"I think today is an important day, not only in Ontario history but also in Canadian history. We have before us the first truly proactive pay equity legislation for the public and private sectors in North America, and I am delighted to ask all honourable members of the House to join in assuring its passage." -- Attorney General Ian G. Scott

What is the Pay Equity Act?

The Pay Equity Act (the Act) requires employers to identify and correct gender discrimination that may be present in their compensation practices and to adjust the wages of employees in female job classes so that they are at least equal to the wages of employees in male job classes when they are found to be comparable in value based on skill, effort, responsibility and working conditions.

You can read the entire Hansard transcript below: Official Records for 15 June 1987: Legislative Assembly of Ontario\

PAY EQUITY ACT (CONTINUED) / LOI DE 1987 SUR L'EQUITÉ SALARIALE (CONTINUÉE)

Hon. Mr. Scott moved third reading of Bill 154, An Act to provide for Pay Equity.

L'hon. M. Scott propose la troisième lecture du projet de loi 154, Loi portant établissement de l'équité salariale.

Mr. Breaugh: There could be an error here, but I thought there was a bit of an agreement that this particular bill would be stood down till somewhat later in the afternoon, as I understood members from each of the parties wanted to make short comments on the bill before it had third reading. If that is agreeable, perhaps we could do that.

Hon. Mr. Nixon: I understood members of all three parties wanted to comment but I was not aware of an agreement that it should be stood down. Can we do it now? I do not really care.

Mr. Breaugh: If I may, we can do it now but it means the members are going to listen to my short speech on third reading. If that is their pleasure, I will speak until my critic arrives.

Hon. Mr. Nixon: Nothing would please me more.

Mr. Breaugh: I guess that is what we are doing. We are lining up the speakers now.

This has been a long time coming. I am actually rather grateful that I have an opportunity to say a few words on third reading because I have been one of the members who has had an interest in this bill for a long, long period of time and I have not been able to participate in the committee procedures, as many members were able to do.

It is a major change in Canadian legislation, in provincial legislation, despite all the shortcomings the bill has. For us as a political entity, as a political party in Ontario, we thought that this concept was important and that it belonged in the accord we signed with the Liberal Party some two years ago. If we have regrets, they centre around how long it has taken to produce the bill in its final form and the deficiencies that are still in the bill.

1520

All of that notwithstanding, I think it is still important legislation. Members can probably tell it is important by the letters, the telephone calls and the number of people who are interested in this legislation.

It is true that of all the things we have done here in the last couple of years, trying to address ourselves to the matter of pay equity is one of the most important, because for more and more women in the work place the fact that they are working is not something casual but rather something essential. That argument and all the long arguments we have gone through are important ones.

I want to say for my party, because she will not say it herself, that the member for Ottawa Centre (Ms. Gigantes) has distinguished herself on this bill. This is a bill that is critical to working women in Ontario. I have watched her, with her usual ferocity, go at the legislative process in any way she could. That is what a good parliamentarian does. She attempted on a regular basis to improve the quality of the legislation. She successfully put forward the different sides of the issue, and it is a complex issue, and of course she had the tenacity to follow it through the process.

I would like to speak longer but I do not want to prolong the situation this afternoon. I do want to hear from the member for Ottawa Centre, who is not in her place. I am sure other members will have an opportunity to participate briefly this afternoon, but I think it was worth noting that although we normally do not engage in a great deal of debate on third reading of bills, this is a concept that deserves that kind of attention. This is a bill that is certainly not perfect but is significant in the history of our legislative process in Ontario and worth noting by means of some debate.

Mr. Shymko: I just want to comment on an issue that is not being resolved by this bill, which certainly I am supporting. It is an issue that I have discussed in committee with the Attorney General (Mr. Scott). There are employees, particularly women, almost 100 per cent of them immigrant women, who are still being exploited in a major way, who do not even get salaries of equal pay for equal work never mind work of equal value. This bill will not address the plight of these women.

