On problems

Con MP Lois Brown offers the Harper government's reponse to a bill to undo the Con/Lib attack on pay equity:

I would like to draw to the attention of the House an article in today's paper, the headline of which is “Women grab reins of power in PS”, from which I would like to quote. I am very proud to be part of a government that has taken a look at this issue and realized that it needed to be addressed. We took stock of it and addressed it in budget 2009. The article states:

A married woman was forbidden from working in Canada's public service 55 years ago, but today women have the majority of jobs and a growing hold on the executive ranks.

They have outnumbered men since 1999, but the government's latest demographic snapshot shows 43 per cent of executives are now women...

I believe that is to the credit of what this government has done and what this government saw was a problem that needed to be addressed.

Which raises a couple of interesting points of interpretation. Has Brown accepted her party's rewriting of history such that the Cons have always been the government in order to take credit for what happened around 1999 (presumably excepting the few hobby-horse issues they still regularly complain about)?

Or do the Harper Cons consider the advancement of women in the public service to be a "problem that needed to be addressed", which they're proud to have changed through their budgets?