Debates of May 31st, 2022

Opposition Motion—Canada Research Chairs Program

[Andy Fillmore, Liberal, Halifax, NS]

Madam Speaker, I thank the member for the excellent question about youth.

I have mentioned a number of the fine research institutions in my riding, such as Dalhousie University, Saint Mary's, NSCAD University and King's College. I have spent a great deal of time at all of them, and in fact sometimes on the faculty of Dalhousie University, and one thing is absolutely clear: We have to be extremely intentional, open-hearted and open-armed about inviting young researchers and youth into those university programs. They are literally the future, and the ability to create a future for all young Canadians, including newcomers, is to be found in the work that we are doing with the tri-council around diversity and inclusion.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Bay of Quinte.

[Ryan Williams, Conservative, Bay of Quinte, ON]

Madam Speaker, Canada's science and research ecosystem is extremely important for economic development in Canada, and we must ensure that there are equal opportunities for all Canadians and international talent who wish to work in Canada in order to fill a shrinking labour pool and to fill an enormous and important growing future in Canada.

We have never seen a moment like this in history in terms of the amount of change that has already started, with five innovation platforms evolving at the same time. We would have to go back to the early 1900s to see anything like it, and we had only three platforms then. In the 1900s we had the telephone, the automobile and electricity. Today we have DNA sequencing, robotics, blockchain technologies, energy storage and AI. All of them are in exponential growth and converging with each other in profound ways.

Over the past several months, those of us on the science and research committee have been studying the state of science and research in Canada, and we found a few fundamental conclusions; actually, we found three of them.

First, Canada is leading in several key areas of research worldwide, including genomics, DNA sequencing, biomanufacturing, AI and quantum physics. We have an incredible genomics program in Canada. When it comes to AI, the University of Waterloo, in the Kitchener area, is doing incredible things in quantum computing. We lead the world in quantum computing, which is fascinating and far above what I sometimes understand.

However, we are failing not only when it comes to funding for research, and specifically private business research funding, but in what we call the “Valley of Death”. We give a lot of money to universities to develop intellectual property, and then that intellectual property gets shelved. It stays in a drawer and we do not commercialize it. That Valley of Death is costing us a lot of money.

The measure of science and research in Canada is intellectual property. We call it the currency of innovation. It includes patents, trademarks, copyrights and trade secrets, but we are falling behind the world in getting science and research out the door. Dr. Bell stated, “To a large extent, the question of how to attract and retain top scientists should therefore be rooted in how science innovation can be fostered in Canada right now.”

Translating that IP, commercializing it and accelerating Canadian companies and Canadian GDP should be paramount to our whole strategy of how Canada develops and attracts talent. If we compare ourselves to the United States, we see that the United States creates 169 times the IP that Canada does, despite being only 10 times our size. It has $6.6 trillion of IP, and nearly 90% of the growth of the United States can be attributed to the generation and commercialization of IP. What it means for Canada is that if we attribute just 5% of GDP growth to innovation, research and development, it would equate to over $80 billion in GDP and thousands of high-paying jobs.

I want to thank the chair of the science and research committee, the member for Etobicoke North, for starting the committee. It is very important to Canada. Within the recommendations from the first report that the committee submitted is the note that Canada is lagging in attracting and retaining top talent with research and innovation, which is in parallel to the crisis we have with the shortage of skilled trades and workers across this nation. This is a main barrier, alongside bridging the Valley of Death, to unlocking Canada's true economic potential.

We have an acute labour shortage right now in Canada to add to our acute housing crisis and our acute inflation crisis, and they are all converging at the same time, causing massive economic peril to our nation. We are short 1.03 million jobs in this country right now, and this number has risen by 150,000 jobs in just a few months. “Help wanted” signs are all over Canada, and I do not think there is a riding where employers are spared from the perils of looking for employees.

However, we have not spoken very much in this Parliament about the cost of that. According to the Conference Board of Canada, the cost is $25 billion. We can compare that to our tourism industry in Canada, which is trying to get back on pace. It is worth $35 billion to Canada, and the cost of not having talent in Canada is costing us $25 billion a year. It is costing employers and it is costing companies when they cannot scale and cannot grow. This costs Canada money; the money we need to grow this country and ensure that we are becoming the best country we can.

