Mr. Speaker, I should like to follow on the hon. member's comments with respect to the word best and the concept of best qualified which Reform is seeking to introduce into the legislation. It strikes me that it could have a twist, an irony of resulting in imposing on the private sector a ridiculous standard. The word best is very hard to define. The prior speaker indicated that he thought the language itself was problematic.
If we use the term best qualified then we would have to look somewhere for a definition of it. I briefly looked in the Oxford dictionary and it states that the word best can be an adjective, a noun or an adverb. It is defined as follows: "excelling all others, inherent or relative to some standard, the most appropriate, advantageous, desirable, or in a person, the kindest, the greatest in size or quantity", and so on.
I wonder how the Reform Party will explain that kind of an imposition of regulation on the private sector. Which of those definitions should we choose? Are we asking employers to hire the biggest person, the kindest person, the most appropriate person? If the job involves answering the telephone, do we need a Ph.D. in communications, or would a graduate certificate from a business college suffice? Could we use someone who has a physical disability to answer the telephone?
My view and the view of many people on this side of the House is that the imposition of the term best qualified is ridiculous in this context. How can we legislate a definition of best, a word that could have different grammatical forms?
All this goes back to the fundamental Reform position which is absurd in my view. Government is not here to create barriers. Government sometimes has to act to take away the barriers, to intervene on behalf of our citizens to remove barriers in different situations: barriers in the legal system and barriers in employment.
Reform has stated today: "The only criteria on which people should be hired or promoted is merit. Anything else is discrimination".
Testosterone levels are a little high on the Reform benches today. The concept of discrimination is dealt with under the Canadian Human Rights Act. If Reformers would bother to read that act, they would see that their definition of discrimination does not hold water.
The Canadian Human Rights Act specifically allows special programs designed to reduce the disadvantage suffered by groups or individuals when those disadvantages are based on race, national or ethnic origin, sex, disability and other characteristics such as accidents of one's birth or accidents of one's life. These programs are allowed under that statute and under the Constitution of Canada.
I know it upsets them to mention the charter of rights and freedoms because they do not like it. However I would like to draw the attention of hon. members to the law of the land, section 15(2) of the charter which deals with the right to equality before and under the law and to equal protection and benefit for all individuals.
Subsection 15(2) of the charter states:
Subsection (1) does not preclude any law, program or activity that has as its object the amelioration of conditions of disadvantaged individuals or groups including those that are disadvantaged because of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.
That is part of the country's Constitution. It means that equality means more than just treating everyone identically. It means that equality also requires special measures and the accommodation of differences. That is what employment equity seeks to do, to achieve equality in the workplace through the accommodation of differences, through the elimination of barriers, through outreach recruiting programs, but not through hiring the unqualified. This is not discrimination by any stretch of the imagination.
We fully support hiring on the basis of merit. Nobody is disputing that point. However Reformers have created a strawman. They call it discrimination. They set it up and then they knock it down.
That is why section 6 is included in the act. Section 6 is there because employment equity does not require any employer to hire someone who is unqualified. That is what section 6 does.
How much clearer can we be? Reform repeatedly insists on raising this spectre. I want to be perfectly clear that employment equity is by no stretch of the imagination discrimination. It is perfectly compatible with the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. If Reform members
object then we should let their objection be against the foundations of the country and not against the employment equity act.