Mr. Speaker, I want start by thanking the people of Surrey North for giving me the opportunity and privilege to be their voice in this House today.
I also want to wish a joyous day to my friends from Quebec on this national day for Quebec.
I want to commend my colleagues for working so hard in the last 24 hours and being here around the clock. They have done a wonderful job of standing up for the hard-working people of Canada.
I have been hearing from government members across the aisle that owners of small businesses have been calling them. Small business owners have also been calling me. They are telling me they want the government to unlock those doors, let the workers go back to work and get our postal service working.
I stand here as a new MP for Surrey North. As the owner of a small business and as a person who believes in our charter rights to collective bargaining, I also believe in good-paying jobs that support our local economies and the small businesses in our communities.
I had a chance to meet a couple of postal workers during the election. In the conversation I had with them, they said they were worried about their pensions and about their wages being clawed back. They were afraid. They wondered what they were going to do.
Lowering wages is basically a race to the bottom that the government seems to support. It will hurt us all in the long run.
When I moved to this beautiful country 31 years ago, my brother had a very good-paying job. He worked in the sawmills. He was a unionized worker and he helped me to go to university because he had that good-paying job.
I have talked to many people in the last years and months who are working in the sawmills. I am mindful that the government and the Government of British Columbia do not want to support secondary manufacturing. They would rather ship raw logs abroad. That is a discussion for another day.
With this lowering of wages, I bet there are people earning $12 an hour now, working in the same sawmills my brother worked in as he helped to support me. What are these people going to do? How are they going to be able to afford an education for their children?
The extra money that is earned in good-paying jobs is spent in our communities, in small businesses. In this House we talk about small businesses being at the heart of our economic engine. If we are not supporting our small businesses, how can the economy prosper?
I own a small restaurant in Surrey and I know how this impacts our communities. This money is being taken out of our local businesses, out of the pockets of small businesses that are already being hurt by the HST that was introduced by the Conservative government and by the B.C. Liberal government. I know how it hurt the small businesses in British Columbia when it was introduced by the Conservative government and the B.C. Liberal government.
I read this in the paper yesterday. The Prime Minister and the former premier of British Columbia had cooked up this deal in secret. Can we guess who has been appointed high commissioner to Britain? It is the former premier of British Columbia. That is for another day.
We need good jobs in our communities. The Conservative government does not believe in this idea.
The government has a choice. It can unlock those doors and let the workers go back to work.
I am speaking today in the House under very difficult circumstances. The government has introduced a piece of legislation that will take away the right of workers to bargain in good faith. That to me is unacceptable. It is impossible for me or for any person who values the legal right to strike, a right that is in our constitution, to support this legislation.
The government has chosen to violate the rights of the workers to negotiate a fair agreement. It is highly unusual for a government to force back-to-work legislation on locked-out employees. It is highly unusual because it seems to most people to be completely unreasonable. It is clear to most reasonable people that locking out workers is not fair collective bargaining.
Again, collective bargaining is our charter right. I wonder what the government is trying to say to Canadian workers by taking this unreasonable course of action. What is the government trying to say to hard-working families? Is it that the right to collective bargaining does not really exist in Canada? It does not seem to exist under this government.
This intervention by the Conservative government, this imposition by the Conservative government, is something I simply cannot support. I find it very troubling that the government would throw out our rights with such ease. It does not seem to be the Canada that I came to 31 years ago. In my Canada, hard-working people are respected. Their rights are respected, not ignored or trampled upon by government.
I am disappointed by the actions of the Conservative government. These actions are not acceptable to me or to the people of my riding of Surrey North.
The proposed back-to-work legislation to end the postal dispute sets out a wage settlement that is actually lower than Canada Post's last offer. We know that. We have talked about it in the last day or two. The legislation outlines a wage settlement of 1.75% in the first year, 1.5% in the second year and 2% in each of the final two years. However, at the bargaining table Canada Post had offered 1.9% in each of the first three years, followed by 2% in the final year.
Basically, this legislation offers the postal workers lower wages than what they had bargained for in good faith before the Conservative government locked them out. The difference works out to about $860 to $870 for a full-time employee over the course of the agreement.
Yesterday we heard our labour minister talk about 45,000 people against 33 million people. Let us remember that those 45,000 people who work in the postal service have families behind them. They have many small businesses behind them.
The Conservative government has made it clear that it is opposed to workers trying to improve their working conditions and to families making a living wage in our country.
