In this day and age, why do we tolerate a law in Canada that institutionalizes discrimination?
The Employment Equity Act requires that employers in certain industries give hiring preferenc e to women, people with disabilities, aboriginal people, and visible minorities. The idea is that these groups should be given special treatment in order to compensate for past injustices.
While this is, indeed, a worthy objective, the method is flawed.
In private enterprise, positions should be filled on the basis of merit. Increased efficiency, competitiveness, and profitability are significant motivators for businesses to have the most capable workforce possible.
As such, an employer would not only have to be horribly bigoted, but also be a poor business person if he were to hire an incompetent white man over a more qualified female visible minority applying for the same job.
Such a company would languish while competitors whose hiring was based on calibre would achieve maximum efficiency and success.
However, just as the employer who refuses to hire the best candidate out of prejudice will see his business suffer, so too will the employer who cannot hire the best candidate because of well-intentioned equity legislation fail to capitalize.
Regardless of motivation, hiring based on irrelevant factors such as race or gender, rather than merit, prevents businesses from developing in a healthy competitive manner.
The Employment Equity Act applies to federal government regulated industries, which account for about 10 per cent of the Canadian workforce.
The industries that fall under the act are not exactly stellar examples of Canadian achievement: telecommunications, transportation, railroads, and airlines, among others.
Equal opportunity for all is imperative, but it should be achieved by removing obstacles that stand in the way of people realizing their ambitions, not by providing special privileges to certain demographic groups to the detriment of society.
No one benefits if everybody’s well-being is sacrificed in order to achieve fairness. Not only that, but given the arbitrary selection of demographic groups covered by the Employment Equity Act, it is doubtful greater fairness is achieved at all.
University of California researchers have found that unattractive people make 12 per cent less than those easier on the eye. Meanwhile a 2004 study in the Journal of Applied Psychology has found that someone who is 5 feet 5 inches tall will earn $166,000 less over the course of a 30-year career, on average, than someone who is six feet tall.
The list of disadvantaged groups goes on. Clearly it would make more sense to improve overall well-being than to try and give artificial advantages to everyone who might be subject to discrimination.
For the first time in history, there are more women in the American workforce than men, and young women are earning more than young men.
According to New York research firm Reach Advisors’ analysis of Census Bureau information released in 2008, single childless women between 22 and 30 are earning eight per cent more than their male counterparts.
This result has been achieved primarily because more women are getting university degrees than men.
In fact, young women are outperforming young men in just about every conceivable area. With statistics like that, can anyone still patronizingly say women need a handicap to compete?
Discrimination is unconstitutional under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Let’s focus on prosecuting discrimination rather than institutionalizing it.
Canadian businesses will be better equipped to be competitive in the global market if they are allowed to hire the best people, rather than the people the government arbitrarily thinks need extra help.