Bill C-377 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Income Tax Act (requirements for labour organizations)

This enactment amends the Income Tax Act to require that labour organizations provide financial information to the Minister for public disclosure.

Labour

[Shelly Glover, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance]

Mr. Speaker, if that member had been paying attention to our committee business, he would have seen and heard that there are actually some amendments that will be proposed to deal with some of these measures.

Let me remind the House that Bill C-377 is a private member's bill, not a government bill, and we will do due diligence in the finance committee in examining the entire bill.

If the hon. member would like to sit in, I encourage him to take the spot of another member.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, workers, businesses and investors are all voicing concerns over Bill C-377, including Canada's police officers.

The bill would require that names and addresses of police who retire or officers who are sick or injured be posted on the Canada Revenue Agency website. Not only is this a massive breach of privacy; it also puts the safety of front-line police officers at risk.

Does the Minister of Public Safety agree with his Conservative colleagues that retired, sick and injured police officers should have their names and addresses posted online?

Canada Elections Act

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Transport]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the sponsor of the bill who, I believe, does so with good intention and with a skilled hand as a legislator in this place.

The bill would amend the Canada Elections Act to increase the fines for serious election offences. It would provide that the Chief Electoral Officer could contest an election of a candidate under part 20 of the act.

I think everyone in this place can agree that it is our responsibility as parliamentarians to always look for ways to continue to ensure strong, free and fair elections in Canada. Our electoral system must have the trust and confidence of Canadians. Our Conservative government has a proud record of achievement when it comes to strengthening our democracy, a point which I will return to a few minutes later.

We certainly agree that people who commit election fraud and those who break the law should be held to account with tough penalties, and we certainly do not have a problem with tougher penalties. In fact, we welcome the agreement I think we have here in the House on fines and tougher penalties for serious election offences. That agreement is something I hope we will be able to come back to as this session of Parliament continues this fall.

We probably all agree more generally with some sort of strengthening of the enforcement mechanisms of the Canadian Elections Act as well. However, we believe that changes to the Canada Elections Act should be considered in a broader context than that presented in the bill. Piecemeal amendments such as these do not encompass the broader context of the act.

That context is illustrated by the fact that just earlier this year the procedure and House affairs committee produced its 15th report in response to the Chief Electoral Officer's recommendations following the 40th election. That report contained 50 recommendations to the act, and that was not even a comprehensive review of the act. It was simply a review of issues that came up during that particular election.

One of those 50 recommendations dealt with fines. The government is currently reviewing this recommendation and the report as a whole and will put forward a proposal in due course. Therefore, we will have that issue covered in the future and in a more comprehensive way than this bill can provide for. That is plain to see. This bill has two elements. The procedure committee report has 50, so we are talking about a vast difference in scale. That is the broader context at stake.

However, I will not leave it at that. There is a serious problem with the bill. The bill has only two main elements and one of them is, unfortunately, disqualifying in nature. The problem is that the bill would completely undermine the neutrality and impartiality of the Chief Electoral Officer. The bill must be defeated on these grounds alone, even if there were no others.

Right now, participants in an election are able to contest that election. That means any elector or candidate in the electoral district in question can contest it. The application must be accompanied by a security cost in the amount of $1,000. By inserting the Chief Electoral Officer in the arena, we would be undermining his impartial role. The officer is an independent player who represents Parliament. He is not a participant in an election and must therefore act in a manner that is neutral and impartial to all parties and candidates.

Each actor in an election has his or her role. The officer supervises the conduct of elections, kind of like a referee in a hockey game. He does not pick up a stick and start paying. At least he should not.

All complaints alleging offences to the act are referred to the commissioner of Canada elections. The commissioner investigates and enforces the rules. When the commissioner believes that an offence has been committed, the commissioner may refer the matter to the director of public prosecutions who would decide whether or not the matter should be prosecuted.

While the administration and enforcement is left to others, the contestation of elections is left to the political actors, that is candidates and voters. Once again, the Chief Electoral Officer is kept above this fray.

The Chief Electoral Officer should not be an active player in making an election contested. Otherwise, he or she would be put in a conflicted position of potentially filing a complaint against himself or herself. He or she is, after all, the officiator and any bill that requires him or her to make complaints on how an election is officiated would effectively turn his or her own sword on his or her own person.

