Bill No. 15 - Gender-based Analysis Plus Implementation Act. - 2nd Reading

CLAUDIA CHENDER « » : Madam Speaker, this bill calls for employees of the Province to receive training on GBA+ and for policy, program, and legislative submissions to Treasury and Policy Board and to Executive Council to include a gender-based analysis plus. Of course we support this bill because it's something that we've been arguing a long time for.

As mentioned in the bill, gender-based analysis can be used to assess the potential impacts of policies, programs, and services on diverse groups, in particular women and people who are gender-diverse. This is work we need to do. So many of our laws, institutions, and programs continue to be gender-biased and either exclude or not meet the needs of more than half the population, and I think we were just discussing that.

We were also just discussing challenges around women in the workforce. Despite closing the gender wage gap, we know that women in Nova Scotia still only earn 73 cents of every dollar earned by men in the province. The government has a huge role to play in that in terms of our policies and what they enable or don't. We know that trans and non-binary people in Canada continue to face underemployment, barriers to health care, and fear of harassment.

Over the past eight years, we in the NDP have asked the Liberal government many times to table their gender-based analysis of legislation. We asked in Question Period, we asked in budget estimates. We filed FOIs. We asked in committees. We didn't get much back, Madam Speaker.

I know that the member for Cole Harbour-Dartmouth wasn't there at that time, and I'm glad to see this bill come forward, but I will say that this is not the first time that this idea has occurred. Certainly it's something, like child care, whose time has more than come.

We have lots of examples of programs that could have benefited from this kind of analysis. We just talked about child care, the fact that up until a few months ago, there was really no movement on child care, particularly affordable access to child care, as well as ECE wages. That is a gendered issue, Madam Speaker.

We also would have been really interested to see a gender-based analysis of the elimination of school boards. As I think we were discussing yesterday, school boards were the only elected body with gender parity and the entry point for many women, in particular, into political office.

We've seen prenatal classes cancelled in Nova Scotia, inexplicably. I wonder if a gender-based analysis was done of that decision.

But looking forward, Madam Speaker, I think it's really imperative to pick up where I left off a few minutes ago, to say that since 2020, since the pandemic struck, our caucus has continually advocated for an economic recovery task force that is made up of all parties and of all sectors of the economy. The reason we have done that, in part, is to ensure that stimulus spending, in particular, as we move out of this pandemic and into whatever our new economic mode is, is subject to that gender-based analysis so that we can rebuild a different and more equitable economy than the one that we have in some ways left behind.

We have fared better than many of our other provinces and countries around the world when it comes to the last few waves of COVID-19, but we didn't escape the disproportionate impact of this pandemic on women. We also did not escape the disproportionate impact on women of the stimulus spending to date.

We filed an FOI asking if any of the appropriations related to COVID-19 and that were done by the previous government were subjected to a gender-based analysis and, just as a refresher, most of that money was spent on building highways, so - spoiler alert - no, it wasn't.

We know that the government spent money to keep child care centres open. There's work that was done so we're not saying that work wasn't done. It was. The point of a gender-based analysis is really to reveal unconscious bias. It's so that when we're doing things the way that we've always done them and in the way that we think they are important - we are all smart enough in this Chamber to know that we're going to miss stuff - we're not going to be able to take things into account. That's why when we talk about an analysis or a lens, we are creating a system that can reveal some of those unconscious biases. I would suggest that those biases are really alive and well in the way that the government operates.

We've come a long way, but we have a long way to go. In our caucus we brought forward a number of pieces of legislation designed directly to impact this: paid parental leave for municipal councillors and MLAs, which we were glad to be part of that conversation that led to a change in both legislation and in policy for this Chamber and for municipal government. We have continually advocated for set sitting hours - so far, so good, this session, but we'll see. We've also advocated for a legislative calendar, so we have - we're talking about fixed election dates. We all really disagree on July but we all agree on fixed election dates. We agree with the government's rationale on fixed election dates - it gives us time to plan.

Similarly, if we had a legislative calendar, like most other legislative bodies, we would also have time to plan. It would make it remarkably easier, in a disproportionate fashion, for the women and gender-diverse folks in this Chamber, or who aspire to be in this Chamber, if they knew when they were going to have to be here.

We've advocated for affordable child care, free birth control, free menstrual products and expanded access to trans-health care in Nova Scotia.

It has been noted already that the Throne Speech we heard just a couple of weeks ago didn't mention women at all. I know, again, that that doesn't mean that no action will be taken or that there won't be any emphasis on equity, but it is something that we are alert to. It is something we are watching and thinking about because we know that we can't have a healthy economy - forget the economy, we can't have a healthy society without women. We can't have a healthy economy without women and gender-diverse folks, and we know we need a government right now, at this moment in time, that will put the needs of women and gender-diverse people at the forefront, including prioritizing child care, health care, and better wages for low-wage workers.

This is the care economy. This is what we have been talking about for some time now. It isn't pouring money into the same old - I'm not trying to pick on Public Works - sort of shovel-ready projects and overpasses and roundabouts and highways that we can pour money into. That's not because it's not important. Of course we need roads. I'm sure we'll spend lots of time talking about roads. But the reality is that when the pandemic hit, what did we do? We defaulted to what we have always done to stimulate the economy. We put money into shovel-ready projects. But if we had just taken a minute and thought about what else we could have done, I think we could have come up with some pretty great ideas. The great news is it's not too late.

We support this bill. I would urge the government to pass this bill. We think that progressive feminist gender-based analysis should be at the core of the government's work as it is in ours.