SoVote

Decentralized Democracy

House Hansard - 78

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 31, 2022 10:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 78 - May/31/22
Mr. Luc Desilets (Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, BQ)
  • May/31/22 12:56:41 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I commend my colleague from Vaughan—Woodbridge, whose French is getting better all the time. Obviously, the Bloc is opposed to any sort of hiring quota and the imposition of such quotas on the basis of the four criteria set out by the Liberal government. How would the member, who is from the business community, react if his superiors gave him similar instructions and he had to hire people in his sector based on those four criteria?
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Context: House Hansard - 78 - May/31/22
Ms. Andréanne Larouche
  • May/31/22 5:38:58 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, actually, listening to today's speeches, I get the impression that we are searching for a cosmetic fix to a problem. We have so much work to do to deal with the causes, and imposing these targets and quotas is not the appropriate way to deal with the problem. I will give my colleague an example. During the pandemic, the numbers showed that women were impeded in their research, that they were particularly affected by the pandemic and that this was detrimental to their academic work. Would imposing targets and quotas have solved the problem? I do not think so. We really have to get to the root of the problem. Why were these women affected by the pandemic, why does the mental load still fall on them today, and why are they even more stuck at home, which has an effect on their work? What can we do to improve their work-life balance? These are the kinds of questions I want to raise today. In my speech, I spoke about the quandary that quotas create for universities. I also explained that these things are already being done in Quebec anyway. I think that we need to be addressing this issue on a larger scale. We need to be proactive. I do not think that setting criteria and targets will necessarily help fix the many problems.
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Context: House Hansard - 78 - May/31/22
Mr. Garnett Genuis
  • May/31/22 5:56:06 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, respectfully, the point I would make on this is a bit more subtle. It is to say that there are barriers that people face that are not necessarily the result of the intention of somebody to discriminate. There may be issues of unconscious bias or there may be structural issues that lead to an effect of discrimination without there being an intent to discriminate, but my point is also that the solution to that problem is not saying we should slap a band-aid on and have quotas. My solution to that problem is saying we should do everything we can to understand what the root causes of those barriers are and try to remedy them. That is important not only for those who would otherwise benefit from a quota, but for everybody society-wide, if we could try to understand and confront those root causes.
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