Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her question.
There is in fact something immoral about this Conservative government. The first immoral thing is the fact that only 13% of the candidates in the last election were women. I have not done the math, but the Conservative Party is certainly the party with the least representation by women in the House of Commons.
This situation is not simply a matter of it being absolutely necessary to have equal representation of women and men, or to have women account for 52% of elected representatives because they represent 52% of the population. The problem is that the Conservative government is dominated by men and is insensitive to the status of women and the needs of women.
Pay equity should be included in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. That is right! Pay equity should be a fundamental right. There is also the question of protective withdrawal of work. In addition to the real measures set out in the Charter, there should also be other concrete measures taken by this Conservative government.
Earlier, I raised the question of protective withdrawal, an extremely important question. It would allow a pregnant woman working in an environment that is harmful to her or to her fetus to stop working and still receive 90% of her net pay, as is the case in Quebec, without having to mortgage her employment insurance, as women working in companies governed by the Canada Labour Code must unfortunately do.