Mr. Speaker, thank you for that ruling.
As I was saying, as the party of grumpy old guys gets grumpier, its base is getting grumpy as well. That party's base is getting frustrated. Every single principle upon which those members got elected by that base, the party has compromised and jettisoned overboard, thrown overside in the interests of political expediency, whether it is stacking the Senate with their cronies, which the Conservatives said they would never do, or whether it is racking up record deficits, which they said they would not do. The Conservatives' base is starting to wonder where the party is that they elected. Now that the Conservatives have their majority, now is the time to come on strong.
I would think the Minister of Finance was channelling Maggie Thatcher, if he had a sweater set and pearls. Every time I am in the men's washroom at the urinal, I expect to look over and see Maggie Thatcher right beside me, but no, it is the Minister of Finance.
The Conservatives are looking south of the border. If people liked the Mike Harris government, they will certainly like the labour legislation those guys have in mind. We are getting an inkling of what that will be like now. They take on big ticket items, such as defined benefit pension plans. Thomas d'Aquino and the 140 CEOs in the country are who those guys work for. That party is the political arm of the Business Council on National Issues. They have said that we have to do away with defined benefit pension plans, so those guys are dutifully falling into line. They would have us put in place some American-style 401K plan, and we know how well that has worked for American workers who invested their life savings in Enron and others.
The Conservatives would have us revisit our labour laws, like the right to work laws in the United States. As they have set about trying to recreate Canada in the image of the George Bush or Ronald Reagan United States, or however limited their vision is, I do not know if they realize what a fight they will get from the official opposition.
Also there are predictable consequences. There is a point in law that says a person can be presumed to have intended the probable consequences of his or her actions. I will tell one story as a graphic illustration of the predictable outcome of the direction in which the Conservatives are taking us.
In 1913 there was a famous fire in New York City at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. Hundreds of workers died because of the sweatshop conditions, et cetera. It was at that time that workplace health and safety conditions began to improve, just out of public outrage, until about the time the Reaganites said, “Enough of these union nuisances. They are holding back prosperity. We have to smash the unions”. They put in place right to work states, like North Carolina, not unlike what the Harris government tried to do in Ontario.
I will tell a story about a chicken factory in Durham, North Carolina. This is a recent story. It happened in the 1990s. In a chicken processing plant, the chickens go by so fast that the poor women who work in the place have to do 40 actions per chicken per minute. They have to cut the wing tips off, cut the neck off, and so on. It goes so fast and it is ice cold in the plant, they do not know they have cut themselves until they see the blood dripping on the ground because their hands are so cold. They are paid $7.50 to $8 an hour. They started stealing the wing tips, the necks and the giblets that would otherwise go into hot dogs, and they would sneak them home. This is a true story. The employer padlocked the doors from the outside. The place started on fire.
