Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Laurentides—Labelle.
The Bloc Québécois will support the Liberal motion, because we believe that the cuts to Status of Women Canada that have been announced are symptomatic and provide disturbing evidence of how important women are in the mind of this government.
The Bloc Québécois calls on the government to take a step back, because we believe that this cut is being made not in the spirit of budget rationalization—because we know that this government has surpluses—but rather from an ideological perspective, one that is contrary to the values of Quebeckers. We think that women in Quebec are being judged based on how Status of Women Canada’s programs are being managed.
The Conservative government has announced cuts of $5 million over two years to the secretariat of Status of Women Canada, whose budget is only just over $24 million. That means a cut of 20% of its budget, a budget that it was allocated after heated battle.
I would like to remind this House of the tough battles that were fought, with the Bloc Québécois among those leading the charge, to have the Standing Committee on the Status of Women created. For more than 10 years, we had to call for this committee and demand that it be created, and it finally happened in October 2004. I was among the first group of members who took part in that committee’s work. At those parliamentary committee meetings, where we heard ordinary people, experts and ministers, but most importantly many representatives of groups and organizations, we saw that the needs and the problems are enormous.
That is why I find it absolutely incomprehensible that today the organization that manages those programs is having its budget cut, when women are barely starting to get access to services and the needs are growing.
That committee was given the authority to review all issues arising from the mandate, management, organization and operation of Status of Women Canada, and also to hold an inquiry. If we make cuts to the management of Status of Women Canada, however, who will deal with that committee’s reports? The Standing Committee on the Status of Women is important.
Let us recall that five reports have been submitted. There was a report on maternity benefits, employment insurance parental benefits, that talked about the exclusion of self-employed women—and that is still the case.
A very important report on pay equity was submitted. We know that the pay equity problem is a grave injustice, and that it is very difficult to deal with it. In Quebec, we have made significant progress, but here in Canada women’s wages are still much lower than men’s.
A third report about funding by the women’s program was also submitted. The question was what the women of Canada thought about it.
Of course a report on increased funding for equality-seeking organizations was also submitted. The organizations are underfunded. We have identified a lot of flaws, particularly recently, when Women and the Law had to close down because the minister dragged her feet on providing the funding it needed.
Another report dealt with gender analysis. When we are dealing with discrimination against women, it is important to understand that we have to have an analysis, department by department, to be able to prove what is being argued and prove what women need.
We are concerned that if Status of Women Canada's budget is cut, the Standing Committee on the Status of Women, an essential committee, will have few respondents and few responses.
Yet the Conservative government may well need the expertise of Status of Women Canada—this was abundantly clear in the child care agreement. The Conservative government's decision to cancel the child care agreement, which was signed by the governments of Canada and Quebec on October 28, 2005, was anything but unremarkable.
That legally binding contract, which took months to prepare and was announced with great fanfare, was cancelled the following year by the Conservatives. It is this failure to follow through on promises that women in Canada and Quebec find so discouraging. I would like to remind the House that this cancelled contract represents a loss of over $800 million for child care centres in Quebec.
In its place, the government is offering a $1,200 annual, taxable allowance. This shows just how out of touch this government is with women's needs. It would have been wiser to listen to the Bloc Québécois' suggestion and grant a refundable tax credit, but the government refused to do so.
As further evidence of their obsession with making sure everyone knows about their ideas, it seems that for the first two months, the minister sent parents their $100 cheques through the mail rather than electronically. The cost to taxpayers: $2 million. This is a great injustice.
So when the government comes back to tell us about accountable financial management, that raises more than a few eyebrows.
What about attempts to get preventive withdrawal for female federal employees who work under conditions that could pose a risk to their children's safety, whether at border crossings or elsewhere? Preventive withdrawal for pregnant women is still not the norm.
As for work-life balance, it is clear that the government has no vision about this. We should have a vision about child care, in order to develop a solid network of child care centres for the future so that we can have a safe place for our children and avoid health and dropout problems later on.
Yet, the minister responsible posted this on the Status of Women Canada website. Yesterday, September 27, 2006, we could read this:
As a member of the Canadian Heritage Portfolio, Status of Women Canada plays an important role in the life of Canadians.
Status of Women Canada is responsible for promoting gender equality, and over the next year it will work to achieve the objective of supporting the full participation of Canadian women in all aspects of society. I am pleased that particular attention will be given to those challenges that are currently faced by Canadian women. I look forward to working with them on such issues as the economic stability of women and the situation of Aboriginal women.
Given the circumstances and given the quote from the minister, how could she have written and approved that after announcing a 20% cut in the organization's funding?
Often, when we talk about the economic stability of women, what we are really mean is poverty. Children are living in poverty in Canada because families are poor, and we know that the poorest families in our society are single-parent families, most of which are mother-led families.
Although the Canadian economy grew by 62% between 1994 and 2004, which produced nearly $480 billion more each year in market value during those ten years, more and more women saw their salaries stagnate or barely change, while hard costs such as housing, tuition fees, child care and public transit have increased, which has had an impact on family economies.
In conclusion, it is important that we continue to fight to stop the cutbacks that have been announced. We demand that the government reverse its decision and cancel the cutbacks.
It is important to understand that these cuts are not the result of rational thinking, rather they result from an ideological approach that completely opposes the values of Quebeckers and everything defended by the Bloc Québécois.
We can only conclude that this government is reactionary and, unfortunately, misogynous. We in the Bloc Québécois will continue to rise and defend the women of Quebec and ensure equality in all areas for Quebec's women.