Mauril Bélanger

[Economic Action Plan 2015 Act, No. 1, May 14th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I also want to rise today to debate a particular section of Bill C-59, section 20, which deals with the sick leave and disability programs that the government wishes to impose upon the federal public service. This is nothing new.

Here is a passage from the October 2013 throne speech, in which the federal government announced, and I quote:

It will reform disability and sick-day entitlements and work with employees to get them back to work as soon as possible.

That almost implies that employees are absent not because they are sick, but because they can take sick leave. Before talking about Bill C-59, I would like to talk about a bill that was passed not long after the 2013 Speech from the Throne, and that is Bill C-4.

Bill C-4, which I had called at the time a rather explosive bill, indeed, exploded the relationship between our federal public service and the Government of Canada, in a number of ways. It changed legislation that governed the federal public service and, also, the workers who fell under the jurisdiction of the Government of Canada, through the Canada Labour Code, in a number of ways. I will mention three.

The government gave itself the ability to define “essential services” in a way that had not existed before. It was, before the adoption of Bill C-4, a mechanism where both parties, the employer and the employees, could present their arguments and the body that rendered the decision was a rather respected one. However, this law now, essentially, gives the authority entirely to the government.

The other thing is that the unions will no longer have the right to arbitration, which was a very important tool that has been used repeatedly over the past decades. However, now, arbitration would be an option only if 80% of the members do a job that is considered essential. The government has given itself the right to very easily control the union's ability to use arbitration by taking away the essential right to the renegotiation tool that works well when the parties cannot come to an agreement.

If the unions manage to win the right to an arbitration, the government had also changed the conditions that arbitrators can use. They can only refer to the government's financial situation or recruitment and retention issues in the public service, nothing else. That was not the case before.

Finally, the arbitration boards will no longer be independent. Basically, they report to the government.

In addition, there is another matter that I should mention. The definition of “danger” is changing, which would affect not only the 200,000-plus core public servants, but also the 800,000 other employees in Canada who fall under the Canada Labour Code, and the minister, or one of his delegates, is now responsible for defining “danger”. That sets us back at least 50 years. Given the tremendous progress we have made, regarding the rights of unionized workers in our country, I believe, now, that the public service and the workers governed by the Canada Labour Code are less well-served.

Back, now, to Bill C-59.

I wrote a blog on October 15, 2014, and I will quote it now.

[The President of the Treasury Board] has now proposed replacing the current system of banked sick leave with a new short-term disability plan and has warned that annual sick leave may be limited to five days a year [he has now offered six], which is a draconian cut from the 15 days currently allowed through negotiated collective agreements. Paid sick leave is not a perk that can be given or taken away at the discretion of the employer, but a contractual benefit of employment negotiated over time and representing, along with salary and other forms of leave, the mutually agreed worth of the work provided by employees.

A Treasury Board report has warned of a heavy fiscal liability that the government’s obligation to provide sick leave apparently represents, but the report is mistaken or misleading in several respects. To start with, a theoretical liability is meaningless when a great number of public servants do not use all their sick leave entitlements. Furthermore, the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) has noted that the so-called liability includes work-related injuries and unpaid sick leave which are not relevant to the current discussion and negotiation. The PBO has also argued that the incremental costs of paid sick leave are minimal when departments do not backfill sick employees, which is the case with most departments and agencies. Finally, numbers are skewed when individual sick leave days are placed in the same basket as the forced draining of an employee’s banked sick leave immediately prior to long term disability.

The current system serves an important purpose: workers should not be going to work sick as this would impede their own recovery and may put co-workers—or the public—at risk of illness as well. We should be promoting healthy workplaces.

Let us hope that this situation will be resolved by good faith negotiation and not by another piece of legislation embedded in yet another omnibus bill.

That is the end of my blog entry from October 2014. Unfortunately, that is exactly where we are now. Bill C-59 basically contains a measure giving the President of the Treasury Board the power to do whatever he wants, regardless of existing laws.

