Bill Blaikie

[West Coast Ports Operations Act, 1994, February 8th, 1994]

Mr. Chairman, the minister mentioned the discipline that he would want to bring to both parties to the dispute in this case and in other cases if he should find a way to have final offer selection built more into the labour relations of the country. I wonder if at this point he could tell us, because there is no obvious point in the bill where this question might be asked, why he chose not to try to impose some discipline on the company at the point at which the longshoremen volunteered to continue to handle the grain and the company refused.

It certainly seems to us, as I said in my earlier remarks, that this was an opportunity for the collective bargaining process to work without the pressure that it immediately creates when grain exports are held up. I wonder if the minister could explain why he did not say to the company: "Look, you simply cannot have that advantage. If people are willing to continue to handle grain then you must be willing to continue to permit them to do so". Why did he permit the lockout to transpire?

[West Coast Ports Operations Act, 1994, February 8th, 1994]

Mr. Chairman, we do this committee of the whole so rarely that none of us are as practised at it as we used to be, but I must say it is nice to be back on the front bench momentarily.

I wonder whether this is the appropriate place to ask the minister a few questions. I have two things. This is the clause having to do with final offer selection. I wonder if the minister could indicate whether or not the fact that this is in the bill is simply a reflection of the fact that this is what the employer in this case had hoped for prior to the stage of mediation or whether this reflects a new policy thrust on the part of the government in labour relations by way of recommending not just in this bill but to the country that final offer selection will come to be seen as one of the ways in which labour disputes of this kind and others might be settled.

[West Coast Ports Operations Act, 1994, February 8th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, it is always a regrettable day when the House has to deal with back to work legislation. It has happened before and our view today is the same as it has been in the past, that it is regrettable when the government has to take such action.

Generally there are things that the government could have done before taking this action that might have, because nothing in this life is for sure, prevented the situation from developing to the point at which the government felt it had no option.

It is particularly regrettable in this case because it has already been said to some extent there is very little that separates the parties, although what may seem like very little to us may seem like a lot to those who are involved in the intimacy of collective bargaining and it is very hard to know the full story of that bargaining. We have to accept that what is left is significant to the respective parties.

In any event, I would like to say I listened very carefully to the minister who was careful to be measured in his remarks, critical of both parties for not coming to a negotiated settlement.

I put it to him that what he has brought in today plays, at least in the perception of the union involved, to the strategy of the employer and a strategy that the employer had as far as the union is concerned for some time. If I understand the situation correctly, it was the employer who called for a final offer selection mechanism to be used before the situation went to mediation.

In effect the employer has what it wanted out of the situation, out of allowing the strike to continue and creating a situation in which the government felt it had no choice.

The government did have some choice. If the minister, as previous ministers have, feels that it is time for the government to sort of lay the law down literally and say get back to work, why is it that governments are not equally willing to lay the law down to companies and make sure they do what would be in the best interests of the situation?

I am referring here to the fact that the grain handlers were willing to continue to handle grain because grain is obviously one of the things that is a pressure point as far as the politics of this situation. There still would have been plenty to argue about and worry about. We would not have had to worry about grain if the longshoremen who offered to continue to handle grain were permitted to do so by the companies involved, but they were not.

This raises two questions. Why did the companies not allow them to do so? I think that is pretty obvious. If it was the strategy of the company in the first place to create a situation in which the government would eventually come in and provide through legislation what it had recommended earlier then that makes sense from the company point of view. However, it does not make any sense from the point of view of the government if the government was genuinely concerned about making sure that the flow of grain to port and offshore was uninterrupted.

Why could the minister not have been tough with those companies and said whatever strategy they have must be a strategy that does not include blackmailing the country with respect to the export of grain? Why could the minister not have done that? Maybe we will have a chance to ask him that when we get into committee of the whole.

It is also interesting that the minister, given that he is a Liberal from Manitoba, has brought in final offer selection as part of the package. I recall that it was the Liberal Party in Manitoba that voted against final offer selection when the NDP government of the day brought it in or, to be more precise, co-operated with the Conservative government in doing away with the final offer selection that the NDP government had brought in.

