Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the question and I am delighted it has been raised. I have always believed that in Canada we need to have fair representation for women, visible minorities, aboriginal peoples, people with disabilities, francophones and anglophones.
I have said publicly and I continue to say that if there is the spread my colleague has mentioned it needs to be corrected. I have not seen the statistics. I have talked with my colleagues in the Bloc. Some indicated an openness to that possibility.
We have to recognize as well that I do not run the province of Quebec and do not aspire to do so. I will continue to make statements such as the ones I have made in a positive way to encourage them not only to have fair representation among women, visible minorities, people with disabilities, but anglophones and francophones. That is what the essence of government is, to make sure people are fairly represented.
I am part of the government and I am proud to be part of the government. Obviously the statistics with respect to federal government operations are much closer in line if one looks at the federal public service, if one looks at the military, if one looks at the RCMP, if one looks at other organizations. The statistics reflect quite accurately the make-up of both French and English speaking Canadians throughout Canada.
We have noticed some difficulties elsewhere in terms of fair representation among visible minorities and people with disabilities and we are trying to correct those.
I do not want to be paternalistic about this and I do not want to seek a conflict unless that conflict were to bring about a positive resolution. At the federal level we have made some significant gains in terms of fair representation particularly with respect to English and French. We still need to make further gains with regard to other groups and we are in the process of doing that. We have done it rather well.
With respect to other provinces, I hope we look at the province of Quebec to see whether there is a fair distribution of jobs in the public service between English and French speaking peoples, and that we do so in other provinces. We would look at every province to see whether there is fair representation, English and French speaking. Then perhaps we could put that on the table and have a good debate about what is right, what is fair, what is just.
I would like to go beyond language distribution, although I think that is an important issue, to look at representation from the perspective of women, visible minorities, aboriginals, people with disabilities. I give my total commitment to that kind of exercise in a totally non-partisan way. If we want the best society on this planet we need to do things like that with conviction and take the politics out of it.