Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to participate today in this debate on the report produced by the status of women committee. This is a very significant day. This is one of the rare opportunities we actually have in this place to debate, discuss and have a dialogue on an issue that is fundamental to over half of our population.
The question of pay equity goes back decades. The question of treating women as equal participants in our society has long been a matter of debate and discussion in this place. In fact, like my colleague from New Westminster--Coquitlam, I go back probably 30 years in this struggle. In fact, one of my very first obligations in public life was to work within my own party, the NDP, to ensure that members of the NDP caucus were vigilant about pursuing pay equity.
I can remember back 30 years to a time when we put out publications, buttons and slogans, anything we could, to raise awareness about this issue. In fact, we came to the House of Commons with a T-shirt that read “A Woman's Place is in the House of Commons”. Colleagues of mine back then, such as Stanley Knowles, Ed Broadbent and others, took up this campaign with real energy and determination. Going back all those years, I think the NDP has always led the path in Parliament for the achievement of some very fundamental equality goals.
Today, here we are in November 2006 debating something that we thought was done with. We thought the debate was over, that the discussion had been finished, and that the dialogue had ended. We thought that we all had understood by now the importance of equal pay for work of equal value.
Twenty years ago when I was in the Manitoba legislature, as part of the NDP government, we developed at that point a sophisticated but sensible and pragmatic approach to this issue, and that was legislation entrenching equal pay for work of equal value, with a scheme, a system, for actually evaluating on the basis of skill, education and responsibility. It is a set of criteria that has been well recognized across this country by every think tank, every academic institution and every government organization as one that is workable and certainly reflective of a fundamental principle.
So why are we debating pay equity in 2006? Why are we talking about a report that has been gathering dust over a number of years? What do we need to do to finally achieve equality for women?
I suppose we could start today by all voting in favour of the recommendation in this report, which is basically to finally get some government action on a study that has been going on for years about the need to advance the issue of pay equity, to entrench the notion of equal pay for work of equal value in all aspects of our daily living, and to ensure that a mechanism is in place for women to seek justice if they are not able to enjoy the benefits of equal pay for work of equal value.
If we do not do this today, if we do not convince the Conservative government today to take up this banner when the Liberals failed Canadian women, then we are only delaying the day when women can be equal participants in our economy, contributing to the fullest their abilities, paying taxes, growing our economy and making a difference.
What a shame this is in this day and age, when we are talking about the need to be competitive in the world economy, about the need to ensure productive workforces and about the need to ensure that our economy is growing and prosperity is on the horizon. What a shame that we do not recognize one of the fundamental aspects of that dream of being a prosperous, wealthy nation. That fundamental, of course, is equality for all people: paying people the same based on their contribution to the workforce.
I know the Conservatives have some trouble with this concept, or at least they did at least in opposition. We have had debates before about what equal pay for work of equal value means. I hope, now that they have had some time to think about it and are actually in government and know the value of tapping an individual's fullest potential, that they will see the importance of actually acting on this report and entrenching the notion of equal pay for work of equal value right across the board.
If we do not, we will lose an important resource. We will set aside a major contributing factor to our future prosperity.
Let us look at some of the statistics. We have heard them before. When we think about poverty in this country, I do not think we can ignore the fact that one in seven Canadian women lives in poverty. That means 2.4 million women. Forty-nine per cent of single parent families headed by women are poor and 41.5% of unattached women over 65 are poor.
In general, women in this country are poor and less wealthy than men because of the fact that they are not treated as equal participants in our society today. The very notion that we can get away with paying women less than men for doing comparable work is antiquated, out of date and hurtful to a modern day civil society. What other reason would account for that kind of disparity than this notion that women are, in this day and age, still a source of cheap available labour to be brought into the labour force as needed and to be pushed out when it is perceived that women are taking jobs away from men?
Gosh, we have been through this so many times. I think back to probably about 30 years ago when the Liberals were in government and the minister of labour at that time said that full employment was an actual fact because the majority of able-bodied men between the ages of 18 and 55 were working, implying that as long as women were working for pin money, then we did not include them in the figures. I remember at that time a Conservative actually suggesting that working women were a social phenomenon.
We have been through so many ups and downs on this issue that it is high time we actually come to grips with the fact that women are equal participants in our society today and ought to be paid on the same basis. That brings us to this report.
It was agreed long ago that there would be a study and a task force on the whole question of the application of equal pay for work of equal value across the board. The Liberal government took it upon itself to ensure that this study was undertaken, and that, as we know from the committee's report that we are discussing today, was in 2001. The minister of justice and the minister of labour at the time announced the establishment of a pay equity task force to develop some options and recommendations to improve the legislative framework for dealing with the issue of pay equity.
Finally, after long deliberations and some difficulties on the part of the task force in getting access to all the information it needed, a report was handed to the government in 2004. Here we are two years after this report was handed down and we are debating whether or not to implement it. What happened in those two years? Why did the Liberals leave this issue to languish? Why was it put on the shelf to gather dust? Why was there no action?
I go back to some of the questions I asked in the House then. From my Hansard, dated May 5, 2004, I asked in the House:
The task force report came down today and it has the support of women across Canada. I want to ask the Prime Minister about this and only the Prime Minister.
