Debates of Oct. 16th, 1995

Employment Equity Act

[Peter Thalheimer, Liberal, Timmins—Chapleau, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am appalled at the way hon. members of the Reform Party are misrepresenting Bill C-64 to the Canadian public. They are consistently using terms that do not apply to this legislation either in fact or in spirit.

In its minority report, the Reform Party makes it look like employment equity and affirmation action are one and the same thing. However, any astute Canadian reading Bill C-64 or the current Employment Equity Act can see quite clearly that employment equity is not affirmative action.

I suppose it is fitting, in keeping with its small r republican status, that the Reform Party tries to equate everything with the way things are done in the United States of America. However, employment equity is a fair and just Canadian manner of addressing the inequality of opportunity experienced by persons with disabilities, aboriginal peoples, visible minorities and women.

Of course we know why the hon. members of the Reform Party use the term affirmative action. For the Reform Party, affirmative action is a code word for preferential treatment and in Reformers' convoluted attempts to obfuscate and derail this legislation they think they can pull the wool over the eyes of Canadians by taking this approach.

Canadians are a lot smarter than the members of the Reform Party realize. They will not be bamboozled by smokescreen language that fails to address the true spirit of Bill C-64.

Reform has a section titled "Are Numerical Goals Really Quotas?" in its minority report. I am delighted to be able to tell the hon. members opposite that the answer is no. Numerical goals are not quotas.

I would like to take a moment to tell members of the Reform Party what the difference is between quotas and goals since it is clear from their arguments that they do not seem to know. I want to say at the outset that Bill C-64 specifically states that quotas cannot be imposed. Under the bill a quota is defined as a requirement to hire or promote a fixed and arbitrary number of persons during a given period. I refer them to section 33.

Most Canadians understand the difference between numerical goals and quotas, even if the Reform Party does not understand.

Goals are based on the availability of qualified people to do a given job. Quotas are arbitrarily determined.

The bill clearly states that employers will not be required to hire unqualified people. Goals are percentages of anticipated hirings and promotions that an employer aims to achieve but quotas are usually fixed numbers of positions.

The bill specifically states that employers will not be required to set fixed and arbitrary goals. Employers must make reasonable efforts to achieve goals. Quotas must be attained regardless of the circumstances. The bill clearly states that if employers make reasonable efforts to implement their goals they will be found in compliance.

This is the Canadian way. The government's approach to implementing employment equity can be described as flow based. We are asking well-intentioned men and women to work in collaboration with one another to achieve employment equity goals within a reasonable time frame. That time frame is flexible depending on individual circumstances. We know everyone is not able to move ahead at the same pace and the commission will take that into consideration.

We have a process for those few employers who do not comply with the legislation. We know from experience that the majority of employers bring a very positive attitude toward achieving the goals set out in Bill C-64 and the Employment Equity Act.

Why is the Reform Party misrepresenting the legislation and misleading Canadians regarding its intent? Canadians support equality in the workplace for members of designated groups.

I can assure hon. members opposite that they will not score political points by misconstruing the spirit of the legislation. The goal of Bill C-64 is not to place undue hardship on any employer who is making an honest effort to meet the spirit of the new act. I repeat again, because it seems members of the Reform are having as hard time grasping this, we are only asking for and we only expect that employers make all reasonable effort to comply with the act's provisions.

I ask the hon. members of the Reform Party to consider their bogus argument about the necessity of meeting quotas. The bill specifically rules out quotas. It is that simple.

We know from recent studies that the majority of people entering the labour force will come from members of designated groups. That is simply one more reason that employment equity makes good economic sense. It will help employers focus on accessing the skills of those productive and hard working individuals.

This legislation is a positive step for Canadians. It will help us gain a diverse and highly skilled workforce that will ensure Canada a competitive edge in the rapidly expanding global marketplace. For that reason I am pleased to be able to support Bill C-64.

[Vic Althouse, NDP, Mackenzie, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to this bill on employment equity, a concept with which I have no problem. We still need in our society, however enlightened it might tend to be, some recognition that not all aspects of our society are as accepting of visible minorities, aboriginals, females, people with handicaps in the workplace or in our society as is generally perceived to be most appropriate.

I have no objection in society attempting to use the law as is being proposed in the equity bill to force this sort of compliance to avoid discrimination for any of the reasons this proposal lists.

I am therefore basically in support of the idea of employment equity and the requirement that employers give equal opportunity for all people regardless of the circumstances of their birth or what life may have imposed on them by way of disability after birth.

