Madam Speaker, the Liberals promised pay equity 42 years ago. That was a promise made by former prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau. They promised it again in 2016, with no rationale at all for the delay. In 2016, a unanimous all-party committee called for pay equity legislation by June of 2017. Here we are, almost a year later, and there is still no legislation. All the women's organizations that testified at committee said there is no reason for delay, and they said repeatedly that justice delayed is justice denied.
In December 2017, the labour minister said, “Our consultations on how to do this are over”, and still we have no pay equity legislation in the House.
The budget documents said that pay equity is essential for women's economic justice, but the budget had no money for pay equity. Barb Byers, who is the former secretary-treasurer of the Canadian Labour Congress, said:
Let us also be mindful that women have been waiting for longer than [14] years. We have been waiting for decades and decades, and while we wait, the debt owed to those who are caught in the wage gap continues to mount.
My team asked the Library of Parliament to calculate the cost of that debt over the 2004-2017 period. The calculation begins in 2004 because that is when the previous Liberal government had a pay equity task force and had legislation and never moved on it. The Library of Parliament calculated that over this period, the wage theft from Canadian women was equivalent to $678 billion in wages. That figure represents about 33% of the gross domestic product in 2015. That is a colossal effect.
Fourteen years have passed since the pay equity task force called for pay equity legislation, and over those years, Canadian women would have had $678 billion more in their pockets. Still there is no legislation and no money in the 2018 budget.
Last year, an alternative federal budget was put together by progressive NGOs across the country under the banner of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, and it stated that $10 million a year would fund pay equity. The CCPA also recommended it in last year's budget, and nothing was done. For this year's budget, the Canadian Labour Congress asked the federal government to, at a minimum, fund the establishment of a pay equity commissioner and a pay equity office and the infrastructure needed to implement legislation once it comes. Again there was nothing. No funds were devoted to implement pay equity.
To the minister's representative, why does the government continue to delay justice with respect to funding for the implementation of pay equity, and how much longer will women have to wait to be paid equally for work of equal value?