Human Resources committee  Of course, there was a very consultative process set up. It was very effective and very transparent, and it came up with something that it called balance. I guess balance is a matter of judgment. If you happen to be sitting on one side, you'll probably see the balance as a little

Human Resources committee  First of all, I don't believe the data show anything. I think this is a classic example of being able to use data to show whatever you want. I started to look at the data published by the Quebec labour department--which does break down federal and provincial--and came to the con

Human Resources committee  I only have two minutes left? Gee, I've hardly started. Well, if I only have two minutes left, I'm just going to go through a couple of other points. This would be the most draconian legislation we have federally. I listened this morning to everybody talking about the essential

Human Resources committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I've been asked to pass along the regrets of George Smith, who is the chair of FETCO and who would normally be attending a hearing dealing with a bill of this magnitude. Unfortunately, as you know, we were all faced with very short notice with res

Information & Ethics committee  No. I think we've indicated both in our brief and in the subsequent comments that we believe—specifically because we were asked the question in relation to the Alberta and B.C. laws as it relates to consent and to the formal dispute resolution process—that this legislation is a n

Information & Ethics committee  Somebody must have decided that five years was an appropriate time to have a review. We're also involved in the five-year review of the Employment Equity Act, which is another five-year period of time. Is that an appropriate time, is it 10, or is it 15?

Information & Ethics committee  Oh, I think we've definitely had enough experience. Our problem is that we think that perhaps there wasn't enough.... Again, I don't want to sound parochial here, but we are just looking at the employee relations issue from our perspective. We don't think that perhaps enough th

Information & Ethics committee  I mentioned a number of other employee relations statutes at the beginning, and they all bump up against PIPEDA in one way or another. We don't want to try to get away from our responsibilities under the law here, but we do think the law should be designed to recognize that we ha

Information & Ethics committee  Go ahead, Barbara, everybody wants to answer.

Information & Ethics committee  Maybe I can just reiterate the comments I made in answer to basically what was the same question, and that is that we're talking solely about management of the human resource system. We're not talking about anything broader. I think the specific question was something like, wit

Information & Ethics committee  The examples I referred to a few minutes ago are all on employee relations. As I said at the beginning of my introductory comments, the only thing we're interested in is labour. All the examples relate to issues of employee relations and they all relate to the types of situations

Information & Ethics committee  I'm sorry.

Information & Ethics committee  I will have to defer to my legal friends with respect to that issue.

Information & Ethics committee  Mr. Chairman, I'd just like to add that at the request of Industry Canada, in the process of preparation for the review, they asked us for specific examples. If I recall, one of the examples attached to our brief as an appendix is that very specific case that Barbara made referen

Information & Ethics committee  Subject to Edith or Barbara correcting me, I think this is the approach in B.C. and Alberta, is it not?