This bill was last introduced in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session, which ended in September 2013.
Lisa Raitt Conservative
This bill has received Royal Assent and is now law.
This is from the published bill.
This enactment provides for the resumption and continuation of postal services and imposes a final offer selection process to resolve matters remaining in dispute between the parties.
All sorts of information on this bill is available at LEGISinfo, an excellent resource from the Library of Parliament. You can also read the full text of the bill.
The Speaker Andrew Scheer
Order. The hon. member has been speaking for a little over four minutes and I have heard the words Bill C-6 only once. Maybe she can bring the rest of her remarks to the substance of the bill. I think the House would appreciate it.
Carol Hughes NDP Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON
It all comes back, Mr. Speaker, to the first part when I was offering congratulations about being elected.
Usually when I stand in this House to offer some remarks on a piece of legislation, I say that I am happy to speak to the bill. Today nothing could be further from the case.
There is nothing happy about back-to-work legislation, and the piece we have before us now is among the worst this place has ever seen.
It is a blatant attack on workers and pensions and is emblematic of the contempt that the Conservatives display for hard-working Canadians. As I indicated before, this is exactly what the chief had mentioned.
We understand how this government feels about workers. When it comes to picking sides and using legislation to end strikes and lockouts, the government has one gear: overdrive. We have seen this with workers, and we have seen this with first nations as well.
Even Lorne Gunter, a columnist friendly to the Conservative government, stated on Wednesday that they are acting like bullies in the Canada Post lockout. It's not that I agree one bit with his prescription for privatization. He manages to completely ignore Canada Post's mandate when he asserts that the private sector can do the same job as the Crown corporation. I will speak to that in a moment.
What concerns us on this side of the House is that not only is this government choosing winners and losers in this dispute, they are forcing a lower wage on Canada Post employees than the corporation was offering, and the logic behind that has gone missing.
It would seem that Conservatives feel workers do not deserve to make a good living wage in Canada, that only management deserve defined-benefit pensions, and that the interests of the elite far outweigh the interests of the general public. How does driving down wages help the economy? It does not. It lowers the buying capacity of individuals. That much is certain. It makes it harder to buy a house, which in turn affects housing starts. It makes it difficult for children to pay for increasingly expensive post-secondary education, which makes it harder for those children to get better-paying jobs themselves. It increases the divide between the wealthiest and the poorest Canadians, a trend that has gone on for a 25-year run now in the wrong direction. It is another nail in the coffin of the middle class in Canada. It is not a prescription for a robust economy either.
We have to ask ourselves then, if this move does not help the economy, what purpose it serves. Could it be ideological? It would seem so.
Let us take a moment then to look at the main point in Mr. Gunter's article that I spoke about earlier. He suggests that the private sector could easily deliver the same services Canada Post offers, at which point he needs to take a look at the mandate of Canada Post which is to guarantee postal service to all Canadians. When people call for Canada Post to be privatized, many are looking at the $281 million the corporation made last year, and they are licking their chops.
If we privatize it, will all Canadians still receive postal services? I do not think so. I have already spoken about Algoma-Manitoulin-Kapuskasing. It is a vast rural riding and is exactly the kind of place that would suffer the most if Canada Post were to be replaced by the private sector. In rural and remote areas, postal service is arguably more important than it may be in larger centres.
Many people in my constituency have limited or no Internet options and they still write and receive letters. They cannot go online to do their banking or pay their bills. For them postal service is an integral part of day-to-day life. This is the actual postal service that this government, under another government agency, has locked out.
If we imagine what might happen if we privatize postal service in Canada, we can look at two different scenarios for places like Algoma-Manitoulin-Kapuskasing. Under one scenario there would not be postal service at all. Let us face it: there are postal routes in Canada that are not contributing to the $281 million Canada Post made last year. Most of those are rural and remote. If we allow for the private delivery of mail in Canada, I cannot imagine many people busting down doors to get their hands on the rights to deliver mail in places like Hearst.
Speaking of Hearst, right next to it is Constance Lake. It took us a year to finally get a post office there or at least some postal service there after there was no postal service delivered to that area. They had to travel over 40 kilometres. This is how we know that if Canada Post were privatized, we certainly would not see the services in those areas.
What we would likely see is a profitable portion of postal deliveries scooped up in a heartbeat and quite possibly the end of mail delivery in many parts of Canada.
The second scenario is one that sees rural and remote delivery continued but at a dramatically higher cost to the consumer. If we allow the real price of delivery to govern the cost of each piece of mail, the delivery of rural and remote mail will become exorbitantly expensive. It will add to the already high cost of living in these places, which has been exacerbated in recent years by the high cost of basic items, such as heating, and tax grabs like the HST.
