Réal Ménard

[Criminal Code, June 13th, 1995]

Madam Speaker, I wish to state from the outset that it will be impossible for me to support the amendments proposed by the hon. members for Scarborough West and for Central Nova, which, of course, should not surprise us. I want to start by repeating what we were told by a psychology professor, who had a great influence on me. He started from the basic premise that sexuality has many facets. This sexology professor reminded us that those who feel comfortable with their own sexuality do not feel the need to denigrate others with a different sexual orientation.

Tonight, I am sorry that some of my colleagues, whose views I as a parliamentarian must respect, may have made comments which, in my opinion, showed, to say the least, very little respect for a kind of sexual pluralism that must be acknowledged. What I find most regrettable, and the reason why I do not understand the purpose of the amendments tabled by some of my colleagues, can be summed up as follows: Is it too much to ask some parliamentarians to recognize, to understand that, in 1995, some members of society are still being molested, beaten or ill-treated for the sole reason that they are or appear to be homosexual?

That is what the bill before the House wants to deal with. I fail to understand why parliamentarians who have a voice in government, who have a public voice, will not admit that this is so, although all the hard scientific evidence is there.

In fact, two years ago, the Government of Quebec, the first government in Canada to speak out against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, instructed the Quebec Human Rights Commission, a public body with credibility, to investigate violence against gays. That was the specific mandate of this commission. We can assume that, if a government takes the trouble to instruct a commission to investigate, acts of violence are being committed in our society.

The commission, which made several recommendations, examined fifty statements by gays, young and not so young, who were attacked-I think it is important to emphasize this-who were attacked simply because they were gay. I think you would have to be extremely obtuse, bigoted and empty headed not to realize, as a parliamentarian, that this is a situation that must be dealt with.

What do the opponents to this bill find so disturbing? Of course we could wonder about their fantasies, but we will refrain. We will remain strictly on topic. What disturbs them in the legal sense?

With all due respect for the hon. member for Scarborough West and the hon. member for Central Nova-I must admit that when she talks about homosexuality, she does not mince her words, which is putting it mildly-I have not heard either member give examples that would hold water in the legal sense.

I would have had more respect, although I still have some, through you Mr. Speaker, for the hon. member for Central Nova or the hon. member for Scarborough West, if they had risen in their seats and argued on a legal basis to make a connection between agreeing that gays should not be attacked and pedophilia.

That is what disturbs them. That is what frightens them. I had a chance to discuss this with the hon. member during an exchange in committee. However, none of them were able to make a connection between what is proposed in clause 718.2 and what they themselves as parliamentarians anticipated would happen.

Quite frankly, when people are disturbed by a difference that is as legitimate as it is ancient, by the expression of a difference in sexual experience, one wonders, and whether they are parliamentarians is irrelevant, whether they have a healthy and balanced life.

What is disturbing, and I think the Minister of Justice is to be commended for his courage in this respect, is that, as parliamentarians, we have no obligation to support a certain set of moral values. You know, when the only argument is a moral argument, when as a member, all they can do is get up and talk about prayers, religion and family, it is because they do not have much in the way of legal arguments.

I have great respect for people who are deeply religious. I have great respect for parliamentarians in this House who, in some way or another, want to perpetuate the family, be it in its traditional form.

But please, do not tell us that because we want to protect a specific group of people who are confronted with violence every day, because the legislator wants to make attacking gays because of their sexual orientation a factor in determining sentencing, please do not tell us we are challenging family values.

I come from a traditional family. My father, Claude, is 55 years old, my mother, Thérèse, is 60 years old. I have a twin brother who has the exact same genetic base as me, another brother who is a police officer-nobody is perfect-and an older brother. I come from a traditional family. It is quite traditional, with my father supporting the family and my mother raising five children at home, who all shared similar influence.

[Criminal Code, June 13th, 1995]

Madam Speaker, on a point of order. When you take part in a debate you are responsible for the words you utter. I know that, like all the members of this House, you are particularly sensitive to the words reported.

I would just like to understand your decision and draw to your attention that the remarks our colleague made in her opening words to her debate are what she actually said. If I may, I-

[Criminal Code, June 13th, 1995]

Is the word immoral acceptable, Madam Speaker?

[Criminal Code, June 13th, 1995]

Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Up to now, I have kept from interrupting my colleague for Central Nova. However-and I would like some guidance from the Chair-I contend that associating homosexuality with immorality strikes a blow at a large sector of society and is therefore unparliamentary. I would ask the member for Central Nova-

[Point Of Order, June 2nd, 1995]

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I will let you be the judge and decide whether this is a question of privilege or a point of order, but as you know, the matter I wish to raise is connected to the fact that yesterday, we had the second hour of debate on a motion I presented earlier in April in which I urged the government to recognize same sex spouses.

I must say that yesterday, for the first time since I became a member of Parliament, I was not very proud to be a parliamentarian. I was not very proud because, as we know, a few days ago the Supreme Court asked us to discuss one of the most important issues for the future of our society, and I am referring to equal treatment of same sex spouses.

I feel I must draw your attention to the fact that yesterday evening, some very discriminatory, hateful and offensive statements were made concerning the homosexual community, and we can hardly say the homosexual community benefited from the kind of debate we had yesterday.

My main point is, and I will give a very specific example, that I always saw the role of the Chair as allowing a maximum of freedom of expression, and I must say that you and your team have always scrupulously abided by this principle. However, I feel I must draw your attention to the fact that in the course of the debate yesterday evening, the hon. member for Calgary Northeast made some comparisons that were extremely dangerous and very difficult to accept for parliamentarians, and I think that if we do not put a stop to this and if we do not call to order members who take the liberty of making comparisons which I find deeply offensive between the homosexual community and certain rights to which I am committed on their behalf, the reputation of this institution will be tarnished.

In concluding, I simply want to bring to your attention a comment that will give some indication of the very distressing tenor of yesterday's debate, at least in the case of the hon. member for Calgary Northeast. Very briefly: "Homosexuality, to anyone who has not been brainwashed by the last decade of effective propagandizing by the gay lobby, is unnatural".

I finally want to say that I am not acting on behalf of any lobby whatsoever. In presenting a motion I felt was important, I was acting as a parliamentarian in order to raise one of those issues which, as you know, requires more than one debate.

In concluding, I want to say that I do not believe that in this Parliament or anywhere else, those who are involved in promoting gay rights have been brainwashed.

[Human Rights, June 2nd, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I would remind the Minister of Justice that the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms has prohibited discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation since 1978 and that he should use it as an example.

Are we to understand that, despite the very clear decision by the Supreme Court, the government will not change its policy with respect to homosexuals, lesbians and same sex spouses, a policy which, by the fact of doing nothing, denies the rights accorded by the country's justice system to all these Canadians?

[Human Rights, June 2nd, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Justice.

In its decision last Friday in the case of Egan v. Canada , the Supreme Court of Canada found that sexual orientation is a profoundly personal characteristic, which is either immutable or alterable only at unacceptable personal cost and which, therefore, comes under the protection of section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Since the Supreme Court of Canada considers discrimination based on sexual orientation unconstitutional, will the minister not acknowledge that he has a duty to table his bill to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act by the end of the present session and thus make all discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation illegal? A little courage, Mr. Speaker.

[Supply, May 30th, 1995]

Madam Speaker, I much appreciate the member's logical and far-reaching question. He will perhaps share my point of view when I remind him that the human rights commissioner appeared before our committee this morning. As you know, the Canadian Human Rights Commission has a budget of close to $14 million. We learned that the backlog to which my hon. colleague is referring represents almost 600 cases.

Of course, the ideal situation for any such organization would be no backlog at all. I agree with my colleague. From what I understand of the workings of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, a body whose work I follow rather closely, it is fairly diligent, and the backlog is, in my opinion, in the acceptable range, not ideal, but acceptable.

