I hear the hon. member. That may be so because so many have complied with the rules already. Why not leave the rules in place? If everyone is complying and the rules are in place, fine, it does not do any harm to have them there. Yet the hon. member for Calgary Centre spouted absolute rubbish. He suggested that we did not need the bill at all and that we should scrap it. That is what these amendments do and I am not in favour of the amendments.
City police forces, national chartered banks, multinational computer companies and more and more Canadian employers are enjoying the benefits of workplace inclusiveness and fairness, with good reason. Margaret Wente wrote in the Globe and Mail that employment equity programs were ``spreading, not shrinking. Their biggest boosters are powerful, middle aged white men-.They need diversity in their work forces, not to remedy past injustices but to be more successful''.
The business argument for employment equity is straightforward. As our population becomes more racially diverse, it is essential that a company's workforce reflects the market it wants to sell to. This is increasingly true in the international marketplace. Business organizations ranging from B.C. Hydro to North American Life Assurance and the Bank of Montreal realize this reality and fully endorse equal opportunity employment. Many of those employers appeared before the committee. The hon. member for Winnipeg North who is chair of the committee heard those
witnesses. He has spoken about it and will continue to speak about it in the course of the discussion on the bill.
They and other progressive employers have instituted employment equity programs in their workplaces not out of benevolence but out of good business sense. They have discovered that the best argument for employment equity is the bottom line.
Black & McDonald, the Toronto based mechanical and electrical services contractor, is an example in point. Many of the people hired as maintenance mechanics and building supervisors over the past few years were recent immigrants due as much to a skill shortage in Canada as to the firm's employment equity efforts. The company reports that the performance of this division has improved dramatically, which it credits to its highly skilled, hard working visible minority employees and the market potential they represent. More and more satisfied customers have resulted in more and more contracts for Black & McDonald.
A recent Conference Board of Canada study found that half the employers surveyed capitalized on Canada's ethnocultural diversity to expand their market share. That trend will only increase. By 2001 visible minorities should form 48 per cent of the consumer market in Toronto, 20 per cent in Montreal, and 39 per cent in Vancouver. Firms that fail to act quickly will be left behind in a country experiencing huge population growth among designated groups.
Upwards of three-quarters of new entrants into the workforce by the turn of the next century, which is only five years from now, will be members of the designated groups. At a time when human capital far outweighs location or physical resources, it is imperative that employers maximize their people potential in the workplace.
Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce chairman Al Flood put it very well when he said:
The issue of underemployed intellectual capital is a major one for Canadian business in a competitive global society. A business in a complex, changing world needs more than one point of view. Those diverse views will only flourish in an environment uncontaminated by notions of ability based on gender, race, religion and so on.
The key word in that quote is ability because employment equity is really about assuring equal opportunities to individuals qualified to do the job. We are not talking, as the previous speaker said, about quotas. We are talking about ability, about assuring equal opportunities to qualified individuals. It is no coincidence then that half of all CIBC managers are women. Canada's banks have one of the best records in the economy for building diversity into their workforce. Yet never do we hear that such progress comes at someone else's expense.
While I am on the subject of someone else's expense I quote again from the little green book of the Reform. I have a quote here from the hon. member for Beaver River that will be instructive. Perhaps it explains in part the silly amendments of the hon. member for Edmonton Southwest. She said: "Women are just trying to lift themselves up to the detriment and expense of men". This is what the hon. member for Beaver River says. I presume she believes this nonsense. I suspect what happened is that she has been sitting there listening to her seatmate, the hon. member for Calgary Southwest, telling her that is what happens.
When the hon. member for Halifax or the hon. member for Nepean start speaking to me about lifting themselves up or changing their roles, I do not feel it is at my expense. I have never felt that it was at my expense. I am sure my male colleagues on this side of the House would share that view.
Our female colleagues are not getting additional rights at our expense. If they get any additional rights we are all improved by them. There is not a finite supply of rights. Rights are created because individuals are there. Because individuals get rights does not mean the rights of someone else are necessarily diminished. Some may feel that way, but I suggest it is not true that they are necessarily diminished. The extension of the rights granted by this legislation have benefited all our society enormously.
I do not know when the hon. member for Beaver River made this quote. Unfortunately the little green book, or "The Gospel According to Preston Manning and the Reform Party" as its other title reads, does not tell us when the quotation was made. Nevertheless the words are written down and I am sure the hon. member for Beaver River could not explain them away.
Another very short quote from her is: "I am basically a Tory". I do not know why she is in the Reform Party if she is basically a Tory. She should help the hon. member for Saint John. Then we have a famous quote of her leader, the hon. member for Calgary Southwest: "Deborah Grey is the prairie Margaret Thatcher". What a fire that is.
