Mr. Speaker, while I agree with some of the things in the statement put forward by the Liberal government today, I am interested in the fact that earlier today someone from the Liberal side said that if it had not been for the NDP taking down the government we would have had pay equity. Why did we not have pay equity the year before that or the year before that or the year before that? Mr. Speaker, let me know when I get to the number 12. The Liberals had a significant number of years to bring in pay equity but chose instead to wave it in front of the public as we neared an election. Therefore, I think that is a facile argument to make.
The Liberal opposition says that it wants to help all women and particularly women who are vulnerable. The United Nations report criticized Canada in 2003, which, as I recall, was under a Liberal government, for failing in areas such as providing support to single mothers and first nations women. I cannot think of groups of people who would be more vulnerable than many single mothers and first nations women.
I was very interested in a comment made earlier by a Conservative member saying that the Conservatives wanted to do things that did not cost money. I would suggest to them that one of the things might be to recruit more candidates since they only ran 38 women candidates with 12% being elected, compared to the NDP running 108 women candidates with 35% being elected. That is something that would cost no money, would increase women's representation in the House and would be a significant--