As my colleague says, that is what they do in some states, and it does not work practically.
What has to be done when bringing people into organizations like the one I managed is to bring them in as they were on the basis of the career they chose a long time ago, based on their ability to pass courses, on their personal desire to teach young people and so on and so forth. To legislate employment equity in an organization like that would be near impossible. It just does not work.
People from all over the world reside in my community. Many businesses and companies I have visited even recently have almost exclusively been owned and operated by people from Laos, Cambodia and other countries. We could look at that and say if we want to enforce or legislate numerical goals or quotas, it could actually work in the reverse. There are some people missing out of here from the community so let us go back and change all of the ratios. That is not practical.
I do note from the community I live in that I do not see the bias we are talking about here from the Liberal ranks. I do not see the necessity of having that quota, that numerical goal. I am sure people in my community would be quite opposed to the thought that might happen.
A number of times we have heard Liberal members talk about numerical goals. They say that numerical goals in employment equity are not quotas, that they are something else. We just pick a number and say this many people have to be hired.
If we look at something like the supply management system in this country, we should say that there are no quotas in supply management, just numerical goals. I do not think the folks across the way really know what the heck they are talking about when they talk about numerical goals and quotas. They are legislating something here that the rest of Canada is going to have to live with for a long time. They are making a very grave mistake.
We only have to look as far as the official bilingualism program to see what they are trying to legislate. They tried to legislate a country into an attitude that everything shall be equal. In fact, they would hire a number of investigators to ensure that the official bilingualism policy would be fulfilled and put into place. If not, there would be penalties.
That is exactly what the Liberals are talking about here. They are talking about a large number of people within a department to make darn good and sure that employment equity is put in place. If it is not put in place, maybe they should be given a fine.
My experience is that we cannot legislate attitudes. One cannot legislate that which people will not do. What we have to do in this country is make fair and reasonable application to all people. We must have a country where all people are equal, regardless of race, colour, creed or religion. That is what has to be done and we have to have it up here. We do not legislate or mandate it.
I am reminded of two young fellows who came into my office not long ago holding a piece of paper. It was an application for a scholarship from a very large company in British Columbia. It had to do with scholarships for pre-apprentice electricians. What these young fellows were concerned about was that it was only available to aboriginal people, visible minorities, the special needy and women. I had to explain to them that my feeling was the company was trying to increase its employment equity. They did not understand that. They truly did not. They thought things were based on abilities, skills, work experience and so on.
Once the bill goes through and we have more employment equity rules and regulations, I am not sure how we can explain that to them. I sincerely hope the Liberal government will have an answer because the people do not understand. It is not as easy as chalking it off, as the Liberals would say, to a bunch of dumb Reformers. That is not the case. We should get off that kind of rhetoric. I think Liberals have some explaining to do as to how the legislation will really work.
There are a lot of examples in society in which governments get too far involved in what they think is right and they legislate it, which is exactly where this government is going. I often comment in the House about the arrogance of a party much resembling the arrogance of the Conservative Party when it held a large majority. I would caution the government very closely that it not get carried away with its arrogance in its legislation. It should look at the employment equity legislation and consider that all Canadians today consider themselves equal, regardless of race, colour, creed or religion. Do not try to legislate it. Put it in your hearts and in your minds.