Mr. Speaker, if time permits, I will be sharing my time with the member for Surrey North.
With International Women's Day just two days away, I am pleased to speak to this important issue of the status of women in Canada. although I am sad to note that status has actually been deteriorating.
From 1995 to 1998, Canada ranked number one on the UN human development index and the gender development index. Since then, women's progress has been stalled, economically, socially and politically.
In 1999, we fell to third on the GDI. We were seventh in 2004 and, by 2006, we ranked 14th in the world economic forum gender gap index, behind Sri Lanka, the Philippines and most European countries.
That precipitous drop happened under the Liberal government which presided over a government that did nothing to overcome some of the biggest obstacles to continuing progress for women. During its tenure, it failed to remove the single biggest barrier to women's access to good work which, of course, is access to affordable child care. It failed to redress the huge and growing imbalances in the taxation of women when compared to men, corporations, charities and overseas businesses.
Under the leadership of the then finance minister, the member for LaSalle—Émard, the Liberals insisted on blowing the government spending capacity on gratuitous tax cuts to the richest sectors of Canadian society while telling everyone else to tighten their belts.
Women are still paying the price for the Liberals' unthinking adherence to the ideology of deficit reduction, but the Liberals, who have always thought of themselves as the naturally governing party, thought women would not remember, just like they assumed the sponsorship scandal would not matter. After all, they were entitled to run this country in perpetuity.
However, a funny thing happened on the way to the polls. Voters said that enough was enough. They rejected the party's right wing policies, as well as its excuses for the sponsorship scandal, and sent the Liberals into opposition.
However, he Liberals appear to be slow learners. Instead of recognizing that the voters had sent them a message and had punished them for their sense of entitlement, their attitude is still the same. In fact, nothing makes that more clear than the motion we are debating here today.
It ends by saying that it was the Bloc and the NDP's defeat of the Liberal government in 2005 that led to the installation of a government that is hostile to the rights and needs of vulnerable Canadians. How absurd. Do the Liberals really believe that if we had the power to install a new government that we would have chosen the Conservatives? No political party has the power to install a government. The only body that has the power to install a new government is the Canadian electorate.
It was the Canadian electorate that threw the Liberals out and, contrary to the contention of this motion, the Liberals' record in government did not entitle them to another term.
Let us look at what the motion says and of course what it does not say. It states that:
...there is a growing need in Canada for a national housing strategy designed to assist the most vulnerable in our society and to treat them with the respect they deserve;...
Absolutely. Except it was the Liberals who cancelled the national housing program in 1995. It also states that:
...an adequate supply of high quality childcare spaces is essential to ensuring women's participation in the workforce and the government should take the necessary steps immediately to create 125,000 spaces...
Again, absolutely. However, where was the Liberals' child care plan during their 13 long years in office? I agree that we need to restore the court challenges program, that we need to restore the research and advocacy mandate to the government's women's program and that we need to enhance the role of Status of Women Canada and provide access for women to government services in all regions of our country.
However, it is precisely because these things are so important that we need to make progress on each of these issues now. If we are serious about achieving equality for women in Canada, it is no good to table a motion in this House today whose “be it resolved” simply assigns blame for the Liberals' election loss. We need constructive action that will make an immediate difference in the lives of women.
We had that opportunity in this House just two days ago when we voted on the Conservative budget. The NDP was here in full force to oppose a budget that failed Canadian women. The Bloc was here too. The Liberals only sent in 11 of their 93 members and therefore allowed the budget to pass. Where were the other 82 members?
We could have defeated the government resoundingly and sent a strong message to women from coast to coast to coast, but when it was time to stand and be counted, even the mover of today's motion was a no show. What a disgrace.
She is playing Canadian women for fools. Despite being responsible for further stalling the social, political and economic progress of women, she is hoping once again that women will not notice, that women will be placated by a crassly partisan motion that is a day late and a dollar short. Nothing could be more disrespectful of women and their ongoing struggle for a fair and just society.
We must remember how long that struggle has been going on. It was in the early 20th century, between 1909 and 1911, that working women in the United States started organizing and striking in response to low wages, abhorrent working conditions and a lack of legislative protection for women. It was the 1911 fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company in New York, in which 143 women lost their lives, that galvanized women in their fight for better conditions and human rights.
Yes, we are a long way from 1911 today, both in time and progress. Canada now has a strong base on which to build when it comes to women's equality. It was nearly 90 years ago when women received the right to vote. It was nearly 80 years ago that we were legally recognized as persons, although I might add, that was 20 years later than corporations were recognized as persons in Canada. We have guaranteed equality rights in the charter, decriminalized abortion and birth control, and a strong network of women's services across our country, including emergency shelters and rape crisis centres.
As I said at the outset, we are starting to slide back. At best, women's progress is stalled economically, socially and politically.
Today, women in Canada are still not safe in their own homes or on the streets. An estimated one in four women will be a victim of sexual violence in her lifetime. In the workplace, women still only earn 70% of every $1 that a man makes. Poverty affects almost half of single, widowed or divorced women over 65 and more than 40% of unattached women under 65.
There are many battles yet to be fought and won. The most recent Conservative budget should have been one such battle. New Democrats fought it but in the absence of Liberals during the vote, we ultimately did not win.
That is devastating for the women's movement in Canada. That budget did virtually nothing for women. In fact, women were essentially left out of this budget altogether. The word “women” appeared in the 2008 budget exactly seven times. The word “corporation”, by contrast, was mentioned 109 times. Nothing symbolizes the Conservative agenda more clearly.
Heck, there was more money in this budget for hogs than there was for women. The budget gave $20 million to develop a plan to advance the equality of women, a plan, by the way, that we have had since 1995 as a result of the commitments Canada made at the UNs' Fourth World Conference on Women. However, the government found $50 million for the hog industry. That works out to $3.57 for every hog in Canada but only $1.21 per woman.
There was no new money for the national child benefit, child care, affordable housing, a revival of the court challenges program, proactive pay equity legislation or any improvement in the minimum wage or maternity leave benefits.
Senior women, who experience poverty at twice the rate of senior men, were told that if they could not make ends meet that they should go out and get a job. Instead of raising their GIS, the government simply said that it would exempt the first $3,500 earned from affecting their GIS eligibility.
What is even worse, when I asked the Minister of Finance about that he erroneously alleged that he did increase the GIS. Absolutely not true. The only increase to the GIS is the legislated increase based on the consumer price index.
The finance minister then went on to talk about the $5,000 tax-savings plan, completely oblivious to the fact that I was asking about Canada's poorest seniors who, by definition, do not have the capacity to save. To add insult to injury, he then told them to check out his government's website to get more details.
I would strongly encourage the Minister of Finance to come to my riding of Hamilton Mountain. I would happily take him on a tour of seniors buildings in my community for a reality check. Seniors who are having to choose between eating and heating cannot afford to buy a computer or pay for monthly Internet access. It is almost as if the Conservatives inhabit a parallel universe.
Yes, the struggle continues and the battles will continue to be fought but we would win many more of these battles if the opposition parties in the House were united in fighting for the equality for women.
The Liberals abdicated that responsibility when they allowed the Conservative budget to pass this week. In light of that self-serving action, which was orchestrated simply to avoid an election that the Liberals knew they would lose, the motion that is now before us simply is not worth the paper that it is written on.
