Mr. Baylis, there's nothing in this that requires anyone to divulge anything about their identity they don't wish to divulge. Diversity respects those elements of our society. For a person who is potentially gay or lesbian, and they are out and they are describing where they stand and who they are, that reflects diversity. You're not required to inquire of people if they are clear in their statement of who they are. They, then, represent the diversity.
Let's face it. We live in a patriarchy. This Prime Minister did a wonderful thing by having gender parity in cabinet. The first prime minister that I knew of to do that was Gro Harlem Brundtland in Norway, and that was in the 1980s. After she did that, Norway passed a law that corporate boards had to be 50% women, and now they are.
This legislation, with this amendment, doesn't even require that a gender quota be met, or a gender target be met. It merely says, when looking at diversity, you look at issues like disability, gender, race, ethnicity, indigenous heritage.
There was no clearer evidence to me that we lived in a patriarchy than when the news media and pundits got busy on Justin Trudeau's 50%-women cabinet. For the first time, I heard media people wonder whether these people were qualified to be cabinet ministers. I never heard anyone wonder whether the men who were appointed to cabinet were qualified. It was a brand new concept, women being appointed to cabinet. Could they possibly be qualified? I won't bother mentioning previous male cabinet ministers one might have pondered about.
I would really urge my Liberal friends to take this step. This is a very modest step in describing what diversity means, so that corporate boards will have consideration of this and think, “Wow. That would be a great person to promote to senior management. That would improve where we stand in our representation of women, people of colour, LGBTQ, and trans.” This is an important step, please.