When it come to top scientists, Dr. Thomas Bell, a professor at the Imperial College in London, stated at committee that “top scientists are attracted by top science” and that “The best scientists will not come to Canada and will not stay in Canada if they feel that their science will suffer.” Dr. Bell stated that “the question of how to attract and retain top scientists should therefore be rooted in how science innovation can be fostered in Canada right now.” Dr. Bell also spoke to how “attracting scientists and retaining scientists are two separate issues.”

When we are trying to attract a scientist, Dr. Bell states:

There are significant academic costs in moving labs. It's hugely disruptive. Packing up and reassembling a lab takes time, often resulting in months of inactivity. Moving to a new university means relearning all of the internal systems and ways of doing things, and moving countries is doubly disruptive. Scientists moving to Canada for the first time need to learn how funding and hiring works and how to attract students, and they need to build their collaboration networks from scratch. Many will have young families and would need to learn how the school system works. The cost of moving is therefore very high for a scientist, so attracting the top scientists to Canada is more difficult than retaining scientists. If you want to attract the top scientists from outside the country, these significant additional costs should be considered.

We spoke to many different witnesses in the science and research committee, including the chancellor from the University of Waterloo, who stated that we are losing 75% of our software engineering grads to the U.S., so retaining top talent is something we are not only striving for but are failing at.

When it comes to attracting top talent, Canada starts at a disadvantage. In particular, we need good Canadian research chairs to oversee major development and research in intellectual property, but overreach of government policy is leaving applicants out, despite good intentions. Diversity targets set by the government are unrelated to the research; they exist only to fulfill targets of inclusivity, rather than being included in criteria that include merit.

This new practice is called target ad postings. They are meant to meet diversity, equality and inclusivity targets, and they were created to tick boxes off as per government quotas, or government funding would be lost. Examples of targeted ad postings for CRC positions included a Queen's University posting for an engineering chair that was only open to women. Men could not apply. That means that if a Black man of equal merit were to apply, he would not qualify. A position in the University of Waterloo faculty of environment exempted men from applying. That meant that if an aboriginal male applied, he would not be considered, despite any merit he might have.

All these institutions were following guidance and diversity targets laid out by the Tri-Agency Institutional Programs Secretariat, which is the government body responsible for administering the CRC program. The promotion of diversity, equality and inclusion allows CRC program job postings to exclude applicants if they do not meet diversity targets, and that is wrong.

Target postings need to be reviewed so that diversity, inclusion and equality remain key pillars in hiring, but the practice of exclusion needs to be reviewed immediately, as it sets a target for equality of outcome instead of providing all candidates with an equality of opportunity. Only an equality of opportunity will ensure we will look at breaking down barriers that exist with inclusion and diversity and still ensure we hire top talent where we need it. Only by ensuring there is equality of opportunity do we ensure we do not practise inclusion by excluding someone else.

Additionally, because we are also striving for equality of opportunity for all our institutions, Canada research chairs should always maintain excellence as their primary criterion. We are simply not seeing enough talent. What equality of opportunity means is that we break down barriers that exist. It is not going to be easy. It is going to be quite hard, but we have to do that.

We have to do that especially when some smaller institutions are lucky to get any applicants and are under threat to meet quotas or lose funding. By all means, let us work together toward improved opportunities for everyone, but let us not pretend that targeted hiring does not, by design, put other criteria ahead of excellence or put some institutions ahead of others.

Professor David Wolfe, of the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto, has noted that talent was important 20 years ago and it is 10 times more important now. He said, “If we don't fund, support and nurture that talent and put it out into the local labour market, we don't have the base either to grow our own domestic firms or to attract other firms into our regions.”

The CRC program was launched in 2000 to fund 2,000 research chairs, although there are now 2,285 of them. The program's aim is to attract and keep top academics in Canada. Tier two chairs are five-year terms worth $100,000 in annual federal funding and are awarded to emerging researchers; tier one chairs are awarded to leading academics and are worth $200,000 annually over seven years. The research chairs are Canada's effort to recruit top talent from around the world and enhance our competitiveness. We need more than one or two demographic groups to do that.