As such, no measures should be put in place that would risk giving rise to even the perception of any favouritism on the part of the Chief Electoral Officer. I think we can all agree that any favouritism or bias on the part of the Chief Electoral Officer would bring the officer and Elections Canada as a whole into disrepute. The power to contest elections would create just such a risk. The Chief Electoral Officer would have to pick cases to be brought to court. Invariably, those denied will complain of favouritism, having to bear the cost of litigation, and rightly so.

Furthermore, irregularities that may call an election result into question may have been the result of actions or omissions on the part of the Chief Electoral Officer or Elections Canada staff themselves. Imagine if actions or omissions of the Chief Electoral Officer became the subject of a potentially contested vote, and then imagine we had a legal regime that required that same electoral officer to file a complaint against himself or herself. The conflict is obvious and inescapable.

We saw this was the case in the contested election of Etobicoke Centre. In such a case, the Chief Electoral Officer would find himself or herself in a conflict of interest were he or she called upon to defend the actions of his or her staff while at the same time initiating the complaint against the process that he or she ran. So it is clear that the bill would put the Chief Electoral Officer in an intolerable position of conflict. As such, this proposal alone renders the bill unsupportable by the government. Thankfully, we are taking other actions and we hope to co-operate with the hon. member for Beauséjour and the opposition in order to see them to a successful conclusion.

Last night, Bill C-21, the political loans accountability act, passed at second reading in the House. The bill would fix the current rules for political loans, which have been made a mockery of by the opposition parties. Six of the nine NDP contestants in the recent leadership contest failed to meet their filing deadlines for disclosure. They claimed software glitches or having to attend a conference. They had six full months to get their books in order but they could not meet a generous reporting deadline.

The Liberal Party's record is worse. Four Liberal candidates from the 2006 Liberal leadership race, six years ago, have still not paid off their debts despite very generous extensions to the deadline. We are moving to tackle this problem and these abuses through the political loans accountability act.

Finally, we are moving forward with Bill C-377, which would require disclosure of union finances, this being extremely important after the recent discovery that the unions gave $340,000 in illegal money to the NDP.

I encourage the opposition parties to work with us to expand accountability and strengthen the democracy that we all enjoy.

Income Tax Act

[Patricia Davidson, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to present a petition signed by many members of my riding requesting Parliament not to pass Bill C-377.

Finance

[The Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

The House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded division on the motion to concur in the 11th report of the Standing Committee on Finance concerning the extension of time to consider Bill C-377.

[James Rajotte, Conservative, Edmonton—Leduc, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the 11th report of the Standing Committee on Finance.

It is in relation to requesting an extension of 30 sitting days to consider Bill C-377, An Act to amend the Income Tax Act (requirements for labour organizations).

On behalf of the entire committee, I wish a wonderful summer to everyone in the House.

First Nations Financial Transparency Act

[Carol Hughes, NDP, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my distinguished colleague, the member for Manicouagan.

It gives me great pleasure to speak to the bill so that the government can hear again how wrong-headed its approach is, not just for Bill C-27, but for much of what it has been hanging its hat on lately.

At the outset, the bill is unnecessary in that it ignores some simple ways to address the problems it seeks to solve. Bill C-27 is overly punitive and amounts to a real waste of valuable and much needed funds by duplicating efforts and increasing the bureaucratic burden on those first nations that do not already have self-governing regimes. It sets the course for costly legal battles and ignores the advice of the Auditor General to reduce the reporting burden placed on first nations. Worst of all, the bill was created without the consultation or involvement of first nations.

Bill C-27 is similar to a private member's bill the government is championing these days. The member just spoke to that. Bill C-377 is similar in that it seeks to force other bodies and organizations to do what the Conservative government is so thoroughly incapable of doing, which is to behave in a publicly accountable and transparent fashion. It is nothing short of ironic that we are debating the bill in the shadow of the ominous Trojan Horse budget bill, a budget that amounts to a leap of faith when put to the same test that Bill C-27 would force on to first nations.

We have just witnessed the government throttle the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer by refusing to provide the information needed for that office to report to parliamentarians in the manner that we have asked of him, in the manner that the Conservatives supported as opposition members and so thoroughly frustrate now that they are in government. We all welcomed how accountability and transparency were to be the hallmarks of the government and yet those principles are more notable by their absence than anything else when it comes to its actions.

The Accountability Act was the Conservatives' first piece of legislation after replacing the tired and corrupt Liberal Party in government. Only six years later, it is nothing more than a shell of broken ideals crushed under the weight of parliamentary bullying, influence peddling, lobbyists and allegations of electoral fraud.