I hope this is a lesson to Mr. Edwards in Manitoba and to others that perhaps this is something that ought to be revisited by his cousins in Manitoba as something that may prove to be a useful device in labour management relations and in the settling of labour disputes.

Pursuing this theme that I started to some degree before, I want ask the question rhetorically at this point, but perhaps later on in committee of the whole in a practical way to the minister, why the onus is always on working people to serve the national interest or in this case in the interest of the country as it is represented by grain exports and all of the other exports that are tied up as a result of the strike.

Every day in the country business people and corporations make decisions that are not necessarily in the national interest. They make investment decisions. They make all kinds of decisions that are not in the national interest but which are in their self-interests. When they do that people simply say that is the way the world works. These people act in their own self-interest and that is the invisible hand of Adam Smith working its wonderful way in the world and we just have to trust that this will all work out for the best. They are just showing good business sense when they look after themselves.

When working people try to look after themselves and try to put their self-interests forward in an aggressive way that says if you do not do this we are going to withdraw our services, this is sometimes regarded by some, not necessarily the minister, in the country as a heinous act.

People are doing this all of the time. We have had capital strikes in the country from time to time when people say: "I am sorry, if I cannot make the return I expect on this particular investment I am not going to make it. If I cannot do this I am not going to do this". This happens all the time. However, when it is done by the business community it is just called good business sense. When we respond to it we are just trying to create the right business climate.

I just wanted to share the offence which I take not in anything the minister said, but in some of the comments which sometimes attend occasions like this when people comment on the actions of strikers and ask: "Why do they not do what is in the best interests of the country?" I would like to see everybody act in the best interests of the country. If that is what the minister has in mind in the coming reforms he spoke of, then I will be behind him, but we will wait and see.

With respect to the port of Vancouver, in a larger policy framework, decisions are made all the time in transportation policy particularly with deregulation, et cetera, which have caused more and more traffic to proceed on American rail lines and to proceed to American ports. All this has happened in the name of creating the right business climate for shippers, for the railways, for truckers and what not. This harms the port of Vancouver. This harms the Canadian national interest. But this is all taken like the weather: something we cannot do anything about.

Well something can be done about it. There could be a different macro policy framework in which it is ensured that people use the port of Vancouver and are not tempted in any way, or even permitted in some cases, to use the port of Seattle or any other American port when Canadian ports are waiting to provide services.

The minister mentioned he would like to see changes in how labour relations are dealt with. I am not sure exactly what he means but I have a suggestion or two. One of them is that he could bring in anti-scab legislation in the appropriate areas. We have been calling for this for a long time. It is certainly one of the things which might prevent many labour disputes and many strikes from occurring in the first place, or certainly not to occur for the length of time they often do.

Although it is not in the federal jurisdiction I think of a strike at Northern Blower in my riding. They have been on strike for almost two years now. I see these poor guys out there every day when I drive to my constituency office. If we had had legislation to prevent the use of replacement workers that strike would have been over a long time ago. These people would not still be out of work and there would not be the acrimony. There would not be the situation which occurs there now and has put a lot of people in a very difficult position.

I am sure there are many other things the minister will be considering, but I would ask him to please consider instituting at the federal level that kind of legislation and perhaps other ways of making sure there are no strikes.

There are two kinds of strikes. There is this kind of strike which gets dealt with very quickly. Then there are the other kinds of strikes like the one at Northern Blower and many other places that drag on and on and on. They are very destructive of people's lives and in many cases their relationships with former workers and colleagues.

I know the minister has a great many tasks ahead of him in terms of social programs. Perhaps he has too many. I have a great deal of respect for the minister but I do not know that anybody could do everything that is on his plate. I hope at some time the government considers that and provides him with some relief, particularly in this respect because I know the minister is going to be preoccupied with the social program review and will not be able to give his full attention to this kind of thing.

Our position is that we regret this has happened. We are opposed to it, as we have always been opposed to any imposition on the collective bargaining process. We think this could have been avoided had the government acted sooner or had the government permitted those who wanted to continue handling grain to handle it. However, we are prepared to help the government get this particular bill through and we will have more to say on the matter as the day continues.

