Debates of May 31st, 2022

Opposition Motion—Canada Research Chairs Program

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Madam Speaker, I want to pick up on a theme we heard from a previous speaker about this apparent distinction between equality of opportunity and equality of outcome. I cannot think of how we can define progress if we do not look at outcomes. I think that often equality of opportunity is used as an excuse for not doing anything.

I wonder if my colleague can think of any institutions in Canadian society that have achieved diversity that is reflective of the population without proactive equity measures.

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

Madam Speaker, if we say that we do not need to focus on equity outcomes, if we think that access is basically equitable, we are forgetting that access is ultimately not so equitable if the outcomes are not there. Otherwise, there would be no reason for it. Therefore, we need to take proactive and affirmative steps to be able to have those role models.

As my colleague said earlier, it is important to have indigenous and visible minority women as role models who have succeeded in certain positions or situations. In the long run, this will help us look beyond theoretical rights to achieve true equity backed by real outcomes.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Madam Speaker, I will try to refocus the debate and not make any generalizations or take intellectual shortcuts, out of respect for the debate today.

My colleague from Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie tried to reduce the debate to skin colour. All that the Bloc Québécois is saying is that the criterion that should take precedence when recruiting researchers in the Canada research chairs program is excellence. However, the criterion that currently takes precedence is based on identity.

I would like to quote a few visible minority researchers, such as Dr. Kambhampati from McGill University. He told me that he does not care about skin colour when he wants to hire someone who is interested in working on a project and is good in that field. What does my colleague from Rosemont—La Petite‑Patrie think about that?

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

Madam Speaker, it is rather unfortunate, but, if only 6% of the researchers who are capable of excellence are members of a visible minority, then I wonder how it is that all the excellent researchers are white men.

[Lori Idlout, NDP, Nunavut, NU]

[Member spoke in Inuktitut]

[English]

Uqaqtittiji, I wanted to start my statement in Inuktitut to portray the impacts of what could happen if this motion were to pass. It would allow for a lot of exclusion. In addition, it would diminish the years of hard work that the Canada research chairs program has done to increase equity, diversity and inclusion.

I turned to speak the rest of my statement in English because I know just how important it is to work collaboratively and to work toward a common understanding. Having been educated in a colonial system, I have learned that Canada is proud of its history. By this point in our society, we espouse inclusiveness, diversity and equity.

Allowing this motion to pass will see results as catastrophic as the Franklin expedition. I am sure that I do not need to remind my colleagues in the House and those listening to this debate that Sir John Franklin perished in the Arctic. When Franklin left England, I am quite sure that he was selected for his skills and his qualifications. After all, his research and advances to achieve navigation could benefit travels across the north.

For years, academics and researchers searched for the demise of this expedition. For years, academics and researchers ignored Inuit knowledge passed on from the 1800s, as much of our knowledge is still in many aspects ignored, impacting our Inuit lives. It took 165 years, and only with the knowledge and guidance of Inuit was Franklin's ship found. In this history, Canadians can thank Louie Kamookak, an Inuk from Gjoa Haven in my riding. It was his talk on the Inuit knowledge that led to the wreck finally being found 165 years later.

I seriously question the Bloc members who have decided to use their opposition day on this matter. Why are they so adamant to protect white male privilege? Why are they looking to remove the equity, diversity and inclusion objectives that address the under-representation of women, visible minorities, people with disabilities and people from indigenous communities in federally funded research chairs? Why have they not focused on important matters requiring our attention? We are experiencing a climate crisis and a housing crisis, and there are indigenous people who are being deprived of their rights.

Inuit and first nations are questioning the Bloc's position on the French-language laws and the lack of commitments toward promoting and revitalizing indigenous languages. Indigenous people in Quebec are often excluded, as Bloc members continually debate their nationhood in Canada, a place they settled on, a place they took from indigenous peoples.

This motion reeks of “all lives matter”, a slogan associated with the criticism of equity, diversity and inclusion of the Black Lives Matter movement. We must not try to hide that Canada is still a place of discrimination and that legislation and policies protecting equity, diversity and inclusion are still very necessary.

We hear the need for them every day in this House. We hear every day about the atrocities experienced by indigenous women who continue to be targets of violence, leading to the need for the National Inquiry on MMIWG to have been created. We hear weekly how much the federal government says it funds initiatives to make improvements on indigenous peoples' lives, and yet, because of the systemic racism, we still hear about violent deaths of indigenous women. As recently as last week, another indigenous woman was murdered.

