Deborah Grey

[Supply, October 16th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I would be interested to know if the government of Saskatchewan has brought in full pay equity. Maybe it is working on this before Roy leaves. I am not sure. This might be his last item of business.

I have been told that I do not know the difference between men and women and that I just do not get it. Now I have had a pox put on my house. This could be a long winter. However, I am looking forward to heading home to see my husband as soon as time permits.

Let me go back to the difference between equal pay for equal work and equal pay for work of equal value. How do we know the value of work? It seems to me all work is valuable. It seems the government is talking about the fact that only some work is valued. I think all work has value whether it is done by men, women or young people. I spoke at two or three schools last week and saw groups of young people. I think it will be exciting to have them in the workforce.

It is very difficult to see an ill defined policy like this one. I just gave probably the best life example of work of equal value. As much as I respected my principal, he was the last guy I wanted to see when it was -45°C and the boilers were not working. Somebody has to somehow arbitrarily put value on work A , work B or work C .

I see I have exorcised some of the members across the way. Before we move on to the next speakers, and I look forward to hearing what they have to say, let me reiterate very strongly that with more and more government money being distributed to various groups on various issues, the problem is only increasing.

We can talk about women's shelters, family violence, violence against women, women staying home with their children, or those of us with older parents. Many baby boomers are staying home with those people. Is it getting worse? It would seem so. The government just continues to put in more and more money and give the rhetoric that it has solved the problem.

The Prime Minister met with NACSOW. I was amused the minister said that I was ranting about the Prime Minister's meeting with the women's groups yesterday. It was not this member but the NACSOW people themselves who said the meeting was a colossal waste of time. I was not at that meeting. I was on an airplane. When the people themselves say it is a waste of time, I think we need to realize that surely there are better ways to solve the problem than an increase in rhetoric and money and everything else.

[Supply, October 16th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, she says it has nothing to do with it. What does have something to do with it is the fact that when government money is being thrown at something and it really does not solve the problem, the government needs to go back to the table and say “wait a minute, maybe there are deeper root causes for some of these issues”.

[Supply, October 16th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member says I just do not get it and do not understand the differences between men and women. Does that mean seven years of marriage have taught me nothing?

Let me assure the hon. member that I am well aware of the differences between men and women, and I say praise God. I was 41 when I was married the first time and I love having a husband. The hon. member can bet I understand the differences between men and women. I grew up in a family of four daughters. My husband is the eldest of five sons. I certainly do understand some of the intimate differences between men and women.

The hon. member talks about women being caught in the pink ghetto. She said I do not get it and she asked where I live. I live in Edmonton. I have seen some things all across the country, specifically in Vancouver, where family members still live.

The member laughs this off and talks about the pink ghetto and whatever else. Frankly, I do not find it very funny. The hon. member says I do not get the fact that women have been ghettoized and asks me to explain that.

The minister knows there are many reasons why women exit the workforce. She just talked about it with her CPP in and out plan. That is one of the reasons there are problems. That is one of the problems. Beyond that, many women choose to go into the humanities and other areas. They make conscious decisions about child raising and child rearing.

Just to label it off and make comments about the colour I am wearing today, I am not sure—

[Supply, October 16th, 2000]

I see I have touched a nerve. It is a funny thing. When we look at it, we must realize that these are the demands we are talking about and will be voting on maybe not later this afternoon but certainly tomorrow.

[Supply, October 16th, 2000]

Very good. I am glad to know that somebody over there has talked about how women are starting businesses at twice the rate of men. That is good news.

When we talk about taxes and how this will absolutely help, we want to lower business taxes. The minister and a couple of other members over there are rolling their eyes to indicate as if this would help. Lower business and payroll taxes would help a man or woman with a small business. I see that as good news and I am sure they do over there too. It is just the looks on their faces that does not have me convinced.

