Mr. Speaker, I am going to be sharing my time with the hon. member for Hochelaga.
I want to take this opportunity tonight to speak to Bill C-24, and to discuss the reasons why it is an illusory attempt to cover-up a key political charade with regard to the Prime Minister's commitment to gender parity. That commitment rings hollow when we get down to the heart of the matter, and the substance of the bill which creates a new set of problems for economic development.
The whole thing is a diversion from the real issues and required actions. Canadians deserve a candid account of what is before them with the government's Bill C-24. There are three key measures contained in the bill. First, it adds the current ministers of state to the minister's section of the Salaries Act, thereby giving them the same salary as ministers. Second, it creates three new place holder cabinet positions to be filled and defined whenever the Prime Minister chooses to do so. Third, the bill removes ministers who act as the heads of regional economic development agencies from the Salaries Act.
The effect is that if someone is the head of a regional economic development agency, it no longer makes them a minister. That is significant because it stands to reason that the minister in charge of economic development of a region must also know and understand that region. The Liberals have made a crucial error in consolidating all the economic development agencies under a single minister. Central control of regional development was an ill-advised move that should have been turned back, and now the bill removes all possibility of appointing a minister specifically responsible for the economic development of a particular region. What they are doing is entrenching their mistake into legislation.
In a press release issued by the government when it introduced Bill C-24, it said that the legislation was meant to show that the Government of Canada was committed to creating a one-tier ministry that recognized the equality of all cabinet members and supported their work on the government’s priorities. The government would have us believe that there is an important principal of equality at stake with the bill, but in fact, the bill fails to demonstrate any greater equality between ministers or between men and women in cabinet, for that matter, than an existing legislative regime already does.
The NDP has long championed the closing of the gender wage gap in cabinet as well as for all Canadians. The problem with the bill, however, is that it is not so much designed to close the gender wage gap as it is meant to fix a political problem the Prime Minister created when he boasted about having a government with gender parity, but appointed a disproportionate amount of women to junior posts.
Members will recall that the Prime Minister originally bragged about having gender parity in his cabinet. However, he quickly came under criticism for having made most of them ministers of state instead of full ministers. As I pointed out, ministers of state are not department heads, and between 2008 and 2015 inclusively, they have not been paid as full ministers.
Changing the law so that ministers of state receive the same pay and status as full ministers is the Prime Minister's disingenuous solution which only deals with the issue of his contrived gender pay gap in cabinet. It does not deal with the issue of whether or not real gender parity in cabinet means appointing an equal number of women to be department heads.
By papering over the distinction between ministers of state and full ministers, the Prime Minister is prioritizing equality of compensation over equality of responsibility with respect to gender parity in his government.
In addition to that huge problem, we are also deeply concerned about the Liberals' move to consolidate the economic development agencies under one minister, from Mississauga, who is the current Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development. This is a huge mistake. It should go without saying that the minister in charge of economic development in a region must know and understand the region. Our provinces and territories will be best served by economic initiatives designed to meet their unique challenges and issues, something that a pan-Canadian approach will not do.
I have to underscore that what makes it worse is that this bill would remove the possibility of appointing a minister specifically responsible for the economic development of a particular region. Regional economic development should absolutely be a priority of the government, but the current approach of centralizing control of regional economic development under a solo minister from Ontario is broken. The government should not entrench its mistakes in legislation.
The law currently allows for the provision that ministers of state with the appropriate level of responsibility be paid as ministers for departments. House of Commons Procedure and Practice clearly states and specifies the difference in their roles. I will quote a portion of it:
The principle of individual ministerial responsibility holds that Ministers are accountable not only for their own actions as department heads, but also for the actions of their subordinates; individual ministerial responsibility provides the basis for accountability throughout the system. Virtually all departmental activity is carried out in the name of a Minister who, in turn, is responsible to Parliament for those acts. Ministers exercise power and are constitutionally responsible for the provision and conduct of government; Parliament holds them personally responsible for it.
In other words, one minister must ultimately be accountable for the actions of a department. While ministers may delegate responsibilities, they are ultimately responsible for the actions of those to whom they delegate.
Either the Liberals are creating a situation where the lines of accountability are not clear, in which case they are compromising the principle of ministerial responsibility, or they must admit that some ministers will still be subordinate to others; i.e., not all ministers are equal.
There is nothing wrong with having some ministers who run departments and some who do not, nor is there anything wrong with having a convenient title, like minister of state, to designate those ministers with less responsibility.
Canadian taxpayers are being asked to pay more for junior ministers so that the Prime Minister can be spared the embarrassment of explaining that a gender pay gap in cabinet existed because he failed to appoint enough women to senior posts. If the goal of the bill is simply to eliminate the gender pay gap created by appointing a disproportionate number of women to junior roles, it is completely unnecessary. This could be accomplished in two ways: by making the current ministers of state ministers of departments, or by establishing ministries of state for the current ministers of state.
Meanwhile, the gender parity argument is cringeworthy. The Liberal government is dragging its feet when it comes to implementing pay equity for all Canadian women who are not in cabinet. We are still waiting for this feminist Prime Minister to implement proactive legislation on pay equity before the end of 2016. We are still waiting for the repeal of the unfair 2009 Public Sector Equitable Compensation Act, and last but not least, we still await the adoption of the recommendations of 2004 pay equity task force.
If the government is sincere, we need it to conduct and publicly release a gender-based analysis of this bill, close the gender wage gap, and address the responsibility gap in cabinet by making more women department heads. The government must address pay equity and equal opportunity for all Canadians in conjunction with those meaningful initiatives.