This morning we saw a headline in the Ottawa Citizen that made mention of the fact that the President of the Treasury Board is pressuring unions for a sick leave deal by the fall. In Bill C-4, the government established and tilted in its favour the capacity to negotiate, or dictate really, to the public servants of our country. Now, in Bill C-59, we are seeing a provision that would give the President of the Treasury Board the ability to dictate, when he wants, measures that have not been negotiated and that I do not believe would result in agreement. In the budget that was adopted in this House, the government and one of the ministers said that it is cast in stone, is expecting to recover $900 million worth of benefits this year from the sick leave program that our public servants benefit from. Therefore, as far as I am concerned, we have a situation here that is not appropriate.

We should also note some numbers. Of the core public service staff, 25% have fewer than 10 days of banked sick leave, and 60% do not have enough banked days to bridge the gap to disability. Federal public servants currently have 15 days per year and can carry unused days over, which the government wants to stop, however the banked days are forfeited upon retirement. If there is abuse or if conditions need to be changed, five of the largest unions have been negotiating with Treasury Board since last June, apparently there are now 18, and have indicated a willingness to correct measures that may not be as solid as they should be. However, for the government to dictate that we will go from 15 to 6 days, non-accumulative, is not appropriate. That would create a situation in our public service that would not favour the service to the public.

In the past we have had a very solid relationship with our federal public service. Starting in the 60s when the prime minister at the time, Mr. Pearson, recognized the right to strike, and until 1984, 41% of our employees in Canada were unionized. That has now dropped back. In that period of time we had a great compression of the inequalities among the salaries of people. Since then it has been increasing. That is a serious difficulty that not just I but the World Economic Forum has identified as the world's single largest problem. The way we are dealing with our federal public service will not help solve that at all. It is a sad way for us to go, and I would hope that we would consider going in another direction rather than in this one.

[Privilege, May 12th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I have a question for my colleague from Toronto—Danforth.

Would he agree to having the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs also consider the issue of linguistic ability? Four times now, when I arrived at the Hill gate by car, I was stopped and not one of the constables could speak French. All four times this caused delays. One time, there were three other people and I had to wait for a fourth person to arrive by car. This caused a delay of four or five minutes.

I wonder whether my colleague would agree to have this type of delay considered by the committee as well because it has held me up a number of times.

[University of Ottawa Alumni Week, May 5th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, as a proud graduate of the University of Ottawa, I want to recognize that institution's Alumni Week, which is this week, until Saturday, May 9. It has been officially proclaimed by the City of Ottawa and it pays tribute to the 92,000 graduates living in this region.

This year the University of Ottawa is celebrating its 50th anniversary as a public institution. My alma mater is now a world-class teaching and research institution and the largest English-French bilingual university in the world. Many other members here are also graduates. I see someone nodding.

On this special week, it is with pride that I invite all fellow citizens of our region to celebrate the success of this institution and its contribution to our economy.

I invite you, Mr. Speaker, a University of Ottawa alumnus, to proudly wear our school colours of garnet and grey, which I am wearing today.

I also invite MPs to join Alex Trebek, another proud alumnus of the university, to a reception in our speaker's lounge, following today's question period. À bientôt donc. He may have some questions for us to answer.

[Privilege, April 30th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I wish to indicate my support for the recommendation that you just received, that the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs be asked to deal with this matter.

You may recall, Mr. Speaker, when the motion to make the RCMP the lead agency to take care of security both inside and outside the House and on Parliament Hill was made, I raised an issue and made a suggestion in writing to the government that it should follow a model we have in British Columbia, where if it it is the RCMP that does this, they still have to go through the provincial authorities. Also, in the model in London, England, the city police do it, but they still have to go through parliamentary authorities. Even the government whip who was proposing the motion agreed with that.

Given what has happened today, it would be important that parliamentarians deal with this issue so that the Speaker of the House and the Speaker of the Senate could have the input of parliamentarians in dealing with a very important matter. I totally agree that the most significant thing we have to do here is cast a vote and if we are prohibited from coming here, for reasons that may be valid, we still need to figure out a solution, and parliamentarians should be involved in reaching that solution.

[National Anthem, April 28th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, that is such nonsense.

