Madam Speaker, I am glad the member counts himself in support of employment equity. In my province he joins 11 per cent of the population who would agree with him, and only 11 per cent.
I was on a talk show last week about the issue of employment equity. The host of the talk show asked me a couple of questions which may be similar to what the hon. member mentioned. For example, one question was: How will we make sure that employers hire the best? The member talked about progressive employers attracting the best employees. It may possibly be that because this legislation was designed in Ottawa that this whole concept is so flawed.
Members should take the time to come out to Vancouver sometime because there is actually a country that exists beyond the Rocky Mountains. They should come out and see what British Columbia looks like. British Columbia, especially Vancouver and the lower mainland, is the most cosmopolitan area in Canada.
Hundreds of thousands of people from all different ethnic backgrounds live in harmony together in the lower mainland and work well together. By the year 2000, 85 per cent of all new job applicants will come from those four designated groups. What employer in Vancouver is going to say: "I am going to refuse to hire the best people I can get". That is an employer who is on the way out and is going broke.
In Vancouver if employers are not prepared to hire the best people, regardless of gender, visible minority status and so on, they will not be able to compete on the west coast of Canada. They must hire the best. Employers in the lower mainland find this laughable. That is why there is only 11 per cent support in the entire province. They look at this and say: "We are hiring the best. I do not care what gender they are, what colour they are or what background they have. We want to hire the best people we can".
Although they talk about the progress since employment equity was brought in, the old Employment Equity Act, employers who have been covered under the act for the last eight or nine years have done absolutely no better in hiring people from the designated groups than employers who are not covered under the act. In other words, they have done all the paperwork, gone through the motions, done the surveys and spent the money but it has not made a lick of difference. If it helped maybe I would be persuaded, but it has not made any difference because employers in the non-covered areas have done equally as well in hiring people from the designated groups.
In Toronto, if we were to take the low income people by ethnicity, Portuguese people have some of the lowest per capita incomes, the lowest employment rates and one of the lowest graduation rates from high schools. It is a problem in that community. The ironic part is that they could live across the street from someone who fits in a visible minority group and the visible minority would be covered under the program but the Portuguese people would not be covered. Why? Because they do not fit the right criteria.
They have demonstrated need. They have historical disadvantage. They have low per capita income. They have poor job opportunities. They have less education. They have need of assistance based on need, not based on ethnicity, but they cannot get assistance because they are not in the right group. That is totally unfair because that group needs help as much as or more than any other person who might be living on that street.
I would like the member to respond to any of the comments I have made and to give me examples from his list of employers who have been using poor employment practices. As I mentioned earlier, nowadays the people who refuse to hire the best are the companies on the way out. That is good. If they are not hiring the best they deserve to go broke. However they should not have to hire based on a quota. If it is 80 per cent female, what is the difference? If those are the best people they can find for the job, great.
I would like him to tell me about his list of discriminatory employers who he will whack into line with this coercive legislation.