Mr. Speaker, I can only repeat that the Reform Party obviously needs to educate itself. The member for Vegreville just said "if discrimination finds its way into the workplace". It is impossible to look at any statistics from the workplace and not accept that discrimination finds its way into the workplace.
I will quote some additional statistics from a recent report by Simon Fraser University. Canadian born Greek males earned 16.2 per cent less than Canadian born males of British background. Even those earnings paled beside the ones for black and Filipino immigrant males who posted earnings that were respectively 21 per cent and 20.2 per cent lower than those for Canadian men of British background. Double jeopardy operates for women. Visible minority immigrant females earned 7.2 per cent less than white Canadian females. I therefore ask the hon. member to please take the if out of his statements about discrimination in the workplace.
Employment equity is not about being able to get a job; it is about having an equal opportunity to get as good a job if the person is as good. It is true that over 80 per cent of employees in the clerical category in the Government of Canada are women. Those happen to be the lowest paid jobs. That may be why there is such a high representation of women. Employment equity is about giving all groups the opportunity to earn the same as anybody of similar competence. Within that group of clerks the top levels are more likely to be occupied by men. Even within that group of clerks women are not allowed to progress.
The member referred to the fact that equity has been achieved. It has not. Notwithstanding the qualifications, we must look at the quality and the rate of pay, rather than simply being able to access the lowest paid jobs.
I sat through a couple of months of committee hearings on this bill. There was only one poll which came forward which said that Canadians were not in favour of equality in employment and it was a flawed poll. If the Reform Party had more polls with more validity to bring forward at any time during those hearings, it had every opportunity to do so, but it did not.