I refer to the Portuguese and other immigrant women who clean our offices. If you look at the system of contracting out jobs, you will have an immigrant Portuguese woman cleaning my office in the Whitney Block paid some $4 an hour less than the lady cleaning my colleague's office in the Legislative Building doing the same work. One is a public servant of the government of Ontario, a civil servant paid according to the unionized rate. The other lady doing the same work is being paid $4 an hour less because she is contracted out.

This bill does not resolve the issue. I tell the Attorney General and the government that if we have a philosophy of pay equity, of eliminating inequities that are exploiting individuals, particularly women, we should review our policy of contracting out jobs.

It is an irony. When I raised the issue and the contract of the company that was hiring these women came up for renewal, its contract was not renewed. When I was fighting on their behalf, they ended up without jobs two months after this issue was raised.

Maybe it is an issue of contracting out to somebody else, but these inequities exist. I appeal to the government that if we are moving in the direction of eliminating these inequities that have discriminated, basically against women in such a blatant way, we should review our contracting-out policies. Wages should at least be close enough to the wages that are being paid to those workers who are members of the civil service, doing exactly the same job. That inequity has to be addressed.

I have not received an adequate response to this from either the Attorney General or the acting Minister of Government Services (Mr. Conway). As we pass this bill, which I know is supported by all members of the House, I would like to hear how the minister will address the other issues; because the women will be coming back, working exploited once again, taking care of the same families, with the same concerns, with the same problems of economic survival, and their plight is not addressed one iota.

Ms. Gigantes: I have just a few brief words as we come to the point where we are going to pass Bill 154. I would like to start by recollecting the words of one of the leaders of the Equal Pay Coalition, Mary Cornish, when she appeared on behalf of the coalition to speak to members of the standing committee on administration of justice working on Bill 154.

She said: "As you consider the amendments and go through the committee stage, there is sometimes a tendency in this process to weigh equally the amendments put forward by the business community and by women's groups and the unions. We ask you to recognize that this is not an equal process because for the past aeons and centuries women have been paid unfairly. It is not appropriate at this time to split the difference and give the business community part of its amendments and us some of ours."

In fact, very few of the amendments sought by the Equal Pay Coalition, by representatives of women working in unions, by community groups around this province, and indeed by members of my party, were passed in committee stage. One does not like making predictions in politics and the longer I spend in elective politics the less wise it appears to me to make predictions, but I am willing to predict to members of the Liberal Party that this legislation will come back to haunt them.

This is the kind of legislation whose inadequacies will become obvious only with the passage of time. I know there are hundreds of thousands of women across Ontario who today feel that the legislation we are passing is going to benefit them, that it is going to rectify the inequities they have suffered in the work place and that it is going to ensure their particular employer no longer discriminates between women's work and men's work as it is performed in that work place. All of us who studied this legislation and attempted to improve it know this is not the case.

This is not what will be happening tomorrow; it is not what will be happening next year; it is not what will be happening the year after that. In fact, the formula provided in this legislation may cover as few as 1.1 million out of two million women, leaving 800,000 to 900,000 effectively excluded from the benefits of this legislation. Under the provisions of that legislation, even the women who qualify for equal pay adjustments are going to have to wait years.

Given the intent of employers not to bear the burden of the cost of rectifying discrimination and given the reluctance of the Liberal Party to provide against the restraint of wages by employers to provide for the costs of equal pay adjustments, those very women who are eligible under this legislation for equal pay adjustments will be asked by wage restraint to help contribute to the costs of rectifying the discrimination that has been practiced against them.

It will take time before the full extent of the loopholes, exemptions, failures and flaws in this legislation are clear and obvious to all the people of Ontario; but the smart employers of Ontario know already, the legal firms that specialize in such matters know already and we know. There is a whole host of very powerful people preparing in this province to be able to seek out every loophole that exists in the legislation and to make sure the effectiveness of this bill when it is passed into law is severely limited.

