Bill C-6 (Historical)

Restoring Mail Delivery for Canadians Act

An Act to provide for the resumption and continuation of postal services

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.

Restoring Mail Delivery for Canadians Act

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

Madame Speaker, I believe it is important to focus on how we are seeing here a replay, to use an example, of another provincial government, the former Harris government here in Ontario. What the rest of us across the country heard was how devastating that agenda was on the working class, on people's communities and on their well-being. If that was a sign of things to come, then many of us are in for quite a ride.

[The Deputy Speaker, Denise Savoie]

Order, please.

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Marc-Aurèle-Fortin.

[Alain Giguère, NDP, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Madam Speaker, I am a new parliamentarian, and I have a practical question that perhaps you can help me with. Is there not supposed to be a minimum of 15 members from the government party to make quorum?

[The Deputy Speaker, Denise Savoie]

No, there needs to be 15 members total in the House.

[Alain Giguère, NDP, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Madam Speaker, we could start with a little reminder: Walkerton. This is what happens when a government places itself at the service of lobbyists and not at the service of the people. This is not an ideology, but greed.

Walkerton is a small town that was having its water tested by the government. One fine day, the Harris government, on the advice of lobbyists, decided to privatize the lab studies. So the private company, which was supposed to do much more for a better price, decided to make it much more profitable. The tests were erroneous and the residents were poisoned.

Unfortunately, this is the type of situation that we are facing. Once again, a government on the right decides to listen to lobbyists rather than face its duties. In this case, on one side, we have a very old Canadian union that was established in 1911. This union has taken part in many conflicts and has also brought many benefits. It created the context of a permanent, professional and non-partisan public service. It was an essential element in 1911. The petty politics of personal involvement were banished.

This union has become one of the best organized, most democratic and most powerful unions in Canada. It was part of many struggles in Canada. Over the years, it has created for itself a good collective agreement, with fair wages for fair work. It also established a defined benefit pension plan, and of course indexing has been added to protect pensioners from inflation. A clause for survivor's allowance, without penalty, has also been added to prevent the spouses of pensioners from falling into poverty. The union even gave same-sex couples the same rights long before any other unions. This is a very rich, very well capitalized pension plan with blue chip stocks in banks, Canadian financial institutions, PotashCorp and so on.

Unfortunately, plans like this one are coveted by everyone across Canada. This was obvious based on how quickly the government decided to intervene in the case of Air Canada. What was the problem at Air Canada? We were told that a strike at Air Canada would trigger an economic calamity, even though the company issued a press release telling everyone not to worry because the strike would in no way compromise the company.

Yet the government said it had to intervene immediately, that the union had to be crushed, that someone must prevent it from protecting its defined benefit pension plan. That was crucial in the case of Air Canada. The big shots that supposedly saved the company suspended pension contributions. Combined with some bad investments, this led to a $2.1 billion deficit in the fund, an actuarial liability for the company.

We can only imagine what a lovely gift the government was about to give the company. By waving a magic wand, it was going to force the union to come back, to give up its defined benefit plan and, as if by magic, between $500 million and $1.2 million would have disappeared from the deficit. The net worth of shareholders was going to jump by over $1 billion in just one day. Would that not have been great? That is what the Conservative Party is all about: friends first, the people second, like in Walkerton.

The postal institution is as old as Canada. As a joke, we used to say that, even before the RCMP and even before the first settlers arrived, a Canadian post office was setting up shop. That is not far from the truth.

Historically, this public service institution has always played a vital role in Canada. It has always been in operation, whether as the post office department or as the Canada Post Corporation. It has always operated under political authority.

Never in Canadian history has a Canada Post president, a crown corporation or a postmaster general taken action without getting the Prime Minister's approval first, especially when planning to cause havoc and declare a lockout. That cannot be done without the political authority's permission. And I am not the only one to say this.

Just recently, we have seen this with the Gomery commission. The hon. member for Bourassa would be able to confirm that the Gomery commission clearly showed that the Canada Post Corporation had followed the directives from the Prime Minister's Office in the matter of sponsorships.

So here we are with a big mystery. They are attempting to persuade us that the Canada Post Corporation started the lockout without permission from the Prime Minister, who had no other choice but to take action by imposing special legislation because he thought the lockout was so terrible. Wow! And he is trying to persuade 33 million Canadians of that. Let me just say that the number of Canadians who believe them after finding out the facts will drop. It will drop like a stone, in fact. No one can believe so implausible a story, that the Prime Minister does not know what his left hand is doing while his right hand is doing the opposite. The Prime Minister's authority is directly involved in all this. It clearly means that everything that has been happening is simply an ambush. They have intentionally led the union to a lockout in order to be able to ask for an arbitrator who, under this special legislation, will eliminate the pension plan for the benefit of their friends in power.