The support does exist. The poll I commissioned actually uses the correct lyrics of our anthem. It is quite clear: 58% of Canadians support it and just 19% oppose it.

What the member forgets is that, in the first hour of debate, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, who was speaking on behalf of the government, was referring to the 2013 poll as the reason for the government's opposition to this. I recognize that in 2010 the Conservatives did say in the Speech from the Throne that they would do this, and they got a lot of calls from their supporters.

If we do a poll and misrepresent the words of our anthem in soliciting the response of Canadians, we can expect that to be in error. However, if we do it and quote the anthem accurately and ask them questions, we would then get the true feelings of Canadians.

I would hope that parliamentarians would acknowledge that and do the right thing tomorrow.

[National Anthem, April 28th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, the first thing I want to do is offer an apology to a colleague. In early April, I commissioned a poll about the proposed modification of the English version of O Canada, and in a press release about the poll results and the first hour of debate, we correctly identified the role of the MP for Richmond Hill as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration. However, when we sent an op-ed last Friday to National Newswatch, we erred in identifying him as the PS to the heritage minister. For that I apologize to my colleague, and I assure him that the error will not be repeated.

Now I move on to the response to my question of last week about the government's basing its position on the results of a poll that misrepresented the current lyrics of O Canada. The MP for St. Catharines, sadly, did not address the question in his answer. Yesterday, during the second hour of debate on Bill C-624, the member said that the anthem had not been changed in 100 years. He was wrong.

The original English version was written in 1908, and it included “us” in the second verse. It was changed to “thy sons” in 1914. It was modified again in 1916, in 1927, and in 1980, when both versions were enacted by Parliament in the House and the Senate in one day. The reason for that expedient enactment was a desire to officialize in law the lyrics to celebrate the centennial of the French version, first sung in 1880. Incidentally, the French lyrics have never been changed, because they have always been inclusive of all of us.

During that day of June 27, 1980, the official opposition House leader, the late Hon. Walter Baker, a Progressive Conservative, and the Hon. Ed Broadbent, then leader of the NDP, both confirmed their desire to review the lyrics of the English version, and the government gave its commitment to do that in the following session. The same commitment was repeated later that same day in the Senate at the urging of many senators, including the late Hon. Florence Bird, who specifically wanted “women” to be included in our anthem. Unfortunately, it never happened, and tomorrow will be the first time since 1980 that parliamentarians will be asked to vote on this matter.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage also suggested that traditions demand that we not modify our symbols. I have to disagree, and in fact, the changing of symbols is something that regularly happens to reflect societal evolution. I gave, and will repeat, two examples.

First is our coat of arms. In 1921, King George V added the maple leaf to it, because in the preceding decades, the maple leaf had become a symbol that most Canadians associated with.

The second example was the adoption by this chamber, in 1965, after a long and sometimes acrimonious debate, of a new flag, which rapidly became a symbol that most Canadians embrace.

In the past century, our society has evolved. In 1914, there were no women soldiers. Now there are, and the first one died in Afghanistan: Nichola Goddard. Her mother supports this bill.

Women also got the right to vote in 1921 and were declared persons in 1929, which led to the first female senator, Cairine Wilson. Then in 1982, our Charter of Rights and Freedoms guaranteed the equality of men and women before the law.

Finally, the parliamentary secretary also said that few countries dared change their anthems. Does he not know that Australia's parliamentarians did so in 2011 and added the word “daughters” to make it more inclusive, which is exactly what we should do?

I hope that tomorrow Canada's MPs will decide to include 52% of our population now excluded from our anthem because we sing “our sons”. Let us start singing “all of us” instead. That is the right thing to do, and I hope we will do so and represent the evolution of our society over the last century.

[NATIONAL ANTHEM ACT, April 27th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I listened very carefully to what was said by the parliamentary secretary, and there are some errors in what he said.

He said that the anthem had not been changed in 100 years, which is correct, but it was changed from 1908 to 1914. The original version included “us”. Therefore, to say that the anthem has not changed in 100 years is not exactly accurate because it has been changed a number of times in those 100 years, the English version, that is. Therefore, he is not correct in saying that.