We must do better to increase these existing figures: 40.9% of women hold research chairs; 22.8% of visible minorities hold research chairs; 5.8% of people living with a disability hold research chairs; and 3.4% of indigenous people hold research chairs. All of these figures are just too low. The only way to continue to advance Canada as a society is to continue to use the criteria to keep equity, diversity and inclusion.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to ask my colleague a very simple question.

Competent researchers from visible minorities do not have access to research chair funding because they do not meet the criteria or do not want to meet them. If that is not discrimination, then I do not know what to call it.

There is already discrimination against people who are under-represented and do not meet certain criteria of the Canada research chairs program. What is my colleague's opinion on this?

[Lori Idlout, NDP, Nunavut, NU]

Uqaqtittiji, I think it is a statement that absolutely makes it necessary why we need to keep that legislation and those policies, because that discrimination exists. We need to make sure that these policies are used to open opportunities for people who are indigenous, who have disabilities, who are visible minorities. It is the reason why we need to say not to pass this motion, because we still have too much systemic discrimination in Canada.

[Jenica Atwin, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

Madam Speaker, qujannamiik to my hon. colleague.

I have the same thoughts that the member shared about this motion. With such limited opposition days, it is quite interesting to me that this one was selected as the issue to be debated today.

It is a bold move to make such a statement about whom we want in these positions. Can we all agree that these are highly educated, highly experienced individuals who made this decision to ensure that equity and diversity are included in this process? Are we kind of jumping ahead of ourselves here, not letting the potentially beneficial outcomes for these institutions to be seen before we criticize it, before we look again at these concepts of a dystopia? I think that was mentioned in a different version, as if there is going to be a reversal of The Handmaid's Tale should we allow these kinds of actions to take place.

I am wondering if the member could comment on that. Why are we sounding the alarm before we even know how beneficial this could be?

[Lori Idlout, NDP, Nunavut, NU]

Uqaqtittiji, I enjoy working with the member on the standing committee.

It is a difficult question, but it is an important one, with all that is going on in Canada, with all that is going on in research. I know that in the Arctic, for sure, a lot of the academics are starting to open up to the idea of the importance of using indigenous traditional knowledge so that academia and indigenous traditional knowledge are used in parallel and are not separate from each other.

In Canada's time, we are moving toward a greater future where there is inclusivity and where it is necessary to make sure that we are keeping these opportunities open and making sure that it is the relationships that we focus on when it comes to people who have the ability to make decisions about what research will happen. These chairs have important positions, and the themes and guides that they provide to the rest of academia will be truly important, so making sure those groups of chairs are diverse is very important in Canada.

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

Madam Speaker, earlier today, a member from the Conservative Party spoke a little about the importance of what he referred to as “individualism” and the importance of ensuring that those who are accessing positions in educational institutions “have earned” the right to be there.

I am wondering if the member could please share her thoughts as to why that narrative is extremely problematic in having equitable access within our systems.

[Lori Idlout, NDP, Nunavut, NU]

Uqaqtittiji, I just want to drive back to the importance of identity. I think that identity does play a huge role in Canada. We are quite proud of ourselves as Canadians who support each other, and Canadians are the most generous when it comes to charity. Being an individualistic person who only serves to promote oneself as a person is not something that is a very Canadian part of our identity. I think most Canadians would prefer to be known as generous, caring and inclusive, as we hope we will continue to be.

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

Madam Speaker, today I will be sharing my time with my colleague from Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot.

We are talking about research funding in a provincial jurisdiction, meaning Quebec's jurisdiction, and we are talking about it here in the federal Parliament. Clearly, there is already a problem. What is even more problematic is that these criteria for awarding Canada research chairs are not a lesson in democracy. It is not a lesson in democracy because they were introduced in 2000 and this is the first time we have debated them here in the House.

Regardless of what the NDP members say, it is healthy to debate, even if they do not like it. This is especially true given that we have never debated this matter here, thoughts have not been shared, and what I have heard today shows a complete lack of understanding of the academic world. I would very much like to hear what the Minister of Health has to say about this motion, as he is a professor at Laval University. I hope he will have the opportunity to speak.

