Madam Speaker, I listened to the comments of the hon. member.
It appears perhaps that a little earlier he missed the point of some of the things that some members of the Reform Party were saying. So that the point is clear, I would like to state again that the Reform Party members have continually today applauded the achievements of not only the women MPs in this House, but the achievements of women throughout history, not because of the fact that they are women but because of their achievement in the same ways that we would applaud the achievements of men.
I want to make that very clear. We do not distinguish by gender the magnitude of the achievement but rather the achievement itself.
I would like to go back to some comments that the member made earlier in regard to some of the names we give to people in the workplace, such as policemen. He made a comment on that. He indicated that he found that term objectionable. I would like to ask him and maybe he could reply if he finds the term policewoman objectionable as well or should we be calling the person a policeperson. We could get carried away with this in the same way there is a suggestion that we begin to call manhole covers personhole covers. Where does it end?
Even in this House we differentiate between the terms Mr. Speaker and Madam Speaker. Does the member find these terms objectionable?
I talked about quotas earlier and certainly the government has not made mention of quotas. Let me say that the affirmative action groups in the U.S. began in the same manner. They did not mention quotas. They used terms like pay equity and job equity. In fact they were talking about quotas. That was their hidden agenda. That agenda would not fly in the early days so they chose to use softer, gentler terms.