1530

For years, women have been doing the jobs of cleaning, cooking, clerking, co-ordinating and caring in this society. Those jobs have been called women's work and those jobs have been underpaid by each and every employer across this province, almost without exception.

Would that this legislation were stronger. We could then support it with a whole and happy heart. I will vote for this legislation most reluctantly and feeling most disappointed in the product we have been able to bring forward legislatively.

I say to the Liberals, this legislation will haunt them and they deserve to be haunted. We in our party will continue the fight for equal pay for work of equal value for every person in Ontario.

Mr. Harris: On behalf of our party, I too want to take a few minutes to put a few things on the record on this particular piece of legislation.

We in this party think this is a poor piece of legislation. We think many parts of this bill will prove to be unworkable and many parts of this bill will not achieve the purpose or the great principle the bill sets out to achieve, that of redressing systematic, gender-based pay inequity.

Throughout this bill, we in this party have had to face the reality that the other two parties are going to proceed. We had to face the reality that they were determined to proceed with a "pay equity bill" whether it was a good bill or a bad bill, whether it in fact would meet or would not meet the objectives of the principle that was outlined for it; that in fact there were other circumstances that have been driving this particular piece of legislation that seemed to make it "important" that this had to be passed. Something had to be passed, whether it was good or whether it was bad.

We tried very hard to make changes in this particular piece of legislation. We moved a number of amendments to make this legislation, we felt, perhaps more workable, to make this legislation more acceptable to those who are going to have to implement and work with this legislation; those being the employers of this province. We feel their concerns have been totally ignored. We feel there has been a great insensitivity on the part of the government, in its proceeding with this particular bill, to the private sector and to those who are going to have to make it work.

I pointed out last week during one of the very critical amendments, the one that summed up to me the total unwillingness to listen, involving who was in fact going to enforce this legislation. We lost all the amendments we had put forward on behalf of those employers, who are indeed the ones who must make this work or else it will be a shemozzle.

As members will know, when a bill is so complex and gets involved in areas that are breaking new ground, that are difficult or impossible to administer, one will be blamed for trying to circumvent legislation no matter what one does. We believe it gives rise to confrontations that we do not think need to be there.

Last week I spoke, not on an amendment that changed the bill, although we moved many of those amendments and were defeated by the Liberals on them, but on the particular amendment that talked about who would administer this bill. This legislation will create another independent, self-perpetuating bureaucracy.

Last week, we proposed an amendment that would have made the new pay equity administration a part of the existing employment standards branch of the Ministry of Labour. The business community, I might add, very much supported this view; and I pointed out last week that that surprised me a little bit, because I know that many in the business community have felt they have had to spend thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars -- I have a number of cases in my files in my constituency office defending what they felt were interventionist interventions by that particular branch of the Ministry of Labour. On those occasions they proved themselves right, but they had spent innumerable dollars, lawyers' time, accountants' time and what not, defending the position they were put into.

I was surprised to hear many of them say, "In spite of that, at least here is a branch of the government used to dealing with employer-employee relationships; it has been used to dealing with equal pay legislation. We have far more confidence in that group than we do in a whole new, independent, self-perpetuating bureaucracy." We were defeated on that amendment as well. I believe I had expressed at that time that I could not understand why that particular amendment was not looked at with a little more sensitivity by the government.

I just wanted to refer to a couple of comments I made at that time. I said we were not talking about the principle of the bill. We were not talking about the legislation in that amendment. We were talking about the people who have to make it work. The choice was the employment standards branch or this separate Pay Equity Commission; the employers said they would be more comfortable with the employment standards branch. The government would have to give the same direction to both of them. The legislation is going to be the same; either one would have to enforce the legislation. Given that those who have to make this legislation work indicated a preference, what difference would it make to the government, unless it really did want to set up a new bureaucracy, a new commission and a whole bunch of new appointments and a whole bunch of new civil servants?

