Government Operations Committee on June 12th, 2023

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

I'll be brief, Mr. Chair.

When union resources have been used, grievances can take years to be resolved. That's why people need to be able to use more than one resource.

That being said, I have a feeling that we won't agree on the purpose of amendment G-7, whether we adopt it or not. I would ask for a recorded division on amendment G-7.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Colleagues, can we vote, then?

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Yes. Let's vote on it.

(Amendment agreed to: yeas 8; nays 2)

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Shall clause 12 carry as amended, on division, colleagues?

(Clause 12 as amended agreed to on division)

We have new clause 12.1, which is amendment G-7.1 on page 26.1 of the package.

Mr. Fergus, are you addressing that?

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Yes. Thank you.

The sponsor had raised concerns about the 2017 Therrien case, where a complainant who was refused by the commissioner was ultimately left without means to address the matter. This is a way of making sure that we address this matter: that complaints are referred to the correct course or recourse mechanism.

Practically speaking, from now on, if complaints come to the commissioner that are assessed and refused, then the commissioner must inform the whistle-blower of the most appropriate mechanism for dealing with the complaint. This is to make sure to not leave anyone hanging without options.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Ms. Vignola.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

We don't have any arguments.

(Amendment agreed to on division)

(On clause 13)

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

We have government amendment G-8, which is on page 27 of the package.

Maybe we'll go to Mr. Fergus for this one.

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Thank you, Mr. McCauley.

Also, thank you for getting my name correct. That's a joke between us. The day is young.

This goes back to a debate that we had earlier with the agreement of all parties that we would replace the term “good faith” with the notion of “on the basis of reasonable belief.” This is the international standard, and this is the one we all agreed to earlier on. This is basically carrying through implementing that in different parts of the bill.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Shall G-8 carry?

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

We can have a recorded vote on that.

(Amendment agreed to: yeas 8; nays 2 [See Minutes of Proceedings])

(Clause 13 as amended agreed to on division)

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Colleagues, there are no amendments to clauses 14 to 16. If we have unanimous consent, we can batch them.

Go ahead, Mr. Fergus.

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Chair, thank you very much for that.

We do have a number of changes we'd like to suggest. They affect clauses 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20 and 23. This is all related to the note that I shared with all members of the committee regarding what we are trying to do here.

All these clauses allow folks, if they take a case to the PSIC, and they're refused.... This opens up the the door allowing them to go directly to the tribunal.

Here's the situation. The commissioner has a lower threshold for accepting or approving cases. It doesn't stand to logic to then, with the lower threshold, if it doesn't work there, to send it to a place at the same time where there's a higher threshold. If you go straight to the tribunal, then, first of all, I don't think it would work out. Second, what will happen is that a lot of work will go to the tribunal. The tribunal will then be hearing a lot of the same cases. This will increase dramatically the work of the tribunal. Frankly, I think, to be fair, it would lead to the Speaker ruling that there's a royal recommendation implication on this.

I know this is a situation where we have a—

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Can I interrupt? Do you have a copy of the amendment you're proposing for clause 14?

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

I'm looking to negate these clauses. They're all related. In a sense, if we accept one, we should accept them all, but it would probably lead to a big use of resources.

Would you like me to repeat the clauses?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Which clause are you referring to? Is it clause 14?

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

It's clause 14. The changes are being proposed by, I think it's Mr. Johns. I might be wrong in who proposed them. I'm sorry; this was proposed by Mr. Garon. It's clauses 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20 and 23.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

I'm going to allow our legislative clerk to weigh in on whether we'll actually have to address these one by one.

[Dancella Boyi, Legislative Clerk]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Fergus, to confirm, you are referring to clause 14, clause 15, clause 16, clause 17 and clause 18.

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

It's clauses 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20 and 23.

[Dancella Boyi]

Thank you, Mr. Fergus.

On one last point of clarification, you mentioned these are amendments that have been proposed. We currently don't have an amendment to clause 14.

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

I apologize. I didn't mean “amendment”. I should have said “negate”.

[Dancella Boyi]

Negate, okay. It's to negate clause 14, for example.

The procedure we're asked to follow according to the rules is that an amendment to delete a clause is not admissible. It would be necessary to vote down the clause. When the chair puts the question on a particular clause and one is in disagreement, the correct process would be to negative it, to vote it down instead of amending to delete it.

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

That's fair enough. Thank you for that information. I will abide by that rule.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Colleagues, are we prepared to vote?