Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Ottawa West—Nepean.
I stand here to support this motion by the New Democratic Party, which calls for closing the unacceptable pay gap between men and women that contributes to income inequality; to implement the 2004 task force on pay equity; and to do this starting within the public service.
This is eminently supportable, but sometimes people listening to this debate do not know what pay equity is. People may think that pay equity and employment equity are the same thing. We see today that there is an Employment Equity Act that requires that women not be discriminated against in the workplace. This came in as federal legislation about 20 years ago.
However, pay equity is very different. Pay equity is rooted in historic fact. Women worked in certain sectors as receptionists, nurses, etc. This was also known as the “pink ghetto”. They were paid less than men because they were doing women's work. That tradition has continued over the years. In Canada, women are attaining post-secondary education at a level equal to and surpassing men in terms of their abilities and their attainment. However, they are still earning 73¢ for every dollar that male counterparts earn. We need to rectify this. It is important that we do, and this motion asks us to do it which is why we support it.
Canada also has an international obligation under the United Nations and domestic obligations. Our international obligations under the United Nations are with the International Labour Organisation Convention No. 100. Our domestic obligations are with our Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
At the World Economic Forum, Canada is now in 19th place with regard to pay equity. The Nordic countries have surpassed us when looking at the issue of gender equity. However, that is not all. In 2001, Canada was number one in terms of all forms of gender equality. Today, we are 30th, so we have slid badly with regard to equality between men and women. In 2001, at that time under a Liberal government, the minister of labour and the minister of justice asked for a task force to report on the status of pay equity and what should be done to achieve pay equity in the future. The report came out in 2004. This is the one that the NDP is asking us to bring about and change. We are in agreement with that. However, what was wrong was that in 2009 we slid even further because the then-Conservative government removed the issue of pay equity from the Human Rights Commission and put it into the Labour Relations Board, which actually said that it was all about labour relations. It is not; it is about human rights. I want to remind everyone that in 1995, 20 years ago, at the Beijing conference, for the first time in the world, women's rights were considered to be human rights. This equality issue is about human rights and we need to deal with it right away.
One of the first things we need to do is to look at the fact that currently women in the labour force bring about $130 billion over 30 years into the GDP. However, if we implement pay equity and women are paid equal pay for work of equal value, which is what pay equity is, we would see that in the next 20 years that would go up from $130 billion to trillions of dollars. Therefore, Canada would benefit economically when women are allowed to fully participate in the economic life of this country. We make up 51% of the population. I do not know of any business, board, factory, or industry that would ignore 50% of its workforce and decide that it is ever going to make it. That is what we do when we do not talk about pay equity.
Now that we have Statistics Canada back, we might be able to look at disaggregated data to measure how many women are not being paid equally for work of equal value, to make this transparent; and to do the kind of data follow-up and evaluation that we need to track this issue. It is an issue that we must track.
The 2004 task force said that we need legislation and that legislation must be very clear. It must give clear criteria for what pay equity means. Pay equity is about similar duties and responsibilities. It is about similar qualifications, similar access to benefits, and similar rates of pay for men and women who do the same work. That is a very clear set of criteria that we would have to follow in implementing legislation.
We want to look at major wage discrimination that occurs in the workforce, not only against women, but aboriginal peoples, the disabled, visible minorities. Are they being paid equal pay for work of equal value?
We also want to make sure that we do not restrict legislation only to unionized workers but expand it to non-unionized workers.
If we are setting up legislation, we want to monitor and maintain good pay equity legislation and pay equity policies. We need to look at how all employees participate. That means that 50% of the employees who are participating in this process must be women.
We want to look at how we would follow up on complaints. There must be some kind of mechanism where people have an opportunity to follow up on complaints.
This is a matter of political will and a commitment to human rights. It is for this reason that the Liberal government supports this motion.
Michael Ignatieff, when he was the leader of the opposition, brought a similar motion to this one. It did not pass in the House, but it was calling for the implementation of the 2004 task force recommendations on pay equity. It was also a way of talking about how we, as a federal government, could play a part.
When we look at places like England, etc., there is a difference in terms of federal and provincial legislation. We cannot demand that provincial legislation and the private sector actually follow pay equity. However, if we bring in legislation and work clearly with them as partners, we can set the criteria. We could look at how we can finally give women an opportunity to play their full role in society, to improve our economic performance in Canada, and play a strong role in competitiveness in the new global marketplace.