Mr. Speaker, obviously it is ridiculous and makes no sense that feminine hygiene products would be classified as a luxury item, and I hope that has been well established on both sides of the House. It shows a case of misprioritization by the Conservatives where they have billions to help out wealthy families and $700 million every year for a CEO tax loophole, but when it comes to an issue like this one, they say they cannot do anything about it right now, but look to the future. Well, the future is the next election. We have a budget bill in front of us right now, but the Conservatives have chosen not to act on this.
In the budget documents from the Conservatives, every year they refer to a typical family, usually a family of four, a husband and wife with two kids and that is fine in the Conservatives' world view. In their typical family in past years the woman has earned more than the man, and then this year, suddenly the Conservatives flipped that ratio around, because in order to justify their $2 billion income-splitting plan, in order for that to make sense in a Conservative world view, suddenly the man had to earn quite a bit more than the woman and the woman had to take a $50,000 or $60,000 pay cut to qualify for income splitting.
The Conservatives can show their social agenda through taxation which is not only did they scrap pay equity law in Canada, but now they want to describe how they want families to work under their Leave it to Beaver world view. They want to go back in time and make choices for Canadian families and particularly for Canada women. We know women still earn three-quarters of what men do for the same work in this country. Rather than helping to rectify that, the Conservatives seem to be interested in enshrining that and making it even worse in some cases.
I wonder if my friend would like to comment on that.