Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak to this motion this evening. I congratulate my hon. colleague from Wetaskiwin for moving the motion and for ensuring that members of the House and Canadians everywhere are aware of the Reform Party position regarding employment equity and merit based hiring.
There are two schools of thought when it comes to employment equity. The first is that legislative programs are necessary to fix the wrongs, especially past wrongs that were in the workforce. The second is that employment equity is flawed because it advocates hiring of individuals based on personal characteristics, not on merit. Obviously we have two schools of thought.
Relative to these opposing views is the assumption of the need for some type of affirmative action or employment equity legislation. It was thought to be an appropriate method of addressing inequities in the workplace. Much has been written about the culture of work in this regard, yet I believe that inequities that are socially engineered do not explain the vastly dissimilar outcomes different groups experience in the course of their lives.
The government attempts to dismiss the more complex elements, the nature of which is evident in Bill C-64. Conditions today are not what they were 10 or even 15 years ago. Empirical evidence and supporting information have shown that culture and education have more to do with gaps in the workplace than we may assume.
I will now highlight five points which express the Reform position as I believe it to be. First, all Canadians are equal before and under the law, and all workers have the right to be free of discrimination in the workplace. I believe that sincerely.
Second, the marketplace will provide solutions to a representative workplace in the private sector. The hon. member for Fraser Valley West has spoken before in the House to this issue, and eloquently so. Businesses exercising appropriate management and personnel practices will hire people who relate well to and serve their customers well. That in itself should mean there will be openness within management to ensure employees have full access to all of the opportunities the workplace offers.
Third, the role of government is to ensure equality of opportunity rather than to determine equality of employment outcome in the public sector or beyond the public sector. Equality of opportunity, that is the role of government, but government cannot ensure equality of outcome, and nor should it try.
For example, when the NDP was in power in Ontario it made itself vastly unpopular by launching an expensive social reform, almost a revolution, in the midst of the deepest recession since the 1930s. Businesses found many ways to circumvent the new law guaranteeing equal pay to women. They placed employees on contract, forced unpaid overtime and shorter work weeks and hired part time workers. The government's employment equity campaign aimed at hiring more women, often by posting advertisements that bar men from applying, made men very angry and resentful.
Even Thomas Walkom, the Toronto Star fair minded Queen's Park columnist, called the decision to hire on the basis of race and sex wrong, unwise and unfortunate. Women should be given the nod when applicants are of equal merit, he argued, but excluding any group from applying is dangerous: ``The government has merely succeeded in creating a new victim, the able bodied white male''.
The fourth point Reform puts forth with regard to employment equity is that the workplace should be free from arbitrary obstructions to hiring and promotion. Merit must be the sole hiring criterion. I believe this and evidence has shown that a majority of Canadians believe this also. That would mean Canadians generally do not support Bill C-64, the employment equity bill. Perhaps this is why the government has chosen not to proclaim the legislation. It is a question which remains and does linger.
The fifth point is that employment equity legislation and measures which take away from merit based hiring are coercive, unfair, unnecessary and costly, and should be discontinued. To this end the
government could go one step down the road to properly addressing the issues of merit based hiring by repealing Bill C-64.
One cannot address today's motion or Bill C-64 without addressing the issue of quotas. When is a quota not a quota? It would seem that a quota is not a quota when the former Minister of Human Resources Development calls it a numerical goal. Remember that minister was the chief architect for the government's social engineering plans for employment equity. He insisted numerical goals were aimed at getting a specified number of women, aboriginal, minorities or disabled, into certain industries and that these are not quotas even though the dictionary defines a quota as a proportional part or share required from each person or group for making up a certain number or quantity.
Why does the former minister of HRD not speak clearly and call a quota a quota? Perhaps he does not like the word because the imposition of hiring quotas for disadvantaged groups in the U.S. has created an undesirable backlash among those excluded.
I raise an interesting example from the United States. The American case study is curiously illogical and I believe raises questions about current hiring practices which do hint of those numerical targets.
I use an example from a small California college. At this college a form was circulated to companies wanting to do business. The letters that accompanied the forms urged that they be filled out as quickly as possible: "To allow us to continue to do business with you, equity information is being requested of all colleges". Such colleges receive government assistance in the U.S.
The supplier is required to list the percentage ownership of his business involving native Americans, blacks, Hispanics, Asian Americans and Asian Indians. To get first in line to do business with the college, any supplier must be 51 per cent owned by one of these minorities or have a business with management and daily operations controlled by one or more of the minorities. The same priority goes to businesses owned 51 per cent by women or whose management and daily operations are controlled by one or more women who own the business.
A separate bureaucracy was created to monitor this. The penalties imposed are real as well. The form states: "Any material misrepresentation will be grounds for terminating any contract which may be awarded and for initiating action under federal and/or state law concerning these false statements".
Should we not be more interested in ridding the workplace of such repugnant misrepresentation and unfairness? When looking to hire, should we not be more concerned with what the applicant knows or what he or she may perform or what are the merits of hiring her or him instead of using and applying filters which unnaturally dictate the outcomes of hiring practices?
Simply put, the Reform Party wants everyone to be treated equally and fairly. We want everyone to have the same access to opportunities as the next person. What we do not want to see, however, is a situation in which we are dictating what those outcomes should be. Let us rather foster equitable hiring practices.