Unfortunately for the government, the longer the debate goes on, the longer people outside the House will talk about it and the sooner they will realize that the government's version of events does not add up. I doubt that 33 million people are going to believe, after a week or two of lockout, that the Prime Minister is not aware of what is going on in his own office.

What impact is this having? Some 55,000 Canadians are without an income or wages because of the government's decision. They can not afford to buy groceries or pay the rent. Moreover this is affecting the Canadian economy.

The members opposite are saying there is cause for concern and that it is important to do something about it. That is true. They have to end the lockout, stop making backroom deals and start doing their duty by listening to people and standing up for them instead of serving the interests of their friends and lobbyists.

[Gary Goodyear, Conservative, Minister of State (Science and Technology) (Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario)]

Madam Speaker, the member hits it on the nose that 55,000 workers are seriously inconvenienced by this. The government is very concerned about that. We are concerned that an agreement could not be reached after eight months. We were concerned about the rotating strikes that cost Canada Post, and ultimately taxpayers, over $100 million, and now the lockout. At the end of the day, what we are concerned about is all Canadians. We are concerned about small businesses that are losing money. There is strong evidence that the economy is being hurt and at a very critical time when the global economy is still fragile.

Would the member see that the best way to end this now, the most firm, complete and final way, is to agree with the back to work legislation, support the government's concern for all Canadians, not just those who are unionized, but Canadians who do not have unions, Canadians who want to go to work are being negatively impacted? As a result, seniors are not getting their cheques and folks are not getting their passports or their visas for family members overseas who are ill. The government is concerned about this on a whole. These workers need to get back to work, and this filibustering is not helping.

Would the member please consider supporting back to work legislation as the final and complete solution to this problem?

[Alain Giguère, NDP, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Madam Speaker, what the hon. government member is asking of us is not to facilitate a return to work, but to condemn generations of Canadians to no longer have a pension plan that guards them from poverty. That is important to point out. For the sake of small businesses and people who are expecting official documents, why on earth is the government maintaining this lockout? All the Prime Minister has to do is pick up the phone. He just has to tell his guy to end the lockout, that he is the Prime Minister, but the Prime Minister—

[The Deputy Speaker, Denise Savoie]

Order, please. Questions and comments. The hon. member for Davenport.

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

Madam Speaker, the government says that it does not interfere with Canada Post, of which it is the sole shareholder. That is a bit of a head-scratcher for many people. Then it turns around and does just that and offers postal workers less than what management offered initially.

Does my hon. colleague not think it would be fair if the government withdrew the wage clause in the bill?

[Alain Giguère, NDP, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Madam Speaker, the entire bill must be withdrawn, in my opinion. It makes no sense at all. The government created this mess and wants somebody else to clean it up. It makes me think of a chicken farmer who puts a fox in a henhouse and then decides, very intelligently, to punish the chickens. This is exactly the kind of logic this government is using.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health]

Madam Speaker, what is a real head-scratcher for any Canadian watching this debate is the theme of the NDP speeches. What the members are doing consistently is speaking about anything except what the debate is about, which is back to work legislation. In the last speech we heard about the CBC, about Gomery and about Walkerton.

The facts are very clear. This is about two parties that for eight months could not come to an agreement. The minister has bent over backward to try to get to some type of resolution. The question that Canadians want to hear tonight is how long will the NDP allow these two parties to hold Canadians and Canadian small businesses that are right now creating jobs for Canadians hostage? How long will those members condone the actions, as the Minister of Immigration said, that are hurting the most vulnerable—

[The Deputy Speaker, Denise Savoie]

Order, please. I must stop the hon. member there to give the member for Marc-Aurèle-Fortin an opportunity to respond.

[Alain Giguère, NDP, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Madam Speaker, my response will be very brief. All the government has to do is end the lockout. It pulled it out of nowhere, and built it from the ground up, so it can put an end to it. If the Prime Minister is no longer able to pull rank over the chief executive officer of a crown corporation, then my goodness, it was clearly a mistake to elect him.

[The Deputy Speaker, Denise Savoie]

Resuming debate. The hon. member for Saanich—Gulf Islands.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Madam Speaker, this discussion and debate has now taken us through several calendar days, although, as we know, the date on the table remains unchanged. I hope our minds do not remain as fixed as the table date of Thursday, June 23.

I will review some of the things that I think are salient about this situation and see if I can shed some light on it, hoping that it does some good to the discussion we have had here.

The first thing is to look at Canada Post. It is the most important public service for delivery of mail and other things that are really important to us.

As a public service, it is worth noting that it has been profitable every year for 15 years. It is also worth noting that it is facing challenges and its profit margin is going down in competition with other areas, competition with email and with commercial carriers like UPS and FedEx, even though it was able to take over Purolator and run it very profitably.

