Thank you, Mr. Chair. This recommendation came from the Human Rights Commission. The Minister stated that there was no time for consultation, because we are just seeing this now on the floor of the House. It was in the report. It has been years since that report. This committee, which undertook the review of this bill, read the report. When the committee went on the road, they asked explicitly, in every community that they went to, how people felt about this clause. It is a little disingenuous to say that there no consultation. There was consultation; it's in black and white in the report.
The Minister and the department knew about this recommendation. They read the report. They chose not to engage. The Minister stated that the small, local insurance providers probably don't even know about this. That is because the department never went to talk to them about it. There has been no meaningful alternative presented by the department. With other bills, there is a lot of back-and-forth between the committees and the departments, and in the end, we come to something that we can all agree on. We have seen nothing from the department to address this issue of prohibiting discrimination based on genetic characteristics.
The only reason that I see that this is being opposed is because of fear, fear of a lobbyist group. I have never before seen a document tabled in the House from a lobbyist group, and then an entire Cabinet position based on that document. This is the sort of thing that people think about when they think about politics. That is why a lot of us got into this, because of practices like that. We want to stop practices like that.
This might not be a perfect solution. This motion might not be the perfect motion, but it is better than anything that the department has brought forward. Because of those reasons, I am going to be supporting it. Thank you, Mr. Chair.