However, the bill has not done a good job of looking at the global economy of the new world order we are now living in, which has presented a much different form of employment than what this bill and what most of the legislation that governments have put together deal with. These kinds of bills and laws function on an employer-employee relationship. They are virtually toothless when it comes to a new world where more and more people are self-employed, where contracting, subcontracting and subcontracting the subcontracting goes on, so there are three, four and five levels of contract.

As a consequence of that new practice it is virtually impossible to supply the kind of protection this bill proposes to do. If members do not believe me they should walk outside of the doors of this House. There is a program going on, the Peace Tower project, in which we have seen the most blatant treatment of an employee because she was female. The House, on whose territory this injustice took place, appears to be unable or unwilling to do anything about it. It is under the aegis of the Speaker but he seems unable to do anything. The job was contracted by the minister of public works who cannot find 10 minutes of time to even discuss it with me and whose officials actually aided the ejection of this woman and her fellow workers from the site. They had to leave their tools which they cannot recover.

The several times they have attempted to recover the tools employees of Public Works and Government Services Canada have told them that they are disrupting the building site and that they cannot have their tools because the current contractor is using them to complete the job. The contractor forced them to leave the job site because they insisted on using a female engineer.

If we are going to be believable in this Chamber in trying to deal with questions of inequality in the workplace we are going to have to recognize that very often in this new world order the workplace is run by people who have subcontracted and subcontracted those contracts to the point that it is impossible to hold the employer who makes those kinds of decisions, however arbitrary, unfair and normally illegal, responsible. We cannot do anything about it.

As a consequence, the subcontractor has forced the building trades people, the masons who were working on the Peace Tower, off the job because they persisted in using a female engineer. He had no objection to her work. He was only objecting because she was female. He made that quite clear. He forced them off the job. They left their tools and they cannot recover them. They can go to court. They have due process. I have talked to members on the government side who have said: "Use due process, that is what you have to do".

Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, you are aware that due process in this case is almost useless because her employer, the mason that hired her to be the engineer for his part of the project, is not the person who is forcing her off the site but the subcontractor above him. The Ontario Human Rights Commission has some trouble dealing with this.

Others have advised me. Others of the legal profession from the government side have said: "Look to the federal human rights commissioner. He is obviously the one who has to do this because it is on a federal site and it is for the federal houses of Parliament for Pete's sake". Again the person that has pushed her off the site is not her employer and there seems to be nothing that the human rights commissioner can do in the case of this injustice.

I raised this briefly at second reading and I remind members on all sides that if this kind of injustice is to be permitted on our own grounds literally and figuratively and we can do nothing about it, what is the point of replicating the same type of legislation using the same requirements only on employers versus employees without taking into account the contractors and the subcontractors and all the other permutations that occur in business?

What are we really accomplishing? We are accomplishing very little except perhaps to make the whole process and the whole political group of us in the House look rather silly.

I keep preaching from my far corner. Very few people are in the House when I do my little rant on these things, but I hope the new ears hearing this each time take this to the rest of their colleagues and see if there is some way we can force compliance if not across the country at least on the acres of yard in front of the House.

This is a great injustice and makes the whole process of attempting to get employment equity to permit females equal access to jobs as engineers or scientists or doctors or lawyers. It makes the whole process of the last 15 or 20 years look absolutely ridiculous.

This woman is apparently considering going back to washing dishes because that is the only employment she can find at the moment. She had a job as an engineer. The subcontractor hiring her firm to work on the Peace Tower forced it off the job because it persisted in employing a woman engineer.

For his efforts that subcontractor was rewarded with a further subcontract to work on the whole House of Commons instead of just the Peace Tower after he engaged in this process.

I cannot let any debate or any discussion of an equity employment bill go by without reminding members of the House, and I hope some of the frontbenchers will take this to heart, that we have allowed a grave injustice just outside our doors. If any of the laws we pass in this place are to be taken seriously by people outside of Ottawa, we should be able to enforce what we have already made law numerous years ago when work gets done on our buildings on the confines of Parliament Hill.

Until that happens I am afraid I will look sceptically at this new effort at achieving employment equity.

[Bob Mills, Reform, Red Deer, AB]

Mr. Speaker, listening to the last presentation, it proves the point that so much of this comes down to enforcement of what we already have.

We have laws to protect against discrimination and obviously if those laws are implemented we need not to go any further or introduce any kind of new laws.

I have not heard very much talk about what the business community is saying. Coming from that area I have to put some emphasis on what it is saying about the job equity program.

I am a little annoyed that we should be dealing with this bill in the House which will basically institutionalize discrimination in the workplace. This is exactly what I feel Bill C-64 does, and the Liberal government should be ashamed of promoting this sort of archaic legislation.

