Madam Speaker, I found the member's speech interesting. She was talking about individualism as if we stand alone and do not need anything else around us.
What I hear her saying is that this country has never had and does not have today any sexism or racism that we need to worry about, that there is no stereotyping of the disabled and the physically challenged. She very well knows those very people came before us and told us that of them, something like 2 per cent or less have university educations. Two per cent or less have proper jobs because they do not and cannot access jobs because of stereotyping. This is just the physically challenged. I am not even talking about the racial situation.
The hon. member was talking about individualism and being able to stand alone, being able to make our decisions alone without any laws, rules, collective understandings or agreements of any sort. There was a time when that did exist. At that time there was also child labour and slavery in the world without any of these laws. I do not believe she is suggesting that we go back to those times.
The hon. member is also forgetting that women had to fight. There is the Person's case. Why do we even celebrate Person's day now? Did we forget that we had to fight for the rights to be considered as people and persons? It was not that long ago and a lot of things are still happening.
We saw in the paper just recently where women in business cannot get loans and have to pay higher interest. They stand alone but it does not seem to help. Being individuals does not seem to help.
Yes, we have a charter. Why do we constantly have to go to the Supreme Court with charter challenges in order to get the rights under that charter? They do not automatically happen just because there is a charter. How did we get the rights under that charter? It was by fighting tooth and nail because they were not in the original draft of the charter.
How does the member expect to stand alone, individually isolated and through osmosis each of us will do the right thing only because we want to and because it has never happened before?