With the 2022 deadline looming, universities are acting on their EDI plans. UBC, which has 199 chairs, has filled 60 CRC positions in 2020, which is great, but they are all targeted hires.

Moura Quayle, the UBC associate vice-president of academic affairs, said:

We’ve been more than successful with white women, we’re now over that target. But we need to work on finding people with disabilities.

That is fantastic for UBC, but now white women are going to be excluded. At the same time, if we look at that across the nation, we see that we have a lack of talent at the table to apply for these institutions, and if we look at areas like Quebec, which has smaller institutions and smaller areas, we are eliminating huge sections of the population instead of looking at the barriers that exist for those individuals to apply and to get into the programming.

I think when it comes to this motion, all we are looking at is a review of the program and the criteria to ensure that anyone who wants to get an education and become a Canadian scientist or work with our innovation sectors in Canada—which, by the way, are going to grow to 2.25 million jobs by 2026, which is 11% of the whole workforce population, and pay over $80,000 or $90,000—should be afforded the opportunity to do just that. When we are a million jobs short and are so many jobs short in our science and research industry, our government should be doing the best it can to ensure that anyone from any creed, any background or any community who wants to join the industry has the opportunity to do so.

We are doing it all wrong. This practice is not only excluding candidates in the name of exclusion, it is not a one-size-fits-all across the nation. Each region in Canada has its own talent needs. What I love about the college system is that there is a college within 50 kilometres of 95% of Canadians. Through our research for top talent for SRSR, science and research, we have found that if universities and colleges are located in a certain region or city, it encourages students to enrol there and enables people in the labour force to go back to university to develop their talent if they so wish.

Furthermore, follow-up data on graduates shows that students who have studied in the region generally pursue careers there. For nursing talent, universities at Trois-Rivières, Rimouski and Abitibi-Témiscamingue offer nursing programs. We learned this in the science and research committee. Between 80% and 90% of professionals trained by those universities remain in and work in those regions, so those universities are training nurses who are working in those same regions that desperately need nurses. We are short 60,000 nurses in Canada right now.

The work of inclusion and diversity would include, in this instance, not just hiring qualified applicants from diverse backgrounds, but ensuring that colleges break down barriers and enrol students from all backgrounds. However, colleges need funding, and not all funding is equal. If we want to talk about quality of opportunity, let us look at the funding.

It is well known that 15 universities in Canada receive over 72% of the research funding. Let us think about that for a moment. There are over 380 colleges in Canada, but 15 universities receive 70% of all research funding. Colleges receive 2.5% of funding. What was awesome at this committee was that when we looked at what colleges do, especially when it comes to commercializing IP for existing companies, they are doing that work. They are engaging with companies and doing such great things.

My point is that setting diversity targets flows funding that is absolutely lopsided to the few rather than to the many. I am talking about another problem, which is that in Canada we spread the peanut butter a little too thin across the country, but when we look at programs, we see that extra funding for research and development can attract many Canadians to participate in an innovative and prosperous Canada. We need to look closely at where funding is going and how we are attracting talent where it is needed, and ensure that we are developing those programs and the science to make sure Canada prospers. Canada will prosper from that.

We need to work more on breaking down barriers for equality of opportunity. That means more work, not less. That means that we make diversity a top priority, not cherry-picking the results we want. For instance, J.P. Morgan in the U.K. is pushing for more inclusion of Black diversity in the finance industry, and recently held its first EMEA Black advocacy program, with about 200 people from institutions across London gathering to discuss how progress could be made.

The bank in the U.K. has increased its Black U.K. employees by 45% by breaking down barriers and ensuring that Black people see themselves in roles and seek to obtain the education for the roles they want. It involved mentorship. It involved making sure that there was community promotion and inclusiveness. It made sure there was internship programs and co-ops. It meant breaking down a lot of barriers that existed in those communities. It did not mean that 45% of those positions were posted only for Black men for J.P. Morgan. That is not how that was done, nor how it should be done.

