SoVote

May/31/22 11:27:44 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, the difference between women who have earned their places and women being appointed to their places is paramount. Women I have spoken to take offence at the fact that they have to be appointed in order to make it to a position rather than earning their place as they should, and they do. The difference is that we are jumping a couple of steps on that. Eliminating barriers allows women or anyone with an ethnic diversity to get through that barrier in order to earn their own place on the podium. However, we jump that and say we know there are barriers but we are just going to appoint someone anyhow. We eliminate the systemic problems that exist in the first place. UBC, which appointed 60 positions, put out a target ad, meaning it posted a job for women only to apply. The problem when that is done and a quota is filled is that the next ad would say that only people with disabilities could apply and women are excluded. We cannot exclude them in order to get others ahead. What we need to do is break the barriers down, to your point, so we have more women who want to enter politics who can and are able to then do it on their own merit, because we know—

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Context: House Hansard - 78 - May/31/22

Mr. Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay (Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, BQ)

May/31/22 12:17:47 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise today, on this Bloc Québécois opposition day, to speak to our motion on federal funding for university research and the associated conditions. With this motion, which I will not read again, our objective is clear: we must ensure that grants are awarded without discrimination, based on skills and qualifications, essentially on merit, and not on identity-based criteria, in the interests of genuine equality of opportunity. This motion is particularly important to me, because universities have long been some of the institutions where I have been fortunate enough to spend some of my career. In Quebec, I studied political science at the Université de Montréal, and sociology at the Université du Québec à Montréal. I was fortunate to have been a lecturer at Laval University and at the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi. I was also able to see what was happening across the ocean because I had the amazing fortune to complete my doctorate in the socio-economics of development at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris. Those were probably the best years of my life. I have very fond memories of my university days, although they were unfortunately not without a few dark periods. During their careers, young students, researchers and teachers quickly learn about the hegemony of research chairs, which unfortunately too often comes at the expense of teaching, a role that is now mostly carried out by precarious staff. This hegemony of the chairs also lets Ottawa take control of research and impose its ideological terms and themes. This is especially true in the social sciences, where radical ideologies are often lifted directly from American campuses. Academic researchers who arrive in the middle of this have no choice but to conform, or else be pushed to the academic sidelines. The Canada research chairs program was created by Jean Chrétien's government 20 years ago, in a context where Ottawa was sucking the lifeblood out of Quebec's public finances and then using its surpluses, obtained on the backs of Quebeckers, to invade areas of provincial jurisdiction, with education being one such jurisdiction. At the time, Ottawa swore that they would not be intruding on education since research was not specifically under any jurisdiction. However, it is now clear that the creation of research chairs was a direct intrusion. The program is basically acting as a hiring program for professors. Ottawa is dictating to the universities the terms and conditions for hiring faculty. This situation is unacceptable and the program must be overhauled. Ottawa is using its spending power to occupy the field of research funding. It is taking advantage of the fact that money is key and thus changing the way our universities operate. That is what is happening with the excessive demands imposed by the Canada research chairs program, particularly its requirements for equity, diversity and inclusion, which we find unreasonable. By imposing its requirements under these research funding programs, Ottawa is not respecting the autonomy of universities. There is no reason for Ottawa to dictate conditions of employment for faculty. If Ottawa wants to take over spending power in the field of education, it should offer funding unconditionally, but that will never happen. As my colleague from Mirabel said earlier, Ottawa imposes conditions but does not offer funding, as always. It is unacceptable for Ottawa to impose targets on Quebec universities under threat of sanctions. These universities are educational institutions where independence of thought should be at the forefront. Why can they not be given free rein to set up their own diversity and inclusion programs, without being dictated to by Ottawa under the threat of losing some of their funding? The requirements imposed by Ottawa are unacceptable and illegitimate obstacles. It was no doubt to remedy this problem that the Pauline Marois government, with Pierre Duchesne as minister of higher education, sought to liberate Quebec's education system from Canadian ideological control by creating Quebec research chairs. That would have been a good idea. I am being critical of the research chairs, but I want to make it clear that we strongly support permanent, increased funding for scientific research. There is no denying that Canada is unfortunately not a leader in this