I said at that time, and I have not been given any argument since, and I still maintain that I cannot think of any other reason they would not allow the employment standards branch of the Ministry of Labour to deal with this particular legislation, unless they wanted to just rub the employers' noses in it and say: "We do not care whether you like it or not. We are going to stuff it down your throats and this is the way it is going to be." They said that on a number of the amendments; but now we are not talking about the bill, we are not talking about any amendments that would affect anything, we are just talking about who is going to administer it.

Either it wanted to make a lot more appointments, to set up a whole new bureaucracy -- I admit that when I expressed that view, maybe it was something of an off-the-wall comment, but the way this government is hiring civil servants perhaps it could hire all nine million Ontarians. They would have zero unemployment, and then presumably everybody would vote for them because it gave them all a job. They are going more in that direction than they are in any responsible direction as to what we see as a responsible way to proceed in Ontario.

1540

We really thought that was a slap in the face and the last insult to what I think is for the most part -- there may be one or two bad apples of any group; there is whenever you take numbers -- a private sector here in Ontario that wants to abide by the law, that wants to do the right thing, that wants to be fair and wants to treat employees fairly. We felt that was maybe the last slap in the face.

We tried to make those changes. They were all turned down.

I guess I would like to indicate that our party is concerned about gender pay equity. We have expressed those concerns.

I pointed out as well last week our disappointment that for those civil servants in Ontario, the public sector, that I thought this government should be condemned for not providing that for them two years ago. That was a commitment of all three parties more than two years ago in an election.

Indeed, that could have been provided without legislation, and we have gone more than two years now where two things could have happened: one, the public sector would have been covered by pay equity; and second, we might have learned something in those two or two and a half years. We might have learned something about ground-breaking legislation that may have made it more applicable for us to come up with a meaningful piece of legislation for the broader public sector.

Rather than taking a piece of legislation with the public, the broader public and the private sectors, rolling them all into one and phasing it out over one year, three years, seven years, and gosh knows how many years for some, we think it would have made far more sense to proceed with equal pay for work of equal value in the public sector two years ago.

Perhaps had the government been serious in wanting to really find out what problems there may be and come up with meaningful solutions, in at least a year we could have had in place pay equity legislation for the broader public sector which we think and we have said is the way we would have proceeded. We feel it would have made a lot more sense. We feel it would have given us experiences that would have provided for a better piece of legislation, if in fact that is what is required in the private sector, after what our experiences through the public and broader public sectors demonstrated.

We do have very grave concerns about this piece of legislation. We do not think this bill is the answer in the private sector. I suspect the government is not sure either whether it is the answer, given the implementation period it has put into it, but none the less it is determined to have something it can hang on the wall that says, "Yes, we have passed something that has to do with pay equity."

I also want to tell members that I indicated we had to face reality, that we had to put forward amendments to a piece of legislation we felt should not be dealt with in the way it was being dealt with. We put those amendments as best we could and we were defeated on most of them, as members know.

Mr. Barlow: All of them.

Mr. Harris: The member for Cambridge tells me all of them.

Before I conclude, I also want to congratulate the member for Cambridge and the member for Ottawa West (Mr. Baetz), who worked so hard on behalf of our party in putting those positions forward, and the member for St. George (Ms. Fish), who has made a valuable contribution not only to this particular piece of legislation but also to this caucus and to most pieces of legislation we deal with. The member for Ottawa West and the member for Cambridge, as well, put in a lot of time on this particular piece of legislation.

I should also indicate to this Legislature that we are not going to allow one party, another party or anybody to say we are less sensitive because we are concerned about some aspects of this particular bill. We think perhaps we are more sensitive, because we have tried to put forward a timetable that we think is far in excess of this government's timetable on the public sector and would have provided experience that we feel would have helped us through the private sector.

