I hope my colleague from Beauce will continue to listen carefully to what I have to say because even people from his own riding call me regularly because they are dissatisfied with their member.
I was saying that not only do we know the mentality of government members, of those Liberal backbenchers who are nothing but doormats, but also that of the President of the Treasury Board. All his actions over the last few years have gone against the interests and the rights of workers.
I can give a few examples that will help a lot of people understand what I am talking about. I hope the Liberal members who are here today are listening to me and will see the undemocratic and anti-worker attitude exhibited by the President of the Treasury Board since he took up his duties in 1993.
Now for the examples. He has refused to comply with the ruling on pay equity. My colleague, the member for Longueuil, who has done an extraordinary job on this issue, will be able to attest to that. If I am not mistaken, on this very day, the Canadian Human Rights Commission blamed the President of the Treasury Board for appealing its ruling. The commission has asked the government to withdraw the appeal. How did the government react? Because it lives on another planet and because it is deaf, it has decided to go ahead with the appeal.
I am happy to see that the member for Mississauga West is listening carefully. I am sure he will learn a lot of things from my speech.
I was talking about the President of the Treasury Board, who has refused to discuss the issue of orphan clauses and to recognize the problem.
The consensus in Quebec is almost unanimous, particularly among young people, that orphan clauses are discriminatory for young people who represent the future and to whom totally unfair and discriminatory clauses are applied. And what is the President of the Treasury Board doing while this discrimination is going on? Nothing. He does not even acknowledge the problem.
What is the President of the Treasury Board doing? He is completely reforming, and failing on all counts, the Canada Industrial Relations Board, where appointments are still being made along party lines and smack of patronage instead of being made according to merit.
As I said earlier, in my introduction, this government harks back to the Duplessis era, it is out of touch with reality, behind the times, old-fashioned, undemocratic and despicable.