On planning for retirement, the official opposition has a plan to benefit all older Canadians, especially women. That is exciting to me. In 1997-98 women made up 52% of college enrolment and 55% of university enrolment. There is nothing wrong with that. It is certainly representative of what they represent in the population and it is absolutely wonderful to see that happening. The minister talked about some of the good things happening regarding student loans.

Let me wind down by talking about the manifesto of the March of Women 2000 and NAC have as their plank and platform. This actually is what we are voting on, not just the words of the Bloc motion.

First, of its feminist dozen, which is 13, is to restore federal funding to health care and enforce the rules against the privatization of our health care system, beginning with Alberta. I notice that at the Liberal convention this weekend people want to talk about two tier health care systems in Quebec. I will be interested to watch the health minister have a little fit like he did with the folks in Alberta. I also will mention for the listening audience that B.C. and Alberta pay health premiums, and I understand that no other province does. That is kind of interesting.

Second is to spend an additional 1% of the budget on social housing.

Third is to set up the promised national child care fund, starting with an immediate contribution of $2 billion.

Fourth is to increase old age security payments to provide older women with a decent standard of living. That is an excellent idea. Women between the age of 55 and 65 who are widowed receive pitiful survivor benefits. It is a difficult 10 or 15 years that they have to spend.

Fifth is to use the surplus from the employment insurance fund to increase benefits, provide longer payment periods and improve access as well as improve maternity and family benefits. It is funny that the Liberals took all that away but now that we are on the eve of an election all of a sudden it comes forward. Maybe we should revive that old Barry McGuire song “The Eve of Destruction”. It is not an eve of destruction but it is certainly an eve of an election.

Sixth is to first support women organizing for equality and democracy by allocating $50 million to front line, independent, feminist, women controlled groups committed to ending violence against women such as women's centres, rape crisis centres and women's shelters. Yes, these are good ideas. However, what happens to men who are perpetrating violence or men who are victims of violence? We would all agree that we have some of in the country. Surely they would not just fall through the cracks. Second is to recognize and fund the three autonomous aboriginal women's organizations to ensure full participation in all significant public policy decisions, as well as provide adequate funding to aboriginal women's services, including shelters in all rural, remote and urban aboriginal communities. Third is to fund a national meeting of lesbians to discuss and prioritize areas for legislative and public policy reform. Fourth is to provide $30 million in core funding for equality seeking women's organizations which represents only $2 for every woman and girl child in Canada, our fair share. I am not sure what that is.

Seventh is to fund all consultations with a wide range of women's equality seeking organizations prior to all legislative reform of relevance to women's security and inequality rights beginning with the criminal code and to ensure access for women from marginalized communities.

Eighth is to implement progressive immigration reform to provide domestic workers with full immigration status on arrival, abolish the head tax on all immigrants and to include persecution on the basis of gender and sexual orientation as grounds for claiming refugee status.

Ninth is to contribute to the elimination of poverty around the world by supporting the cancellation of the debts of the 53 poorest countries and increasing Canada's international development aid to .07% of the gross national product. We are $600 billion in debt. For every family of four either watching here or on television today that is an extra mortgage of $75,000 on our debt. It cannot be forgiven. We owe that money and every single family of four in the country owes that percentage to our national debt. Surely we are in a pretty grave situation here too.

Tenth, of the feminist dozen 13 immediate demands to the federal government to end poverty and violence against women, is to adopt national standards which guarantee the right to welfare for everyone in need and ban workfare.

I always liked working. I am very glad and grateful, being raised by a single parent, that my mom did not have to use welfare. She worked in a lamp store and raised five kids by the scruff of the neck in downtown Vancouver in the sixties when such a thing certainly was not popular. She was very blessed that she did not have to go on welfare. She certainly did not think she had a right to it. She had the opportunity to get out, get a job and raise those kids. For her, welfare would have been something that she would have to fall back on if she needed to. I certainly do not think she thought that it was a right.