After a decade of stagnation under the Liberals there is still a large gender gap in the workplace. The Prime Minister knows about gender gaps and credibility gaps too. He need only look at the list of Liberal candidates in this election.
If the Prime Minister will not run more women, will he at least commit to the recommendations released today? Will he commit to implementing those pay equity recommendations immediately and provide Parliament with a plan of action?
Needless to say, I did not get an answer from the Prime Minister. As one would expect, I received an answer from the President of the Treasury Board and guess what the answer was?
Once we have had a chance to study it and understand the implications, we will report back to the House.
That was from my good friend Reg Alcock who is no longer with us. I wonder why. That kind of inaction was unacceptable then and it is unacceptable today.
The report that was handed down was a very fine blueprint for future action. Many groups commented on it. Many in fact described it as a useful, pragmatic document that should provide good direction for government and should lead to expeditious implementation.
I want to refer to a document prepared by Margot Young for Status of Women Canada dated September 2002 where she said:
There are clear and strong arguments to be made that pay equity legislation, removed from a human rights legislation context, should nonetheless be granted similar interpretative treatment - at least to the extent of being given a liberal, purposive and organic interpretation. Pay equity legislation should contain textual recognition that pay equity is a fundamental human right,--
When the report came out other groups commented and one of the most significant responses was from the Canadian Labour Congress which had been working on this issue for a long time and representing women in the workforce for eons. It knew full well the importance for its members of equality between men and women. The Canadian Labour Congress at that time said in a press release on May 5, 2004:
Canadian working women have been waiting for this report for a long time. The federal government should move quickly to implement its very positive recommendations. There is no reason to delay and every reason to proceed with new pay equity legislation based on the report.
It went on to talk about how the report had been based on years of study, research and consultations that happened with unions, employers, women's organizations; how it based its recommendations on a solid understanding of human rights commitment here at home and internationally; and how it was certainly consistent with the history of this country in pursuing equality and justice.
It was a resounding vote of “yes” given to this report by people deeply involved in this field. It should have provided the basis for action and it did not. Why the Liberals continued to drag their feet I do not know. They had time enough. They had resources enough. They had rhetoric enough, but the rhetoric never went beyond this supposed commitment to women's equality. That was true on a number of fronts.
I am reminded daily of this as we fight the Conservative plan to dismantle the Status of Women program and to eliminate funding for women's resource centres because they help to empower women to help themselves. I am reminded as we deal with this daily onslaught of cutbacks from the Conservatives how in fact the Liberals started this whole path we are on. In fact, the Liberals gave the directions to the Conservative government on how to do it. The Liberals gave them the road map by in fact eliminating core funding for women's groups.
Let us not forget that it was under the Liberals that the National Action Committee on the Status of Women was gutted. It was under the Liberals that organizations representative of women across this country, whether it was NAC, NAWL, FAFIA or whether it was advisory councils right across this country, all of them depended upon recognition that the work they did was important and that government financial support was there to ensure that their work continued.
What the Liberals did was decide that no longer would such organizations receive core funding, receive money they could count on year in and year out. From that day henceforth, after the Liberals made this big meanspirited decision, women's groups were forced to start appealing for funds on a project by project basis, thereby diverting most of their energies into administrative paperwork just to meet the new and evolving criteria that the Liberals had put before them.
We are reaping today the results of that kind of negligence, that kind of meanspirited agenda, and that kind of a Liberal approach which always puts rhetoric over action, never keeps its promises, and pretends that it is doing the best for vulnerable groups in our society today.
Frankly, I am getting a little tired of hearing from Liberals about their self-righteous indignation about how the NDP caused them to lose their culture of entitlement, and to lose their belief that they are somehow the natural governors of this nation. I am not any happier with the Conservative Party's approach, but it sure is galling to hear Liberals stand up these days and talk about their belief in pay equity and their belief in child care, when they spent years dilly-dallying and fiddling away without action.
The Liberals promised for 13 years to implement a national child care program. They came forward with a program when they knew they were in trouble in the dying days of a minority government. They used this as if it was intended all along and we should have automatically kept believing them and kept putting our faith in the them because they said they were going to deliver.
How can we keep doing that? It is impossible. There has been no action on child care and no action on pay equity. Here we are debating a fundamental issue for women's equality at a time when the Liberals dropped the ball and where the Conservatives have always said they really do not understand or accept the concept of equal pay for work of equal value.
We are in a real difficult spot. If the Liberals had acted when they had opportunity to do so, we would have been well on our way to trying out a legislative approach and seeing in fact if moving away from a complaints based regime and toward a more proactive legislative scheme would make a difference. I am sure by now we would have been assessing the legislation, making judgments, and determining whether or not to fine tune it and improve it.
Instead, here we are debating the concept. We are debating the very notion about whether or not it makes sense in this day and age, even though women still only make 60¢ on the dollar that every man makes for doing roughly the same work. We are not talking about different jobs. We are talking about work of equal value and suggesting in fact that it is not conducive to a productive economy nor is it conducive to a healthy population to discriminate.
We, as a society, have a job to do to address systemic discrimination. That is what we are dealing with, something that is deep rooted in our system because it has served this country well to keep women as a cheap resource of labour. It is high time we dealt with that, put it to bed, and started working on the basis of the fundamentals of civil society.