[West Coast Ports Operations Act, 1994, February 8th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. With respect you asked if there was unanimous consent to do that and it was granted. Therefore there is no need for the motion at this point. It is just a question of allowing the debate to take place. We did not rise in our place nor did others because normally the minister rises in his place to give the first speech on second reading. That is what we were waiting for when you stood up to go into committee of the whole.

We agreed to go into second reading and then have committee of the whole. That is what unanimous consent was given to and now we wait upon the minister to justify the bill before us.

[West Coast Ports Operations Act, 1994, February 8th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order.

[West Coast Ports Operations Act, 1994, February 8th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, how can we be going into committee of the whole right now when we have second reading of the bill now?

[Pre-Budget Consultations, February 1st, 1994]

-and the member will still wait awhile before he hears me say it, although I would have to say that the point made about the complexity of the tax system and the way in which what is supposed to be a progressive tax system turns out to be a non-progressive tax system because the higher up the income bracket you are, the more you are able to hire people to figure out how not to pay taxes is a point that is well taken. That is why I continue to be open to the member's proposal, if not convinced at this point.

I just want to say to the member, I was going to bring up David Lewis if he had not. He could not remember the name, so I had to help him along. David Lewis, former leader of the NDP in this Parliament was the one who coined the phrase of corporate welfare bums and I am glad to hear a Reform Party member talking about that.

I know there was some talk of that in the Reform Party platform, but their tendency has been to concentrate and to have Canadians concentrate on what people at the lower end of the income scale are allegedly getting for nothing in the form of welfare, social programs or whatever. I think the distinction that exists between certain groups in the House is that I find the welfare that exists at the top of the system much more offensive.

If there is a single mother on welfare getting more than she should, maybe that should be corrected, but that does not drive me wild. What drives me wild are the tax expenditures that are claimed and created by government and exploited by business which sees many large profitable corporations in this country paying absolutely no taxes at all.

I have certainly done my best while I have been here-and I think the member will vouch for this-to call attention to that. I am glad to hear someone from the Reform Party calling attention to that as well. If he is serious about that he is going to have to take on some very strong powers and principalities, to use a Biblical term, because they have got their claws right into the public trough through the tax system.

When I was first elected here along with you, Mr. Speaker, in 1979, the deficit was $14 billion and tax expenditures for that year were $32 billion, twice the deficit. We could have paid the deficit off and had $18 billion left over if we had been smart about tax expenditures. However we have not been and it is time that we did get smart about tax expenditures.

[Pre-Budget Consultations, February 1st, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I know that what the member just said is music to the ears of the member for Broadview-Greenwood, except he did not actually come out and say that he was in favour of a single tax-

[Pre-Budget Consultations, February 1st, 1994]

David Lewis.

[Pre-Budget Consultations, February 1st, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I have just a couple of comments to make on some of the things the hon. member had to say.

It is appropriate that the member pointed out in part of his speech the role that interest rates play in increasing the deficit. He was counselling against the strategy of higher interest rates because it would have the effect on the deficit that he pointed out. However, I think it would be useful not just to apply that insight in terms of how not to deal with the deficit now, but also how the deficit was created in the first place.

Much of the deficit that we have before us today was created not by the social spending that the Reform Party wants to criticize, but by the high interest rate years in the early eighties. I think that is one of the holes, if you like, in the Reform analysis.

We cannot go back and change those interest rates. We cannot go back and eliminate the debt that was created by those interest rates. I realize that, but there is a kind of implicit blaming of social spending for the deficit when studies have shown, particularly a Statistics Canada study, that it was the high interest rates in combination with tax expenditures that were largely responsible for the deficit and not social spending.

The member's argument would be much more credible if that were at least acknowledged. It may be that there might be some restructuring of social programs in order, but I do not agree with the member that the way to do it is to eliminate universality. If high income Canadians who are receiving these benefits are so willing to contribute to the deficit then why can we not do that, if they are that willing, through a more progressive income tax system whereby they would pay for these universal programs they receive through the income tax system?

What would be the member's objection to that? Why do we have to accept that the only way that high income Canadians can do this is by foregoing these certain benefits and paying for them item for item instead of accepting that for once we could have a fair tax system in this country and high income earners could pay the share that they have paid less and less of in the last nine years thanks to the tax reforms of the Conservative government?