In Canada, we see barriers broken every day. The Alpine Club of Canada just appointed its first female leaders: Isabelle Daigneault, the first female president, and Carine Salvy, the first female executive director. The Alpine Club is an organization based in Canmore, Alberta. It manages a network of cabins across Canada's remote back country, and it has worked to educate people in the world of mountain climbing. It was a big barrier and it took many years, but how great it is. We celebrate that the barrier was broken.

Amita Kuttner is Canada's first trans person and the first person of East Asian descent to lead a major Canadian political party, the Green Party. This is very important. It is a major glass ceiling to be broken.

We have Major Guenther, who is an F-18 fighter pilot in Cold Lake, Alberta. How amazing is that, to have those barriers broken?

In my own riding today, I am sad to announce that our own Loyalist College CEO, Dr. Ann Marie Vaughan, is resigning to become Humber College's first female president and CEO, near Toronto. We are sorry to lose her, but how great is it that she is breaking barriers and moving on?

Our university, college and polytechnic system has been a critical provider for many of our technical skills shortages for technology clusters across Canada in the past two decades. We are so happy she has been a leader in our region for that.

At the end of the day, we really have to look at what this motion is and what it is not. This motion is about looking at equality of opportunity for all Canadians. What I like about this motion is that we are going to review a program that ensures that the barriers that exist are going to be broken down.

The other side of it is that we are going to make sure that we do things the right way so that when we are funding research in Canada, we are getting the best and brightest, as well as having an inclusive and diverse policy. That means not posting jobs that say “for women only”, or for a different sector of diversity only, and that we include that in decision-making, in policy-making, in interview processing, in various education and in funding.

As a parliamentarian, a Conservative and a Canadian, I believe in equality of opportunity for Canadians versus equality of outcomes. Canadians are unique, innovative, creative, entrepreneurial and competitive. As long as we focus on breaking down barriers, we focus on that equality of levelling the starting blocks. Equality of outcome as a goal skips that part, whereas as Canadians, we can do the work ourselves. It is a utopian fantasy that often ends in a dystopian outcome: excluding someone else in the name of inclusion.

We are a great nation. We have so much to achieve. As we work through the work in reporting, new science, research and industry, I look forward to the policy that will not only build the future, but policy for the government that embraces this new era when Canada has the opportunity to leap ahead. Let us ensure that we break down any and all barriers for the future leaders in this country and for all who will find this country home.

Let us not practise inclusion with exclusion. Let us break down barriers to include everyone and provide equality and opportunity.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his speech, in which he spoke of equality of opportunity, a value that I hold dear.

As status of women critic, I would like to bring a very feminist perspective to today’s debate. We have done a lot of work in Quebec to integrate more women into our research chairs. It is very exciting.

My colleague from La Prairie spoke of the importance of working proactively and of determining why women are still under-represented in Canada. I will give you an example. During the pandemic, a number of female researchers had to postpone or delay submitting their research programs because they were locked down at home with their children.

How can we work proactively and promote better work-life balance policies so that women who want to be mothers will see they can also be researchers at the same time, for instance in our research chairs? Instead of setting criteria that exclude certain targets, for example the white males of a certain age mentioned by my colleague, how can we work proactively to attract these under-represented groups to our research chairs?

[Ryan Williams, Conservative, Bay of Quinte, ON]

Madam Speaker, as I noted in my speech, we have to look further downstream to how we attract those individuals into education and how we then ensure those people have equal opportunity when it comes to jobs, which means breaking down those barriers.

I know we can all agree that any Canadian who has the opportunity and the education has the merit and the ability to get themselves into a position they want. As I mentioned, what I love about individualism is that all of us as Canadians have the ability, competitiveness, drive and work ethic to be able to do that. That applies to all Canadians.

What has been really great, as we have seen lately, is that there are women, for instance, who are breaking down those barriers and there are people of different ethnic backgrounds breaking down those barriers. We are seeing it happen. We just have to ensure that with those barriers that exist, whatever they may be, we have honest discussions and speak about them, break them down and ensure everyone has equal opportunity to achieve what they want to achieve.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, the member made reference to research chairs from UBC, where he said that more than 50% are now female. If that is the case, it kind of sets the example and proves that as a society we need to do what we can to ensure there is a higher sense of equality and fairness. Actions need to be taken in order to encourage that to take place. As an example, I would just look in the front benches of government, where 50% of cabinet is female. It is a specific action.

