Mr. Speaker, here we are under time allocation, debating the budget implementation bill, Bill C-86.
We have been waiting three years in this Parliament for pay equity legislation to be tabled. Canadian women have been waiting 42 years since the first Trudeau prime minister promised to implement pay equity legislation.
Having spent three years ostensibly consulting with employers, the labour movement and the lawyers who have been litigating pay equity in the absence of federal legislation, the government finally jams it into this 800-page bill.
We thought it would really reflect the advice the consultations had gathered. Instead, under extremely tight timelines, the NGOs, the labour movement, teamsters, the Canadian Labour Congress and the Ontario Equal Pay Coalition all proposed extremely detailed amendments. They said the pay equity parts of this legislation would not work, and that women would not get equal pay.
I proposed dozens of amendments at finance committee that were written by the lawyers who have been litigating this all this time. Liberal members voted every single one of them down.
Why did the government not take the advice of the people closest to pay equity and get this right after waiting 42 years?