Mr. Speaker, I am astounded at "understood to be a given" that equality exists in the country. Unfortunately there have been a lot of barriers for visible minorities, women and disabled and aboriginal people. They have not had the opportunities.
We have a composition in the public service that in past has not represented the composition in the population. There have been barriers to employment and barriers in terms of pay opportunities. These are facts that do exist and have been substantiated time and time again by many studies.
We are simply trying to break down those barriers. I never said quotas. I never used the word quotas at all. I talked about training. How do you equate training and quotas? Training is to help people. Training is provided for all people, men, women and all of the target groups I talked about today, training to help prepare them for jobs that can help them to rise higher in the service, to be able to perform to the best of their abilities.
Surely there is nothing wrong with that. How does the member equate that to quotas? I never said anything about quotas. We are trying to prepare people to do the best they can, to be able to advance in the public service and to give them the kind of training and support they need so that we will have an even bigger talent pool to draw from when we need to advance people. That surely is going to be to the benefit of the people of the country in terms of the public service we would provide.