Madam Speaker, the hon. member for Wetaskiwin has moved Motion M-154, which reads as follows:
That, in the opinion of the House, the government should support the rights of all job applicants to be evaluated solely on the basis of merit.
The motion moved by the hon. member is self-evident. All job applicants should be evaluated on the basis of merit. I agree with the hon. member on this point: every job applicant should be evaluated as objectively as possible, on the basis of merit and solely on the basis of merit. In fact, this is a fundamental principle in human resources management.
But to evaluate job applicants on the basis of merit and solely on the basis of merit does not always work. Several groups in our society are penalized and not evaluated on the basis of merit by their employers. This type of discrimination is usually based on their sex, their culture, or the fact that they belong to a visible minority or have a physical handicap.
This is exactly why the federal government, the provincial governments and major corporations had to act and set up employment equity programs. Market forces unfairly penalized some groups in our society.
It is easy to apply the basis of merit to job applicants, but without deliberate interference in favour of some of the target groups, individual merit is no longer the only element to be factored in, since women, natives, the handicapped and members of visible minorities are penalized to start with. This is why these four groups were designated as target groups for employment equity purposes by the federal government in 1992.
In December 1992, an amendment to the Financial Administration Act provided the employment equity programs within the federal public service their statutory authority. However, the basic elements of the employment equity programs remained the same as the ones listed in the 1986 Treasury Board policy on employment equity. It is important to note that the legislative basis for the employment equity program precedes the election of the current Liberal government.
Merit in the awarding of a position must be based on an objective system of evaluating positions. A system of evaluating positions must describe and measure the levels of complexity, responsibility, knowledge and working conditions associated with each position as objectively as possible.
But this objective mandate must be accompanied by a social mandate within an organization, and this social mandate is generally fulfilled in the field of human resources management through the creation of employment equity programs.
The beauty of all this is that the economic and social aspects are inextricably linked and mutually complementary. Thus, employment equity programs allow talented individuals, members of target groups, to make their mark at last, with the help of the recruitment and promotion policies set up in the wake of these programs.
These people come to light and make an exceptional contribution to their employer that they would never have been able to make without the existence of employment equity policies, because members of their particular group were excluded from the outset by the predominant or corporate culture of their organization.
We will not be supporting Motion M-154 brought forward by the member, because evaluation for a position solely on the basis of merit must not override the federal employment equity policy introduced in 1986 and recognized through legislative amendment in 1992. And in order for the principle of evaluation on the basis of merit to be as strong and objective as possible, the groups discriminated against from the outset must be recognized, so that the most talented applicants are selected, regardless of the group to which they belong. Recognizing merit alone would be short sighted and would be to lose sight of merit itself ultimately.
Where have we got to with employment equity in Canada and in the various provinces, in the public and in the private sector? The situation varies from province to province. According to Morley Gunderson, Director of the University of Toronto's centre for industrial relations, who has looked at the situation in Ontario, the public sector and large businesses have raised their female employees' salaries by 20 per cent, in order to improve the employment equity situation.
The corrections have been far more modest in smaller businesses. Initially, the only initiatives outside Quebec came from the federal government or businesses under federal jurisdiction. Quebec recognized male-female employment equity as early as 1976, while five other provinces followed suit in the mid and late 1980s. Equity here means equal pay for equal work.
The public sector has led the way in male-female employment equity. Generally, large businesses have inaugurated pay equity programs, but this is far from being the case for smaller ones.
The Canadian Federation of Independent Business is recommending, even to the Harris government in Ontario, an increase from 10 to 50 in the number of employees a business may have before it is obliged to establish an employment equity program. This would exclude two thirds of the workforce there.
Clearly, salary discrimination is more common in the private sector. In the federal government, the cost of establishing pay equity is currently estimated at $1.5 billion, as the result of a decision by the Canadian Human Rights Commission. It recognized the results and the relevance of the independent study requested jointly by Treasury Board and employee unions. The federal government has given itself the months of April and May to evaluate the back pay and salary increases that would affect the pay of 80,000 female employees.
The Public Service Alliance of Canada contends that the federal government owes $1.5 billion to 80,000 women working in six
classifications of jobs occupied predominantly by women, such as clerk, secretary and typist, key punch operators, librarians, hospital workers and educational support workers. The Alliance is calling for salary adjustments to be made retroactive to 1986.
Some unionized workers are concerned that salary retroactivity, while legitimate, will result in further lay-offs by the government. The federal government has been revelling in employment equity terms for more than 10 years, but the court decision is continually being put off.
Therefore we cannot support motion M-154 because it demonstrates short-sightedness with regard to professional or on-the-job performance. If we evaluate all job applicants solely on the basis of merit we risk eliminating at the outset talented candidates from discriminated-against groups. The present government should conform without delay to the court ruling and definitely do justice to its own employees in target groups-Natives, the handicapped, members of visible minorities and women-giving them the retroactive payments and raises they are entitled to.
Only then will we see if the government can, for once, act on what it says.