Mr. Speaker, the reason feminism is material to this bill is that colleagues in the Liberal Party have talked about the Prime Minister's feminist bona fides. Colleagues in my party have talked about whether this bill is actually feminist. Colleagues in the NDP have raised the same question. I want to have a more honest conversation today.
Two days ago, in the House of Commons, the Minister of Status of Women was asked a question by one of her colleagues on the Liberal backbench about feminism and different slurs that have been used. She made a reference to two things that have made the news recently. One was calling parliamentary colleagues Barbies. I have had the great pleasure of being called that before. In fact, an artist in Manitoba, who I understand actually had grants at the time, although I am not sure, from the Manitoba Arts Council, put together a movie that insinuated that I was a talking-point Barbie, so I have some sympathy. The minister also talked about a very derogatory term, “feminazi”, being used.
The problem I had with the Minister of Status of Women's response was that she made a glib comment that I think was designed to absolve her party of guilt on this aspect. To me, rather than being honest about the fact that none of us, to put it politely, is perfect in this regard, and no party is fantastic about this, the minister herself stood very proudly and very glibly ignored this key fact. I raised comments made by one of her colleagues. If I had had more time to find the quote, I could have raised the fact that one of her colleagues may have insinuated that one of my colleagues was akin to a stripper. Some of my colleagues opposite are now sitting on the independent benches for various reasons.
We are all uncomfortable here now, and we should be, because when we talk about being feminist and standing up for women's rights, we cannot pay lip service or make it a partisan issue. That is what we do here over and over again. I am not going to pretend that my party has been perfect, and I am also not going to wave the stick at just the Liberal Party. I am going to ask all members in the House to do a lot better.
With regard to this bill, if my colleagues in the Liberal Party really support women's rights, they are going to tell the Prime Minister that maybe it is not right to pass a bill that calls female ministers equal when they do not have the ability to bring memoranda to cabinet. For my colleagues on the Liberal backbench who do not understand what that means, it means that there are people in the “gender-parity cabinet” who are called full cabinet members, and are included in the count of their quota, who do not have the right to bring a topic to cabinet for consideration without the approval of a senior, and in most cases male, minister.
They also do not have the right to chair cabinet committees. In fact, if we look at the chairmanship and composition of the Prime Minister's cabinet committees, which is where the real power is in government, which you know, Mr. Speaker, and all of us in this place know, it is actually a lie and an affront to say that there is gender parity in that cabinet. If we are going to be uncomfortable, let us talk about that fact.
Rather than enshrining this in law and having people stand here and extol the virtues of it, let us call a spade a spade. This bill would not create gender parity. It would make women in cabinet say that they are equal, even when they are not, because of the Prime Minister's ego. That is the antithesis of feminism. That is making women cover over inequality for the political gain of a man. I do not care what political stripe members are in this place, that is wrong.
I have had to roll my eyes and facepalm when some of my male colleagues have said things that made me absolutely and completely angry, things that were cringeworthy. I have talked to them afterward and said that I was not going to carry the bag for them. They know that.
I am very proud of the advances my party has made for women in this country. We might not agree on how to achieve gender equality, but if we are going to move forward on that, I would like to think that we are going to agree that a bill like this does not do it.
I do not care if the Prime Minister calls himself a feminist. He should be putting his money where his mouth is all the time, and this bill does not do it. I cannot support it, nor should any member of the Liberal caucus. I would like to see them talk to the minister and say that I have a point and this should be tweaked.
I was appointed as a junior cabinet minister. I was appointed as a minister of state. I was really glad to do that, because it gave me time to understand how the bureaucracy worked, how government worked, and how the cabinet table worked. Male colleagues were appointed by former Prime Minister Harper to the same role. It was not about gender. To me it was about career progression. I had someone who believed in me and thought I had the potential to be a senior member of government but who also gave me time to learn how government worked before the onslaught of question period and media scrums.
We know that there are ministers in the government, and I am sure they are well-intentioned and came to Ottawa wanting to effect change, who do not know how to do their jobs. They do not understand that bureaucrats are going to put out memos for them to sign off on about things like taxing employee discounts. They are not going to understand that it means that they should not sign off on those memos and should review things.
I had time to learn how that worked before I was stuck in as a minister of national revenue. That is not a bad thing. That is a good thing. I am so honoured that I had the opportunity to learn how to do that while contributing to government.
Here we are today with a bill that says that it would create gender parity in cabinet, and it would not. How can people across the way stand and say that it is a great advancement for feminism, when it is not?
A better way to have more women in politics and around the cabinet table would be if we understood that there are tools at our disposal right now. Earlier in the debate, one of my colleagues talked about the fact that the Prime Minister already has in his toolkit the ability to have full cabinet ministers. Hopefully they would be, as they have been across different governments, people who have a degree of experience in this place and in parliamentary committees and an understanding of how government works. That is a different skill set than they would have in any private sector industry or NGO. This place has a learned skill set, and that is okay.
Focusing on tokenism, and then trying to cover it up with a thin veil of feminism that is false, is actually doing a disservice to Canadians, because we are throwing people into situations when they are not ready to govern. That abdicates our fiduciary responsibility to Canadian taxpayers. It abdicates our responsibility to the public service to understand how to translate a political mandate into change within the public service. It abdicates our responsibility to Canadians in that ministers have to understand how those two things work together when they are bringing bills forward in the House of Commons and through committee. It abdicates our responsibility to women, because we are calling something feminist when it is not.
I am not going to stand here and say that I am perfect or that anyone in this House is perfect, but by standing here pretending that this bill is feminist, we are doing a disservice to all Canadians.
My colleagues opposite should go into their caucus room next week and say that maybe they should make some changes to this bill. It can be done in committee. It does not work right now. It is not doing it for me, it is not doing it for the NDP, and I am sure it is not doing it for a lot of people in the Liberal caucus.
Let us do something that resembles work in this place. Let us have a debate, translate those changes at committee, especially given the testimony we heard at the government operations committee, and have a bill that creates, not stymies, gender equality.