Mr. Speaker, the nomination process in York Centre has nothing to do with employment equity goals. However, I have fought and won a lot more elections than the hon. member has ever even thought about, some 11 of them. In this past election the people of York Centre gave me a plurality of somewhere over 20,000. I won every single poll. The voters of York Centre spoke quite well, as they have in most parts of the country, by electing a very solid Liberal majority government to represent every aspect of the country, not just some portion of it.
With respect to the downsizing, we are not being detracted in terms of the employment equity goals by that. It is obvious that a lot of people in those four target groups are going to be part of the downsizing. Given that we operate on the merit principle would indicate the reverse order of merit as being paramount in that case.
The situation is being monitored very carefully to try to maintain the numbers as best we can. After all, we do not have enough aboriginal people, the disabled, or people who are in the visible minority groups, as well as women in executive groups. Therefore, I do not want to make the situation any worse if we can help it by staying within the principles of merit which the Reform Party keeps telling us we should. We are monitoring the situation carefully.
I am pleased to say that as a result of the report issued last week by Treasury Board, of the over 8,000 positions that had been removed, there has been no change of that balance. In fact in some of the groups a little bit less has been reduced. The one exception to that would be people with disabilities. This would be largely because a number of them are going out under the early retirement incentive, people who are closer to retirement age perhaps, more than disabilities, but those are people who are taking a very conscious, positive decision about leaving.
I am very pleased to say that of the over 8,000 people who are gone and in particular those who were in the indeterminate or permanent positions, none of them went involuntarily. They all went voluntarily. That shows we are trying to treat people who are departing the public service in a fair and humane way, as well as those who continue to stay to operate the programs and services.
After all, we have to bring about that reduction. We do not particularly like it. The hon. member is critical of it but, at the same time, he and his party are critical of the deficit. This is all part of getting our fiscal house in order and reducing the deficit. We are treating people in a very fair and reasonable way. We are keeping a very close eye on our employment equity goals at the same time.