Madam Speaker, that was a shock to all of us. We knew the Conservatives were dead against something as progressive as pay equity and were going to try to do whatever they could to kill it, but on top of that, to fill up this legislation with slings and arrows and to suggest that anyone advocating in the labour movement on behalf of an employee to get the employee's rightful access to pay equity would be penalized to the tune of $50,000 is just beyond comprehension, beyond belief.
I have never heard or seen anything like this in my 20 years of elected political office, nor in my 40 years of working in the political movement, especially in the women's movement where we have fought for so long to have pay equity in the first place. We cannot stand here and allow pay equity to be killed in one fell swoop without doing everything we can to stop it. Everything about this legislation is wrong, wrong, wrong, and I would urge the Liberals to rethink their position.
Just today in the press we noted that the Minister of Health, a woman in the cabinet of the government, has come out in full support of the Conservative government's legislation preventing female federal public service employees from filing pay equity complaints, and supports the notion that a union would be fined $50,000 if it gave support to an employee for pay equity. That is shameful. That is unacceptable, and I would hope that if we cannot convince the Conservatives, at least the Liberals will stand up and help us separate this part of the legislation out of Bill C-10.
When it came to equalization, the leader of the Liberal Party somehow managed to give all the members from Newfoundland and Labrador dispensation from voting against equalization. Now we are simply asking, if the Liberals really believe in pay equity and understand it is a fundamental right, will they be given dispensation to vote against Bill C-10 and stand up for the women of this country and stand up for pay equity?