Eleventh is to recognize the ongoing exclusion of women with disabilities from economic, political and social life, and take the essential first step of ensuring and funding full access for women with disabilities to all consultations on issues of relevance to women. Yes, that it a good thing but are men with disabilities treated fairly in the workforce as well? Do we just eliminate them? There are great problems with all people with disabilities and we would be discriminatory if we just picked out one group of them and not the other.

Twelfth is to establish a national system of grants based on need not merit to enable access to post-secondary education and reduce student debt. As far as I know, we are the only national party in the country that has in our platform an income contingent student loan repayment plan. I have not seen that over there. I understand that the minister of HRD not long ago said “We lost $245 million but shucks it was student loans.”

These were taxpayers' dollars. They just disappeared? We have said pay the money back. If they have a job doing x when they are qualified to have a job doing y then surely they should pay back some of it out of the money they are making doing job x . Make it contingent upon their income. People would know that they would be paying back their loans, maybe at a lower rate. However, when they get a better job at least we know it would be paid back fully. Then we would not have the HRD minister saying that they lost the money and since it was more than six years ago they just wrote it off. I do not think that is fair to anyone.

Thirteenth is to adopt proactive pay equity legislation. I have always believed in equal pay for equal work. I am a high school teacher and worked just as hard as every male teacher in that school. How do we go to pay equity where we are talking about equal pay for work of equal value? How do we ever define that?

I would like to mention to the minister as I wind down now, that in my little school in Dewberry, Alberta we had some problem with the boiler systems. One morning it was 45 below. Yes, the principal is number one in any school, but does anyone know who I went to see on that morning when the boilers were out? I went to see the janitor because I knew he was the only guy who could get those things going or get some propane tanks in there to blow heat down the hall. How do we ever determine what is work of equal value—

[Supply, October 16th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the debate today as well. I noticed that my colleague talked about the fact that we have been trying very hard for 20 or 25 years, I think was the number she used, to advance some of the problems we have seen today. I would like to put on record that a full 35 years ago in the mid-sixties, my mother Joyce was a single parent. It was fairly rare back then, certainly in Vancouver in the sixties. I can remember being I think the only family in our school that had divorced parents. It is not that many years down the road and it seems almost strange if a student has two parents at home.

Government money is going into looking at these problems. They are endemic in society, but is just throwing money at them the ultimate solution?

The minister just took a shot across, saying that my party and I are only concerned about taxes and debt, that we do not understand the lives of real women out there. I have news for her. I know all too well on a personal basis the pain involved in growing up in a single parent family in Vancouver, very close to where she lives right now. I have been very blessed by that. I would have given anything if my mom had been able to be a doctor or a professional person to raise her kids. She had no trade. She went out, got a job in a lamp store and raised five children single-handedly. I take my hat off to her.

There are thousands and probably millions of people out there in the very same position, but surely these things have been going on not just for 25 years but for 35 years. For the money the minister says she is putting in to rectify these problems, surely something else is missing in this equation. It is not just money for this group or money for that group, but something is wrong if the basic building block of the family is not a concern.

We put forward a tax friendly policy toward families because we truly think that families are discriminated against if, for instance, one parent chooses to stay home and raise the kids. That does not mean I advocate that one parent out of every family should stay home, but surely they should be given that choice.

The minister knows that under tax policy one needs a receipt for third party day care. What is the problem? If someone chooses to have one parent stay at home, why can that not be treated as some sort of tax break? We have been around the block on that. I know that the junior minister of finance got backed right into a corner some months ago about this very issue because it is indefensible.

If she says that all I do is rant about taxes, that is one way they could solve a whole lot of problems in a big hurry. Many of these things we are looking at and talking about today, and which the March of Women, address the whole idea of violence against women. However, there is violence against everyone in our society. Everyone of us here should abhor that. Surely we could make changes in the justice system.

I look at the youth justice bill for instance. The justice minister was sworn in I believe on August 3, 1997, but I am not sure of the exact date. She said the youth justice bill was going to be her number one concern. It is now October 2000 and I am terrified to think what concerns seven, eight and nine are.

