Government Operations committee  I have two responses to make to that. One is that the broader context into which that press release is released definitely makes a link to gender equality by the use of the term “equalize”. I guess, as well—

Government Operations committee  I have one more point. I think it's really important that issues about gender equity come up in the context of the Standing Committee on the Status of Women, but I also think that they are not confined to that. That doesn't speak to your claim that this bill really has no profile

Government Operations committee  Thank you.

Government Operations committee  I can't answer that question, I think that's too decontextualized and I think that the discourse of pay equity, the value of pay equity, is not concerned about bringing people's pay down. It's concerned about people who are paid unequally in a way in which they would complain abo

Government Operations committee  No.

Government Operations committee  I am not sure that I fully understand your question. If you are saying something other than what I am saying—which is that this bill is not about moving us forward in terms of gender equity—I am not sure what that is. But if what you are saying is that this bill is not about gend

Government Operations committee  No problem. I think this is a different issue from the one about how we characterize the set of amendments currently before us, and of course gender-based analysis is an important component of sound policy-making. I will add only, since I think I don't have any more time, that it

Government Operations committee  Equal pay for work of equal value. There's a difference between pay equity and equal pay, and what pay equity gets to is looking to a more contextualized substantive analysis of the value, the character of work, as opposed to simply the form of job title.

Government Operations committee  No, I don't I don't think the legislation speaks to that. But I don't want that comment to then be used to imply that this is a piece of legislation that instantiates pay inequity because it's paying equally across unequal jobs. I don't think that's really one of the best uses to

Government Operations committee  No, I don't. I am sorry to say that, and I don't speak French well enough to try.

Government Operations committee  I was in the same 70s as you were.

Government Operations committee  There are a number of points I'm going to take up with what you said. You began by talking about change being incremental, and I think that's right, but I think we get incremental change because we push for more. It's never enough to say that we've done a little and we'll rest on

Government Operations committee  I think it really depends on what you're talking about, how you effect change in particular contexts. When you talk about cabinet composition, it's clearly top down. You need a prime minister who's committed to putting women into positions of power.

Government Operations committee  I would say it's contextually configured, and I think we get more incremental change by asking for more than incremental change. That was the first aspect. The second thing you talked about, the character and the class of emerging ministries, as ministries that we have emerging

Government Operations committee  Yes. There are always things you can do legislatively—in some sense as much as Parliament can bind itself—to express formal commitments to a particular kind of decision-making process and a kind of accountability in that decision-making process. The government could commit, in p