Mr. Speaker, I was listening with interest to the President of the Treasury Board as he glossed over some of the measures that the government will be taking in the next few months, measures that are in fact an attack against the rights of collective bargaining in the public service as well as the right to strike.
The assumption in what the President of the Treasury Board is saying is that the way essential services were negotiated in the past was somehow a problem, as if some essential services were not deemed essential because there was a process in place to consult and negotiate with the employees. In fact, I think employees would be pretty well placed to define what might be essential and non-essential, knowing their place of work.
This is clearly an attempt to centralize this designation in order to use it as a tool ahead of the bargaining process in order to win every single conflict.
I would like the President of the Treasury Board to tell me where the problem is.