We just went through a campaign during which there was a huge response to the message the leader of the NDP brought to Canadians. It was a message of hope based on making life more affordable, and it obviously resounded with the Canadian public, as we now sit as the official opposition. The NDP believes in the need to address the inequities in Canada's rural and remote communities.
Let me speak about Elliott Lake.
I see that the Speaker is getting up.
The Speaker Andrew Scheer
I am anxious to hear about Elliott Lake, but now we will have to move on to questions and comments.
The hon. member for Essex.
Jeff Watson Conservative Essex, ON
Mr. Speaker, hopefully we can actually talk about the bill in the next couple of minutes.
There has been a lot of discussion today, and members opposite on several occasions have raised the prospect of making amendments to Bill C-6. There has been a lot of talk about one of them being about wages. The member's colleague, the member for York South—Weston, suggested that 11.5% over four years, which is what he said the Toronto police received in a settlement, would be considered a fair wage. The member for Trinity—Spadina suggested 3.3% per year, which would be 13.2% over four years.
Can the member tell us whether the New Democrats will be moving an amendment to stipulate wage increases that are somewhere between 11.5% and 13.3%?
Carol Hughes NDP Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON
Mr. Speaker, as we indicated before during this debate, we are not going to show the government all of our cards at this point. We have indicated what we are willing--
Carol Hughes NDP Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON
Mr. Speaker, as we have indicated, we have actually provided some information with respect to a hoist motion. If the government is willing to really negotiate and look at the wage rates, then we are certainly open to its suggestions and will continue down that road. Obviously the government is not willing to move at this point, and that is why we are still here today.
Let me tell you about Elliott Lake, which reinvented itself, as a response to the loss of mining jobs, as an affordable place for pensioners and seniors to retire. For many of those seniors, the incremental increases in the cost of living ate away at the advantage they sought when they moved to Elliott Lake.
What does all this have to do with the debate? It has to do with pensions, which are part of Bill C-6. Price increases to everyday items, such as groceries, are hard enough to budget for. When the Conservative government conspired with the Ontario government to slap an additional 8% on home heating bills, it was a significant shock.
The Speaker Andrew Scheer
I have to stop the hon. member there to allow for more questions and comments.
The hon. member for Newton—North Delta.
Jinny Sims NDP Newton—North Delta, BC
Mr. Speaker, I really want to thank my colleague for her very passionate and well-thought-out presentation.
I have a question for my colleague, and it specifically relates to the legislation. The legislation the government has introduced would actually give postal workers a lower salary increase than was offered by Canada Post. I would like my colleague to comment on that and on what kind of impact that has on free collective bargaining.
Carol Hughes NDP Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON
Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the question from my colleague, and she is absolutely right. The government is trying to impose a lower wage rate than what Canada Post actually wanted to give them, while the CEOs are actually making a pile of money. In 2010 it was $497,100, plus a 33% bonus. Is that fair? No.
When we think of this, we think of J. S. Woodsworth's famous line: "What we desire for ourselves we wish for all”. Would it not be great, whether we are in collective bargaining or not, to ensure that all Canadians have a decent pension so that they have a good quality of life? We also want to make sure that every worker has a good wage, and a living wage at that.
Brian Storseth Conservative Westlock—St. Paul, AB
Mr. Speaker, finally the hidden agenda of the NDP is revealed. Not only are they socialists and anti-small business, but now we find out that they are simply a party of large-union members.
I come from a rural riding. I would like to ask the member about a small businessman I talked to in the last week who has been drastically affected. Rochester Hatchery has been drastically affected not only by the situation that is now ongoing but also by the rotating strikes. He said that the rotating strikes were as devastating for his small business, with the uncertainty they provided, as what is going on today. The only thing that will help him is if we move forward and get this legislation passed quickly. It has cost his business $70,000 to this point in time.
I ask the member what she would say to my small businesses in rural Alberta that are being affected.
Carol Hughes NDP Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON
What I would say is that this government can come to its senses and remove that wage from its bill, and we will talk.
Andrew Cash NDP Davenport, ON
Mr. Speaker, last night we heard a phenomenal speech by the leader of the official opposition. He raised the bar and raised the tone of civility of this debate. He also focused our attention on some of the really important things that matter and that mattered in the last election.
