Mr. Speaker, I was intending to ask the member a question. I have immense respect for the member for Surrey-White Rock-South Langley. In her opening remarks she said the bill was enshrining quotas and numerical targets and I immediately became concerned and consulted with my colleague, the parliamentary secretary to the minister of human resources.
It is very important that the House and the people of Canada specifically understand clause 6 of Bill C-64 because it basically abolishes the entire premise of the member's speech:
- The obligation to implement employment equity does not require an employer
(a) to take a particular measure to implement employment equity where the taking of that measure would cause undue hardship to the employer;
(b) to hire or promote unqualified persons;
(c) with respect to the public sector, to hire or promote persons without basing the hiring or promotion on selection according to merit in cases where the Public Service Employment Act requires that hiring or promotion be based on selection according to merit; or
(d) to create new positions in its workforce.
With respect to the member for Surrey-White Rock-South Langley, the premise of her entire speech goes right down the chute when we read the exact wording. It is not a written speech where people want to take partisan, political gimmick shots. They know there is a current in the community right now which thinks that a bill like this is designed to tell the senior management of business that it must hire 15 people from this country or that country, that it must hire 20 per cent of people of this colour or that colour, or this language or that language, or with this disability or that disability.
That is what the Reform Party is trying to spin on this bill. Quite frankly I find it distasteful. I find it distasteful because the very first day the leader of the Reform Party stood in the House of Commons he said they would not come into the House and take cheap, political, partisan shots. If they saw something good coming from the government, they would not get into political gimmickry, they would support the government. What we have today is a beautiful example of Reform Party gimmickry.