Mr. Speaker, the bill would not do that in its current form, and that is why my amendment is so critical. It would at least put a finish line for review that has to take place.
As I mentioned, we are going to a comply-and-explain model, which has been abandoned by many other countries. Norway and France have quotas with penalties. Not only do they have quotas, but they have related penalties. I would argue that we do not have to go that far. We could actually have a hybrid model in between those two. If we do not have that, there is very little expectation.
The Liberals shut down further corporate accountability by making say on pay not something that actually would be done.
Right now as things stand, it is bad enough, but my amendment would at least set a deadline and a hard finish line for scientific and non-partisan evaluation of the quotas and the actual numbers when it comes to representation. The science has already been done by researchers not only across Canada but around the world, and it shows, for example, that Montreal has less than 5% representation by racial minorities on corporate boards despite racial minorities comprising a significant portion of its population. That is just a science-based approach. It is the same with respect to women who occupy these positions. Canada is low, with around a 20% mark on that. There would be a measurement date and deadline for that as a result of my amendment. Right now, all companies need to do is comply and explain. The way the Liberals have set up this legislation, we do not even know when that will happen because of the parliamentary process and no hard finish line, which is necessary.
Therefore the clock never starts to tick on them. We could have successive governments, over and over, and unless one of those governments takes the time to make this a priority, it will never get done and we will be talking about this for the third time in 80 years.