Status of Women committee  I must admit that Canada has made some progress, particularly in the area of child benefits. There has been a significant improvement in the amounts given to families. Quebec has also invested a great deal in this. However, this is unfortunately not true with the other provinces.

Status of Women committee  Absolutely. I think women have made progress. You must also note, and I should have answered this to Mr. Stanton, that unfortunately one of the reasons why the gap between men and women has been closing—two-thirds of that closing—has been through reduction in male wages. This was

Status of Women committee  If you're looking for equality for women, the only way they're going to attain equality is by being in the labour market. The problem with a stay-at-home mom is that there is a lot of psychological experience that in fact they're not being very happy and they're not necessarily b

Status of Women committee  There's a huge economic literature on this question, and of course there are disagreements. One of the reasons women earn less than men is that they are more likely not only to work part time, but also, when they're working full time, to work fewer hours. It's related to the prob

Status of Women committee  That's the Quebec Pension Plan.

Status of Women committee  That's why I put down graph 4. When you look at it by age group, we find that yes, under 25, women and men are contributing about at the same level. But the women's wages, even at that age—even at between 20 and 24—are still only 84% of men's. Then when you get into the childbear

Status of Women committee  Quebec has one. Ontario had one. I'm absolutely in favour. The problem is that with the complaint-based situation, because a model of evaluation to establish what is comparable worth is fairly complicated, the burden of the proof is on the group or the individual who filed the co

Status of Women committee  I admit that, for environmental reasons, we should be involved in various kinds of public transportation. Maybe a subsidized taxi system is what you need in the rural areas. I know that even in small towns, women can't take jobs because they can't get to work, so of course we hav

Status of Women committee  I admit I was very disappointed by the child tax credit, because it is non-refundable. However, the budget documents show that people earning less than $30,000 a year will receive absolutely nothing, whether they are lone-parent families—and most of them have an income of less th

Status of Women committee  Some child care centres will take children at nine months. Some won't take them until they're potty-trained. Of course, we need a national child care program that makes child care accessible and affordable to everybody. Back in the 19th century we asked whether the government sh

Status of Women committee  May I say something on that? My understanding of a defined contribution plan is that it's very much like an RRSP. That is, when you retire, you must make a choice as to what your payout is, and provincial laws as well as federal laws require that at that point, you make a choice

Status of Women committee  Suppose you have a man who earns $100,000 and his wife is at home with the children. Indeed, in Sweden, they say that only rich men can afford to have women at home—a wife at home. But if you have income splitting, she would be taxed at $50,000 and he would be taxed at $50,000, m

Status of Women committee  I have one little comment on Madam Mathyssen's question. If you allowed spouses to split the CPP while they were still alive, when the husband died the woman would have a higher pension of her own, and the combined pension and survivor's benefit would be higher in that case. Th

Status of Women committee  Well, first of all, I want to remark that a couple with $65,000 in retirement income is already in the top 15% or 20%—

Status of Women committee  —except that after he dies, she will have survivor benefits and whatever her own income is. If her income is below $35,000, she's going to be taxed at the lowest rate anyhow, so that's not my primary concern. I also want to say that I think income splitting for people who are st