Mr. Speaker, before I begin, I would like to thank the member for Nanaimo—Ladysmith for her contribution not only to the debate tonight but for her advocacy on behalf of women. I had the pleasure of sitting with her on the Standing Committee on the Status of Women for my first few years as a member of Parliament. I thoroughly enjoyed her thoughtful and engaging approach to our dialogue.
I am similarly pleased to defend and highlight our government's action, not just words, on gender equality and the work we are doing, in particular, to end violence against women and girls. I am especially proud to rise today during the first-ever Gender Equality Week, a week to celebrate Canada's progress in advancing gender equality and an opportunity to reflect on the work that remains, recognizing the countless benefits of gender equality for people, no matter their gender.
Frankly, I have a hard time disagreeing with some of the issues the member raised in her speech, although I do take issue with her mischaracterization of the actions our government has taken. By taking steps to advance gender equality, we are strengthening the middle class and growing the economy for everyone. We could add $150 billion to our GDP in less than a decade if we successfully brought in policies of fairness and equality.
I am glad the member made reference, in particular, to the visit of the UN special rapporteur on violence against women in her question. Before I speak to the many actions our government is taking, I would like to quote the special rapporteur, who said:
I would like...to congratulate the Canadian Government on its current efforts of upgrading the Federal Agency on the Status of Women into a full-size department, which I see as an important step that will enable better coordination and alignment of laws and policies and better implementation...in relation to the protection of women’s rights...across the country, in order to fully integrate national feminist policy at all levels,...with the participation of all stakeholders, including indigenous women who today face intersectional discrimination and violence at a higher level than non-indigenous women, and therefore require specific attention and focus.
Further, the special rapporteur went on to say:
This development, together with the new Strategy to prevent and address Gender based violence [as an obstacle to achieving gender equality], are important steps that are needed to respond to current challenges in the prevention of gender-based violence in Canada.
We are making gender equality a priority in a number of ways. For example, we have made Status of Women a full department and introduced legislation to ensure that gender-based analysis plus is applied to all federal budgets. We have invested $40 billion in a national housing strategy, 25% of which is reserved for homes for women and their families. We have invested $7 billion to address early learning and child care needs. We have strengthened the Canada child benefit so that it continues to help families most in need, in particular households with single parents. We have created a new parental sharing benefit to support an equitable distribution of child care within the home. We have created safer work environments by ensuring that all federally regulated workplaces are free of sexual harassment and violence, and we will be introducing historic proactive pay equity legislation and pay transparency measures to end pay discrimination.
We all need to work together to prevent gender-based violence. That is why the Minister of Status of Women launched the first-ever federal strategy to prevent and address gender-based violence. Gender-based violence cannot be tolerated in Canada in 2018, and we are going to continue to work with all Canadians to end gender-based violence in all its forms.