Let us go back in time. Let us look at the Liberal legacy with regard to funding public services, particularly that of Paul Martin in the 1990s. What was done then? From the first half of the 1990s until 1998, cuts were made to health transfers and social programs, leaving provinces in so much trouble that they had difficulty funding their public services.

Of course, as time went on, health care took up more and more space in the provinces' finances and came to cannibalize all other government responsibilities, including funding for higher education, preschool education and elementary school education. Ottawa's actions left the provinces in turmoil.

Moreover, in the mid-1990s, there was a referendum in which half of Quebeckers said no to Canada. What did Ottawa do? It decided to plant its flag all over provincial jurisdictions. It started with the sponsorship scandal, one of the worst Liberal disgraces in history. It continued in the late 1990s with the millennium scholarships, when a jurisdictional squabble took place with Quebec. The Liberals thought that Quebec's financial assistance to students was not doing the job. They had to get involved.

Since the provinces were in trouble because of the cutbacks, Ottawa said it would create these research chairs. This is the typical old Liberal reflex: they place the provinces in a tight spot, they wait awhile, then they come to the rescue. First, there are no conditions, but, with time, more and more conditions are set, which are expensive for the provinces to administer. Thus, 22 years later, here we are today to discuss the matter.

The issue with the criteria has nothing to do with inclusion or exclusion. Quite simply, the federal government has no business in the matter. It is none of its business. The Liberals will claim they established these criteria to satisfy the courts. However, the courts are only involved because the Liberals are involved. If they had minded their own business, the courts would never have gotten involved in their programs.

Today, we find ourselves with all kinds of criteria for hiring professors. These criteria impede academic freedom, even though professor recruitment is under the purview of the universities, the professors and the researchers.

I am a university professor. I have participated in the meetings to hire professors. Hiring a researcher is such a delicate situation that even university HR departments do not get involved, whether we are talking about McGill University, Laval University or the University of Toronto. However, here we have the smart alecks from the NDP who are able to tell us, in a convoluted way, how researchers should be hired in fields they know nothing about.

I will explain to the House how a professor is hired. Let us say, for example, that there is an opening in the economics department at UQAM. There is a particular need for someone who specializes in health economics, and 300 people apply. After we eliminate those who do not speak French, we still have between 100 to 110 applicants remaining. Unlike the Liberals, we think that French is important in Quebec. Of those applicants, there are some who specialize in all sorts of fields that are not needed, such as macroeconomics and the like, so we have to sort through all the applications. We are left with between 50 and 60 excellent candidates from all over the world, because the market is global. Then, we have to interview about 40 of them. Some of them fail the interview, so we are then left with a short list of about 20 to 25 candidates. Of those 20 to 25 people, we will choose the best seven or eight to attend what is called a fly out. They are invited to present their research to other researchers who have knowledge of the field, unlike the Liberal Party and the NDP. In the end, a professor is selected and offered the position.

What happens then? Sometimes the person who is offered the job will turn it down because our public services are poorly funded and we do not have the means to pay our researchers properly.

Off they go to France, Great Britain, or back to the United States. Even francophone Quebeckers, who have long been under-represented in academia since before the Université du Québec came to be, no longer want to come to Quebec because our institutions have a hard time paying them. We move on to our second choice, our third and our fourth and we do the best we can. In the end, the shortlist is whittled down to one or two candidates who are the only ones we can hire. That is how it works in universities.

Some people here think that introducing new criteria and making this costly process even more burdensome makes it easier to hire skilled people. They obviously know nothing at all about the sector. Like many of my colleagues, I spent the past 20 years in and around academia. Every time researchers were hired, the most important criteria were gender equality and the integration of cultural minorities. Every time we managed to hire researchers, those criteria were met without the help of federal government conditions or the Canada research chair program. These criteria expose the Liberals' moral narcissism. It is their way of signalling that they are better than anyone else.

What happens in the short term when criteria like these are imposed? Sometimes a few candidates who are members of a visible minority or women qualify for the position. However, because of these criteria, every university wants them. If we are unable to hire them, it is because we cannot afford to increase salaries because of the current salary scales. The money is in Ottawa, and Quebec City has been “defunded” once more in its history, so we do the best we can.

