Mr. Speaker, the government owes Canadian women economic justice. Equal pay for work of equal value is a fundamental human right. However, today, women in Canada continue to be paid far less than men for work of equal value. To fix this injustice, in February 2016 I moved a motion in this House to create a special committee on pay equity to implement the recommendations of the 2004 pay equity task force. That was adopted by this House and by the government opposite. A year ago that committee on pay equity tabled a report called “It's Time to Act”. It called for pay equity legislation to be tabled in June 2017. That is now. I did not think that a year later the government would still not have legislated equal pay for work of equal value.
The effects on women are real. Since 2004, the gender wage gap has cost Canadian women $640 billion in lost wages. That is $640 billion that successive Canadian governments owe Canadian women because of Liberal and Conservative failures to act. Without pay equity, that amount is growing every day. On average, women working in Canada full time year-round make only 77% of what their male counterparts earn.
I will list many more ways that this impacts women. Women have to work 14 additional years to earn the same pay that a man earns by age 65. Women do not earn enough during their working years, so when they retire, disproportionately, senior women fall into poverty in Canada. Early childhood educators often do not earn enough, so they either leave the profession or else they have to rely on a spouse to supplement and support them. Women are expected to take time out of the workforce to care for children and seniors, because they earn a lower wage than their male partner. Women are forced to work insecure jobs because they do not have enough savings to wait for better work. The low minimum wage means that women often cannot get themselves out of poverty. Women who are indigenous, visible minorities, transgendered, or living with disabilities experience an even wider wage gap.
What is the government doing? It is delaying justice again for women for no good reason. Oxfam Canada told the status of women committee this year that there are no barriers to the government moving forward with pay equity legislation now.
The government could follow the good examples of provinces that have proactive pay equity legislation, like Ontario and Quebec. My aunt, Kim Malcolmson, a social justice activist and feminist, was one of Ontario's first pay equity workers when its commission was established in the early 1980s.
I will keep fighting, as many generations of women have before, so that women have equal pay for work of equal value, no matter where they live in Canada. The current government is what is holding that process up. Thirteen years have passed since the Liberal 2004 pay equity task force report. It was a comprehensive blueprint for pay equity. A three-year study, with 113 recommendations, it stands up very well in the House, which supported it again a year and a half ago.
Barb Byers, former secretary-treasurer of the Canadian Labour Congress, testified at the special committee on pay equity. She said:
Let us also be mindful that women have been waiting for longer than 12 years. We've been waiting for decades and decades, and while we wait, the debt owed to those who are caught in the wage gap continues to mount. These are women with children to raise, women who deserve a dignified retirement....
Therefore, my question for the government is this. When exactly will it listen and introduce proactive pay equity legislation so that women will get the justice they deserve?