Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her question. It is in fact an excellent question. Why are women’s rights and pay equity not looked at as being equal in importance to the other rights in the charters? Why is that?
As I was explaining earlier, I believe this is inherent in the Conservative government, the Conservative Party, where fewer than 13% of the party’s candidates in the last election were women. Thirteen percent! That is nothing, when women make up 52% of the population. The Conservatives could only find enough women to make up 13% of the people representing them.
There are two reasons for this. First, there is obviously no interest, no awareness of the status of women, and second, women may not be interested in the Conservative Party, which has never stood up for their rights. All it has done since being elected is eliminate funding for status of women organizations, on the pretext that too much money was being spent on administration. I would like to see them organize things and not have administrative expenses.
So only 13% of the Conservative Party’s candidates were women. There are also not very many women in their cabinet or on their benches. The result is that that party is totally lacking in any awareness of the problems women face and the inequity that exists in our society today.