Madam Speaker, the previous speaker, the hon. member from the beautiful province of Nova Scotia, is to be commended for introducing into today's debate the subject of discrimination in the Canadian Forces, although she made it clear this was not the only department where major changes were necessary.
The motion before the House today to appoint this special joint committee could, of course, include discrimination, but I wonder whether this would not be duplicate a previous exercise. Perhaps action, not more studies, is what we need. You referred to the Abella report and the report released last year which made it clear that discrimination existed in several sectors at National Defence.
The facts are there, recommendations have been made, the various parties have responded to the reports that were published, and the only one that is not moving at all is the government. I think it would make sense for the government that has been in power since October 25 and whose members has been familiar with the problem for years, and especially considering the report released last year, to immediately table specific measures to deal with this discrimination.
You mentioned this earlier, quite rightly, and it surprised me as well last year, when I heard that the government was giving other countries advice on how to eliminate discrimination in certain agencies, even private agencies, and that it did not consider implementing its own recommendations.
Although I applaud your comments on the subject, I think you were rather soft on this new government by failing to state quite frankly that it was time to do something specific, since the report and the recommendations are known. All it takes is for the parties involved, meaning the government, to make a decision so that, as you pointed out, this kind of discrimination on military bases is abolished.
I do not think a committee, especially not a committee of both Houses, which means a very big committee, which would be asked to discuss conversion, to reflect on the potential need for a new base for training peacekeepers, to consider the advisability of closing certain bases or what Canada's contribution should be as an international force, in multilateral forces, I do not think it could also talk about discrimination. This committee will already have too much on its plate. A debate on this particular issue would not be appropriate in a committee that is supposed to make recommendations for future policy. It seems to me we do not need any further debate on this issue. The public realizes
that changes are necessary. Changes must be made, and the government can make them without a committee, on the basis of existing reports.
In any case, this committee seems to be one committee too many. We already have a National Defence committee, which is supposed to consider future policy and the estimates and hear testimony from the military and civilians. The hon. member for Trois-Rivières said earlier in his speech that he had a petition signed by nearly 7,000 people from Trois-Rivières who objected to the fact that National Defence and the defence sector are so generously funded and said that conversion was necessary. We already have a committee that can hear these witnesses and make recommendations to the government.
I have known the hon. member as an ardent activist for women's rights. I applaud that, and I know she will keep up the good work, but she will realize it is much harder now. A great politician once said that power imposes its own constraints. I want to ask whether she is prepared to rise in caucus and here in the House, not to ask members to think about discrimination but to ask for immediate implementation of the recommendations of the Abella and other reports, which tell us exactly where the discrimination is and how it should be corrected.
If she wants to accomplish anything, it will have to be done through government decisions. I also think that the proposed committee should not be struck. In other words, the committee is unnecessary because we already have a National Defence committee that could examine all the items the minister mentioned this morning and which the red book, which you praised so highly during the election campaign, mentioned as well, although far more clearly than the minister did in his speech this morning.
Would the hon. member agree that it is time to do something about discrimination instead of taking this issue back to committee?