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

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

Mr. Speaker, the reality here for any Canadians who woke up here Saturday morning and are watching this charade while having their coffee is that we have grandstanding between the Conservatives, who are union busting, and the NDP, who are trying to be the super heroes for organized labour.

Somebody mentioned that the Liberals were going to be sleeping at the switch for the next four years. Well, that is not so. We have a balanced approach.

The reality for anybody watching this is that there is not going to be any mail delivered Monday because of these two parties and their charade. The Conservatives could have had better legislation. They could have limited the debate. The NDP could have worked with them on a consensus. We would have been having mail delivered in this country on Monday morning, but that is not happening. We are having grandstanding here.

Why will the NDP members not get along, put some amendments in place, and work with the Conservatives? Why will the Conservatives not step up to the plate and work together? Use the Liberal approach. The Liberal approach is the middle-of-the-road approach. Get the mail moving.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, given the criticism I have received from my colleagues across the way, I am not going to comment on the Liberal approach. I will let that pass for the moment.

What I think is important, though, is that I actually believe in what I am doing right now. I believe in what my party is doing. This is serious business.

I know the men and women who serve in the postal units in my local community, and I also know about the philosophical thing happening in putting two-tier wages on young people when they enter the workforce. We used to do that based on how people looked: their ethnicity, the colour of their skin, or whether they were woman.

We used to allow two-tier wages in Canada. It is re-entering the system, because young people are going to be entering at a lower wage for the same amount of work. I fundamentally believe that it is wrong. It is wrong to move the country that way. We have a crown corporation that is making hundreds of millions of dollars every year for this country and is contributing very strongly to the economy and productivity.

I do not believe that our youth deserve that fate. They have done enough. They have had enough hard times. They need to see some opportunity.

Why will members not take two-tier wages and benefits and pensions, when they are asking for it for the people of Canada Post who are coming into the system?

[The Acting Speaker, Barry Devolin]

Before we resume debate, I would like to remind all hon. members that when anyone has the floor, other members ought to be listening to them.

Members are aware that another of the standing orders that applies in these cases is that members are not to do things that may cause a disruption in the House. That applies to members who are listening to speeches. That also applies to the members who are making speeches.

I would encourage all hon. members to make their points and to respect the fact that it is in everyone's collective interest that this place not descend into a talking or yelling match, back and forth. If members have conversations they would like to have with one another, I encourage them to take them to the lobby. We have lots of time to discuss those matters.

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Timmins—James Bay.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to commend you once again for the excellent work you and the other Speakers have been doing throughout this debate. Your message is that this is the place where the issues of the people of Canada should be discussed. The discussion has to be done with a recognition of the importance of the debate. I certainly agree with your sentiment that we do not want this to be reduced to any sort of frat-house argument. I am very appreciative.

It is now 47 and a half hours before the mail begins to roll on Monday morning. There is easily enough time to address some of the key outstanding problems.

Over the weekend, I have noticed that perhaps the government has been mistaken. Perhaps there has been a plan to sort of misrepresent what has happened. When the Minister of Labour spoke on Thursday night, I was quite shocked that she continually spoke about a strike, as though this strike justified intervention.

We know that in the past there have been instances when if there was a long-term strike, government had to act in the public interest. That is what happened with the Toronto transit workers. My brother is a TTC worker. I know what it means when there is a long-term strike and there is no solution. However, the labour minister failed to tell the people of Canada that this is not what happened.

A crown corporation cut off service to the Canadian public, and the Conservative government supported it. What has happened is that people who have small businesses, people who are in rural areas, and senior citizens have been cut off from service because of the quite shocking decision by a crown corporation to deny services to the public. When the Minister of Labour gets up and blames this on the workers, it really undermines the ability to find a resolution here.

We in the New Democratic Party believe that it is unacceptable to hold the Canadian people hostage by allowing a crown corporation to deny service.

The government brought in this legislation on Thursday night. Even if the New Democratic Party acted like the old Liberal party, which come the weekend always folded its tents and went home, the mail would not have run on Friday morning. Not a single piece of mail in this country has been stopped because of what the New Democratic Party has been doing here, not a single piece of mail. Yet millions of pieces of mail have been stopped because of the failure of the Conservative government to hold Canada Post to account.

This brings us to this situation, unprecedented in recent Parliaments, of debating here on a Saturday morning. How do we solve this? This is the question.

Canadians are expecting that in this 41st Parliament, people will rise to the occasion. There will be adult behaviour. Conservatives and New Democrats disagree fundamentally on the role of public service, and we disagree fundamentally, between Conservatives and New Democrats, on protecting pensions. We disagree fundamentally, between Conservatives and New Democrats, on the right to collective bargaining. However, what we all agree on is the need to find a resolution.