area. I could even say that it is a real dinosaur, and I think the best example of that is the fact that one former minister of state for science and technology was openly creationist. This was in the 2000s, not 1950. That gives an idea of how scientific research was treated by that government, and the underfunding of scientific research has been a glaring issue. The Naylor report clearly showed that funding cuts in research and development over the past 20 years have had devastating consequences. We saw that at the beginning of the health crisis, which we are barely out of. We had no pharmaceutical industry. We had no drugs, no medical equipment, no vaccines. Worse yet, we had no adequately funded structure to begin working on developing everything I just listed. We had no capacity for rapid development. As for the scientific research institutions that used to be the pride of Quebec, such as the Centre Armand-Frappier, they were all simply abandoned by Ottawa. I think we can see that there are consequences to living in what the Prime Minister proudly called the first “post-national” country. We have more examples. Canada would do well to put its energy into evolving out of the Jurassic age instead of trying to dictate the nature of scientific research and who is authorized to conduct it. Of course we are in favour of including people from diverse backgrounds as much as possible. That goes without saying, because diversity is neither good nor bad. It is a reality. It is a reflection of contemporary society. Let us not forget that the Bloc Québécois once included in its ranks Osvaldo Nunez, the first Latin-American MP in the history of this parliamentary institution. The Bloc also had Bernard Cleary, an indigenous person, and Vivian Barbot, who is originally from Haiti. It also got my predecessor, Ève‑Mary Thaï Thi Lac, elected in Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot as the first Quebec woman of Vietnamese descent in the House. Today, I am the first member of the Huron-Wendat nation to become a member of the House, and I did it as a member of the Bloc Québécois. We have no lessons to learn on that score. Let us make that clear. I would hope that, in addition to representing a diverse population, all these people, myself excluded, were chosen to be lawmakers, elected to serve as members of this Parliament, because they were, first and foremost, skilled and qualified. When people have the same qualifications, of course, no problem. We have no problem with affirmative action to right some of the grave injustices of the past that, unfortunately, very much persist to this day, but restrictive criteria other than straight-up qualifications should never be imposed. Recently, Laval University put up a job posting that did not say an equally qualified person from a diverse background would get the job. The posting specifically said “reserved”. If that is not discrimination, what is it? My riding is home to an internationally renowned university-level institution, the faculty of veterinary medicine at Saint-Hyacinthe. Naturally, as the only French-language veterinary training institution in North America, it attracts talent from around the world. Recently, students and young researchers told me that the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council sent bursary applicants a survey asking them to disclose their sexual orientation. Can someone explain to me how sexual orientation has any bearing on one's ability to dissect a dead bird or on the quality of laboratory testing for avian flu? Why is that relevant? I am still wondering. As a final point, I would say that academic freedom is a fundamental struggle that comes down to the most basic independent thought, the need to reflect on things using reason. It has long been said that the purpose of education is to learn to think, not to learn what to think. The research chair system is a way to tell students what to think. It not only tells students what to think, it also tells their instructors what to think.

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Context: House Hansard - 78 - May/31/22

Hon. Bardish Chagger

May/31/22 5:10:36 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have been watching the member for Victoria engage in this debate throughout the day. I really appreciate the approach she is taking of recognizing that we need to do better, as well as the fact that this is actually much more of a conversation about how quickly, for example, if we see a woman such as myself or herself be appointed, we see the headlines become that it is not merit-based. We are qualified individuals. We are educated. To suggest that when we have more diversity and intersectionalities represented, candidates are all of a sudden less qualified I personally think is, first of all, ridiculous and also disheartening, hence why I mentioned it in my comments. I know we have very qualified people who have been overlooked for far too long. We are creating systems that work for more Canadians, for more talent, and that is why dismantling the systemic issues is instrumental. I would like to assure the member that I will keep fighting to ensure that we do better.

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Context: House Hansard - 78 - May/31/22

Mr. Garnett Genuis

May/31/22 5:58:00 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I think meritocracy is an ideal. We want to live in a society where everybody is judged based on merit, but we have to also acknowledge that we are inevitably going to be imperfect in living out that ideal of meritocracy. That is why we need to try to understand and respond to various issues. It is not that meritocracy is not desirable. Of course it is, but we should not presume that we are living it out perfectly. We should continually be working toward it.

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