Mr. Speaker, I rise again to encourage the Liberal government to put its proclamations of alignment with working women and all women in the country, its avowed feminism. I am again urging the government to turn those good words into action that will result in meaningful differences in the lives of women every day.

For example, the government has continued to fail to table pay equity legislation in this House despite an all-party committee calling for that legislation to have been tabled four months ago. The government says it will probably get to it around the time of the next federal election.

As of tomorrow, we hit a serious milestone. As of tomorrow, women in Canada will be effectively working for free for the rest of the year. Even in 2017, women continue to be paid 74¢ on the dollar that Canadian men earn. If that gap were spread over an entire calendar year, then beginning tomorrow—Friday, September 22—women would go the rest of the year without any pay. That would be worse for a woman of colour. It would be an even earlier date in the year for a woman with disabilities. Indigenous women have been effectively working for free in our country since June 4.

Surely a government that actually wants to stand for gender equality would have already made legislative action using the power of its majority and of this Parliament to make real change that would make a difference in the lives of women and their families.

It has been 13 years since the pay equity task force presented a final report to this Parliament, with which the Liberal government of the day agreed. The pay equity task force recommendations continue to be something broadly supported by feminist, labour, and social justice organizations. At the committee that the parliamentary secretary and I both sit on, the status of women committee, we have been hearing witness after witness saying that pay equity is at the foundation of economic justice for women in Canada.

My staff have done the math on this, bless them, and are following the United Nations campaign #stoptherobbery. They calculate that if pay equity legislation had been brought in place in 2004, when it was recommended, women in Canada would have had $655 billion more in their pockets.

Once again, I ask this. Why is the government not putting its feminist rhetoric into action by legislating pay equity for women in Canada?

Sheila Malcolmson

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