Clearly, Mr. Speaker, program funding for women is not cut and will not be cut. There are no plans to cut that.
Members opposite repeat the same words over and over. But Canadian women are intelligent people. With the past government, when we boil the whole thing down, basically 30¢ on the dollar was used for women's programs. Now Canadian women are looking at this and saying, “Yes, we need to be frugal with our money, and we need to make those precious dollars work”. Women are used to budgeting. Women are used to making money work, to making money grow. Now when we look at this, program funding for women is not cut but the action plans are used.
I have a question for the hon. member on pay equity. Pay equity is a very serious thing and is something that members on this side of the House clearly pay very close attention to. In the status of women committee, yes, at that time, the majority of the people, including me, voted for looking at legislation. We looked at it. We decided that what had happened over the last 13 years was that the legislation was there and nothing was done with it.
This minister right now is taking this legislation and making it work. That is another way of making the precious tax dollars be utilized, so would this member not agree that utilizing what we have out there without starting right at point one is a more prudent thing to do? Why start all over again? It is there. Making it work right now is the more prudent thing to do.