We have heard from many reform speakers now. It is absolutely clear why we oppose this bill. We are not racist. We are not sexist and those gurus of political correctness who try to pin that label on the opponents of affirmative action should be publicly condemned for their behaviour.

Reformers know that the huge majority of Canadians are utterly opposed to setting up discriminatory quotas for the hiring and promotion of target groups such as visible minorities. Such discrimination is wrong, no matter what disguise we put on it or what name we put on it. Calling it employment equity and calling the

quotas numerical targets does not change a thing. Everyone in the House should know that.

For those who argue the wrongs of the past have to be corrected through measures such as these, two wrongs do not make a right. There was discrimination in the past and not everyone got a fair shake in life. That is terrible but we have come a long way and we are moving very quickly to right those wrongs. We have come a long way and now the UN even goes so far as to say we are the best country. I agree with that.

The kind of big government, social engineering contained in the bill is utterly unconscionable. Canadians want less government interference in their lives, not more. This is especially true in the case of affirmative action. The role of government is to provide equality before the law and to prohibit discrimination. However, Bill C-64 does exactly the opposite.

Bill C-64 enshrines inequality before the law. It encourages reverse discrimination. Perhaps worst of all, it propagates a victim mentality among our citizens. Minorities and women should think of themselves as equal partners in building the future of Canada. They should be encouraged to compete, to succeed and to provide for their families.

Bill C-64 is absolutely terrible because it sends the wrong messages. It tells our women and visible minorities they are victims, that they are oppressed and that without special legislation they will be incapable of succeeding in our society. This message is not only false but is extremely counter productive and does nothing to build Canada for the 21st Century.

Bill C-64 will create a tremendous number of problems for the country. They will go on and on and become greater and greater, much as the Americans have found since the introduction of their legislation in the sixties. Now they are having to remove it. There will be social costs and there will be economic costs among many other problems associated with this kind of legislation.

As far as the social costs of affirmative action, there are many. To begin with, the bill promotes an unusual them versus us kind of confrontation in the workplace. This confrontation takes place on two levels. There is a confrontation between workers who have already been hired and there is a confrontation between job candidates.

For job candidates the situation under affirmative action is very clear. If they are not a member of one of the target groups they are penalized. If they are they are entitled to special preference. Not only does this mean the all important merit principle is being overridden, but such discriminatory treatment will foster resentment among the majority against candidates who receive the special treatment. As the resentment builds it could very easily lead to an ugly backlash against people from visible minorities when they are not really the problem at all.

The problem is bad legislation. The problem is the government's ill conceived social engineering which will have very serious side effects.

The first major social problem is that merit is not the sole reason for hiring under Bill C-64. Once the country slides down that slippery slope there is no telling where we will end up.

Among those who are already working there are other serious problems associated with employment equity. The two most significant problems involve promotions and layoffs. In both these cases giving preference to certain employees over others can have devastating consequences not only for the efficiency of the business but for workplace harmony.

Imagine a company with 100 employees struggling to make ends meet. Under these circumstances it is essential that everyone work as a team. The very future of the company depends on it. Let us assume ten people have to be laid off. Under market conditions the business would get rid of the ten people who are the most expendable. Under affirmative action, however, what would the company do? If certain employees were seen as exempt from these layoffs, how would this affect workplace team work and camaraderie? The answer is obvious and everyone in the House knows it.

The exact same situation would occur in the case of promotions. If employees feel their very livelihood and careers are being hindered by affirmative action they will strike back, and this is exactly what we do not want. The workplace should be an opportunity to succeed through skill and hard work. It should not be a place where Canadian citizens are penalized or rewarded for their skin colour or their sex.

Beyond the very obvious social costs, there are also economic costs to this legislation. If we use the Ontario employment equity law as an example, the Chamber of Commerce estimated that a company with more than 500 employees would have to spend $100,000 just to comply with the paperwork. This figure does not even begin to factor in the intangibles caused by hiring, firing and promoting workers on the basis of race, sex or disability.

In the U.S., California particularly, the total cost of affirmative action has been estimated as high as 4 per cent of GDP. That is exactly the same as what is spent on all the education programs in that state. Even if this is double the actual number it still translates into billions of dollars lost. In a time of global competition we must become efficient. We must not tie the hands of our businesses behind their backs.

The U.S. is now abandoning this system of affirmative action because it did not work. It was one of those social experiments of the 1960s. In Ontario the Harris government has decided to scrap the lousy affirmative action law of the previous NDP government. Why? It was too costly and because it would not work. The Ontario

Liberal Party agrees completely and would also throw out this program had it been elected.