As I indicated, we are not going to allow anybody to say that because we disagree with one part or another, or with the methodology or with many parts of this particular legislation, we are not sensitive and cognizant of the fact that there is some gender pay inequity out there.

In closing, I want to indicate very clearly to this Legislature that our party and a future Conservative government would take a long look at this particular piece of legislation to see whether we could not find a better way to achieve the goals this legislation purports to address.

Mr. Rae: I want to participate, if only very briefly, in this third reading discussion, because we have come such a long way in the last two years. It is worth recalling that the Liberal Party agreed, after a long period of negotiation and certainly following a history when both our parties were in opposition, that there was a very strong commitment to equal pay in the public sector and a slightly more ambivalent one in the private sector.

It is interesting to notice that it has taken us two years to get this far. We had a real struggle to convince the Liberals and, in effect, to lever the Liberal Party into combining both pieces of legislation so that we would ensure that private sector workers were not left behind, which would have been the effect of the Liberal plan.

Interjection.

Mr. Rae: The Minister of the Environment (Mr. Bradley) says, "What would we do without you?" I can only say to the minister that I sometimes think it would cause the people of the province some terror to reflect on that. We can tell what they would do. They have the Premier's Council, the $100-million zinger, which they did on their own, without the accord. Apart from that, I do not think he can point to one major legislative item in these last two years which has not reflected the negotiations that went into the accord.

I do want to say that this legislation is not the final word. It seems to me it is the first effort of the Legislature and the first effort on the part of the Liberal Party to deal with this question, the first effort to face up to the problem of inequality between men and women in the work place. It is a piece of legislation which in our view is long overdue, but nevertheless is really only a very partial solution to the massive inequity which exists between men and women in the work place.

1550

The legislation does not deal with the problem of low pay; and let us be quite blunt about it: low pay is the problem that simply will not go away. It is interesting to notice that not only this bill does not deal with the problem of low pay; we also have the pension legislation, which does not deal with the problem of people with low pay who do not have pensions; and the severance pay legislation, which does not deal with the problem of those workers who are now going to be without any protection at all in the work force simply because of their vulnerability.

I must confess that this historic day is a day of mixed feelings. Let me say, though, that there is one feeling I have which is not at all mixed, and that is to pay tribute to my colleague the member for Ottawa Centre, who has done a really outstanding job, not only on behalf of our party and working women in Ontario but also on behalf of all Ontarians, in seeing that this legislation has come forward in the way it has.

I know that the member for Ottawa Centre is also somebody who is experiencing some mixed feelings today with respect to this legislation. Indeed, in that regard, she shares the feelings of all the members of our party when it comes to this legislation. We are in the position of knowing perfectly well that if we had not pushed for the bill in its current form -- that is to say, one bill covering both sectors, public and private -- there are a great many private sector workers who, by this time in June 1987, would have had nothing. Nothing would have been planned, and nothing would have been forthcoming from the Liberal Party of Ontario. Of that, I am completely convinced.

We also know that this legislation is flawed. It excludes a lot of women, it excludes a lot of work places and it has built into it many delays in terms of its implementation. We know, and this is going to be extremely important, that there is nothing in the bill which protects employees generally from having to pay in a sense for Liberal Party legislation. There is nothing here which ensures that it will be employers who will have to set money aside with respect to implementing this legislation rather than simply taking the money out of the pockets of men who are working, and that is an enormous problem.

We know that a great many of these issues are still going to be settled at the bargaining table and will depend on the labour movement's commitment with respect to equity and on the labour movement's ability to negotiate fair agreements. So it is something where, when it comes to unorganized employees, when it comes to many work sites where there are no bargaining committees and no one to bargain, we know there are going to be many opportunities for continuing unfairness.

Having said that, I do want to point to the future. It is impossible for us to see this as the last word. It seems to me this must be seen as the first step, a first step which must be put in the context of two other very important, not only pieces of legislation but also social concepts which, together and working together, will create a world of greater equality than the one in which we live.

