Mr. Speaker, my brief remarks are designed to repeat some of the basic arguments against pay and employment equity which underlie Reform's opposition to Bill C-64.
Reform believes that government should assure equality of opportunity in economic life, but it has no business using the labour market to assure equality of outcome. Doing so interferes with basic freedoms, makes false assumptions about the causes of inequality, creates large inefficiencies and is basically unjust.
Consider the problem with freedom. Canada has developed into a prosperous society by upholding basic personal freedoms. One of these consists of the ability of individuals to sell their labour services to the highest bidder and for employers to choose freely those whom they wish to hire as long as they do not interfere with the fundamental freedoms of others.
These freedoms are an end in themselves, but they also are the engines which drive economic activity in a market economy that has produced the riches our society enjoys today.
Throughout the world and history people have died for these freedoms. We all remember the American civil war. Slavery represents the extreme limitation on people's freedom to sell their labour services to the highest bidder. Employment and pay equity legislation imposes on free Canadians just a bit of such slavery. Our society is on a slippery slope.
Consider the idea that existing inequalities between groups is due to discrimination. Reform believes that this proposition is based on false assumptions and empirical evidence. Studies by Tom Sowell at Stanford University have shown that Americans of Japanese origin as a group have much above average U.S. income.
My former colleague, Don DeVoretz at Simon Fraser University, has shown that immigrants on average have higher incomes than people born in Canada. The recorded extraordinary success of these two groups is indicative of the impossible task of establishing that group disadvantages are caused by discrimination based on race, gender or national or ethnic origin.
Economists led by Nobel laureate Gary Becker have long argued that free markets offer the best protection against discrimination. Consider a firm that gets paid $1 for the assembly of a computer component. The wage rate is $10 per hour and the average male is able to complete 10 units per hour. Consider that women have greater dexterity and are able to assemble 12 units per hour. Any firm which refuses to hire women for this task is at an obvious competitive disadvantage with a firm that does. It will ultimately go out of business.
Students of labour markets have been able to show that discrimination in the labour market has historically persisted only in instances where government regulation or government enforced monopolies like labour unions have prevented the adjustment from taking place.
Bill C-64 and similar legislation involves serious costs. Bureaucrats, lawyers and the police needed to enforce such legislation are not available to produce goods and services that determine our living standard. The private sector incurs large administrative costs. In addition there are the costs of lost efficiency. Goods and services will no longer be produced using the lowest cost.
In the United States affirmative action has been estimated to result in lost output equal to 4 per cent of national income. Since Canada may be assumed never to want to lag behind the U.S. in such social legislation for long, we may soon expect at least such cost.
The ultimate cost of governmental attempting to create perfect equality of incomes has become obvious through recent developments in socialist and communist governments around the world. Employment and pay equity in these systems had been perfected. Now communism and socialism around the world have failed or are in retreat.
What does the Liberal Government of Canada do? It pushes state efforts to achieve equality of income by applying it to the civil service. In addition, the recent Liberal recommendations to the finance minister in the report of the Standing Committee on Finance bragged about the fact that if adopted they will further equalize income. Have the Liberals learned nothing from history?
Let me now discuss briefly the sense in which the proposed legislation is basically unjust. Using the course of power of the state to help one group of disadvantaged individuals automatically discriminates against others and deprives them of their rights and freedoms without due process.
These groups are paying a discriminatory tax and are implicitly declared guilty of discrimination. Reform sees no justice in forcing young people belonging to one group to pay today for discrimination that may or may not have taken place in the past.
By the same token, where is the justice in giving members of minority groups alive today benefits in return for injustices real or imagined suffered by past members of this group?
Let me close by reminding members of the slippery slope on which we find ourselves. In one of his novels, Kurt Vonnegut describes a world in which state created equality of outcome was perfected.
It had moved from assuring pay equity to equity in looks and sports. In Vonnegut's brave new world, good looking people had to wear glasses and other devices to assure equality of looks with those disadvantaged by nature.
Gifted athletes were made to wear heavy weights to assure that they were able to jump no higher and run no faster than the rest. In the end, the hero of the story discards the starting post equalization devices and enjoyed his life to the fullest for a short time until he entered jail for the rest of his life.
Whenever it is impossible to make a strong intellectual case against the government policy like pay employment equity the question arises why governments persist with such policy. Public choice theory of government provides the answer.
Such legislation serves the interests of politicians and parties. Identifiable groups are given benefits and they are expected to reward the donors at the ballot box and with financial support. The cost of the legislation in terms of lost freedoms, discrimination against the innocent and reduced output are difficult to measure.
As a result the victims of the policy have little or no incentives and knowledge to punish the politicians who have imposed those costs on them. Such special interest group legislation slowly and exorbitantly lowers the income of Canadians and most tragically deprives them of their freedom.
Bill C-64 and similar legislated pay and employment equity reduce the welfare of Canadians. That is why Reform opposes it.