It is now 47 and a half hours until the mail can start to roll on Monday morning. The only thing stopping the mail from rolling is the unwillingness of the government to accept taking the wage rollback out of this back-to-work legislation. It is important to take that wage rollback out, because if this is allowed to stand as a precedent, it will be used in every coming labour dispute, because there will be no need for the labour bargaining process to participate with public sector workers from here on in. Employers will be able to say that they do not have to set up negotiations and do not have to go to arbitration. They can count on the government to lock out the workers, manufacture a crisis, and punish the employees by actually lowering the wages they had been guaranteed at the bargaining table. Therefore, this is a bigger issue.

The Conservative government can certainly get a great win out of this if it pulls the wage factor out of the back-to-work legislation. They go back to work. It goes to arbitration. It goes to mediation, and this thing is settled. The Canadian public can be assured that in the 41st Parliament, two parties that have fundamentally different views can actually rise to the occasion and put the Canadian public interest first.

I am very concerned about this act of attempting to use a parliamentary sledgehammer to push down wages and to create a two-tier system of wages in this country.

I heard the member from Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, on the first night of debate, say that at $12 an hour, three days a week, you should be happy to have a job--I think the term was “tickled pink”--if you are a young worker. That might be, again, one of the fundamental disagreements between the Conservative Party and the New Democratic Party.

I know what it is like in my region, where I have older people who have worked their whole lives, and some have pensions they are able to retire on. They are asking how it is that their children are never going to have the middle-class life they have, especially the younger workers, who are paying back $40,000 to $50,000 in debt. This is fundamentally wrong.

We have seen how this was done in Wisconsin, where they attacked and demonized the public service. They attempted to tell the people who were below public sector workers, the people who are earning $10 an hour, the people who have no chance of having a pension, to blame the public sector workers. There is an ongoing pension crisis in the United States. There is an ongoing pension crisis in Canada. What they failed to do in Wisconsin, and what they are failing to do in the Conservative Party, is point to where the real problems lie.

Let us go back to some of the strong symbols of the pension crisis in this country: the Nortel workers. Nortel, which was one of Canada's greatest companies, was allowed to be run into the ground. The pensioners lost their pensions. The benefits for the disabled workers were denied.

The governments of every country in the western world where Nortel had operations stood up for their pensioners, but the Conservative government did not. At the same time, while they were in bankruptcy and were selling off the company, the Canadian brain trust that Nortel was, the Nortel executives were allowed to receive $7.5 million in bonuses. I believe that to be fundamentally criminal.

I believe that if we do not address this pension crisis in this country, and we do not stop the push for two-tiered workers, we are going to see the kind of old robber baron capitalism that existed when my grandparents came to this country.

I have heard a lot of comments, but perhaps the most audacious comment I heard last night, and I was absolutely gobsmacked when I heard it, was from a new member, a former diplomat, who accused us of being communists. He even used the word “Moscow”.

Charlie Angus came from Hawkhill in Dundee, Scotland. He was called a red a whole bunch of times. My family was never afraid of being called red, because they knew what that meant.

When Charlie Angus went to work at the Hollinger gold mine, it was the richest gold mine in the western world. The average life expectancy of an underground miner was 41 because of the silicosis.

They had a two-tiered system there, too. If you were a Catholic or an immigrant, you worked down in the most dangerous gold stopes. Unless you had the Mason's ring, you were not allowed on the surface. Charlie Angus came over from the Hawkhill, and he had the Mason's ring, because you could not work in Scotland unless you were a member of the Orange Lodge. My grandmother used to say that Charlie Angus came over here to get away from the bigotry in the old country. He came over here because he thought all workers should have fair rights.

He remembered what it was like seeing the Croatian and Bulgarian miners sent underground under the gold stopes.

They called him a communist. Do you know why? It was because they started to organize. Charlie Angus walked the picket lines with my mill, and he walked the picket lines with the steelworkers.

They could not get help at a bank, so they created the workers' co-op and the consumers' co-op. I remember talking to a woman in South Porcupine who said that her father was a Finnish miner. He broke his back underground, and not a single bank would touch him, so he had to go to the workers' co-op. She said that they called them communists on the streets.

I thought that was ancient history until I came into this House of Commons. I see that we are being called communists.

We have to get back to what this issue is. By Monday morning we should settle this. We are calling on the Conservative government to stop using the language of “communists” and “reds”. Next they will be calling us North Koreans. We can settle this and put the Canadian public first.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Mr. Speaker, Fort McMurray is famous for many things, including 7% of the GDP of the country. What I like to brag about the most is that I have more union members than anywhere else in the country. I am proud of that. These members are from all across the country. They are from that member's riding. They are from some of the ridings in Quebec. They are from all across the country. Newfoundlanders make up the majority.

