Mr. Speaker, my colleague's speech specifically dealt with some of the gender elements in the budget.
A friend of mine, a young woman, said to me that this appears to be a budget written for women by men. I think part of the reason many people see the budget in that way is that it talks about gender equality, but it really tries to dictate to women on the choices they make, and in a way which I think is out of step with where society actually is right now.
The biggest instance of this is the “use it or lose it” parental leave. The government wants to say to families that parents can no longer decide for themselves how they divide up their parental leave. From now on, the government thinks that each person has to take a certain portion of parental leave. That is because the government wants to micromanage how families divide up their responsibilities. For many families, it is not going to work. It may be a single parent family. It may be a family where one person has the kind of job where it just is much less practical for that person to take the leave than for the other person. In many cases, there may be a desire to breastfeed, which is something that men cannot do.
I wonder if the member can tell us why this budget presumes to dictate to families how they divide up their child care responsibilities. Is it not more in keeping with the nature and goal of feminism to let people make their own choices, to give them the tools and the ability to make their own choices about how they divide up responsibilities within their own family?