Madam Speaker, the last exchange reminded me so much of a previous Parliament, when I asked the Conservative government, when it was adding 30 new MPs to our ranks, if it would not make sense to reduce, pro rata, all the salaries of MPs across the board so that the overall budget for MPs would remain the same. I tried this on several Conservatives, and the answer every single time was, “We are pleased to see that the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands does not want her salary.” The other answer was, “This is the price of democracy.”
Sometimes we can become too partisan in questions around pay. This is redressing an inequality that needed to be redressed, and as bills in this place go, it is relatively non-controversial. The bigger question is when we will move on to pay equity for the rest of the women in Canada.