Mr. Chairman, I was elected in 1993 at the age of 31, and I have been re-elected five times since. I know that my baby face may confuse some of my colleagues. My intention was not to refer to my age, but merely to tell you that I took an interest in this matter starting in 1995. I have previously introduced a number of bills and I would say that, in my life, I have merely contributed to the addition of social condition as a prohibited ground of discrimination, and that I am very proud of that. My life has obviously been much richer; everyone agrees on that.
Why social condition? Because a lot of provinces have social condition as a prohibited ground or related ground. Some provinces refer to prohibited discrimination against beneficiaries or on the ground of insufficient income. This doesn't always concern the ground of social condition. Even Quebec uses that term.
Mr. Chairman, I am convinced that, if litigants had this ground in the Canadian Human Rights Act, it would be a benefit for aboriginal people, for people who are denied loans at financial institutions, for people who have grievances against the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, for the disadvantaged groups of our society.
We have a lot of information. I will definitely be stirring up happy memories for some of my colleagues, and perhaps bad ones for others, but I can assume nothing, Mr. Chairman. When Anne McLellan was Minister of Justice, she established a task force to review the Canadian Human Rights Act. Mr. Justice LaForest chaired that task force, and those people had already ruled that it was appropriate to amend the Act. So we'll have a great deal of information, and I hope that the government will ultimately support this committee's recommendations, which, I hope, will be to that effect.