Pay equity is obviously the first. We have to have a policy in this province which ensures, when it comes to the evaluation of jobs, that there is no discrimination between men and women and that we attempt to establish definitions of jobs and the worth of jobs that are, as much as is humanly possible, free of any of the historical discrimination against women's work which has been so much a part of our work force, as it has been in the rest of the industrial world.

That is only part of the battle. There are two other parts that we have to address, which we addressed in the accord but which the government has yet to address in fact. The first of these of course is the question of child care. If we cannot deal with the historical double standard with respect to the raising of children, and if we as a society do not make it perfectly clear that men and women share that obligation equally and that it is up to the community generally to provide the supports that need to be there in terms of the raising of children so it is not the common expectation that women alone will bear responsibility for the raising of children, unless we make those changes, we will not be moving to a more equal world in terms of the world of work. So it is fair to say that child care is, as much as anything else, a vital part of this strategy for general overall equality between men and women.

Finally, I am a great believer that it is only when our society embraces the notion of affirmative action and embraces the notion of job fairness, employment equity, whatever you want to call it, so that we have in place in the world of work, as in the world of housing, as in the world of the family, some basic understanding of the discrimination that has existed until now and of the need for us to break down that discrimination, that we will deal with the problem of inequality in terms of wages and in working conditions between men and women.

We have, for example, one per cent or less of apprenticeships in a great many trades occupied by women. There is no reason women cannot become electricians. There is no reason women cannot be working in those occupations which are now, for sociological and for other reasons, in effect barred to women. Unless we break down those barriers of discrimination, all the pay equity in the world will not bring about the kind of equality we want to see.

The next step is twofold: to move in the field of child care and to move in the field of employment equity. These are the areas where the government simply has to move, where public policy has to move, and where this piece of legislation must be seen simply as very much a first step.

Let me conclude by saying it has been a long haul. It has taken a lot to drag the Liberal Party and to drag the cabinet and the government to the point where they are prepared to bring in this legislation and actually make it happen. It has been part of the process of the last two years. It has taken this long to get it there. It is one thing to drag the Liberal Party horse to water; it is another thing to get it to lie down on its back and kick its legs in the air. That is precisely what we are seeing at the moment: a great deal of reluctance on the part of the Liberals to move.

Nevertheless, it is something which l think this House will mark as a day of importance, if only because we are going to be coming back to this legislation and improving it, changing it and constantly reforming it, so that one day we will have genuine legislation with respect to equal pay for work of equal value.

Hon. Mr. Scott: A number of honourable members have pointed out that this is a historic day. I propose to say something about that shortly.

Let me just say that if a resident of my constituency came here on this great day to hear this debate, I believe he or she would be surprised at the form the debate takes and would have a number of questions to ask me about it.

The first thing he or she would say is: "Why is it that the members all make self-serving statements designed to show how brilliant, bright and intelligent they are, while at the same time denying those qualities of conscience and intelligence to others? Why is it that those who say the legislation is terrible will stand up in the end to vote for it? Why is it that legislation that is universally condemned by a majority of the House will pass unanimously?" The answer is that this is the political process. The political process achieves a significant end game on this particular occasion.

As I speak to the passage of pay equity, I want very much to have with me, supporting me, a number of people. The member for St. George has worked hard for this bill and the principle for which it stands, and whatever may befall her or them in the next year, she is entitled to say with some credit, "I stood for pay equity," and is entitled to the public respect that brings. The second person is the member for Ottawa Centre, not of my party, who was prepared to excoriate me at every turn, but who, it must be said, has exhibited a long-term commitment to the principle for which this bill stands, and this House owes her credit.

1600

Having said that, I want to draw to me, because they were important support for me in this bill, my colleague and very dear friend the member for Oriole (Ms. Caplan), who is sitting to my right, and the member for Wentworth North (Mr. Ward), who is sitting in the back, who brought this bill through committee and through the cabinet, because they are, as are members of my caucus, as committed to the principle for which this bill stands, like it or not, as the member for St. George or the member for Ottawa Centre. I do them honour.