I want to remind those in the chamber of another speech made last night. It might have been this morning; I can't quite remember. It was by the member for Acadie—Bathurst, the official opposition labour critic. He talked a lot about the history and culture of working people. He reminded the House and Canadians of the battles that have gotten us to a place where so many people in this country take having a weekend off for granted. He talked about his father, who was a lumberjack. He himself was a miner. I thought it was a really powerful speech, because we forget that nothing comes without a fight.
The government has repeatedly asked why we are here. We are here because we want to bring it to the government's attention that we want to speak for all workers, not just unionized workers.
I want to speak to the fact that I have been a self-employed small-business person. My father was as well.
I represent a riding where there are a multitude of different kinds of small businesses and self-employed people, and they are workers too. They want pensions. They want benefits. They want job security. They would like to have access to EI. If their children get sick, they would like to take a couple of days off to look after their loved ones. This is not an option for many Canadians.
We are here tonight, and for as long as it takes, to focus the government's attention on the fact that workers in this country are hurting. A win for a trade union is a win for all workers, and a loss is a loss for all workers.
There are people in my riding who worked for companies for 23 years, were let go, and now have no workplace pensions. They have none. Do members know what they are doing now? They are competing with their grandkids for jobs at KFC.
The government asks what we are doing here. When we in the NDP see legislation like Bill C-6, which offers workers less than what management was offering in the first place, we have to say that this is not right. The leader of the official opposition, the member for Toronto—Danforth, drew a very clear and respectful line in the sand.
I too have received e-mails and phone calls from small-business people in my riding. For example, I received an e-mail from a member in my riding who publishes two magazines, not one but two. He is dependent on postal service. He e-mailed me to say that we have to stand with the workers at Canada Post and that the principle of collective bargaining is a principle that our grandparents and great grandparents fought for.
Last night I listened to many of the members opposite talk about how their fathers were in the trade union movement. I thought that was interesting. If it were not for the hard work and dedication of men and women over decades and decades, many of us would not have had the opportunity to end up where we are right now. That is very important for us to consider.
Another thing I respectfully ask the members opposite to consider is this. In 1995 a CEO's salary was 85 times the average worker's. That seems a little high. Most reasonable people would think there was something out of whack with that kind of equation.
I know some of our friends across the aisle like to characterize some of us on the official opposition side as some kind of wild-eyed folks that they do not want around their money.
However, today a CEO's salary is 220 times the average worker's pay. Whether one is a small business owner, a medium-sized business owner or a big business owner, or a worker, something is wrong with that.
That brings me back to Bill C-6. If we allow pensions to be chipped away at for workers who have fought for so long to achieve and to protect this benefit, then we will not help workers across the country who have no pension in the first place. If we let this happen, it moves the marker back for everybody else.
I was elected in the riding of Davenport on the promise that I would advocate for, speak up for and fight for, among other things, those who had no pensions, benefits or access to a safety net like employment insurance.
If we look at the data, we see a large-scale migration from the unemployed line of the ledger over to the self-employed line of the ledger. The problem is that for so many people who are self-employed, they are not really making enough money. They are trying to get businesses off the ground.
The government likes to trumpet the fact that it has supposedly created hundreds of thousands of jobs, but it never says whether these are full-time jobs. It never says whether these are jobs on which one can raise a family. We need a means test because one cannot raise a family on a $10 an hour or $12 an hour job. One cannot raise a family on a job where at the whim of the employer he or she loses a couple of days of work. That is happening all across the country.
At the same time, housing affordability has plummeted. It is almost impossible for most young families to afford to live in the city of Toronto.
We have postal workers who are key to our communities, to our economy and we have been asked to agree with the government to chip away at their living wage. We will not do that.
We have many workers in the country who are looking for leadership from the official opposition—
The Speaker Andrew Scheer
Questions and comments, the hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Trade, for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency and for the Atlantic Gateway.
Restoring Mail Delivery for Canadians ActGovernment Orders
South Shore—St. Margaret's Nova Scotia
Conservative
Gerald Keddy ConservativeParliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Trade
Mr. Speaker, I have not yet engaged in this discussion or debate in this place. I have listened to the hon. member's comments quite closely, and I there are a few small corrections that need to be made.
First, with respect to the hon. member, he is not simply elected by some constituents. He is here to represent all of his constituents. This is not a closed shop. This is not a union organization. This is not a non-union organization. Our job, as members of Parliament, is to represent everyone as fairly as possible.
The issue is quite simple. We have a group of workers that failed to negotiate. What the workers could not negotiate, they will now try to get through intimidation, and the tactics with which to intimidate are the official opposition.
I cannot understand for the life of me why those members would not agree to put the postal service back to work so all Canadians can get back to work.