Mr. Speaker, I do not know what the members opposite do not get. This is a very simple piece of legislation. There is a history to this legislation. It is an amendment to an existing act. I cannot recall anybody contacting my office in the last seven years and complaining that the federal government through the existing employment equity legislation was excluding anybody qualified from participating. I have not had that and I have a lot of public servants in my area.
There are many people who do not get a job and run out and say there was a black hired and they must have been hired because they were black. There are plenty of minorities, black, linguistic, there are many women who in the past have not been hired not because they were not qualified but simply because of who they were, because they were females, because they were black, because they were immigrants or because they spoke a different language as a mother tongue. That is the reality.
This is not about quotas. I do not support a quota system. However, I will not as a federal legislator shirk my responsibility to pilot policy for the public sector which we are responsible for to indicate that it appears there is a discrepancy in the hiring patterns and policies of many government departments.
Either one subscribes to the the fact that people of colour or women are unable to attain certain standards, which is why they are not hired, or one can encourage the setting of targets whereby the organization or the private sector company will examine whether its employees are reflective of the mix of the labour market it can draw from, and where it is not reflective to encourage that employer to set forth a plan to get participation by the labour market as close to the mix of the labour market by qualified candidates.
I do not agree with quotas but I do agree that we will get nowhere by going into denial and pretending there is equity in the workplace. There is not. This bill will help to establish that it is a priority for Canadians and for the government. I am proud to say I am a part of the government that has taken the initiative to put this back on the public agenda.