This brings me to Quebec's reality and the Liberals' vision of diversity and inclusion. At the Université du Québec à Rimouski, for example, there is a marine sciences department. There is also the Université du Québec en Abitibi‑Témiscamingue. The Université du Québec has campuses in several different regions, and in some places, the local social makeup makes it hard to recruit researchers. In these places, these criteria are doubly, triply and quadruply limiting. Once again, the universities pay the price, because the Liberal method is to impose conditions but not pay.

The federal government tells us that to have diversity every university needs to reflect the average. When diversity is just an attempt to reflect averages that is a big problem. These conditions substitute appearance for competence. The Liberals know about that because that is how they chose the Prime Minister.

However, our universities need to be independent and have academic freedom. It was universities and their rules that gave us the Enlightenment and that gave rise to the greatest research we have today. Every university and every department across Quebec and Canada knows this and is already acting accordingly.

The government is not telling us that this requires diversity. It is telling us not to trust Quebec to manage its own university sector and research funding. Criteria exist to include diversity, but that is up to Quebec, not the federal government.

Where do we go from here? The universities need to keep working on diversity and inclusion, but the federal government needs to leave them alone. The government needs to stop interfering in research because that is not its wheelhouse, because it is ineffective and incompetent. Personally, I do not get involved in areas of expertise that I know nothing about.

We need to get rid of these ineffective rules that are costly for the Quebec government and the universities and that violate long-standing traditions of academic freedom. These rules are adversarial and punitive, and they are poisoning the work environment of our universities. I will repeat that I participated in departmental meetings to hire professors where these inclusion criteria were used, and it is not an easy process.

What should we do? We have to be proactive, restore funding to the provinces and increase student scholarships. We must ensure that those involved in hiring university professors, as I was, have access to a pool of competent people and have all the necessary options. The moral narcissism of the Liberals and the NDP will not result in better research.

[Gary Anandasangaree, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Madam Speaker, I listened to my friend opposite's speech intently and I have some underlying concerns. First and foremost, the implication is that when we look at diversity and inclusion as an issue, it precludes those who are qualified and intellectually capable of a job, so there is a premise I reject.

What the member is trying to say, I believe, is that there should be no measures put in place at any level, whether in academia, government or government jobs, that set particular criteria, whether they be for someone who is indigenous or racialized, for women or, in a case when the Government of Canada hires people, for people who are bilingual. Those may not be criteria we set forth.

I am wondering if my friend could reflect on that and tell us why he fully rejects the notion of any form of personal characteristics being incorporated into the jobs—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

I am sorry, but we need time for other questions.

The hon. member for Mirabel.

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

Madam Speaker, the member is putting words in my mouth.

Members know, and I will repeat, that I spent my life in academia. It is a place where we find the people who are most educated about, open to and aware of diversity. It is not true that we are opposed to having inclusion criteria, but it is not up to the federal government to set out such criteria. This is not the right legislature for that. Teaching and research funding are part of higher education. It is part of that. That is how doctoral and masters students are guided. It is the responsibility of the Government of Quebec.

The Liberal Party's vision is the following: If the Liberals did not set out the criteria, then there are no criteria. The Liberals cannot seem to figure out that such is not the case.

[Lori Idlout, NDP, Nunavut, NU]

Uqaqtittiji, I wonder if there is a common misunderstanding of how the hiring process works. Should the focus not be on improving that process, rather than breaking down the years of work that have been done to keep discrimination at bay?

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

Madam Speaker, people are putting words in my mouth again. That might be because my speech was so good.

Eliminating these rules will not break down years of work. People want inclusion and integration, and I can attest to that based on my own career experience and my colleagues'. Every province, like Quebec, is responsible for funding and managing post-secondary education. Ottawa cannot tell the provinces what to do, period.

If the member wants to get involved in that then she should move to provincial politics.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Mirabel for his speech.

I remind members that this is yet another example of Ottawa's paternalistic approach with Quebec. That is not what my question is about, however, because my colleague did a great job explaining what the federal government is doing.

This morning I explained that if we want to get more women in academia and in other fields, we should be proactive, as my colleague from La Prairie explained so well, and ask why women are less likely to go into certain sectors. I gave an example about how women reportedly had a harder time submitting their research because they were at home carrying a heavy mental load.

How can the federal government be proactive and make life easier for women? It could implement work-life balance initiatives. Essentially, all of this should be set up beforehand. I do not think that university requirements explain why it is difficult to recruit women.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

We have one minute left for the response.

