Madam Speaker, once again the tolerant, compassionate, politically correct Liberals have denied the basic cornerstone of democracy, the right to vote. In fact I am sure they wish they could completely censor this motion. I do not doubt for one minute that some of them would suppress free speech in this place if they could.
Most of my Liberal colleagues across the way will decry this motion by saying that it is disrespectful of goals behind notions such as employment equity. It is often the people that support affirmative action who are the real promoters of discriminatory practices within Canadian society. They regularly avoid accountability or the need to intelligently debate the issues of discrimination and fairness, resorting instead to screams of racist, bigot and extremist. So entrenched is their ideology that they are incapable of assessing the damage to society some of their policies have done.
Section 15(2) of the Constitution is a good example. Let us look first briefly at section 15(1). Section 15(1) states: "Every individual is equal before the law and has the right to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination and, in particular, without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability".
So far that is pretty good. Section 15(1) enunciates a legal principle that is fundamentally sound. All of us are equal and should be afforded equal protection from discrimination under Canadian law. Even vertically challenged MPs with a New Zealand accent like myself are protected from discrimination by section 15(1). The authors of section 15 should have left it at that.
The purveyors of politically correctness and social engineering could not just leave it at that. In their zeal to make some Canadians more equal than others, in their misguided attempts to correct the wrongs of days long since past, they came out with section 15(2) which reads: "Subsection (1) does not preclude any law, program or activity that has as its object the amelioration of conditions of disadvantaged individuals or groups, including those who are disadvantaged because of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical ability".
Basically if we strip away the niceties, section 15(1) says we are all equal and section 15(2) says that programs like affirmative action and equal opportunity make some Canadians more equal than others because of their race, their gender and so on. This is Animal Farm all over again.
It surely must be clear even to the most fanatical defender of affirmative action that giving a specific group of people special rights automatically reduces the rights of some other group. These programs which are supposed to encourage equality actually end up discriminating against individuals who are not part of the favoured group.
In essence, the program sends a message that it is a waste of time applying for a reserved position. To the persons who are given the special consideration, the condescending message is: "Since you cannot hope to make it on merit alone, we will lower the requirements for you". The whole notion is insulting and demeaning. It is completely demeaning to those who it purports to help and those it excludes.
In all of my discussions with people who could be identified as visible minorities, I have never yet met one who wanted to get a job based solely on the fact that they belonged to a special group or a targeted group for affirmative action. They want to get a job based on merit just like the rest of us do.
In other words, even most of the people who are supposed to benefit from the special treatment do not want it. That is why a recent survey of the public sector, the public service in Canada, found such unwillingness for people to self-identify their ethnic origins.
The basic premise of affirmative action programs is highly insulting and is sometimes even racist. I thought the days of Mrs. Parks in Selma, Alabama were long gone, but no. There are actually government sanctioned programs and legislation in place in Canada which makes it legal to refuse people employment because of their colour or gender. I will talk about that a little more later. This is a sad state of affairs because it borders on contempt for those Canadians who truly support the principles of equality and merit.
Let me use an analogy which explains the problem by reference to the Olympic Games. If Olympic events had affirmative action and equal opportunity programs in place, the scenario would be something like this. The International Olympic Committee would implement a program which would allow anyone to compete in the 100 meters who could run it in, let us say, five minutes. Now there is not much challenge in that so it would be a pretty open field.
However, when the race is finally run, the person who won the race with the fastest time would not necessarily get the gold medal. Instead, the gold medal would be awarded to the fastest person who belongs to a traditionally disadvantaged group regardless of whether they won the race or not. Merit would not be a factor. Frankly, it would not take more than one set of Olympic Games for top athletes to work out that they were wasting their time with a lot of training and would simply give up entering the race. It would be equally demeaning for those who were winning the medals because they would feel they were not receiving it on merit.
This type of situation is exactly what happened to a Canadian named Timothy Juliette. He recently graduated from a civil aviation mechanical engineering course with a near perfect 3.98 grade point average. Subsequent to that he was denied entry into a Department of Transport training course which would have allowed him to pursue a career in his field. He was denied access to the course because he was not a member of a disadvantaged group. More to the point, he was denied the opportunity because of his gender and skin colour, in this case white and male.
Sadly, it is all quite legal and constitutional under the present system. Section 15(2) actually allows for programs which discriminate against persons who are not women, aboriginals, persons of colour and persons with physical limitations. It is the height of hypocrisy for the government to claim that it is working against discrimination while at the same time discriminating against people who do not fit into its quotas or hiring goals.
The worst thing is that some of the most vocal of the promoters of affirmative action are so blinded with ideology that they will not or cannot see how intolerant, bigoted and extremist their demands really are. Some of the most vocal act as if they have been chosen by God to be the sole possessors of tolerance, compassion, understanding and intellect, when in fact they exhibit all of the symptoms of intolerance, a lack of compassion and understanding and an inability to see the truth.
A homosexual support group demonstrated against the Prime Minister outside the House yesterday because he permitted a free vote on Bill C-33. The very group the Prime Minister is trying to help demonstrated its intolerance by indicating that it wanted the Prime Minister to force MPs to vote a specific way.
Members of this group need to take a look in the mirror at the reflection of their own intolerance and bigotry. Instead of trying to rationally discuss the issue with those who are voting against Bill C-33, they showed fanatical intolerance. No wonder they drive people away from their cause.
That group thinks it should be immune from accountability and that its version of tolerance and understanding would be to force those MPs to vote the way it says. It is lip service tolerance, and as I said, those people need to look at the reflection in the mirror of their own intolerance from time to time.
I listened yesterday to the member for Vancouver Centre. She told us of the dreadful discriminatory experiences she endured as she struggled to become a doctor. I can understand how she would become very bitter and angry from those experiences. However, we cannot correct the problems of the past by focusing that anger and bitterness into revenge on others who had nothing to do with the injustices. To do so is to sink to the same despicable level as those who have discriminated against her.
On Tuesday evening in West Block there was a reception for a group of Rotary Club students who had won a trip to this region through a competition. While I was at the reception I was approached by some young white males, students who were studying hard in the hope of getting good jobs.
They wanted to express their concerns to me about the discrimination they felt working against them every time they applied for jobs. Does the member for Vancouver Centre really want to hurt these young people? Does she really want to single them out for discrimination and denial of jobs because of the sins of the past? Could she look into their eyes and tell them that no matter how great their merit, their places must be filled by people from designated groups? Could she tell them they must be denied employment because they were born male and white?
Does she really think she can build tolerance and understanding this way? Logically the only long term outcome from that can be a backlash which would destroy all the gains made by teaching tolerance and understanding.
Education is the tool we must use, not discriminatory legislation. It was the state that legislated black people to the back of the bus in Alabama. It was the state that legislated discrimination in Germany and identified people by race, as this government is doing in the census this year. Everywhere discrimination has flourished, it has flourished because the state legislated that discrimination. Now it has happened and it is getting worse in Canada.
The member for Yorkton-Melville, who sits beside me in this House, worked for several years on an Indian reservation. Like the member for Vancouver Centre, he knows exactly what it is like to experience racial discrimination. Right here in Canada, under the noses of the members opposite, a white male living and working on an Indian reservation lived in fear for his life. I hope that at an appropriate time this member will repeat his story for the benefit of the people in this House.
Section 15(2) did not protect him from discrimination because legislation cannot change attitudes or enforce tolerance. It cannot enforce understanding. Only education changes attitudes and builds tolerance and understanding. In this regard I will refer to an incident which took place in the House earlier in the week.
On Tuesday morning the member for Etobicoke-Lakeshore, who is black, was visibly very angry after reading a newspaper report which claimed that the member for Nanaimo-Cowichan had made some discriminatory remarks under questioning by a reporter.
The member for Etobicoke-Lakeshore crossed the House and came among the Reform benches. She was yelling very loudly and was clearly very upset. It was impossible to determine exactly what she was saying. A fair bit of shouting went on back and forth between Reform members and the member for Etobicoke-Lakeshore. I was quite disturbed and distressed by the entire experience.
How much better it would have been if the member, before passing judgment on the basis of hearsay and a newspaper story, had demonstrated the tolerance and understanding she asks others
to display by approaching the member for Nanaimo-Cowichan and saying "is this really how you feel? Is the newspaper story correct? Is there some what we can correct this problem?"
If the member truly believes in promoting tolerance and understanding in these matters she must treat others as she expects them to treat her. This is a two-way street, and her goals will not be attained by screaming at those who can help her achieve these goals.
I am quite sad that I have to convey this message through a speech. I do so only because she appears hostile to any other discussions.
Unfortunately section 15(2) of the Constitution is helping to create an aura of anger and intolerance in the workplaces of Canada and I sincerely believe we would be better off without it.
As I said, I found the incident in the House this week very distressing. I found this entire week very distressing. I very much want to be part of a good and logical debate about important issues facing the country. I do not like being immersed in the aura of anger and intolerance which filled this place over the last few days.
I take the issues of racism and discrimination very seriously. Last year I attended a two day anti-racism conference in my riding so that I could listen to the concerns of those who had been affected and investigate whether there was any racism in my riding. I also advertised in one of my regular weekly reports for the North Shore News for any examples of racism that existed in my riding so that I could intervene and try to resolve the problem.
I am pleased to say that not a single example of racism has been reported to me in the almost three years I have been an MP. My constituents, like the majority of Canadians, are a tolerant lot quite capable of avoiding discrimination without the government's interfering in the process.
On the other hand, can we count as racism the fact that some school students in Richmond, B.C. have complained recently to the media that they cannot get jobs in their community because they are not ethnic Chinese and do not speak Mandarin or Cantonese? Perhaps the member for Richmond should begin addressing the problems in his riding. Can we count as discrimination the examples reported by white males who feel they did not qualify for job opportunities because they were not members of an identifiable group?
It seems these problems, which some might call reverse racism and reverse discrimination, are a direct result of section 15(2) and its associated affirmative action programs which, instead of eliminating discrimination, have simply transferred the discrimination from one group to another.
Two wrongs do not make a right. Let us get rid of these discriminatory actions of government and let us get rid of section 15(2). Let us concentrate on education as the weapon against discrimination.
