Madam Speaker, I appreciate this opportunity to speak on International Women's Day to a motion by my hon. colleague to the right which reflects the decidedly left wing politics of Her Majesty's Official Opposition. Despite the good wording of this motion and the good intentions of my colleague, the implications of this statement in public policy are not entirely positive.
For too long in this country debates over equal rights have been confused with demands for special treatment. We have seen emerge a special language of rights, a language which uses the vocabulary of rights along with the good intentions of those who began Canada's tradition of human rights, to further narrow political interests.
While the intentions of people like my hon. colleague may be good, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. The words rights and equality have been stripped of their old meanings. Whereas one used to know that a right had been violated when, for example, one was put in jail without cause, now many feel that a right has been violated when two people with different resumés, different lifestyles or different biologies do not earn exactly the same income. Whereas the right of equality used to mean the right to be subject to the same laws as, for example, members of Parliament, now the right of equal treatment is taken to mean that each Canadian should receive exactly the same amount of government subsidizing.
While intentions of the social planners and the lobbyists who push for changes in our political vocabulary and the alteration of our political traditions do on the surface display a genuine commitment to the common good, the net effect of their political actions are limiting of freedom, the strangling of private initiative and an attack on the very diversity that is cherished and demanded by the left.
A first broad reading of this motion reveals only a vague purpose. What one needs to do is look at each demand that this motion makes and examine what the real impact of these demands would be. First, the motion demands that this government recognize the principle of economic equality. If we accept that men and women must achieve perfect economic parity, then we have moved beyond equality of opportunity and into equality of result. This motion goes beyond equality of opportunity since equality of opportunity and equality under the law is guaranteed by the charter and by Canada's common law tradition.
That is not good enough for some. For some equality of opportunity really means that minorities, including women, despite the fact that women account for more than 50 per cent of the population, are being systematically singled out and are being restricted from achieving their fullest potentials.
Who is perpetrating this oppression? As usual white males are the culprits of choice. It is said that white males are institutionally advantaged and are maintaining their advantage in the market by excluding others. It is claimed that government programs are being unfair to minorities by not adequately dividing up the pie of federal revenues in a way that ensures the maximum equality of as many people as possible, especially women and visible minorities.
Do these all boy networks exist? Perhaps, but so do female networks and minority networks. Is there a failure of social programs to redistribute wealth in a manner that creates total equality of condition? Yes, and that is as it should be. Social programs were created to act as social safety nets and nothing more. When government makes a decision to change the mission of its programs from safety nets to tools of social change then we have moved away from democracy, given up freedom and sacrificed liberty for the sake of pie in the sky equality.
Is this the price we want to pay for economic equality? I do not think so and I am confident that the vast majority of Canadians do not think so. I am just as sure that there is a contingent of very active, very vocal and very misguided lobbyists and politicians for whom equality of opportunity is not enough. Those people have had their perceptions of reality so clouded by ideology that they cannot see beyond the trees of good sounding intentions and into the forest of an authoritarian welfare state.
Next, this motion asks government to ensure equality of employment, salary and living conditions. How exactly can government achieve such noble sounding goals? I am sure the sponsor of this motion has a plan of action in mind and this plan of action undoubtedly includes a redistribution of wealth, hiring practices that discriminate against one group to make up for the alleged discrimination of another.
Government could legislate pay scales. Government could pass a law requiring free housing to be made available for all women. Would these measures work? Would they achieve equality? Yes, in a way. For if government were to engage in this kind of social and economic engineering the result would be a form of equality. We would be equally burdened by poverty as government saps the initiative of entrepreneurs and the capital of business. We would be equally deprived of liberty as government regulates more and more into our lives. We would be free from having to make moral and responsible decisions for ourselves as government in its wisdom takes that decision making power away from us.
While it may not be apparent to my colleague in Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition, there is an alternative to the equality that comes from massive intervention in all areas of human endeavour. The alternative is equality under the law, equality that comes from equal protection by government from true threats to personal achievement and success.
Canada used to be committed to this vision of equality. Canada used to be a nation in which all individuals were free to participate in the workforce, to succeed economically, to start and develop a strong family unit and enjoy the security, freedoms and equality that come from a good job that can support a strong and intact family.
That vision became unacceptable to the intellectual and political elite in Canada. For the last 20-odd years our elite have been more interested in pushing an agenda of radical change than an agenda for preservation of what works.
An example of what works is creating equality under the law by ensuring that the criminal justice system is able to effectively protect all people. What use is it to demand the right to equal pay when women are afraid to walk the streets alone? What good is it to try to create equality in housing when women often live in fear of abusive partners?
It seems to me that our priorities have become very confused indeed. Further, Canadians are increasingly becoming aware of the inability of government to take over the roles that have been traditionally played by the family. Government, as a result of the very initiatives that are proposed in this motion, has tried to adopt the role of primary parent, primary guardian of children and even principal breadwinner for many families.
What has come of this?-an over burdened and bloated government, children who are neglected in government subsidized day care rather than being taken care of by parents.
Parents today often have to leave their children with caretakers because taxes take so large a bite out of salaries that one pay cheque is no longer enough to support the in home care of children by a parent.
Again, there is a degree of equality being forced upon us here, an equality of mediocrity, an equality of fear that our justice-