One other person whose name I think should be mentioned in this context -- and I am sure the member for St. George and the member for Ottawa Centre would agree -- is Sheila Copps, now gone from this House, to whom this bill was an important and significant commitment.

I should also draw to the attention of the House that my experience with women's issues is not long. I remember, in 1985, in the campaign, when the member for Oriole, at an all-candidates meeting at which I was not present, raised the issue of pay equity -- it was then called equal pay for work of equal value -- and said, "That is going to be a symbolic enactment of critical importance to our party as we move forward." We were not near government at the time.

I heard her, I understood her point, and when the time came in St. David riding for me to make a little plastic recording which could carry one message to the people of my riding, the message on that, thanks to the member for Oriole, had to do with the importance of pay equity in Ontario.

So whatever may be said about the member for Ottawa Centre and the member for St. George, our party, like them, shares a major commitment to pay equity.

There is one point to be made today. If there was ever a day that separated our generation of Ontario from the generations that have gone before us, it is this day. It is here today that, unless the members of the opposition act according, apparently, to their consciences, we will be passing pay equity and at the same time giving final reading at second stage to freedom of information. Those two bills, I respectfully suggest, distinguish our generation of Ontario, this assembly, from those that have gone before it.

Let me say one other thing. There are other people who have committed themselves to this process, who have worked hard and to whom I am extremely grateful. First is the Ontario women's directorate. Glenna Carr, the head of that directorate when we came into office, and Elaine Todres, the head of it now, worked long and hard with their staffs over this two years to make what is happening today possible.

Supporting them has been a range of women's organizations across Ontario, from our own Ontario Advisory Council on Women's Issues, of which Sam Ion is the chairman, to the Equal Pay Coalition, of which Mary Cornish is the chairman, all of which have dedicated themselves to this principle and its enactment, its enshrinement in legislative form. I have been delighted to participate in the process, working, I know, for something they hold very dear.

What we have seen in Ontario in the last quarter century is a fundamental social change. Twenty-five years ago, only 25 per cent of the full-time working force was female, it is now up to 44 per cent, and shortly before the year 2000, a majority of full-time working people in Ontario will be women. It is axiomatic -- it has been demonstrated a dozen times -- that they suffer from often unconscious gender discrimination. The purpose of this act is to begin the process of remedying that significant human and economic wrong.

We began in this Legislature with Bill 105, which was restricted to the Ontario public service; it became amalgamated, effectively, with this bill. In the bill before us there is a remedy for women in the public sector, in the broader public sector and for 85 per cent of the women in the private sector of Ontario. The point I make is that there is no bill in a proactive form in Canada that goes this far.

When members of the third party tell us the bill is inadequate, we will want to recall that in the three jurisdictions in Canada where they have had the reins of power, they have not gone as far as this bill. I am delighted to have their support, but they will want to tell their colleagues in Saskatchewan and British Columbia, and even now governing in Manitoba, there is nothing to fear about taking pay equity to the private sector, as we now propose to do, and there is a lot to commend it. The speech of my friend the honourable leader of the third party should be made, not here, where action is being taken, but in Manitoba, where no action is being taken.

We have made an important and significant start. We have undertaken a significant social change. We are doing something that is right and just and important for women, and I believe we are doing it in a way that will permit Ontario's economy to thrive and prosper and create jobs.

I want to say last that I am very grateful to all members of the House who have made a positive contribution to this bill, who have supported it at one stage or another, who have come to me or my colleagues and said, "That bill is right and we hope it succeeds," and who have participated actively in the work of the committee.

I think today is an important day, not only in Ontario history but also in Canadian history. We have before us the first truly proactive pay equity legislation for the public and private sectors in North America, and I am delighted to ask all honourable members of the House to join in assuring its passage.

Motion agreed to.