| Introducing Inroads | |
Introducing Inroads #3 | ||
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The articles in this, third, issue of Inroads raise some disturbing questions about matters for which we thought we had clear answers: employment equity, gender and violence, linguistic rights, the value of the Charter. We reflected long and hard about asking some of them. But we concluded that they were too important to leave unasked. There has been much emphasis in this country on improving the position of women and racial minorities in the labour market and the world of education. No one associated with this journal would deny the value of efforts to remove obstacles to equity in life chances. But is it possible that in seeking to achieve such equity we are, inadvertently, introducing inequity in another form? Several of the contributors focus on employment equity policy, especially in Ontario where legislation and jurisprudence have proceeded furthest. Elaine Ziemba, Ontario Minister responsible for employment equity explains the underlying reasoning. The goal is to break down the occupational ghettos due to which women, members of racial minorities, aboriginal peoples, and people with disabilities have been denied the chance to achieve their potential for reasons unrelated to merit. Ontario Law now requires employers to implement qualitative and quantitative measures that will result in these four categories of persons being represented in the workplace proportionate to their representation in the community. Sandi Howell and Doreen Meyer make the case for this approach. They point to statistics on earnings that demonstrate that employment equity cannot be left up to the market, that legislation is still very much indispensable. Does application of these policies entail quotas? Do they mean, in effect, that for some jobs “white males need not apply.” The Minister denies this, distinguishing numerical goals set at the workplace and based on local conditions specified in the regulations from quotas. In their analysis of the legislation and the controversy it generated, R. Brian Howe and Katherine Covell propose the addition of a “reasonable limits” clause to serve as a check against unjustified preferential treatment. While employment equity legislation is usually associated with the left, both Martin Loney and Robert Martin dispute the validity of this claim. Loney sees the legislation as, in effect, making the present generation of young white males pay for their fathers' and grandfathers' supposed misdeeds. Martin attacks what he sees as racist assumptions underlying legislation which defines people as members of racial groups first and citizens second. Both take the Ontario NDP government to task for falling victim to “political correctness.” Because of political correctness, they argue, questionable empirical assumptions underlying the policies are never put to the test. Education is the scene of the greatest efforts at attaining gender equity — among both faculty and students. Two contributions bring to light evidence that such efforts have been successful. Indeed, in examining the results of hiring practices in Canadian universities, Grant Brown suggests that they have been too successful. By his figures, qualified male applicants for university positions have in recent years been at a distinct disadvantage. Even more jarring to conventional wisdom, Luc Allaire and Jocelyn Campbell find that it is the boys who drop out before finishing high school or junior college in Quebec. Girls are now well ahead of boys from primary school right through university, including practically all the professional faculties. They conclude by wondering if the increasing absence of fathers as responsible role models helps account for the problems of their adolescent sons, and, even more ominously, what kind of role models today's adolescents will provide for their sons twenty years from now? The numbers amount to 35 to 60 percent of boys leaving school without adequate education to earn a secure, reasonable income. One manifestation of the resulting increased income inequality and family breakdown will be higher levels of domestic violence and anti-social behavior. Brian Crowley's thoughtful discussion of violence and gender confronts this troubling development. Crowley argues passionately against perceiving violence as simply men, the aggressors, attacking women, the victims. In a way, Crowley's charge is similar to that of the job equity critics: politically correct language is limiting discussion where gender is concerned. As a result, we are arriving at wrong conclusions about justice in human relationships. We publish in this issue three articles which originated with the Nakoda Project which, in 1992, during a time of intense constitutional debate, assembled a group of Canadians interested in policy questions. While the conference failed to define a common “ethos” as the organizers had hoped, it did produce some stimulating exchanges of views — as these articles testify. John Robson criticizes the Canadian intellectual elite (whose members dominated the discussions in his opinion) for rejecting the value of individual responsibility in favour of a belief that people should be evaluated and rewarded according to their group identity. A related case is made by Yves-Marie Morissette who warns of the dangers of posing political claims for redistribution in terms of the language of rights and entitlements. For Morissette, the problem is that such claims remove the issues from where they belong, in the political arena, expecting judges to resolve political questions according to the law. The third Nakoda piece, by Paul Stothard, provides an account of insufficiently heralded positive environmental developments. But, he adds, it serves no purpose for the individual citizen to castigate business for failure to achieve desired levels of environmental quality without taking that same responsibility is his or her own choices. Politicians will have to risk unpopularity by making the citizen put his money and efforts where his environmental mouth is. To complete this section, William Schabas spots blemishes on Canada's supposedly immaculate record on capital punishment, and tells us what we should do about them. In the first section of this issue are two articles dealing with contemporary political events. The first is our translation of an important statement on language policy by a group of prominent Quebec intellectuals. The second article is a “scoop” for Inroads. Gaile McGregor sent a series of memos to Keith Davey and other Liberal strategists during last fall's federal election campaign. To some extent, the Grits followed her advice; and they gained enough support during the campaign to win a solid majority. Did her ideas make a difference? All we can do is guess. It depends on how persuasive one finds McGregor's portrait of Canadian culture and her conclusions about what Canadians expect from politicians. We suspect that her analysis is less applicable to the West and Quebec than to Ontario and Atlantic Canada, but — agree or disagree — her memos make good reading. Finally, in our first issue we spoke of the value of “clashing opinions” and the sad lack of it in much of Canadian journalism. We are happy to publish here Ian Robinson's spirited defense of a trade-linked social charter. The article is a response to the polemic in Inroads #2 by one of our editors (John Richards) for greater trade liberalization. |
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