Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for that excellent point. He has pointed out the utter hypocrisy between what the Liberals say and do, and the way the message changes as they go along. We saw this during the recent disastrous tax changes that the finance minister introduced. At the beginning he said, “We are going after the wealthy 1%. People are not paying their fair share of taxes.”
The Liberals were very strong and chose to double down on that. However, when they started to see the huge fire created across Canada, they said, “We're consulting with Canadians. We're going to listen to Canadians”. Then, when it became the climbdown that it was, they said, “Well, there are a few tweaks that we've got to make to our proposals.”
We saw the same thing when this bill came forward, namely, that it was not about gender parity. In reality, it should not be about gender parity because jobs are evaluated based on one's skills, experience, and levels of responsibility. There are many global systems that people use to determine what the pay grade should be based on those factors, and not based on gender.
However, when it is convenient and the Prime Minister wants to look like a feminist or as if he is doing the right thing for a photo op or a headline, and not for the actual money on the bottom line that he is putting into the budget, he does exactly what the member said he does.