When we talk about our symbols, our symbols tend to evolve just as our society does, and I will provide two examples.

In 1921, King George V included the maple leaf in our coat of arms, which was not there before, because the maple leaf had become a symbol that Canadians respected. As well, in 1965 we changed our flag. There are two absolutely important symbols in our country and both have evolved to reflect the evolution in our society.

What the member fails to understand is that in the last 100 years there has been a significant evolution in the equality of genders in our society, including the 1982 charter, so on and so forth. Therefore, for him to say what he just did is not accurate, and to base it on a poll that has misrepresented the anthem is rather strange. The poll referred to in 2013 quoted “True patriot love in all her sons command”. The actual words are “thy sons”, not “her sons”. The polling firm that did it should live up to its mistake and if it was not a mistake, acknowledge its intent to misrepresent our anthem in a question put to Canadians.

The numbers that the government speaks of are faulty, and I hope my colleagues know now that if they actually follow the opinions of Canadians, they need to get it right. I too have commissioned a poll, which has been sent to most of my colleagues, and the results of this survey conducted by Mainstreet Technologies are very different because accurate language is used. The questions and answers provided by more than 5,000 Canadians show solid support for a change in the lyrics from “all thy sons command” to “in all of us command”. The poll shows that 58% approve or strongly approve and only 19% disapprove or strongly disapprove.

The other thing we need to know is that in 1980 the anthem was approved in one single day in both the House and the Senate, and there was a commitment made by the government of the day, a Liberal government—so I am rising beyond partisanship here because this is important—to review the anthem in the following session. The Hon. Ed Broadbent at the time and the late Walter Baker, who represented both parties, agreed with that and wanted it to include “all of us”. The Hon. Florence Bird in the Senate made the same comment and it was confirmed that the government would do that. It never happened.

Yes, we have had nine bills presented, but this is the first one upon which we will have a vote. I hope the members represent the true spirit of Canadians and the evolution of our society and vote in favour of this.

I will provide an example. Our parliamentary sensibilities are well ingrained about what happened on October 22, but the words that parliamentarians used the next day reflected the evolution of our society. Thirteen members stood in this place, including the Speaker, to congratulate the both men and women who so bravely came to our defence the day before. They were the hon. members for Papineau, Haute-Gaspésie—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, Ahuntsic, Edmonton Centre, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, Brandon—Souris, Durham, Surrey North, Northumberland—Quinte West, Lotbinière—Chutes-de-la-Chaudière, Yukon, the Speaker, and Burnaby—New Westminster.

I want to congratulate those members for so effectively transmitting our thanks to both the men and women of our security service. It is important to be inclusive. Let us not forget that in 1914 only men served as soldiers. That is no longer the case. Let us not also forget that it was only in 1980 that the House and the Senate started hiring women in our security forces. Let us be fair and include them in our anthem. Let us sing “all of us”.

I would like to conclude by thanking the members for their consideration of an inclusive national anthem and I look forward to obtaining their support for this much-overdue initiative.

[National Anthem, April 23rd, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, next week we will vote on an act to amend the English version of our anthem to make it more inclusive.

The government said it would oppose the bill based on the results of a question in a 2013 poll. That question was, “It has been suggested that the wording of O Canada be changed from 'in all her sons command' to 'in all of us command'.” The current words are “True patriot love in all thy sons command”, not “her sons”.

How does the government justify basing its position on the result of a question which misrepresented the current lyrics of O Canada?

[Interparliamentary Delegations, April 22nd, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 34(1), I have the honour to present to the House, in both official languages, the report of the Canadian delegation of the Canada-Africa Parliamentary Association respecting its bilateral mission to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and the Republic of Djibouti from October 13 to 17, 2014, and its bilateral mission to the Kingdom of Lesotho and the Republic of Malawi from January 19 to 22, 2015.

[Instruction to Committee on Bill C-51, March 31st, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, would it not be accurate to believe that the bill, which is a Crown bill—a government bill is a crown bill—ipso facto has the royal support for expenditures?