Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for London—Fanshawe for splitting her time with me and also for her tireless commitment and passion around working on behalf of women and children across this country.
I was honoured and privileged to serve as a New Democrat on the very first standing committee for women in 2005. I have to acknowledge as well the tireless work of the member for Winnipeg North and the member for Vancouver East, who worked hard to ensure that the committee was actually established by the House.
This is an interesting motion that has come before the House. The member for London—Fanshawe rightly pointed out the failure on the part of the Conservatives to work on behalf of equality for women, whether it is in regard to cuts to the Status of Women department, gutting the court challenges program, their failure to establish a national child care program, or the Conservative failure to actually move forward on social and affordable housing. I am not going to spend a whole lot of time talking about the very dim track record of the Conservatives, but I am going to talk about the Liberal track record.
When we are talking about the Liberal track record, most of us, when referring to economic security, would take that to mean access to affordable housing, access to a national child care program, good quality jobs, and good pensions, which would mean that senior women in particular could afford to live. We would take that to mean that an employment insurance program, that safety net, actually meets the needs of workers who lose their employment through no fault of their own.
Instead, we found under the Liberal watch a continuous cut to all of those programs that supported working and middle class families in this country. It was cut after cut after cut. Lest hon. members think this is simply New Democrat rhetoric, I want to talk about the fact that, domestically and internationally, the Liberals were consistently cited for their failure to protect the most vulnerable people in this country.
In the March 2007 report of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, there were many criticisms of the Canadian government, but I will talk about one. The report said that “the Committee remains concerned about serious acts of violence against Aboriginal women, who constitute a disproportionate number of victims of violent death” related to domestic violence.
The report goes on in its recommendations to talk about the fact that in the year 2000 it was recommended that “the State...strengthen and expand existing services, including shelters and counselling, for victims of gender-based violence, so as to ensure their accessibility”. That was under the Liberal watch.
We also have a preliminary report from the United Nations special rapporteur on adequate housing, Miloon Kothari, from a press conference on October 22. Again it is a report that is very critical of Canada's housing policy. It talks about inadequate housing. It talks about this being a “crisis” in Canada. Again we have an international person talking about the Liberal track record.
He talks about the fact that “Canada's successful social housing programme, which created more than half a million homes starting in 1973”, at the insistence of New Democrats, I might add, “no longer exists”. He says:
Canada has fallen behind most countries in the [OECD] in its level of investment in affordable housing. Canada has one of the smallest social housing sectors among developed countries.
Those were cuts under the Liberal watch.
Today, we truly do have a national crisis in housing. Thousands of people across this country are homeless. In a survey that was done two years ago in my riding, 50% of the homeless in the city of Nanaimo were women and children. We had a Liberal government that in the past cut the very supports out from under those most in need.
In case the Conservatives think they are off the hook, they are also mentioned in the report. We have a Conservative government that is talking about a “shift in housing policy to provide support for home ownership, mainly through the tax system, while eroding support for social and rental housing”.
Many of the most vulnerable will never have a chance to own a home in this country. That is why we need to invest in social and affordable housing.
What about unemployment insurance under the Liberal watch? By the time the Liberals finished reforming the then unemployment insurance system, now called employment insurance, we had the situation where now only about four out of every 10 male unemployed workers are collecting EI benefits at any given time. This is down from 80% in 1990. Only one in three unemployed women is collecting benefits at any given time. This is down from 70% in 1990.
I am sure that somebody will get up and say that is because the economy is so much better, but the reality of these numbers is that these people are paying into the system, and when they apply for employment insurance, they are told by the government, today the Conservatives, yesterday the Liberals, that they do not qualify despite the fact that they are paying into the system.
Under the current system the basic benefit paid is 55% of insured earnings while the level of insured earnings is averaged over 26 weeks to a maximum of $423. That was a while ago, but under the Liberal watch, it fell from 66% in the 1970s to 55%.
With respect to first nations, the Liberals instituted a 2% cap in funding growth to first nations in 1996. This cap applied to all core programs and services, such as education, child and family services, income assistance, Indian governance support, housing, capital and infrastructure, and regulatory services programs. Again, that was under the Liberal watch.
As for pay equity, a report was commissioned by the Liberals in 2001. Three years later in 2004, the pay equity task force tabled its final report called “Pay Equity: a New Approach to a Fundamental Human Right”, which contained over 100 recommendations. Unfortunately I do not have time to read them all, although I would be very pleased to do that.
The very first task force recommendation was that “Parliament enact new stand-alone, proactive pay equity legislation in order that Canada can more effectively meet its international obligations and domestic commitments, and that such legislation be characterized as human rights legislation”.
The Status of Women committee at that time, which I was very pleased to sit on, did a report to the government outlining the circumstances of the pay equity report. The committee made a recommendation to the government. It recommended that “the Departments of Justice and Human Resources and Skills Development draft and table legislation based on the recommendations of the Pay Equity Task Force by 31 October 2005 and that the legislation be referred to the Standing Committee on the Status of Women”.
As for the Liberal response, by now it should be no surprise. It was that they were going to have another study. They were going to consult. So after the Liberals had been confronted with report after report on what needed to be done to ensure economic security for women in Canada, after they commissioned a report and spent untold thousands of dollars on that report, which was well worth it, they wanted to spend more time and more money to commission another report.
One of the women who came before the Status of Women committee talked about her dilapidated office, because of course the Liberals cut core program funding to women's organizations. She had a broken table in her office. The leg was missing. To shore up her table, she used stacks of reports about inadequate housing, inadequate wages and inadequate pension income. What she asked the committee to do was act on some of the recommendations in those stacks of reports that were holding up the table.
The Liberals had 13 years of majority and minority government to move forward on some of the recommendations in the countless reports they had done with women's groups across this country. Instead of acting on the recommendations, they consulted more and asked for more reports. Unfortunately, the Conservatives are continuing in that same vein.
In conclusion, I want to talk about the convention on the elimination of discrimination against women. Again it cites the Liberal track record and says that the Liberals could not even be bothered to report on that convention in 2002 for the period covering 1994 to 1998. I think that is a good way to end. The Liberals could not even fulfill an international commitment to report in a timely fashion on issues that were of the greatest importance to women, whether it was violence against women, adequate shelter, or access to transition houses. The list is endless. I think it is a very sad comment on today's women's rights.