Trudeau's Feminist Budget Tackles Parental Leave and Pay Equity

(Bloomberg) -- Justin Trudeau is bringing women's equality to the heart of his government's third budget.

The plan, delivered Tuesday in Ottawa, includes funding to narrow the pay gap among federal employers, help women into male-dominated jobs and provide five weeks of paid leave for new fathers who stay at home.

Finance Minister Bill Morneau's budget speech cited the “#MeToo and #TimesUp” movements and wove in references to an apprentice plumber named Joan. Future budgets will continue the new practice of doing a gender analysis of every dollar spent, Morneau said, adding that fixing disparities could boost Canada's economy by C$150 billion ($119 billion) by 2026.

“There isn't one CEO out there who would stand for anything that arbitrarily holds back half the people in their organization,” Morneau said in his prepared budget speech. “With this budget, we are tackling the challenge of equality head on -- asking tough questions, and beginning to provide solutions.”

Highlights of Gender Measures in Budget

• Funding for Canada's “feminist” international aid policy will increase C$2 billion over the next five fiscal years.
• Parental leave will include five weeks of “use it or lose it” benefits for the second parent, to encourage two-parent families to “share equally in the work of raising their children” and allow women to return to work sooner. The C$1.2 billion over five years comes out of an existing employment insurance program. A similar benefit in the province of Quebec has increased the use of parental leave by new fathers to 80 percent, versus 12 percent in the rest of Canada.
• Pay equity legislation for federal employers with more than 10 workers is expected to narrow the pay gap between men and women by about 3 cents on the dollar, and encourage private employers to take action as well.
• Separate legislation will also enshrine and deepen the use of gender based analysis.
• The government has set aside C$86 million over five years to tackle gender-based violence.
• The federal statistics agency will receive funding to create a new Centre for Gender, Diversity and Inclusion Statistics, and the government will expand Status of Women Canada to make it a full stand-alone federal department.

Trudeau has made gender equality a key message for his government since taking office in 2015 with Canada's first-ever cabinet balanced by gender. He told the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland this year that businesses should hire more women and clean up systemic sexual harassment.

There's lots of room for Canada's corporate sector to improve. Out of 250 companies on the country's main stock exchange, only six had female CEOs, according to Bloomberg calculations. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development reported last year that Canada's gender pay gap is “stubbornly high” and exceeds the average across the group.

Morneau said women on average earn 69 cents for every dollar that men bring in, and even women in high-paying science jobs make C$9,000 less each year And about one-third of women have faced sexual harassment at work.

“That's not right,” the finance minister said. “And it's not very smart, either.”

--With assistance from Erik Hertzberg

To contact the reporter on this story: Greg Quinn in Ottawa at gquinn1@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Theophilos Argitis at targitis@bloomberg.net, Stephen Wicary, Chris Fournier

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