I am glad to see that the NDP have identified, in the last three speakers, that they no longer are representing workers but are representing the elite from Canada Post's union. We understand that now. That is very clear, especially in regard to some things that have happened. I think they recognize, with all the mail coming in against this NDP filibuster, that they have to step back a bit from this. I am glad they are beginning to see common sense.

Our economic action plan actually saved Canada from the worldwide recession. The NDP voted against that, and the member for Windsor West especially. I want to hear from this particular member why the member for Windsor West would vote against the economic action plan. It provided almost $2 billion to his riding. It has done so much good for Canada. We see these signs all across country.

Why would the NDP vote against the economic action plan? Was it because the elite union bosses told them to?

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

There we go again, Mr. Speaker, with the big, evil union bosses. We have heard about the union thugs and the communists. We should be debating the issue instead of name-calling.

I find it fascinating to hear my friend from Fort McMurray—Athabasca talking about all the workers in Canada being in his riding: damn right they are. Does he know why they had to leave Timmins? Does he know why they had to leave Smooth Rock Falls? Does he know why they had to leave Opasatika and Kapuskasing?

They had to leave because the Conservative government did nothing for the forestry industry. Entire towns have been devastated. The government's only solution was for these workers to take a bus to Fort McMurray. They can take a bus to Fort McMurray because the government has been pumping billions of subsidies into that city.

We have been saying all along that we now live on the petro dollar, because the Prime Minister said he was going to put a firewall around the Alberta oil industry. All of our workers are being sucked into Alberta, where they have to compete against workers coming in from Pakistan on short-term jobs.

I know what is going on in Fort McMurray because I get letters and emails from folks in Fort McMurray who want to come back. They ask me why the government will subsidize Fort McMurray and the oil sector to the hilt when the forestry sector was left devastated. The manufacturing sector was left devastated. The textile industry in Quebec was left devastated. All of these folks had to go off and work in that member's riding.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, about half an hour ago I received an email from a person who watched my speech.

He said, “I am from Miramichi, New Brunswick, and I have been watching you guys debate for the last few hours. Thank you for informing the audience and MPs of what exactly could be done instead of what they are trying to do now. I think it's just terrible that this government is mandating this and getting in the way of employer-employee negotiations. This seems communist, not democratic, and it's very scary to watch Canada circle the drain while [the Prime Minister] promotes the rich getting richer and the middle class getting poorer. I hope you guys filibuster until the Prime Minister comes to the House with a reasonable solution. This is not the Canada I know.”

Would the member like to comment?

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have been receiving emails from people across Canada who are watching this. Many of them are not union workers. Many of them are not Canada Post workers. They recognize, however, that there is something fundamentally wrong. They have seen the pension crisis. They have seen the ridicule that the government has had for people who fall on hard times.

I would like to remind people what the present Prime Minister said when he quit Parliament to take over the National Citizens Coalition and run the campaign to de-unionize the workforce. At that time he was the rabble leader for the coalition. In Montreal, in June of 1997, he said, “In terms of the unemployed, of which we have over a million-and-a-half, don't feel particularly bad for many of these people.”

I think that is an appalling statement for any elected official to make, especially someone who is now our Prime Minister. He does not feel bad for unemployed workers. He does not feel bad for people who are trying to get by.

We can solve this with a bit of goodwill. The Conservatives will have to raise their game up a little and put the public interest first rather than have this ideological crusade against people in the two-tier--

[The Acting Speaker, Barry Devolin]

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Louis-Saint-Laurent.

[Alexandrine Latendresse, NDP, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to try to clarify a few things this morning. As we have said repeatedly, as recently as last year, in 2009, Canada Post made some $281 million in revenues. Over the past 15 years, Canada Post has made $1.7 billion in profits and has paid the federal government $1.2 billion. The Canadian postal service is profitable, we can all agree on that.

That being the case, why are the workers being asked to make these financial sacrifices? Need I remind the House that it is thanks to them, thanks to their dedication, determination and hard work, that Canada Post can operate and make such profits?

I would like to know why these workers, who are simply trying to enforce their rights, should be the only ones to compromise and make sacrifices in this whole affair.

This government must understand that it does not have the mandate to take the place of Canada Post management. The employees indicated that they wanted to continue working during the negotiations under the same working conditions as before.

Why did the government not let the negotiations continue out of mutual respect for both parties until an agreement could be reached?

Once again this morning, I rise here to repeat that these thousands of men and women who work tirelessly for us day in and day out deserve better than what this special bill is offering. Canada Post employees deserve better than to be so rudely discriminated against based on their age. Reducing the wages of new employees in such a draconian manner sends a clear message to the workers of my generation: their work is worthless and their contribution is not up to snuff. They will never be recognized for their true worth.

Let us imagine what would have happened if, when the hon. Minister of Canadian Heritage was first elected in 2000, that he had been told, “congratulations, but we are going to pay you less than your predecessors”. He would have disputed that, and rightly so.

