Mr. Speaker, we have been waiting such a long time in this country that we want to establish this as a priority of Parliament and start to move forward toward finally making real change in this area.
I commend the Prime Minister for his cabinet appointment decisions, but we cannot rely on the particular goodwill of a particular government at one point in time. We must legislate pay equity. That would then fan out to the provinces and across the country. This is going to require partnership, but without leadership from the federal government we will remain where we are with a significant pay gap of 23%.
We hope that Parliament will choose to task a committee with this work. It will then be up to the committee to decide its own scope and who it needs to hear from. We have experts across the country in provinces that have implemented pay equity who can describe the experience. We have experts who can tell us about the realities of what this gap is costing the country. There is great wealth for us to draw on.