When we see wider participation, whether it is females, visible minorities or people with disabilities, it does inspire others to take on that larger role. In particular, I am focusing on young people. Could the member provide his thoughts on that?

[Ryan Williams, Conservative, Bay of Quinte, ON]

Madam Speaker, the difference between women who have earned their places and women being appointed to their places is paramount. Women I have spoken to take offence at the fact that they have to be appointed in order to make it to a position rather than earning their place as they should, and they do. The difference is that we are jumping a couple of steps on that.

Eliminating barriers allows women or anyone with an ethnic diversity to get through that barrier in order to earn their own place on the podium. However, we jump that and say we know there are barriers but we are just going to appoint someone anyhow. We eliminate the systemic problems that exist in the first place. UBC, which appointed 60 positions, put out a target ad, meaning it posted a job for women only to apply. The problem when that is done and a quota is filled is that the next ad would say that only people with disabilities could apply and women are excluded. We cannot exclude them in order to get others ahead.

What we need to do is break the barriers down, to your point, so we have more women who want to enter politics who can and are able to then do it on their own merit, because we know—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

Just a reminder to the hon. member that I did not make any point.

The hon. member for Nanaimo—Ladysmith has the floor.

[Lisa Marie Barron, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Madam Speaker, if I can speak frankly, I am very disheartened that this is a debate we are having today. Quite frankly, I am feeling that many of the comments in the previous intervention were insulting to many. I am standing here today and want to express that there is a big difference between equity and equality, and it is clear that concept is not being understood.

We have so many systems that were built by white men, for white men. To say that we should not be providing equitable opportunities and looking at these systems to ensure that everybody has access to these systems is clearly inaccurate. I ask the member to please take a moment to look at the Conservative Party and share today whether this theory of equality is working well with the Conservative Party, which currently has only 18% representation of women within the caucus. Clearly, this shows the evidence we need that this equality theory being proposed today is not effective in ensuring equitable access for everyone to these systems made by white men.

[Ryan Williams, Conservative, Bay of Quinte, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am a little confused about the comments. As for equality of opportunity for everyone, I think everyone in Canada would like that. She talks about the Conservative Party. We have members from all different sects of this country. We had the first female prime minister in the country: the only female prime minister in the country. We have members who represent our gay community, who are ethnic and who have different backgrounds.

It is not about us. It is about Canadians as a whole having equal opportunity. I have a daughter who is four years old. I think, for all our daughters and for anyone across the country, all we ask for is equal opportunity for those children to get an education, to ensure they are included and inclusive and to ensure they have an opportunity to work hard and achieve what they want to achieve.

We look at barriers in our institutional systems and in our schools and our communities themselves. I think what we are all saying here is that, when it comes to funding, funding should follow exactly what we are practising in Canada. What we are trying to strive for is that everyone should have the same opportunity as everyone else. Those who work hard and achieve that and get to this place, or others, have done it of their own accord and not because someone else told them to do it. It is because they did it.

I think that is really important.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Madam Speaker, I think it is unappreciated by some in this place that the barriers to entry for women are quite significant and that they will not be broken down unless the first step is to ensure what used to be called affirmative action. That is just recognizing women like me, who are women of privilege by the colour of our skin. If we are going to also want to ensure diversity, inclusion and equity, we need to do more.

I am reminded of one of the really good things that the Prime Minister did, which was to appoint a gender-equal, balanced cabinet.

I vividly recall listening to conservative media commentators. By conservative, I do not mean capital-C conservative: that was not a partisan comment. They were on the national news saying, “Oh, are we now going to have less qualified cabinet members because the Prime Minister is forced to find 50% of them as women?”

It was so insulting, but it was so ingrained that the cabinet ministers in this country, the members of Parliament, are all supposed to be white men, and they were from 1867 until Agnes Macphail was elected.

[Ryan Williams, Conservative, Bay of Quinte, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am not going to take a lot of lessons from this leader, considering how the last leader of the Green Party was treated.

