Mr. Speaker, this massive 850-page bill contains seven different pieces of legislation, and yet the Standing Committee on Finance held only three meetings to study it.
What is more, the 36 amendments proposed by the NDP in committee were all rejected. The Liberals did not even take the time to study or debate them. They rejected them all, including those recommended by the Ontario Equal Pay Coalition, the Canadian Labour Congress or CLC, the Canadian Union of Public Employees or CUPE, Teamsters Canada and the Public Service Alliance of Canada or PSAC. All of the witnesses from these unions agreed that amendments were needed so that the bill would remedy the shortcomings in the legislation, which requires women to go to court to get equal pay for equal work.
If the Liberals were serious about pay equity, why did they not create a stand-alone bill on this subject that we could have debated in the House? That way women would not have to wait three or four years for pay equity.