The youth justice bill deals with women but it also deals with all kinds of problems. It deals with young men and women being perpetrators of crime and young men and women, older people and children being the victims of those crimes. What happened? She blamed the separatists and said they were holding it up in the House of Commons. This is a majority government. If something is as important as making sure that our justice system works well, surely to heaven we do not have to blame it on the Bloc just because it is doing a bit of filibustering in the House. If a government really believes that then let it work through the House and through committee. For goodness sake in two parliamentary terms, one of which is coming evidently to a rapid end for no reason, why can we not get these things through and let justice be justice in the justice system and not under the guise of the Minister of State for Multiculturalism.

Justice and equality do not necessarily require further government intrusion. As I said earlier, we put more and more money into these programs and yet the minister claims that the incidence of violence and the incidence of women's shelters is going up at an alarming rate. It would seem to me that when she talks about the roots of violence or family domestic problems, we have to dig a little deeper to the root.

She talked about the gun control bill and that this really was going to help things because she said guns commit these crimes, and granted they do in violence against women. However, it is almost as if there is a myth across the way that nothing is going to happen or some of these dreadful things will not happen again. Even if a gun is registered, do government members think that a gun will not be used commit a crime?

Let us look at the roots of violence and why domestic violence happens. I know plenty about violence even though the minister would laugh and say that am just a Alliance member and know very little about it. I understand what family violence is about. I do not understand it totally but I understand that even if there is a gun in the house or a knife or a frying pan, if a male or female has it in his or her heart to commit violence, we know darn well it is going to happen. It does not matter if a gun is registered or if a longbow or a crossbow or a Henckels carving knife is used. If violence is in someone's heart, the person is going to commit violence. I really do not think gun control is going to answer the question.

Let us look at economic equality and women and work. Women are more often greatly affected as part of the sandwich generation. They have kids at home to look after. Many of us who are baby boomers are not only getting older but our parents are aging. Many of us look after our parents at home and that obviously takes up, in terms of unpaid work, huge amounts of responsibility for women.

I already mentioned family tax fairness and child care. Why would we discriminate against two parent families where one chooses to stay home? Who in the House would be able to defend such a policy where the government discriminates in the tax system against someone who chooses to stay at home.

Setting up the promised national child care fund is something that the group is looking for, starting with an immediate contribution of $2 billion. When I talk about family and celebrating family as a priority, lots of people send their kids to day care and many times they have to. I do not think it should be a natural way of life to assume that we are going to send our kids to day care as a matter of course. This motion certainly leads in that direction.

Let me talk about personal and business taxes. The minister talked about taxes. I wish she were here to hear this because it is a really good one. She needs to know that women are starting businesses at twice the rate of men. That to me is a pretty significant and exciting development. Yet, I did not hear anything about it from the other side.

[Supply, October 16th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the minister two questions that I think should demand fairly straightforward answers.

She mentioned in response that $20.5 million over five years went to Status of Women Canada. How much government funding from her department went to the group REAL Women?

She also mentioned that the Prime Minister met yesterday with some of the representatives of the women's group. Why it is being reported today, then, that the leaders of NACSOW have said that seemed to be a complete waste of time?

[Human Resources Development, October 4th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, it gives a whole new picture of a lap dog, does it not?

Just a few months ago the Prime Minister was arguing that his HRD minister had really only lost $250.51. Now the public accounts show that oops, it is over $300 million. Which is it: $250.51 or $344,732,360.51?

[Human Resources Development, October 4th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, surely it is the Prime Minister who is all wet. He ought to know about RCMP investigations and golf courses.

The public has invested a whole lot, as the Prime Minister should know, in terms of the billion dollar boondoggle and some other things we have seen that have been expensive for the public. The public has a right to know what is in the auditor general's report.

Will the Prime Minister guarantee that the public will see the report before he calls an election? Yes or no.

[Cultural Industry, September 28th, 2000]

moved:

That the House do now adjourn.

(Motion agreed to)