Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to stand and speak to the bill. In the last session this bill was kind of my baby. It was something I was supposed to shepherd through the committee process, through the amendment process, and so on. I think it is only proper that I spend a few moments talking about the bill and why the Reform Party feels it must oppose the bill in its current form.
I should mention a little bit about the whole process. This was one of the bills that was referred to committee after first reading. Supposedly at that time it was to encourage debate and amendments and the creation of the bill at first reading stage in committee.
I remind the House that during that session things happened in committee that I think are almost unprecedented in the history of the House. We had limited debate of only five minutes per clause. We were not allowed to submit amendments because they were not in both official languages, only in English. Certain portions of the bill were passed without a vote. It was a real travesty.
The ironic part is that it was on the human rights committee that this all occurred. It was a very souring experience. I did report it to the House at the time. I re-emphasize that it is a very poor way to draft what is very controversial legislation.
I will speak on a few points about the bill and then I will talk briefly about the Reform Party's alternative. Contrary to some of the bafflegab that has been coming from across the way, the Reform Party does have a solution to what the bill is supposed to be addressing. We do have some ideas on hiring practices and how to encourage employers to make sure their workplaces are without discrimination. I will put those on the record as well.
I find it interesting that in the bill the Prime Minister's office is not included as being covered under employment equity. It is interesting that the top office in the land will not be subject to employment equity. Why is that? Why are private enterprises that do business with the federal government, the federal government itself, crown corporations, the armed forces and so on all covered but the Prime Minister's office does not want to be covered under the legislation?
I remember making that proposal in committee and it was rejected by the Liberals. I find it interesting that when it comes to their own significant offices they are not prepared to allow themselves to be covered under this employment equity legislation. It is an interesting thought. I wonder if sometime the Prime Minister could expand on why he and his office should not be covered.
There has been recent controversy about the statistical base this whole thing is predicated on and the problems with the statistical base. In the last census 10 per cent of aboriginals refused to even be enumerated in the census. That is just one example of how the statistical base is often skewed. When supposedly the workforce is to be exactly representational, sometimes it is not possible to know because of the skewing of the statistics.
Another thing that was brought out in question period a little while ago is that in the last census almost a million people refused to designate themselves by ethnicity and background. They said "I want to be called a Canadian, please. Just call me a Canadian. Treat me the same as everybody else and I will be happy". Of course the Liberals will not allow that. The next census will make sure all people have to indicate which category they fit into. They will not be allowed to call themselves just Canadian; they will have to indicate they have some form of ethnicity. That is a shame. We should be working toward commonality but instead we are driving in a wedge, trying to drive people apart.
I have heard a lot of talk today that this legislation is not about quotas, that this does not force people to hire a certain percentage of people of certain gender, minority status, and so on. That is simply not true. For example, say we had witnesses from the RCMP who said that in the RCMP in the coming year there will be the following people hired: 238 females, 238 people of visible minority status, so many people from aboriginal groups. In other words, they would be providing exact numbers. When we start quoting numbers like that, what is the difference between that and a quota? There is no difference. We are talking about exact numbers to meet numerical goals arbitrarily set by the government. That is a shame. The government can say that it does not include quotas, but the numbers and the proof are there, which again is why we oppose this legislation.
This legislation is opposed by the Canadian people. In British Columbia, the area I am most familiar with, only 11 per cent of people say they are supportive of this legislation. This includes almost exactly the same proportion of people from any of the so-called designated groups, who do not want to be patronized, do not want to be told the only way they can get a job is because the government is going to somehow pave the way for them. Most people from all groups say: "Just give me a chance, just let me have an opportunity. I will get a job and I will be able to hang on to it because of my abilities, not because the government has said so".
Self-designation is supposed to be a voluntary process. In other words, you do not have to self-designate yourself into any group if you do not want to. At least that is what the government would have you believe. The problem is the lines are already being blurred on that. The Department of National Defence put forward a questionnaire for employment equity purposes. The top part of the form is compulsory, including your name, your rank, your serial number, your whatever from the military. In the fine print it says that you do not have to fill out the second part if you do not want to.
Already there is a record of everyone in the military who is willing to co-operate with the government and those who are not. They already have that information. If you have been a good boy or a good girl and you have done what you have been asked to do, then you get that in your file. If you did not fill out the form, that is also there. In other words, you are not co-operative if you did not fill out the form. You did not help them do what they think is their job.
The lines are very blurry between this voluntary self-identification and the compulsory self-identification that characterized stricter forms of apartheid such as happened in South Africa. It becomes a very blurry line when we force people or even ask people to indicate on an application form whether or not they are a visible minority. To think that this is possible in Canada.
Taking this same attitude to an extreme, during the committee hearings we heard about what happened at the University of Guelph, for example. They put a line down the middle of the student lounge and one side of the lounge was for visible minorities and the other side of the lounge was for whoever was not a visible minority. This is the attitude this sort of legislation promotes: think of yourself not as Canadian; think not as an employer or an employee; think not as a person with equal rights and worth in the
world; think of yourself first and foremost as members of groups, divide yourselves up, divide the workforce. If you are working beside someone, do they have the job because they are the most qualified? That is to be hoped, but is it the case? Is it like the student lounge at the University of Guelph where it was said: "Let us separate the people. We will put all the coloured people on this side and all the white people on that side"? Is that where we are heading? This type of legislation promotes that.
This legislation was designed in Ottawa. I wonder if these people have ever been to the west coast of Canada. I wonder if they have ever been to the greater Vancouver area. Have they been to Richmond? Have they been to Abbotsford? When Mr. Spicer appeared before the committee I put it to him that if he were to say he would not hire visible minorities he would go broke. He would have to hire visible minorities in order to hire the most qualified people or he would go broke. The marketplace would determine that. In British Columbia that is a fact.
I told Mr. Spicer there is a Hindi language radio station in the lower mainland. Under CRTC rules, compounded with these rules, more hoops and more bureaucracy, the radio station will have to show in its designated groups how many people are visible minority status, their gender and all the rest of it. This is a radio station which is addressing the needs of the Hindi speaking people of the lower mainland of which there are quite a few, over 100,000. To say to that station we would encourage it to have so many aboriginal people in its workforce is ridiculous.
The employment opportunities will come and will be determined by the marketplace. We have said that the Canadian Human Rights Commission is there to protect individuals from discrimination. That is its job and I encourage it to do that. The Canadian government could serve a role by advertising jobs properly and extensively; by implementing a comprehensive system of student loans; by making post-secondary education responsive and accessible to local people, in other words not denying people educational opportunities; by performing objective job testing; and also by being a model employer in the area of access and reasonable accommodation for the disabled.
We can deal with the problems in Canada without this legislation. This legislation is bad for Canada. It is unnecessary, it is coercive and I believe it should be dropped.