Our colleague is right to remind us that, as parliamentarians, we must never accept a situation where the Canadian Human Rights Commission simply processes applications; it must also play a proactive role in developing policy. And it is my understanding that Commissioner Yalden reiterated this morning that that was also part of the commission's action plan.

[Supply, May 30th, 1995]

Madam Speaker, I thought you would have availed yourself of the rule of relevancy. I do not know whether the term "stupid" is unparliamentary, but it spontaneously comes to mind.

I cannot understand how someone can be as confused, as blind and as mixed up as the member for Vaudreuil. You should ask one of the pages to bring him some aspirin, because there is definitely something wrong with him.

I have been working with the government party for seven months to improve employment equity, and the member has the nerve to rise today and speak against the Bloc Quebecois. There is something wrong with him.

Let me kindly remind him that the issue being debated today is whether or not the motion tabled by the Reform Party against the actions of his government is supported by the official opposition. We made a speech in which we expressed our concern about the ethnocentric attitude-the member may not understand that term, but we will send him a dictionary-of Reform members, and the member finds a way to rise and be disrespectful towards me.

I will conclude by telling him this: As for sovereignty, if he wants to debate the issue, I am prepared to do so anytime, anywhere.

I will also tell him that, if he looks at the way the Parizeau government, and the previous Quebec governments, particularly the PQ governments, have treated the English-speaking minority, to which I think the member fully belongs, he will realize that he need not worry at all and, also, that we have no lesson to learn from him, given the respect which we have always shown towards the English-speaking community in Quebec.

The members' comments are shameful, unacceptable and totally irresponsible, in my opinion. I am sure that the Minister of Human Resources Development and his secretary of state are outraged by the fact that a government member would rise to make such irresponsible comparisons.

As for the issue of a better future for sovereignists, the hon. member has come up with a rather stupid and meaningless argument, and I would remind him that when Mr. Lévesque held the referendum in 1980, the federal debt stood at $75 billion. Consequently, when the member rises in this House, he should never forget that the debt now stands at $600 billion.

I am not worried about Quebec's future, but I certainly am concerned about the future of Canadian federalism.

[Supply, May 30th, 1995]

Madam Speaker, I thank you for allowing me to take part in the debate. Once the House has returned to normal, you will permit me to say what is obviously a fact and what I am proud to point out: that the Bloc Quebecois supports the bill on employment equity.

You will understand my concern that we should be dealing, in this House today, with a motion that is, in my opinion, ultraconservative. It is very backward and has a major strike against it because it fails to take into account a basic premise, which has been brought to our attention by a number of witnesses since December. The Standing Committee on Human Rights of which I am the vice-chairman has been working for almost seven months on employment equity.

I can assure you that we have had a number of people come and remind us that one would have to be completely blind and particularly obtuse not to understand that, when it comes to dealing with the labour market and finding one's niche in an organization, people are not all equal before the law.

Permit me to point out that the notion of employment equity is not new. In the early 1970s there was a movement in Canadian society and people demanded that legislators intervene to promote greater equality among individuals.

There are, in the area of employment equity, two major types of discrimination. There is discrimination, which is more at the individual level in our society, which takes the form of prejudice and stereotypes and which is found in interpersonal relationships. There is another broad type of discrimination, which is systemic. This means that the system, the labour market, left on its own, would generate inequality of itself, and we would find ourselves in a situation created by a set of practices and procedures. The most obvious example of this, which we all know, is that women do not have the same career options.

These arguments could also apply to politics. We must acknowledge that women interested in a political career face additional requirements because there is a social division of labour which takes for granted that women should be responsible for child care. The same goes for the labour force. It is much more difficult for a woman to reach management levels because of the social pressures that still exist in our society.

That is why in 1983 the Liberal government then in power asked Judge Rosalie Abella to lead a commission of inquiry and recommend what could be done to achieve greater equity in the workplace. What is interesting about this commission, which made 31 recommendations-including some that have become

law and some that are included in Bill C-64-is that the Isabella Commission defined discrimination right off the bat. The commission defined discrimination as the arbitrary barriers that deny some people the opportunity to demonstrate their abilities.

