Mr. Speaker, of course I have to say that I support the hon. member in his position on this bill.
The point the Liberals opposite are missing is the principle of this bill. The principle is the social engineers of the Liberal Party are trying to legislate that businesses in this country will have to enter into hiring practices that will be based on things other than merit or abilities.
This country was made strong by Canadian workers who got their education and their training and did everything they could to prepare themselves to be competitive in the marketplace. They did that and achieved individual rewards as a result. As my colleague has pointed out, this bill seeks to destroy that individual initiative by placing special considerations on special groups. What happened to merit? There is no merit mentioned in Bill C-64.
For this member to tell me that businesses in Ontario are supporting this bill, this employment equity idea, over a fundamental principle of hiring people based on their individual merit is absolute nonsense. I would like to meet a businessman who responded to that survey who would tell me in all truthfulness that he does not care about the merit, the qualifications of the employees, but would rather base his hiring practices on this absurd legislation the Liberal Party is attempting to bring in here.
I ask these social engineers across the way to give us a break. That is not the real world any more.