Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for her advocacy in this regard.
We know that moving forward on legislation to ensure that women get paid equally for work of equal value is critically important. This is something we have been focused on since we came into office. Our government has been very focused on how we can ensure that outcomes for women are consistent with outcomes for men in this country. This has been an important and ongoing focus of our budget in 2018 and multiple measures.
The measure under question, the pay equity portion of the bill, is critically important. We know that women in our country are not paid at the same rate as men. In fact, for similar kinds of work, they are paid about 88.5 cents on the dollar of what a man earns. When we look at it more broadly, comparing women's pay with men's pay overall, it is about 68 cents on the dollar when we incorporate part-time work. We have made it clear that this is not acceptable, which is why we believe it is critical that we move forward with the pay equity legislation in federally regulated sectors, which we have included in this budget implementation act.
We are looking forward hopefully to seeing the member on the opposite side vote for this so that we can see this equity in future.