Mr. Speaker, I am going to follow a little different format here. First of all, I am going to say that I have never stood up and bragged that I was a feminist. However, throughout my working career, most of my working career, I have always believed in working with women and treating them equally, with equal respect to the men I work with.
Most of the people in this House know my background is in the RCMP. I spent 35 years there. The RCMP was one of the first government agencies, going back to 1974, that decided to allow women to join the force and become regular members on the street. That decision was by Commissioner Nadon. In March 1975, they hit the streets, working with us men.
I want to go back in the history of the RCMP. This is all talking about women and gender equality. It is very important to realize that this is nothing new. It is just that we are starting to respect it a lot more now than we did in the past. It is unfortunate that we did not do it in the past.
I want to talk a little about the past. In the organization that I was proud to serve for 35 years, we have had women going back to the 1800s. Many of them worked as matrons for us in the detachments across the country, guarding men, guarding women. Many of them worked as clerks. Even in about 1920, we started hiring them as lab technicians, to work in our labs and help solve cases. They worked as clerks in many of the bigger detachments. Women played a very important role. They definitely were not paid the same as regular police officers, and that may be unfortunate.
One of the things that a lot of people do not realize is that in Canada, as Canada grew, there were many RCMP detachments across this country. Many of them were one-man, maybe two-man detachments. There might be one member there, and he had his wife. A lot of people did not realize that a lot of the wives of RCMP officers, when their husbands were away on patrol, whether it was on a horse, by dog team, or whatever means, lots of times they played an equal role to their husband in handling minor investigations in the community while their husbands were out. They did counselling and took complaints.
I can recall a number of years ago when we had a murder in a community I was in. The culprit would not talk to any of the police, because his lawyer told him not to. However, he knew he was wrong in what he had done, so he gave a statement to my wife, who gave it to me, and I gave it to the crown counsel. The case was resolved.
Women have always played a very important role. I believe they are equal to men.
Let us move to 1974. I think I had about six years' service then, when Commissioner Nadon announced that the RCMP would be taking women into the force. Many of us felt this was a man's occupation. I remember hearing talk for about a year, between 1974 and 1975, that women could not do the job, could not break up a fight, could not go out on patrol by themselves, and that this was a man's world and only men could do the work. Well, 1975 arrived, and women started coming out in the field. I think I can only say, in a few words, “Wow, were we wrong.”
Women, when they joined the force—30 of them graduated in 1975, the first troop—were spread out across Canada. Like any organization, when they were new to us, I think we made mistakes, because we did not treat them equally. They were new; they were unique. We used a lot of them for propaganda, for promotional things, for parades and stuff like that. We gave them a special status.
It really bothered the first few troops of women. They wanted to do the job, equal to what we, the guys in the field, were doing.
They soon made it very apparent that they were equal to us and did not think they needed to be treated any differently. We have seen that change over the years; their uniforms have become the same as those of the men and we got away from all the specialties that were in there.
We have made mistakes in learning how to work with women. However, I learned one thing very early, and I am going back to the mid-70s and a little later. The first two women I worked with were Doris and Ann, and I learned to respect the ability of a woman to handle the same role as a man in the job of being a police officer. In fact, it did not take me very long to learn that they could probably do a better job in a lot of cases than I could.
I always loved having a female member with me on domestic cases, and also cases dealing with children. However, there was one thing that really surprised me when I was policing in a community that was probably one of the roughest communities in British Columbia. We had seven reserves surrounding the community. It was a violent community. There were lots of fights, lots of stabbings, and that stuff. We had two women posted to our detachment. We worried about them, but we did not have to. They were able to integrate just as well as we were. In fact, when we went to a bar disturbance, I could guarantee that if two male members walked into the bar disturbance, the scrap would probably continue, but if I walked in with a female member, it usually stopped. One can be in a rough and tumble logging community, but people still respect women.
I remember one incident where one of our female members walked into the bar by herself. We always told her not to do it, but I guess we were busy. There was quite a ruckus going on. She tried to arrest a guy who resisted her, and I still remember people telling me that half the bar got up, helped her take that person and put him in the back of the police car. He got a little roughed up on the way, but that is irrelevant. If it had been me, I would have had to scrap him all the way in.
Women have always played a very important role. People who have not had the opportunity to work side by side with a woman in an equal environment will learn that they can do a similar job. Therefore, they should get similar pay and be treated equally.
I support the motion. Recommendation 14 says:
That the Government of Canada, following consultation with federal departments and agencies, as well as civil society, introduce legislation by June 2017....
This has to happen. It has been happening for many years in many government agencies. As I said, in March of 1975, the RCMP started working with women. It is very important, but we must look at it across Canada, and treat women with equal respect and provide equal pay for equal work.