[Some hon. members]

By you.

[Ryan Williams, Conservative, Bay of Quinte, ON]

At the end of the day, we have to look at breaking barriers down—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

The member for Saanich—Gulf Islands is rising on a point of order.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

The heckling that I just experienced was a personal attack to my personal integrity, and I take personal offence. I ask the hon. member to withdraw those remarks, because they are untrue, unfounded and based on malicious gossip. He should be ashamed.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

In particular, partisan issues are not the business of the House and should not be dealt with by the House. I would like the hon. member to please address the hon. member for Saanich—Gulf Islands.

[Ryan Williams, Conservative, Bay of Quinte, ON]

Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for her comment but, at the end of the day, I do not understand. We are talking about equality of opportunity and especially about breaking down barriers. Would the hon. member rather have been appointed to the position she holds in the Parliament instead of earning it, as she rightfully has done?

At the end of the day, when we talk to women and to people across Canada, should they have to be appointed in order to break down barriers? Can they not break them down of their own accord? Equality of opportunity means that we break the barriers down so that those individuals can do just that. That is all we are talking about.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to start by saying that I will be sharing my time with my amazing colleague, the member for Nunavut. I am eager to hear what she has to say.

I would like to point out that we are currently, here in Ottawa, on Algonquin territory. Personally, as a member for Montreal, I represent a territory that was never ceded by the Kanyen'kehà:ka, a place for the nations to gather and exchange. I think that it is important to point this out, especially given the nature of today’s debate.

I am not particularly surprised to hear the Conservatives speak of unbridled individualism and individual responsibility. I am a little surprised, however, to hear my colleagues in the Bloc Québécois following the same line. That is a symptom of a conservative shift in the Bloc that has been happening for years but is coming to the fore once again. We can see it in today’s motion. However, intellectually speaking, the motion raises some interesting questions. These are questions concerning equity, sociology, social determinants, systemic racism, the representation of diversity in our institutions and the fact that our public and private institutions should be a reflection of our society, a society that is as open, diverse and inclusive as possible. We need to work on that. I think we need to think about that. These are important subjects and issues.

Did this warrant an opposition day and a full day of debate? That is a good question. That being said, the choice was the Bloc Québécois’s.

I would like to put things in context. After devoting an entire day of parliamentary work to the prayer in the House of Commons, the Bloc now introduces a motion whose main issue is that some white males will not have access to positions in federal research centres. That is the biggest problem for them. That is the Bloc’s priority. That is what we are talking about today. It is frustrating that these white males are facing restricted access to positions where they have been the overwhelming majority for decades.

We are experiencing a housing shortage; some people cannot pay their rent; others have not received an employment insurance cheque for three or four months; still others want to regularize their status but are in the dark because the wait times for immigration are interminable; people are unable to get a passport; we are in the middle of a climate crisis and a climate emergency; we are being told to expect a hot summer with forest fires, floods and violent storms.

However, let us talk about the poor white males who may not have access to certain positions, when they have occupied 65%, 70% or 80% of these positions for years.

A minimum of effort is being put in to facilitate access to these positions for women, indigenous peoples, visible minorities and persons living with disabilities. Apparently, that is unfair and discriminatory. It is called affirmative action, with a view to effecting a social change that will not happen on its own for historical, sociological and societal harmony reasons. I could give several examples, since we still have to deal with sexism, we still have to deal with systemic racism, and we still have to deal with discrimination and prejudice against immigrants and first nations.

That does not count, because we live in a meritocracy. Each individual is responsible for their own success or failure, and that is it. It is that simple. Now there is an intellectual shortcut if I have ever seen one.

I will use the percentage of women in this Parliament, in the House of Commons, as an example. In 2011, when I arrived here, 24% of members were women. That figure was 26% in 2015, 29% in 2019, and 30% last year. On average, the percentage of women in parliament in a democratic G7 country increases by 1.5% to 2% a year. At this rate, our Parliament will have achieved equity in 40 years. My daughter Marianne will be retired when Parliament achieves gender equity. Without serious incentives and sometimes even coercive measures, it will never happen.