I wonder why its federal counterparts are so utterly out of touch with the wishes of the Canadian public. Maybe they know what Canadians want but they simply do not care. Is it possible there is so much arrogance on the government side of the House that it thinks it knows better than the Canadian public? Will those paragons of political correctness in the Liberal benches rise up to save the country from its own folly?

There are many flaws in this bill, many things we could explore. Unfortunately my time is soon up. It is late in the day. I ask everyone to think about Bill C-64 and the institutionalizing discrimination it causes. I ask everyone in the House to consider before they vote on this and think about the consequences for this great country.

[Ian McClelland, Reform, Edmonton Southwest, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. With unanimous consent may we ask the House to consider it 6.51 p.m.?

[The Deputy Speaker]

Is there unanimous consent?

[Some hon. members]

No.

[The Deputy Speaker]

Is the House ready for the question?

[Some hon. members]

Question.

[The Deputy Speaker]

Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Some hon. members]

No.

[The Deputy Speaker]

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Deputy Speaker]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Deputy Speaker]

In my opinion the yeas have it.

And more than five members having risen:

[The Deputy Speaker]

At the request of the deputy whip the vote is deferred until five o'clock tomorrow afternoon. Is there now unanimous consent to call it 6.51?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

A motion to adjourn the House under Standing Order 38 deemed to have been moved.

[Len Taylor, NDP, The Battlefords—Meadow Lake, SK]

Mr. Speaker, on June 11, 1992 the Canadian government signed the United Nations convention on biological diversity in which it made a commitment that this country would pass legislation to protect endangered species.

More than three years later, eight of the twelve provinces and territories still have neither federal nor provincial legislation. There is no time to waste. Canada currently has 244 known endangered species. The number of species at risk has tripled in the past 10 years and the list continues to grow.

On August 17 of this year the Minister of the Environment took the first step toward meeting Canada's obligation when she announced the legislative proposal for a Canadian endangered species protection act. Unfortunately the minister's proposal fails to live up to either the letter or the spirit of Canada's international commitment to protect endangered species. The proposal only applies to species that live in national parks or on other specified federal lands. It covers only 4 per cent of Canada's total land base and eliminates the north entirely.

On September 28 of this year in the House I asked the minister if she would ensure effective protection of endangered species by strengthening the proposed new act. The minister admitted that the legislation did not cover as many species as the government would like and blamed it on the fact that provincial governments had jurisdiction in certain areas. Canadians concerned about the survival of these species cannot accept this excuse for ineffective legislation. A species threatened with extinction is of national importance.

The federal government has more authority than the minister is willing to admit. Effective protection of endangered species requires federal leadership when the provinces refuse to act. For example, the provisions of the minister's proposal only apply to species found in Canada's oceans and not to freshwater fisheries, even though the Fisheries Act indicates that freshwater species are clearly within the federal government's jurisdiction.

The proposed act could also be applied to all migratory species and not just those that happen to wander on to federal land. A few lucky species will have "response statements" prepared about

them but no time limits apply and the government will prepare recovery plans for affected species only if it feels like it.

Truly effective legislation would require recovery plans for all endangered and threatened species and would prohibit the killing or harming of them. Habitat loss is the number one cause of species decline in Canada and is the main threat for approximately 80 per cent of Canada's endangered species. To effectively protect endangered species the legislation must protect the habitat they need to survive.

The government has completely ignored the recommendation of the federal endangered species task force to prohibit any activities that would destroy the critical habitat of an endangered species.

Realizing how important it is to identify and resolve potential conflicts before development begins, the task force also recommended that the legislation require advance review and approval for any proposed activity which could affect an endangered species or its habitat. This recommendation was not followed even though experience in the United States shows that advance review resolves almost all potential conflict between development and endangered species.

I should mention on a related topic that today is the day the endangered spaces campaign is releasing its second book, an interim report or owner's manual. It is most important we remember how integrally spaces and species are tied together. I urge every member of Parliament to read the interim report and support its recommendations.

The government says it is committed to protecting-

[The Deputy Speaker]

Unfortunately the member's time has expired.

[Lyle Vanclief, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Agriculture and Agri-food]

Mr. Speaker, the federal government is strongly committed to ensuring effective protection of Canada's endangered species, which is part of our rich biological heritage.

Although certain aspects of the proposed legislation directly affect only a little more than 5 per cent of Canada's land base, it would also apply to federally managed species everywhere and federally managed marine areas.

The proposed legislation would establish a national listing process that would give legal recognition to all species in Canada at some risk of extinction regardless of where they occur. It is intended to form the federal component of a comprehensive national safety net for the country's most vulnerable species, a safety net in which the federal government does its part in co-operation with the provinces and the territories to ensure that species like the polar bear will continue to grace not only our coins but also our vast northern landscape.

