(Photo: Courtesy of the Canadian Women's Foundation)
The federal throne speech is making some New Brunswick groups happy with its promises.
Johanne Perron, the executive director of the New Brunswick Coalition for Pay Equity, said there were positive commitments for women included.
“The government has promised to develop an action plan for women in the economy and include women experts in that, so that’s very positive,” she said.
Perron said the promise of taking an intersectional feminist approach will accommodate a diverse amount of people and backgrounds in their Action Plan for Women.
“We also would be looking at what would be happening for caregiving, because we know that women are really quite involved in frontline work in the caregiving sector,” she said.
Perron said the long-term investment into a Canada-wide early learning and childcare system will also help. She said women groups have been asking for something like this for decades so it’s much needed and they’ll be keeping an eye on it.
“The throne speech is talking about faster investments in transition houses for women who are in abusive relationships,” she said.
Perron said there was no mention of the pay equity legislation from 2018 drafted for federally-regulated sectors like banks or transportation but the act has not yet come into force because of the lack of regulations to support it.
She said they will be approaching their Members of Parliament to ask about getting those regulations in place.
Perron said they are worried there’s no core funding for women’s rights groups and that’s something they’d like to see eventually because it means a lot to those groups and would facilitate participation with the government action plan.