It is in a challenging situation. One of the reasons it continues to turn a profit, and in the last year I could find was for 2009, a $281 million profit, is due to the dedication and professionalism of its workforce.

We take these things as good starting points for maintaining what we want. I presume we all want Canada Post to be a public service and not privatized. I agree with my friends in the official opposition that there is some risk of that, but I do not think it is as blatant as they do. We have to guard against privatization by ensuring Canada Post remains public and profitable.

Into this we now have, and have had for some time, difficult labour management relationships between Canada Post management and CUPW. The remaining issues on the table, when things fell apart, really had almost nothing to do with the wage issue except for the differential wages for younger workers. Other issues included health and safety issues, which makes sense given what the postal workers go through, as well as staffing issues, sick leave, questions of short-term disability, wages, pensions, benefits, job creation and the ongoing issue of training.

These issues are certainly solvable. I practised in a number of areas of law, but for about three years I practised union-side labour law. I am somewhat familiar with collective agreements and bargaining, working with unions and having long negotiations. Eight months really is not that long as long as a collective agreement can be honoured and stay in place while the parties negotiate.

This is just some of the background that came to me and it is worth looking at it.

We all know the chronology. As things began to fall apart, CUPW instituted rotating strike action, which led, very short days afterwards, to a lockout. I think we all find it somewhat inexplicable that Canada Post management took that route because it brought mail service in Canada to an absolute standstill. We now find ourselves here.

I will start with where we all agree. Then I will deal with what I think are the red herrings where we do not agree. I believe we all agree that we want the mail to move. We all agree that we would like it to move as quickly as possible. I think we probably all agree that we would rather not be here at 2:15 on a Saturday morning. I think that is a presumption that will probably be shared around the room.

On the other hand, despite the occasional moments of lack of decorum, overall all members of Parliament from all parties have conducted themselves with that sense of duty, recognizing that we are here and this issue is important. It falls on us as elected members of Parliament not to just argue endlessly, but to solve it.

I think we would all agree with those statements.

Where do I see red herrings? A couple of them really relate to the larger cultural problem of this place, which is an addiction to partisanship, but I will leave it aside. However, I cannot vote for this legislation as drafted.

I am uncomfortable with some of the accusations. Some of the members of the official opposition make a good point and then take it one step too far. I find myself thinking it was too partisan, it was a cheap shot. On the other hand, in defending the position of the government legislation, some government members have gone too far. If we could tone that down, it would help. I do not mean to sound like I am preaching or lecturing, and I hope members will forgive me.

On the other hand, in defending the position of the government legislation, I think some government members have gone too far. If we could tone that down, it would help. I do not mean to sound like I am preaching or lecturing and I hope members will forgive me.

Something that is a problem and a bit of a red herring is that the issue before us is what do we do as members of Parliament to ensure that the mail starts moving, that there is a fair collective agreement bargaining process that works for all parties. That is our job. It is not really relevant to discuss the fact that other workers do not have such a good deal.

I can say that until May 2 I never had a pension plan, medical benefits or paid vacation time. I have never had any of those things nor have other people in my family, but that is not relevant to what we have in front of us. What we have in front of us are legal entitlements of CUPW negotiated under Canadian law that must be respected. It is not to insult other workers that we respect unionized rights. It is not to divide one set of workers against another.

We have a responsibility to uphold Canadian law and Canadian law says CUPW has a legitimate collective agreement that has been negotiated under Canadian law, which is valid for a very important public service delivery of our postal system. Workers do a fantastic job and one of the reasons they do a fantastic job is that they are in a good union that negotiates well. That is the issue before us.

There are other questions. Does the 2007 Supreme Court decision in the B.C. hospital workers case have any bearing here? I know the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Defence said it does not, but I think there are questions.

I will now come to the difference between us. One group of people in the House believes the best way to get the mail moving is to push through Bill C-6, come hell or high water. One group of people in the House thinks the best way to get the mail moving again is to fight as hard as possible against Bill C-6 in the hope that somehow, while we are in this place in our suspended animation of June 23, there will be some progress somewhere else that solves the problem.

But it is in members' hands to solve the problem now. I made this point earlier today and I will ask my friends in the government to consider it. The fastest way to get the mail moving, which I know is their number one objective, is to change Bill C-6 through amendments that allow all of us in this place to agree that we have respected collective bargaining rights, the labour laws of Canada and Canadian workers, and we have acted quickly in the interests of all people, whether they are small business people or families waiting for cheques.

We should not allow ourselves to be so enamoured by our own rhetoric that we forget that the fastest way to get the mail moving is to amend Bill C-6 so that we can all agree, get the mail moving and go home at some point this weekend.