The hon. member for Mirabel.

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

Madam Speaker, we hear about all kinds of averages and the Canadian average.

Research facilities do not reflect society perfectly. They have evolved with the times. We need to be very careful about all the statistics used to apply averages to this, that and the other thing. That does not work.

My colleague is right. It has been harder for minorities and women for many years. Scholarships have been created and efforts have been made to increase inclusion awareness. This has been the case in Quebec and at Quebec universities. There is still progress to be made and work to be done to encourage more people like Marie Curie and Amartya Sen, magnificent Nobel Prize winners.

Imposing conditions today and preventing Quebec universities from hiring professors will not improve the quality of research. It is the Liberals, not us, who are playing politics with inclusion. It is important to note that they are actually hurting inclusion in the long run with this, because they are directing their energy to the wrong place.

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Madam Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise today, on this Bloc Québécois opposition day, to speak to our motion on federal funding for university research and the associated conditions.

With this motion, which I will not read again, our objective is clear: we must ensure that grants are awarded without discrimination, based on skills and qualifications, essentially on merit, and not on identity-based criteria, in the interests of genuine equality of opportunity.

This motion is particularly important to me, because universities have long been some of the institutions where I have been fortunate enough to spend some of my career. In Quebec, I studied political science at the Université de Montréal, and sociology at the Université du Québec à Montréal. I was fortunate to have been a lecturer at Laval University and at the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi. I was also able to see what was happening across the ocean because I had the amazing fortune to complete my doctorate in the socio-economics of development at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris. Those were probably the best years of my life.

I have very fond memories of my university days, although they were unfortunately not without a few dark periods. During their careers, young students, researchers and teachers quickly learn about the hegemony of research chairs, which unfortunately too often comes at the expense of teaching, a role that is now mostly carried out by precarious staff.

This hegemony of the chairs also lets Ottawa take control of research and impose its ideological terms and themes. This is especially true in the social sciences, where radical ideologies are often lifted directly from American campuses. Academic researchers who arrive in the middle of this have no choice but to conform, or else be pushed to the academic sidelines.

The Canada research chairs program was created by Jean Chrétien's government 20 years ago, in a context where Ottawa was sucking the lifeblood out of Quebec's public finances and then using its surpluses, obtained on the backs of Quebeckers, to invade areas of provincial jurisdiction, with education being one such jurisdiction.

At the time, Ottawa swore that they would not be intruding on education since research was not specifically under any jurisdiction. However, it is now clear that the creation of research chairs was a direct intrusion. The program is basically acting as a hiring program for professors. Ottawa is dictating to the universities the terms and conditions for hiring faculty. This situation is unacceptable and the program must be overhauled.

Ottawa is using its spending power to occupy the field of research funding. It is taking advantage of the fact that money is key and thus changing the way our universities operate. That is what is happening with the excessive demands imposed by the Canada research chairs program, particularly its requirements for equity, diversity and inclusion, which we find unreasonable.

By imposing its requirements under these research funding programs, Ottawa is not respecting the autonomy of universities. There is no reason for Ottawa to dictate conditions of employment for faculty. If Ottawa wants to take over spending power in the field of education, it should offer funding unconditionally, but that will never happen. As my colleague from Mirabel said earlier, Ottawa imposes conditions but does not offer funding, as always.

It is unacceptable for Ottawa to impose targets on Quebec universities under threat of sanctions. These universities are educational institutions where independence of thought should be at the forefront. Why can they not be given free rein to set up their own diversity and inclusion programs, without being dictated to by Ottawa under the threat of losing some of their funding?

The requirements imposed by Ottawa are unacceptable and illegitimate obstacles. It was no doubt to remedy this problem that the Pauline Marois government, with Pierre Duchesne as minister of higher education, sought to liberate Quebec's education system from Canadian ideological control by creating Quebec research chairs. That would have been a good idea.

I am being critical of the research chairs, but I want to make it clear that we strongly support permanent, increased funding for scientific research. There is no denying that Canada is unfortunately not a leader in this area. I could even say that it is a real dinosaur, and I think the best example of that is the fact that one former minister of state for science and technology was openly creationist. This was in the 2000s, not 1950. That gives an idea of how scientific research was treated by that government, and the underfunding of scientific research has been a glaring issue.