Imposing these vastly inferior working conditions on new employees will create a gulf between the generations. It will drive a huge wedge between the young and not so young. It is also likely to create a tense and dismal work environment for employees of different ages when the mail service resumes.

Now more than ever, we need to support and defend young workers. The following was posted on canoe.ca on June 14, 2011, and was based on a very recent study by the Certified General Accountants Association of Canada:

Canadian families face ongoing balance-sheet battle...According to the report, household debt has reached a new all-time high of $1.5 trillion...“The report confirms that more than half of indebted Canadians are borrowing just to afford day-to-day living expenses like food, housing and transportation,” adds Anthony Ariganello, President and CEO of CGA-Canada. “For these individuals, there is little hope for improved financial condition.”

It is unacceptable that at a time when households are carrying so much debt, the government wants to refuse to provide young workers with a decent wage to meet their needs and the needs of their families. They can continue to accumulate debt; they can continue to pay huge interest rates to credit card companies. Is that really the message we want to send my generation?

The article continues and reveals that:

Some 27 per cent of non-retired Canadians commit no resources whatsoever to savings, even for retirement. More Canadians are carrying debt into retirement, with one-third of retired households carrying an average debt of $60,000 and 17 per cent carrying $100,000 or more.

In light of all of this, how can the government want to impose such harmful measures on workers' pensions?

Why does it want to punish the workers, who have been reasonable and who showed good faith by holding a rotating strike—a way to put pressure without seriously affecting mail operations?

Why did Canada Post decide to lock its doors, affecting a large number of vulnerable people and small businesses, as the members on the other side of the House remind us so often.

Most importantly, what message does the government want to send by imposing wages that are lower than what was offered by Canada Post?

The government did not need to interfere in this labour negotiation between the employer and its employees. The reality is that Canada Post employees want to get back to work as quickly as possible. They are probably the ones who most want this dispute to resolved as quickly as possible. Right now, it is impossible for them. The employer locked the doors to their workplace. Canada Post is currently forcing a lockout that is hurting everyone. They must let the employees return to work.

Let them continue to provide services to the public as they have faithfully done for so long. Stop punishing them because they have exercised their legitimate rights and take immediate action to correct the situation with respect and dignity for all.

I do not know if you remember the evening of this past May 2 when the Prime Minister celebrated his new government that came into power with a little under 40% of the votes. He then made a promise, noted by many in the media, that he would govern for all Canadians.

This week, the mask has come off. The hon. members on the opposite side of the House will not hesitate to set unionized workers against non-unionized workers or young workers against the not-so-young to achieve their ideological purposes.

[Gerald Keddy, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Trade]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the comments from my hon. colleague across the way. I understand that we may have slightly different points of view on this issue.

There is another issue that gives a glaring example of union leadership out of control. We all know that CUPW membership does not decide what they are going to do. The union leadership decides what they are going to do. In this case, both sides have been at the table long enough. It is time to go back to the union membership--not to the leaders, not to the member's own colleagues, who are all former union leaders, but to the membership--and ask them to vote again on the offer.

I believe if they went back again and voted on the offer, Canada Post would be back to work.

[Alexandrine Latendresse, NDP, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I believe that 94% of employees were in favour of those pressure tactics, so I do not see what the point is here. The employees clearly want to work. It is the employer that is preventing them from working. I do not understand the point that is being made, because that is what is happening.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for her very thoughtful remarks.

I would like her to elaborate a bit more on the impact of Canada Post's demands and the demands by the federal government on young people. I understand that the starting wage being demanded is 18% below the current starting wage. At the same time, Canada Post has been profitable for more than 15 years. The CEO is the highest-paid of any crown corporation at half a million dollars with a 30% bonus. I am sure he gets a healthy defined benefit pension plan.

The message to young people may be that not only are they paid less at a time when they have greater debt than ever but that there also may be no pension for them. What kind of message does that send to the member, particularly as a young person herself?

[Alexandrine Latendresse, NDP, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for her question. Personally, that is what affects me the most in this conflict because what I see is a bill that is trying to impose measures on young people to really show them that they will never be able to have a salary that is equal to what it used to be. So many people have fought for decent wages to ensure they were sufficient to meet the needs of their families. But when the young people come along, they are being told that they are not entitled to that, that they do not have the same rights as those before them, that their work is worth nothing, that their work is second-class. I think the message is very sad.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

Mr. Speaker, during the last election campaign, one of my friends who was also a candidate, Mr. John Markus, had a little saying that went like this: “You know that socialism is all finished when the socialists have finished spending everyone else's money.”

That is what we are hearing throughout this debate. We have been hearing over and over again about what the president of Canada Post makes. I wonder if my friend across the aisle could tell us what the president of CUPW makes.