We could also look at unemployment rates. In January 2021, unemployment among Black people in Quebec stood at 13%, which is 70% higher than the Quebec average. The Black community has more university graduates but an employment rate that is 5% lower than the average rate, and they earn $4 an hour less than white people.

In February 2021, one month later, the unemployment rate in Canada increased by 0.6%. That same month, the unemployment rate increased by 4.5% for Latin Americans, 5.5% for the Black community and 7.6% for Southeast Asians. They have higher unemployment rates, earn less and have greater difficulty finding a place to live, even though they are better trained and educated than the average Canadian.

If this is not proof of systemic racism and barriers that must be broken, I do not know what is.

At Laval University it was an awful scandal that women make up 38% of professors, or below 40%. This figure is 6% for members of visible minorities. Fully 13% of Quebeckers are members of a visible minority. That represents one million people. That is halfway to the target. Persons with disabilities represent 1% of professors at Laval University.

As far as research chairs in general are concerned, the numbers are practically the same if we look at the average of federal research chairs. Women represent 34%, even less than at Laval University, and members of visible minorities 6%. The number of persons with disabilities or members of first nations is so low that it cannot be counted. The numbers are not available.

Then I am told that we should not have measures to increase these shameful percentages by giving a chance to someone who does not have the same opportunities in life when it comes to filling a researcher or professor position.

Affirmative action measures work, as we have seen in many countries, such as the United States, where such measures were absolutely necessary. I know that “affirmative action” is sometimes translated in French as “discrimination positive”, or “positive discrimination”. Some people find that amusing and say that you cannot fix discrimination by adding discrimination. That is a bad joke that comes from a narrow, short-sighted perspective. Éric Duhaime, the new leader of the Conservative Party of Quebec, was the first to say this in 2019. That is the very perspective that the Bloc Québécois is embracing here. Bravo.

As a way forward, this is just appalling. We could be talking about any number of things that could be done to help people, but instead you move a motion that will actually hurt people.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

I would remind the member that it is not my motion, but rather a Bloc Québécois motion.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

I apologize, Madam Speaker.

We need to do some collective soul-searching. Why is it that women make up only 20% of corporate boards and only 25% of senior management in Canada?

According to an Osler report, a university professor looked at 2,000 senior management positions in Canada. Of the 2,000, he found seven indigenous people and six people with disabilities. That is it. Among senior managers, women's salaries are 56% lower than men's. Visible minority women earn 32% less than white women. That is huge. The gaps are enormous.

It makes perfect sense to try to do something to fix this and ensure that women, indigenous people, members of visible minorities and people with disabilities take their rightful place within our institutions, including universities.

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

Madam Speaker, I do not have a question for my colleague since I doubt that he will answer it.

I simply want to inform him that when he throws out statistics, within faculties, for example, he is referring to professors who might have been hired in 1987, 1988 or 1989, and not just ones who were hired recently. I am a university professor, so I am part of the academic community.

It worries me that there are some members in the House who cannot count. I wanted to point that out.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his pleasant question.

I need only give him the Université de Moncton as an example, where the majority of students have been women for years now. We learned recently that in the Université de Moncton's faculty of science, women make up barely 15% of the faculty.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the comments from the member. What I think of here is that there has to be a will to see the changes we want to see for society to evolve. In many ways, we see very progressive-minded people taking policy initiatives that will in fact achieve, hopefully sooner as opposed to later, a wider participation in our chairs so that they do incorporate minorities, whether they be women, people with disabilities or ethnic minorities. It is important for society as a whole that these chairs reflect the Canadian population, ultimately. I wonder if the member can provide his thoughts on how important it is to have the will to see that take place.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Madam Speaker, indeed, I do think that progressive movements have always worked to achieve equity and equality. Sometimes that requires restrictive measures.

That is okay, because what I am hearing from the Conservative Party and the Bloc right now makes me think of Margaret Thatcher when she said:

There is no society; there are only individuals.

However, that is not how it works. I feel that, as parliamentarians and elected officials, we have to take responsibility and foster meaningful action that moves society forward for all Canadians, making it possible to achieve better representation of our diversity.