Finance committee  Right, and there are provinces that have provincial legislation stipulating wage rates in particular industries.

Finance committee  I think the primary rationale for eliminating this is that it's duplicative. There is provincial and territorial labour standards legislation applied to these workers. In this instance, it's a federal standard that was established in the 1930s at a time when provincial labour leg

Finance committee  Bell Canada is a federally regulated industry, yes.

Finance committee  Well, in this instance, this only applies to the construction sector, so typically it wouldn't apply to communications workers.

Finance committee  There was always a requirement to file collective agreements, so the rationale for this was simply to try to encourage compliance with the measure. In the past, there have been some difficulties obtaining collective agreements from particular organizations. There is a service at

Finance committee  Sorry, perhaps I should clarify that. This is a DRAP-related measure, a deficit reduction action plan related measure. Currently, someone is responsible in the labour program for making certain that the collective agreements that haven't been filed are tracked down, because it's

Finance committee  I have a couple more.

Finance committee  There's another part to division 22—and then I'm here for division 23, as well.

Finance committee  The other part of division 22 is another amendment to the Canada Labour Code, unrelated to the first one. This amends part III of the Canada Labour Code to require federally regulated employers to insure, on a go-forward basis, any long-term disability plans they may offer to the

Finance committee  Yes. Division 23 in the part IV of the bill repeals the Fair Wages and Hours of Labour Act, which was enacted in 1935. It stipulates that all persons employed by a contractor doing work on a federal government contract for construction, remodelling, repair, or demolition of any

Finance committee  Division 22 contains two elements. The first one consists of clauses 432 and 433, which amend section 115 of the Canada Labour Code, which in turn requires that unions and employers to file their collective agreements with the Minister of Labour. There is currently no mechanism

Finance committee  They are occupied. They work only on appeals, but not only on hearing appeals; they do background research and investigation as well.

Finance committee  Yes, they are fully occupied in the appeals process.

Finance committee  When I said that they would be kept within the public service, I mean that they would fill positions that are vacant or positions from which people retire. They wouldn't be leaving the public service. It would be by attrition. We would be filling other positions that become vacan

Finance committee  As I said, our expectation is that the 90-day timeline is a reasonable limit and that the appeals will be heard and processed in that period of time.