This definition underlines the early link between the desire to end discrimination and the notion of ability.

What I find most appalling, most disgusting in the Reform rhetoric is that, throughout committee proceedings, they tried to establish a false link between employment equity and ability. As if public or private sector employers promoting employment equity had to hire incompetent people.

Right from the start, the Abella Commission made it clear that the two employment equity laws did not require employers in any way to hire incompetent people.

There is something very loathsome as well as some dishonest associations in the Reform Party's arguments.

What was the situation? Now that the Employment Equity Act has been in effect for nearly seven years, we see that some progress has been made. Let us look, for example, at the four designated groups. As members know, employment equity is a requirement for private sector employers with 100 or more employees. At the present time, the Employment Equity Act affects roughly 5 per cent of the labour force and 350 employers. We have not done nearly as much as we could to provide greater coverage for the labour force.

So, any employer who employs one hundred or more employees and does business under federal jurisdiction is required to develop employment equity plans indicating how he will ensure that his workforce better reflects the representation of various groups in the Canadian workforce. This is the purpose, the basis for the Employment Equity Act. Employers are asked to pay special attention to four groups which have a harder time finding a place in our society.

Which are these four groups? They are, as you know, visible minorities, members of ethnic communities; women of course, to whom you are very sensitive and who make up 52 per cent of the Canadian population; aboriginal people and people with disabilities.

Figures show that progress has been made. There are certainly more women and members of visible minorities in the workplace today than before. Let me give you some figures.

In 1987, one year after the Employment Equity Act was first passed, visible minorities represented five per cent of the labour force; in 1993, they represented 8.09 per cent of the labour force. So, there have been gains; there has been some progress. But can we reasonably assume that, without legislation to sensitize employers to visible minority integration, without influencing the labour market in any way, this would have happened anyway? I think not.

As for women, in 1987, they represented 40.93 per cent of the labour force and, a few years later, in 1993, 45 per cent. There have indeed been gains, but we must never lose sight of the fact that women make up half of the Canadian population and that it would be unacceptable for the workplace not to reflect this reality.

As for the other two designated groups, namely aboriginal people and persons with disabilities, they may well be the greatest source of concern to us parliamentarians. While the situation is relatively positive for women and for members of visible minorities, aboriginal people and persons with disabilities still have a long way to go.

In 1987, it will be remembered, aboriginal people accounted for 0.66 per cent of the workforce, compared to 1.04 per cent in 1993. This is not even a one per cent improvement. It is important to recognize the need to make room for more aboriginal people on the labour market.

Persons with disabilities account for 13 per cent of Canada's population, something which cannot be overlooked as we are about to enter the 21st century. There are more and more persons with disabilities in our society. These people want to work, and they can be part of the labour force. In 1987, persons with disabilities accounted for 1.59 per cent of the work force, compared to 2.56 per cent in 1993. This represents an increase of just under one per cent.

These figures are a reminder that, when it comes to employment equity, we can certainly not say "mission accomplished". There is still work to be done. I take exception to the comments made by the Reform Party.

Throughout the proceedings, we heard Reform members shamelessly and unacceptably claim that, in 1995, there existed what they called reverse discrimination. They said that, in our society as well as in the workplace, those who are discriminated against and for whom policies are required are in fact white men with no handicap, a group which the neoconservatives of the Reagan era called the silent majority. This is the simplistic argument used by Reform members.

Yet, we see-according to the figures released by the Canadian Human Rights Commission-that white men with no handicap hold 55 per cent of available jobs, while accounting for 45 per cent of the workforce.

Given these figures, how could we possibly agree with the simplistic views of the Reform members and their comments on reverse discrimination?

Another study, conducted by the Pearson Institute, is very enlightening. Two years ago, this institute estimated that, of the people in the top 500 positions in Canada, the movers and shakers who make the most important decisions and have

enormous influence on the government's decisions, less than 1 per cent were aboriginal people, less than 4 per cent belonged to a visible minority and less than 12 per cent were women.