The Naylor report clearly showed that funding cuts in research and development over the past 20 years have had devastating consequences. We saw that at the beginning of the health crisis, which we are barely out of. We had no pharmaceutical industry. We had no drugs, no medical equipment, no vaccines. Worse yet, we had no adequately funded structure to begin working on developing everything I just listed. We had no capacity for rapid development.

As for the scientific research institutions that used to be the pride of Quebec, such as the Centre Armand-Frappier, they were all simply abandoned by Ottawa. I think we can see that there are consequences to living in what the Prime Minister proudly called the first “post-national” country. We have more examples. Canada would do well to put its energy into evolving out of the Jurassic age instead of trying to dictate the nature of scientific research and who is authorized to conduct it.

Of course we are in favour of including people from diverse backgrounds as much as possible. That goes without saying, because diversity is neither good nor bad. It is a reality. It is a reflection of contemporary society. Let us not forget that the Bloc Québécois once included in its ranks Osvaldo Nunez, the first Latin-American MP in the history of this parliamentary institution. The Bloc also had Bernard Cleary, an indigenous person, and Vivian Barbot, who is originally from Haiti. It also got my predecessor, Ève‑Mary Thaï Thi Lac, elected in Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot as the first Quebec woman of Vietnamese descent in the House. Today, I am the first member of the Huron-Wendat nation to become a member of the House, and I did it as a member of the Bloc Québécois. We have no lessons to learn on that score. Let us make that clear.

I would hope that, in addition to representing a diverse population, all these people, myself excluded, were chosen to be lawmakers, elected to serve as members of this Parliament, because they were, first and foremost, skilled and qualified. When people have the same qualifications, of course, no problem. We have no problem with affirmative action to right some of the grave injustices of the past that, unfortunately, very much persist to this day, but restrictive criteria other than straight-up qualifications should never be imposed. Recently, Laval University put up a job posting that did not say an equally qualified person from a diverse background would get the job. The posting specifically said “reserved”. If that is not discrimination, what is it?

My riding is home to an internationally renowned university-level institution, the faculty of veterinary medicine at Saint-Hyacinthe. Naturally, as the only French-language veterinary training institution in North America, it attracts talent from around the world. Recently, students and young researchers told me that the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council sent bursary applicants a survey asking them to disclose their sexual orientation.

Can someone explain to me how sexual orientation has any bearing on one's ability to dissect a dead bird or on the quality of laboratory testing for avian flu? Why is that relevant? I am still wondering.

As a final point, I would say that academic freedom is a fundamental struggle that comes down to the most basic independent thought, the need to reflect on things using reason. It has long been said that the purpose of education is to learn to think, not to learn what to think. The research chair system is a way to tell students what to think. It not only tells students what to think, it also tells their instructors what to think.

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

Madam Speaker, a member of the House indicated earlier that it is unfortunate the Bloc has brought forward this particular motion, maybe even suggesting that it could have used a different motion today.

I look at the motion a little bit differently. I see the motion as something that, at the end of the day, I do not believe is in the best interests of Canada, primarily because I see the true value of Canada's diversity. Often when we get the types of appointments that are necessary, they can be inspirational for younger generations. This allows us to build a healthier and richer society.

I am wondering if the member could reflect on the province of Quebec in its entirety, whether it is the rural part or the city of Montreal. Does he believe that his attitudes toward ignoring women, minorities and other ethnic—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

I am sorry, but I have to get to other questions. I would ask individuals to mind the time. For questions and comments, about 45 seconds would be good. People have been extending them past one minute.

The hon. member for Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot.

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Madam Speaker, I have a lot to say in response to that.

I am amazed by how concerned they get about the topics we choose to debate on our opposition days. It is the same argument every time. Why did we not move a motion on another topic? It makes no difference to the government what topic we want to debate.

I often get the impression that people still think of Quebec as being just the city of Montreal surrounded by fields, an image that is pretty outdated.

I represent an extremely rural riding that elected the very first Vietnamese woman in the history of this House, so enough with the stereotypes of rural folks. We can settle this right now. She was elected for her skills and her ability to be a good MP.

Quebec has taken a number of positive steps, as I said. “Discrimination” is an ugly word. I am in favour of these positive steps, of course, but I also support equal qualifications. It is as simple as that. We can look at all kinds of models—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

Order. We must move on to the next question.

The member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley.