JOB QUOTAS REPEAL ACT, 1995 / LOI DE 1995 ABROGEANT LE CONTINGENTEMENT EN MATIÈRE D'EMPLOI
CONTENTS
Thursday 30 November 1995
Subcommittee Report
Job Quotas Repeal Act, 1995, Bill 8, Ms Mushinski / Loi de 1995 abrogeant le contingentement en matière d'emploi, project de loi 8, Mme Mushinski
STANDING COMMITTEE ON GENERAL GOVERNMENT
Chair / Président: Carroll, Jack (Chatham-Kent PC)
Vice-Chair / Vice-Président: Maves, Bart (Niagara Falls PC)
*Carroll, Jack (Chatham-Kent PC)
Danford, Harry (Hastings-Peterborough PC)
Flaherty, Jim (Durham Centre PC)
*Grandmaître, Bernard (Ottawa East / -Est L)
Hardeman, Ernie (Oxford PC)
*Kells, Morley (Etobicoke-Lakeshore PC)
*Marchese, Rosario (Fort York ND)
*Maves, Bart (Niagara Falls PC)
Pupatello, Sandra (Windsor-Sandwich L)
*Sergio, Mario (Yorkview L)
*Stewart, R. Gary (Peterborough PC)
Tascona, Joseph N. (Simcoe Centre PC)
*Wood, Len (Cochrane North / -Nord ND)
*Young, Terence H. (Halton Centre PC)
*In attendance / présents
Substitutions present / Membres remplaçants prèsents:
Bassett, Isabel (St Andrew-St Patrick PC) for Mr Flaherty
Boyd, Marion (London Centre ND) for Mr Marchese
Clement, Tony (Brampton South / -Sud PC) for Mr Danford
Parker, John L. (York East / -Est PC) for Mr Hardeman
Ross, Lillian (Hamilton West / -Ouest PC) for Mr Tascona
Also taking part / Autre participants et participantes:
Ministry of Citizenship, Culture and Recreation:
Clement, Tony, parliamentary assistant to the minister
Bromm, William, policy analyst
Lillico, David, legal counsel
Clerk / Greffière: Grannum, Tonia
Staff / Personnel: Klein, Susan, legislative counsel
The committee met at 1003 in room 1.
SUBCOMMITTEE REPORT
The Chair (Mr Jack Carroll): Good morning, everyone. The question came up at one of our other meetings about the request for reimbursement of expenses by witnesses, and there was some disagreement over that. The subcommittee has met again and unanimously decided that the payment of witnesses would be left to the discretion of the Chair. Only if the Chair made a no decision would that have to come back to the committee for a final decision. So I present that to you today as the report of the subcommittee. Does anybody have any problem with that?
Mr Bart Maves (Niagara Falls): A quick question: Does the Chair have discretion as to whether he just pays what's asked for or does the Chair have discretion to set the manner in which the transportation should have been utilized and so on?
The Chair: Basically he has discretion. We trust that he would use that well.
Mr Bernard Grandmaître (Ottawa East): Does it come back to us if --
The Chair: If the Chair's going to deviate from the request, then that would have to come back to the committee.
Mr Mario Sergio (Yorkview): We know you are going to be using your good common sense.
The Chair: That's right. That's the report of the subcommittee. Any further discussion on that? All those in favour of that report? Okay, the report's carried.
JOB QUOTAS REPEAL ACT, 1995 / LOI DE 1995 ABROGEANT LE CONTINGENTEMENT EN MATIÈRE D'EMPLOI
Consideration of Bill 8, An Act to repeal job quotas and to restore merit-based employment practices in Ontario / Projet de loi 8, Loi abrogeant le contingentement en matière d'emploi et rétablissant en Ontario les pratiques d'emploi fondées sur le mérite.
The Chair: Picking up where we left off on Monday, we were discussing the amendment to subsection 1(5) by Mr Clement. We had extensive discussion on it. Is there any further discussion to be held this morning? It was the third amendment.
Mr Grandmaître: That's the first government motion. As you know, the opposition had introduced a motion which was defeated, and we asked staff what was really the difference between the Liberal and the NDP amendments. I'd like staff to remind us again of the difference between the Liberal and the NDP amendments and the one introduced by the government.
The Chair: The two that we have dealt with, we have dealt with, so perhaps we could answer that question as an interpretation of this amendment, what in fact it means. Would that be sufficient? Can one of our experts handle that for us?
Mr David Lillico: Does the committee want a brief explanation of the differences among the three versions of subsection 1(5)?
The Chair: I don't want to dwell on the two that we've already dealt with. We've already had amendments that we've dealt with and rejected. I don't want to dwell on those two, I would like to dwell on this particular amendment. To make this one clear, if you need to refer to the two we turned down then feel free to do that, but don't dwell on the other two, please.
Mr Lillico: The amendment that's now before the committee is the government motion to amend subsection 1(5). As the bill has it at the present time, the requirement in relation to destruction of the information relates to information collected exclusively for the purpose of complying with part III of the act. So that refers to all the sections of part III of the act under which information may have been collected from employees.
The motion put forward the other day by the government makes a change so that the information in question is no longer all of the information collected under part III but only some of the information collected under part III, specifically the information collected under section 10.
Under the motion now under consideration, information collected under section 11 or section 12 or the other sections of part III would no longer fall within the category of information that needs to be destroyed if this motion is adopted.
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The distinction is that section 10 of the act deals with information provided by employees in the workforce survey as to their status in relation to the designated groups. Individual employees provide that information on the survey, and then, under the regulations, employers make certain determinations in relation to that information provided by individuals, and they compile it. So the information given by individuals and the compilation of that information by the employer, as is required by the regulations, that information would be required to be destroyed if it were collected exclusively for that purpose under the motion we have before us.
But other information, such as information relating to general policies and practices and barrier elimination that employers may have collected in relation just to determining in a general sense what barriers may exist in their workplace, all of that would need to be destroyed under the bill as it's currently drafted. Under the proposed amendment that other information about barrier elimination would not need to be destroyed and employers would be able to retain it.
Mr Grandmaître: Who will determine what is exclusively for the purpose of complying with section 10? Who will decide that the information collected will be exclusively to respond to section 10 of the bill? Who will determine this?
Mr Lillico: As the committee has noted before, there is no external enforcement provision contained in the legislation, so that different employers, we anticipate, will be in different positions as to the purposes for which they collected that information.
Some employers will have collected it only because they were complying with section 10 of the Employment Equity Act; some will have collected it partly for that purpose and partly for the purposes of complying with federal contract compliance requirements. It will be up to the employer in question to make a determination as to what the purpose was for their collection of that information. Those employers will make that determination.
Mr Grandmaître: Or an employee appealing or making a complaint to the Human Rights Commission, I suppose.
Mr Lillico: If there were a complaint by an employee that there had been a discriminatory action taken against that employee arising out of this, then that matter would go to the Human Rights Commission for determination, yes.
Mr Len Wood (Cochrane North): As pretty well everybody is aware, a lot of this information that was gathered was provided on a voluntary basis, and there's a considerable amount of cost and energy that was involved in gathering it. What I'm concerned about, and maybe you can answer this, is how you are going to be able to enforce the destruction of information that, like I said before, employees brought forward voluntarily. The lawyers were involved in compiling this, and employees and employers spent a considerable amount of money in gathering this.
Mr Lillico: As we've said before, there is no external enforcement mechanism in the bill as we have it, and the destruction requirement doesn't encompass all of the information that employees provided, only the part of the information coming out of the workforce survey in section 10 of the act.
Mr Len Wood: There are a lot of groups that have come forward in opposition, presenters that have come forward here saying that they don't want the destruction of any material that has been gathered to take place. The list is quite lengthy: the Toronto Board of Education, the Council of Ontario Universities, the Ontario Chamber of Commerce, the Committee on the Status of Women, the Alliance for Employment Equity, the Ontario Nurses' Association, the Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation, the Ontario Public School Teachers' Federation, the Toronto Employment Equity Practitioners' Association, Lawyers in Favour of Equity -- the list goes on and on and on.
There's an enormous amount of opposition out there to wasting of dollars in this particular section of the bill and the amendment that is brought forward. People have put a lot of energy and time into this and they don't want to see all of their time and energy just poured down the drain.
I was hoping that that whole section on destruction of data would be removed. We know, after yesterday, that this government that is in right now is only going to be in for one term, so this information can be used whoever the next government is. You don't have to go back and spend millions of dollars to collect the information again when the information is there. It can be stored and it can be used.
I don't know how else I can get the message across that it is wrong and very destructive on the part of the government to ask for the destruction of data that in everybody's minds was being done for the right thing.
There are a lot of employers and employees out there who would like to continue with employment equity programs in the workplace, because they know that is the way of the future. Other provinces are doing it, the federal government is doing it, there are other jurisdictions all around the world that are doing it.
Just because Ontario is in a mood now of destruction, cut and slash and burn and destroy everything that Ontario stood for, doesn't mean that we have to turn the clocks back 20 years and destroy everything, and this is basically what is happening here.
Mr Tony Clement (Brampton South): Could I --
The Chair: I don't know. That wasn't really a question, so there's no need. Are there any other comments?
Mr Clement: I'd like to respond, if I could. Do you want me to?
Mr Grandmaître: The Chair has a flight to catch.
Mr Clement: Obviously I've overstepped my bounds.
The Chair: No, I'm sorry. You're more than welcome to make a comment.
Mr Clement: Just for the record, I will respond on behalf of the government to Mr Wood's concerns. With respect to other governments in the world collecting these data, he may be correct, although I would go out on a limb and say that South Africa probably stopped collecting these sorts of data when the government changed from minority to majority rule. So there's a trend the other way as well.
I acknowledge that there were some quite vehement deputations in front of this committee regarding destruction of data. Mr Wood is quite correct. It is in replying to those deputations that the government put forward this amendment to restrict the destruction portion to as small a subset of the data collected as possible while still keeping to the principle that we as a government did not wish to coerce out of individuals personal information such as their racial background or the extent or presence of a disability.
In terms of wasting of dollars, it is my opinion that a number of the large companies that do have these data are probably in the process of modernizing these data, because they do have to always be modernized and brought up to date. If they are using these data for federal contract compliance, among other things, they get to keep the data. A lot of the smaller businesses that are caught by the previous legislation had not even begun to collect these data, so they would not be affected.
My opinion, sir, is that the wastage of dollars which you're quite concerned about, quite legitimately, is small if not non-existent.
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Mr Len Wood: In rebuttal response, why would it be a concern of so many presenters coming forward, and this is the position that they have taken, that it is wrong to destroy anything that valuable dollars and energy of people and employers have been involved in collecting?
We're talking about trying to build a stronger, a healthier, a compassionate Ontario, yet employers and employees are going to be told, "Everything you've done over the last number of years as far as collecting data, we have the right, we have a mandate from the election now to destroy." At some point down the road, if you have to reinvest and collect all these data again, the message I'm getting is that you think it'd be well spent to duplicate what has already been done.
I don't believe that it would be money well spent in a few years down the road to expect employers and the employees to be involved in the same exercise again. As I said before, the reaction I'm getting from the constituents and the media is that you only have a one-term government here and a lot of this stuff will have to be redone in three and a half years down the road.
Mr Sergio: Just for my own information on procedure here, is it common to go back and forth, or should we stick strictly to the question and debate the motion? Can I have some direction from you or staff? Otherwise we can spend three days just going back and forth because we do not agree with what one of the members may say. If it is appropriate, I would like to ask yourself or staff to say, "Let's stick to the debate on the amendment or the clause itself." You may not like what I say or what you hear, but I don't think that we should be going back and forth and spend three days on one particular clause.
The Chair: Point well made, Mr Sergio. Any other comments?
Mr Terence H. Young (Halton Centre): I would like to say something for the record. With all due respect to those presenters who came, many of the delegations -- and I don't want to name any names, because I'm not that familiar with all their backgrounds -- but a large number of those groups were in the employment equity business. That doesn't mean they have a conflict of interest; it means they have a duplicity of interest. In other words, without those data or without this system of employment equity that the former government brought in, a lot of them are going to lose business. We have to keep that in mind.
We have to represent all the stakeholders in the system and all the voters. Mr Wood made a comment that we have a one-term government, and he's speaking from experience, because he was just a member of a one-term government. But the secret to staying in government next term is representing society at large, which is what we're trying to do.
Mr Len Wood: With all due respect, these are not special-interest groups that made presentation just for the sake of being involved in employment equity and information. These are large employers and representatives of large employee groups, visible minority groups, women, people from all different cultures that they have in their workforce. For the member to say that their only interest is in gathering employment equity information is an insult to all of the groups that made presentations.
I've listed them off for the reason of making sure that they are covered on the record. What this member has said now is an attack on all of those groups as far as I'm concerned. It's not acceptable to see these groups, because they make presentations here and are wanting to make sure that, in this particular section, data are not destroyed and their money is not being thrown down the drain, being attacked by a member from the Conservative caucus.
The Chair: There being no further discussion on the motion, I'm going to call for --
Mr R. Gary Stewart (Peterborough): Mr Chair, could I have one question before we vote? I would like an interpretation of the word "exclusively." Would the parliamentary assistant just make a comment on what his interpretation of "exclusively" is, on the information, which in my mind -- and which may answer the question of some of them -- suggests that there is some material that can be retained.
The Chair: Mr Stewart, that question was asked and was answered.
Mr Stewart: Sorry I'm late, but I would like to know what the answer is. We've been at this thing for seven days. Another five minutes is not going to hurt, Mr Chairman, if I may ask.
The Chair: Okay. Could we have a quick interpretation of the word "exclusively," please?
Mr Grandmaître: That would be the same as you've answered.
Mr William Bromm: The word "exclusively" was put in to ensure that employers who collected data for other purposes were not required to destroy it. For example, employers who were federal contractor compliance employers were not collecting exclusively for Bill 79 purposes, and employers who already had employment equity plans or special programs prior to the passage of the Employment Equity Act who were updating their data under Bill 79 were also not collecting exclusively for Bill 79 purposes, so they would not be required to destroy. So our interpretation of the word "exclusively" is to capture only those employers who collected the data simply because Bill 79 told them that they had to.
Mr Stewart: Since the passing of Bill 79? Is that what you're talking about? Anything prior to that can still be retained?
Mr Bromm: Yes, and anything after the passage of Bill 79 that was collected for other purposes as well. An employer may have collected certain data not only for Bill 79 purposes but because they had to assess accommodation requirements under the Human Rights Code. Those employers would also not fall under the exclusivity wording of the provision and would not have to destroy the data. Again it's a question of that employer asking himself or herself whether or not they were collecting the data simply because Bill 79 told them they had to.
The Chair: Okay. There being no further discussion on the amendment, all those in favour of the amendment please signify by raising your hands. Recorded vote.
All in favour of the amendment?
Ayes
Bassett, Clement, Maves, Parker, Ross, Stewart, Young.
The Chair: All those opposed?
Nays
Grandmaître.
The Chair: The amendment carries. Shall section 1, as amended, carry?
All those in favour? All those opposed? Section 1 is carried, as amended.
Are there any amendments to section 2?
Mr Grandmaître: Yes. I move that section 2 of the bill be struck out, Mr Chair.
The Chair: That particular motion, Mr Grandmaître, is out of order for procedural reasons.
Mr Grandmaître: Can you give me the reasons?
The Chair: The way to express your wishes to remove a total section is to vote against it.
Any other amendments to section 2? Any discussion on section 2?
All those in favour of section 2 being carried? All those opposed? Section 2 is carried.
Any amendments to section 3? Seeing none, any discussion on section 3?
Mrs Marion Boyd (London Centre): I'm worried about section 4, not section 3.
The Chair: Any discussion on section 3?
All those in favour of section 3 being carried? All those opposed? Section 3 is carried.
Any amendments to section 4? Ms Boyd?
Mrs Boyd: Mr Chair --
Mr Grandmaître: On a point of order, Mr Chair: I'm sorry, but the NDP did have a motion on section 2. I think it should be read into the records.
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The Chair: It was also out of order. It was the same as yours. There was no need to --
Mr Grandmaître: Didn't you want to read it into the record?
Mrs Boyd: If necessary, sure. We probably should record that that was an amendment that was similar.
The Chair: Backing up, the NDP also had an amendment to section 2.
Mrs Boyd: Which was exactly the same as the Liberal amendment.
The Chair: That it be struck, and that amendment is ruled out of order.
Getting back to section 4, any amendments to section 4?
Mr Grandmaître: I move that section 4 of the bill be struck out.
The Chair: That motion is also out of order for the same reasons that the motion in section 2 is out of order.
Mrs Boyd: I would indicate that the NDP also had a similar motion.
The Chair: The NDP had a similar motion that section 4 be struck out, which is also ruled out of order.
Any discussion on section 4?
Mrs Boyd: In the discussions here in terms of the Police Services Act, I would remind the committee that in fact the following groups called on the government to maintain the provisions in the Police Services Act: the African Canadian Legal Clinic, the Black Advisory Committee, the Black Educators' Working Group, the Federation of Women Teachers' Associations of Ontario, the Ontario English Catholic Teachers' Association and the OSSTF.
It's important I think for people to recognize that there has been a great deal of change in terms of public acceptance of policing as a result of communities which used to be quite actively suspicious of police forces who now because they see that police forces are more representative of the community tend to be more supportive. One of the real issues for us in terms of policing in this province is to try and build that community support for our police forces and to stop some of the very lengthy controversies that have happened around policing.
One of the signals of a truly integrated community is when those who have the authority to enforce the law look like the people on whom they are enforcing those laws. In fact, you'll find that in many communities the efforts of the police services in those communities to find and to seek out appointees to their police force that are more representative of the community have had a very positive effect on the community's acceptance and support of the police force.
It seems to me that this has been in place now long enough that it has shown itself to improve the sense of community accountability around police forces, and I would urge the government not to take this backward step of destroying the employment equity that has already begun to make such a difference in the support of police forces in this province.
The Chair: Any further comment on section 4?
Mr John L. Parker (York East): I would just make the point that I would tend to agree with much of what my friend has said as far as the value of making certain decisions within the police services, but those are best served, in my view, as management decisions so that the management within each police force can make the decisions that are appropriate in each case and staff their complement accordingly to meet the needs of their particular community, but not by having some statutory requirement come out of Queen's Park that tells them how to do it. It's a matter of how effectively to exercise one's police responsibilities and not a matter of Queen's Park laying out rules as to how hiring is to be done, not in this respect.
Mrs Boyd: If it were possible to do this in a voluntary way -- the value of having a representative police force has been known for 100 years. It hasn't happened, and we go right back to the whole purpose of employment equity legislation in the first place. If your government's position that it is unnecessary to have mandatory measures, that this will happen automatically as a result of goodwill and good management, it would have happened and we would never have been into this.
The previous Liberal government and our government knew that there needed to be some way to encourage managements to really look at this, to stop the closed door, "My dad was in the police force therefore it's my right to be there" kind of thing that we know has been the history of policing not only in this province, but quite frankly the history of policing in almost any community that has not taken extensive steps to open up hiring in police forces.
It is a very, very serious mistake, it seems to me, for you to rely on good management skills, whether it's in the police force, the education field, or in private industry or in government, because there is lots of history to show that people make many fine promises and nothing happens unless we're ensuring that it happens because people are required to make plans and to report their success.
The Chair: Any other comment on section 4? Seeing none, all those in favour of section 4 being carried? All those opposed? Section 4 is carried.
Section 5: Any discussion on section 5? All those in favour of section 5 being carried? All those opposed? Section 5 is carried.
Section 6: Any discussion on section 6? All those in favour of section 6 being carried? All those opposed? Section 6 is carried.
Section 7: A little procedural question here. Since section 7 has to deal with the short title of the act, we will deal with the long title of the act first. Is there any amendment to the long title of the act?
Mr Grandmaître: Why would we have to deal with the --
The Chair: Because there is an amendment to the long title of the act, so we need to deal with it first.
Mrs Boyd: I move that the long title of the bill be struck out and the following substituted:
"An Act to affirm systemic discrimination in Ontario."
The Chair: The amendment to the long title of the bill is out of order. Bill 8 has not been altered so as to necessitate such an amendment. Any other discussion on the long title to the bill?
Mr Rosario Marchese (Fort York): Yes, I wanted to make some remarks on the title of this bill. The reason why we moved such a motion, which you've just ruled out of order, is that we think the title is not just simply incorrect; it's not the truth. It doesn't speak about the truth about what Bill 79 was all about.
The deputants who came in front of this committee found it offensive. Most of the deputants who spoke found it offensive. We find it offensive. It offends us because we know that it doesn't tell the truth. As many of the deputants said, it's a lie. That's in fact what that is.
We wanted to move a motion that said in fact what this is going to do. What Bill 8 is going to do is to affirm systemic discrimination in Ontario, because Bill 79 was intended to rid ourselves of discrimination, systemic discrimination, and to assist those who were most affected by it. So Bill 8 brings us back to the terrible old days where systemic discrimination was the case, and it continues to be the case now by the introduction of this bill. There's nothing that this government has introduced that will deal with systemic discrimination. There's nothing there at all. There are fine words, but the fine words will not help people who have been discriminated against before and will continue to be discriminated against in the future.
The Human Rights Code and the Human Rights Commission will not solve it. They have not managed to solve systemic problems because they weren't set up to deal with systemic problems in the first place. It does from time to time, in individual cases, get to systemic problems but on the whole it is not empowered to do so. And that's the problem. This government is not going to put any money into the Human Rights Commission. They talk about changing the Human Rights Code. I'm not sure what that means. If you're going to change it, I would assume that the changes will help to speed up the cases, but not necessarily in a positive way. If they're not going to put any money, how will they speed up cases? So I see that any changes they might make might further empower the Human Rights Commission to dispose of cases rather than dealing with them effectively.
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I'm worried about what this government is saying. I know that some people feel they're doing the right thing, and I don't want to attack people for, or accuse them of, not doing the right thing because I think some of them are sincere.
But I object to the title. We introduced a title that speaks to what we think will happen, what we think existed before Bill 79, and we wanted to put that on the record to say we object to it and we think they're making a very serious mistake, as many deputants have told the members of this committee.
The Chair: Any other discussion?
Mr Stewart: Just a comment: When I look at the title that they have, "systemic discrimination" --
The Chair: Okay, we had --
Mr Stewart: -- to me it appears --
The Chair: Excuse me.
Mr Stewart: No, I appreciate that, but I just want to make a comment on what they're saying, that Bill 8 is going to promote discrimination. Bill 79 promoted and emphasized discrimination. We heard it in this chamber from people who were saying, "You are promoting racism, you're promoting discrimination because of Bill 79."
What I object to was the kind of comments that ours will not. I think what we're saying is that there will be equity in the workplace. It will be done voluntarily, as many of the various organizations that were here said it would, whether it was in the municipal field or in the business field, whatever. We are not giving any credit to management, to police services, boards, whatever, so I just take a bit of offence when we're talking discrimination --
The Chair: We are talking about the title to the bill, so if we confine our comments to that, please.
Mrs Boyd: I would beg to differ with my colleague on one thing that he said. I believe very strongly that everyone in this room is sincere in their views -- however differently we may have those views -- and that in fact there is no belief of mine, and I would not impute any motive of bad faith to the government in doing this.
That is exactly why we're proposing the title that we are, because we believe very strongly that however sincere the government may be it is the lack of understanding of what constitutes systemic discrimination, the lack of understanding of how all of us are implicated in our own lives in terms of systemic discrimination, because it is hard for us to see in ourselves the kind of discrimination that we have because we come from a perspective, and all of us do that. That is the real nub of systemic discrimination and the problem and the reason.
We're very serious and very clear about why we think this title is necessary: to alert people that if you are not actively working within yourself, within your community, to understand what the roots of systemic discrimination are and how that systemic discrimination shows itself in many different ways in the community, you are in fact affirming systemic discrimination.
By taking away the measures that would have worked to tackle a very difficult issue for all of us -- how people perceive and make decisions when they are hiring, when they are promoting, how that decision-making is based in our concept of who has merit and who has not -- that is what systemic discrimination is all about. And when a government takes away an action that called upon the entire community to work together to try and recognize and deal with the discrimination that underlies a lot of our relationships with other members of our communities with those whom we hire, with those whom we promote, then in fact it will be taken as a message that systemic discrimination is okay and that we no longer need to ask ourselves those difficult questions and face the fact that all of us do that if we're not constantly working against it.
We are very serious in saying that this act could much more truthfully and much more really be named an act to affirm systemic discrimination in this province, because we believe very strongly that that is the effect of this government's actions.
The Chair: Did you have something new to add, Mr Marchese?
Mr Marchese: Yes, of course. It's important to remember that most of the deputants who came in front of this committee were offended by the title, were offended by what the title said about job quotas, because they said, "Show us where there are job quotas," the majority of them. The majority opposed what the second part of the title speaks about, merit, because they said, "If merit were indeed the principle, most of us designated groups would be getting the jobs, and we're not."
Mr Stewart talks about people coming in front of this committee and saying Bill 79, I think he was referring to, in fact promoted discrimination and they were offended by it. Other than a few of them, the majority said quite the opposite. I know we want to hear what we want to hear, based on what we are presenting from two ideological positions, but what the majority of people said was not what Mr Stewart was saying. That's clear from the Hansard.
He talks about everyone wanting equity. I know that my colleague here says they're all sincere about that. I want to believe that, but the effect of what they're doing is quite the opposite. So if one is not intentionally doing something that I think will have a negative result, they are unintentionally doing the same thing. If that is the effect, then whether they're sincere or not about what they're saying, in my view it's causing the same discrimination that we were trying to fight.
They say they want equity in the workplace. Because they say it and because Mr Stewart says it, and all the other members on the other side, doesn't mean that it's happened in the past, because it hasn't. That's why Bill 79 was introduced. Because they say it now doesn't mean it's going to happen in the future simply because they will it so. They say these programs should be voluntary. Most of the deputants who came here said the voluntary system didn't work. Oh, yes, there's some small measure of success, but all in all it doesn't work. Because unless, as one of the lawyers came here and said, you have a big stick from time to time, people will not do it.
If you say you want equity in the workplace but will put no resources into making it happen, then equity will not happen. This government's saying we have a serious deficit, and yesterday's budget shows how they're cutting. They're not going to be able to put more money to bring about equity and merit in the system -- speaking to the title. They're not going to be able to do it, because there are no resources that will be allocated by this government to make equity happen. So how will it happen? Simply because they say, "We have a zero discrimination policy"? That's not going to make it happen.
The Toronto Board of Education had 120 policies on race relations in 1982. In 1986 they reviewed all those policies, only to discover, through the Hitner Starr report, we hadn't done a thing, but we had great policies. All the policy says is, "My God, we're the most progressive, the Toronto Board of Education system, on race relations in Canada." And we were, on paper. Not until we did something about what those policies should have done, did we move to deal with race relations.
This government says, "We have a zero discrimination policy, zero tolerance." That's wonderful. That's going to make us all feel great. We're going to go home and feel we're all equal. We're not equal, and sometimes we have to do unequal things to get to equality. Sometimes we have to do that. That's what they call reverse discrimination.
But I wanted to say these comments only to respond to Mr Stewart, because they've heard the arguments.
The Chair: Any other comments on the title of the bill?
Shall the title of the bill carry?
All those in favour? Those opposed? The title of the bill carries.
We'll go back to section 7. Are there any amendments to section 7?
Mr Marchese: This is the short title, right?
The Chair: This is the short title.
Mr Marchese: I'd like to move that the short title of this act be the Systemic Discrimination Affirmation Act, 1995.
The Chair: The amendment to the short title is out of order as it is contingent on the passage of the amendment to the long title, which of course did not pass. Any discussion on the short title, or section 7? All those in favour --
Mr Marchese: It's an offensive title. It is not, in fact, the case; it is, in fact, a big lie. It offends not just me personally, but many of the deputants that came. They ought to be ashamed of the way they have titled this bill. They know they have titled this bill politically because a number of them in caucus have said, "Whatever you do, don't talk about the reality of this bill; call it the quota bill." So what they have done politically is to say, "This is an act to repeal job quotas," and it's politically motivated. It's for that reason that it offends me. I wanted to say that for the record again.
The Chair: Any other comments on section 7? All those in favour of section 7 being carried? All those opposed? Section 7 is carried.
Shall the bill, as amended, be carried? All those in favour? All those opposed? The bill, as amended, is carried.
Shall I report the bill, as amended, to the House? All those in favour? All those opposed? I will report the bill, as amended, to the House.
That ends our business for today. I just would like to thank all of those who helped me survive my first stint as a committee Chair. I appreciate your cooperation.
The committee meeting for this afternoon is cancelled so that Mr Grandmaître can catch his plane home.
The committee adjourned at 1052.