And there are nevertheless still people around who say that there is no need to legislate a more even distribution of influence, power and management positions in our society, than what currently exists.

If they would only make the effort to methodically write up the profiles of the members of each designated group, they would see that there are still some extremely unsettling problems and inequalities. Of course, we are not saying that nothing good has come of the legislation in the seven years since it was passed. We realize that women and visible minorities have made advances. But we can in no way sit back and exclaim: "Mission accomplished".

Let us look a little closer at the realities of the designated groups. In 1994, even 1995, it is downright awful that the average woman working in the private sector, doing exactly the same job, reporting at exactly the same level in the management chain, and holding exactly the same responsibilities as her male counterpart earns approximately 66 per cent of what the man earns. It is statistics like that which should make us all indignant. Why should we tolerate, as parliamentarians, the fact that, as our society prepares to enter the 21st century, a woman and a man with the same responsibilities and qualifications are not paid the same salary?

It is odd that the Reform Party does not mention this reality. This is absolutely incredible, given the large-scale awareness campaigns led by Treasury Board. So, how is it that, during the course of our work the Reform Party never concerned itself with this reality? What about visible minorities? If we conducted a little experiment and put ten members of visible minorities and ten Caucasians-and I say Caucasian because this is the expression used in the Act-in the same room, we would realize that there were more university graduates among the members of visible minorities than among the Caucasians. And yet, half the time, members of visible minorities are limited to jobs that require little education, pay little and involve manual work.

Who is going to tell me that we, as parliamentarians, should not be concerned about this injustice? This is the reality. And then, what about native people? A report was recently tabled in the House on social problems among the native population. The rate of suicide is extremely high among native peoples. My colleague, the hon. member for Saint-Jean, could speak much more movingly and more expertly than I on this subject. However, the latest statistics have revealed that, in 1993,-and we are not talking about 300 B.C.-the rate of unemployment among native people was still double the national average.

Native people are concentrated in jobs requiring less knowledge and fewer skills and even more in so-called manual jobs. You would not be surprised to learn, Madam Speaker, that the annual employment income of native people is lower. If you have a job, earn a salary and are a native person you, in all likelihood, will be earning $10,000 less than your white counterpart. This is unacceptable, as you will understand.

As regards persons with disabilities, this is perhaps where the Employment Equity Act has made the least progress. This is understandable, because integrating a person with a disability requires employers to make alterations, what the courts have called reasonable adjustments.

It is because of these realities that we must support a bill like the one tabled by the government. I am not saying that, as the official opposition, we do not have a few reservations about this bill. As the committee members know, we put forward a number of amendments. I would have preferred the employment equity plan to be developed jointly by the workers' representatives and the employers, but such is not the case.

What is the Reform Party so worried about in this bill? Why must we spend our time trying to convince our Reform colleagues that a law such as the Employment Equity Act is necessary in Quebec and Canadian society?

Bill C-64 provides for something that we have been demanding for six years: it will now apply not only to 600,000 private sector workers but also to the Canadian public service. This means that, at a single stroke, 200,000 additional workers will enjoy greater protection. I see this as a positive development, since we must recognize the absurdity of asking private sector employers to promote employment equity while exempting the government. We have waited several years for this amendment.

Another positive point is that there will now be an entity in charge of enforcing the act. While employment equity was previously under the jurisdiction of the minister and the human resources branch, the Canadian Human Rights Commission will now be responsible for enforcing the act. The commission may audit reports and establish an employment equity review tribunal. From now on, when employers do not submit their reports in time or when compliance officers discover violations, a quasi-judicial tribunal will have the power to investigate. That is an achievement, a very positive development, that must be applauded.

What is also very positive, as I think we pointed out earlier, is that we used to ask employers to make a quantitative assessment of their efforts.

In conclusion, the Bloc Quebecois is very much in favour of this bill, although we do have a few amendments. But I cannot understand how the Reform Party can take such a small-c conservative, reactionary and deplorable position on human rights.