With the co-operation of federal, provincial and territorial governments the proposed legislation would provide a strong national approach for the conservation of endangered species. This action will not intrude in provincial responsibilities. The federal government recognizes the common but differentiated responsibilities of the federal, provincial and territorial governments with respect to endangered species.

The proposed legislation is intended to complement, not contradict, provincial and territorial actions. The federal government is prepared to do its part and encourages the provincial and territorial governments to do theirs to ensure a truly national approach for endangered species conservation. We are confident of their support.

Canadians have a moral responsibility to ensure that future generations enjoy and benefit from the presence of diverse wildlife species. The federal, provincial and territorial governments must provide the required leadership and legislative tools.

[Vic Althouse, NDP, Mackenzie, SK]

Mr. Speaker, on October 3, I rose to put a question to the minister of agriculture asking him to justify the apparent changes in policy direction that have occurred with regard to the $1.6 billion ex gratia payment to offset the decline in farmland prices that would result from cutting the Crow benefit. It was contained in the budget. It appeared that the $1.6 billion would go to land owners free of current capital gain tax. It would simply accrue to the land and therefore would not be taxable in the year received.

Since that time a number of changes occurred. Some of them were hinted at in the budget speech but others were simply outright decisions that were made, notably changes to permit people who were renting the land to apply for some of the payment. However there was no similar treatment for those people in terms of a share they might negotiate from the land holder. Any share they might negotiate from the owner of the land would be taxable as income in the year received.

They could not apply it to any land or property they might own now and were therefore treated differently. Because about 40 per cent of land in most provinces is rented it seems to some observers like a rather clever and devious way for the government to collect income tax on money it had announced was to be paid out on a non-taxable basis. That is one complaint that I raised.

The other was that there seemed to be a very ill defined standard for what lands would be eligible. It looked as if all farmland, presumably land that was cultivated at one time or now and used for crops, would under the government's estimation lose value. Therefore this payment was presumably to go to those lands. Yet as the nature of the program became clearer land seeded to permanent crops, forage, alfalfa and so on, were not eligible simply by definition somewhere throughout the system.

Yet crops that were to be used for forage, such as barley or oats for cattle feed or livestock feed either as silage or as grain, are eligible. Even stranger, summer fallow which grows absolutely nothing was eligible on the same basis as land that was growing crops. This seemed to run contrary to everything the Department of Agriculture had been attempting to convey to farmers over the previous 10 or 15 years, namely to get into a diversity of crops, to plant crops that would hold the soil in place and keep down wind erosion. They were encouraging continuous cropping to keep stubble. I would submit that forage crops are also a form of continuous cropping. They hold the stubble and the ground. They are part of the diversification program, not only for use within the country but also for export.

The government and perhaps some of the farm organizations that were negotiating with the government left those farmers off the list. I wanted to raise that in question period and again this evening in the adjournment debate.

[Lyle Vanclief, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Agriculture and Agri-food]

Mr. Speaker, the federal budget of last February did contain certain proposals on the payment to compensate for the ending of the Western Grain Transportation Act.

At the time of the budget, the government made very clear its intentions to consult extensively with farm leaders on these proposals so that the program would be as fair and as workable as possible.

In the budget we proposed that land which would be eligible for the $1.6 billion ex gratia payment was that land producing WGTA eligible crops and summer fallow. These provide reasonable approximation of the land base which benefit from the WGTA subsidy. This proposal was taken to farm leaders for discussion.

Through these consultations, farm leaders accepted the government's proposal on eligible acres and agreed that forage not be included. Adding forage crops to the payment base would have significantly diluted the payment.

In the case of who should receive the payment, again we took the government's proposal to pay landlords to farm leaders for discussion. Through consultations farm leaders told us they agreed with the proposal but felt those who rent farmland should also be somehow recognized in the program.

Based on this advice, the application procedures have been designed to ensure that owners and renters reach an agreement on how part of the benefit may be passed on to renters. It is expected that in many instances this will occur through lower farmland rental rates.

Through extensive meetings with farm leaders, the government was able to reach acceptance of the proposals on eligible acres. It was able to address the concerns of farm groups by adding a provision for renters in the application procedures for the program.

[The Deputy Speaker]

Pursuant to Standing Order 38, the motion to adjourn the House is now deemed to have been adopted. Accordingly, the House stands adjourned until tomorrow at 10 a.m., pursuant to Standing Order 24.

(The House adjourned at 6.57 p.m.)