Mr. Speaker, that is a good question that the member opposite asks, but in the absence of any transparency or any legislation, on this side of the House we have no idea. Women in Canada have no idea.
The pre-budget media got top-of-the-fold headlines that this was going to be a gender budget, but when we actually open it up, we see it gives a whole long list of all the economic injustices against women in the country. It is well known that there is a sustained and widening gender gap, that women do not have access to high-paying jobs, that they are not on corporate boards, and that they are not even on the crown corporation boards that the House and the government oversee. We are still one of the few G7 countries that does not have a universal child care program, and elderly women continue to retire in poverty.
Instead, the budget had some programs, it is true, but a number of them, as detailed at great length, do not provide access for women who actually need the help. Now women can get 18 months of parental leave, and that is nice, but they still only receive the same amount of money to spread over a longer period of time.
This is why I brought a motion to the status of women committee this morning that the finance minister come to this committee and describe the benefits of the budget for women. The Liberal members of the committee voted it down.
We thought that, if the minister had a good news story to tell, he would have wanted to come to the committee and explain why, in the absence of gender-based analysis legislation, his version of a gender lens on decisions—inside cabinet, not transparent—was working. The Liberal committee members refused to have him appear, and so we remain in the dark.