Restoring Rail Service Act

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

They may clap, but this is an example of another private pension scheme that helps virtually no one but the big financial institutions.

Where is the public interest that is being upheld? Does it lie at the corporate boardroom table and the profit margins of a profitable company like CPR, or does it lie with making sure that there is a level playing field and that the collective bargaining process is given a fair chance to work?

The public interest is also about ensuring safety on our rail lines. I find it astounding that we have a Conservative government that purports to uphold safety and indeed continually seeks to divide our society into the simplistic division of criminals versus victims, yet when it comes to the safety of workers it is willing to use the sledgehammer of back-to-work legislation to uphold corporate interests and not something as basic as the safety issues that these CPR workers are facing.

I would like to reference the government's own Fatigue Management Plans: Requirements and Assessment Guidelines revised in March 2011, which spells out, and I quote:

Transport Canada recognizes that fatigue is one of the most critical safety issues facing the railway industry today. There is no doubt that fatigue has a detrimental impact on human performance and safety. While solutions to fatigue exist, there is no ‘one size fits all’ solution, which will easily solve all fatigue-related problems. One counter measure alone is not enough, nor is the sole reliance on legislated maximum hours of work.

This is a significant issue for these railway workers who are on strike, this issue of safety and fatigue, and I would argue that it definitely represents a broad public interest in maintaining and strengthening the safety of our rail system. The employees of CPR hold enormous responsibility for the safe transport of goods and people across the vast network of lines across Canada.

Does the minister even know what these basic issues are about? We know from the workplace that employees in freight service are called by phone to work on a two-hour notice. Employees are on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. There are no traditional days off. Until called the employees are often unaware of their destinations or when they will return home, and employees can be away from home for up to 36 hours.

The union proposal is designed to allow employees the opportunity to have two consecutive nights in bed twice a month. That is their proposal, and it is certainly in line with the government's own report guidelines.

Surely this is a fair and significant issue for these workers, yet it and other issues get swallowed up and quashed by the heavy-handed approach of the government. When we see a government in a headlong sprint to legislate back to work not once, not twice, but three times, we can only conclude it has no respect for collective bargaining and the important role unions play in our society. If at every opportunity the Conservatives choose legislation over proper process, if at every opportunity they seek to divide people and to scapegoat unions as we have seen their members do with Bill C-377, we can only conclude, contrary to what the minister says, that they do not represent the public interest. In fact, they despise any—

Jobs, Growth and Long-term Prosperity Act

[Alex Atamanenko, NDP, British Columbia Southern Interior, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour for me to follow my colleague from Welland on this debate. He quite eloquently spoke to the flaws of this bill. I would like to also thank him for his work on the agriculture file and on behalf of farmers.

Just prior to the start of this debate, my colleague from Malpeque and I were discussing how what we are witnessing is a transformation of our country. We were discussing the state of our country, and this omnibus bill, which lumps in all these measures that are chipping away at what many Canadians believe in, is just an example of this. I would go so far as to say that although we speak the same language, we are dividing ourselves into two new solitudes. One is represented by the government side, which represents a minority of citizens in our country, and the other side is represented by this side here, which represents the majority of citizens, citizens who really do not want to see major changes to our social net or to our system.

What are we seeing? We are seeing a government saying that it is all about job creation. At the same time, we are seeing a tremendous loss of public service well-paying jobs. I would like to remind people in the House that especially in our small rural communities, well-paying jobs are the main economic driver. These are the folks who drive the economy. They are the ones who go to restaurants and buy the local cars. They are the ones who keep our communities alive. What we are seeing here is that a lot of these jobs are being cut, and, as I will explain later, it is for no real reason.

Just before I move on, I would like to talk about what I call “union bashing”. We have well-paying jobs in this country, both in the private and public sectors, because we have a labour movement that has worked hard to ensure a high standard. I was talking with some representatives of the Canadian Police Association the other day when they were in town. They told me the reason they have well-paying jobs as police officers is that police officers, with the exception of the RCMP, have unions or associations, and the reason the RCMP has a livable wage is that the bar has been set by people who are represented by unions. At the same time we see Bill C-377, the accountability of unions act, loading a whole bunch of red tape on police associations and other trade unions in the country, which is totally unacceptable.

What are the budgetary consequences of this 2012 budget?

First, there will be at least 19,200 jobs lost in the public service. Second, there will be a total of between 50,000 and 72,000 jobs lost in the economy, including 1,119 jobs lost at the Department of National Defence, 162 fewer trade officers in Canada, 840 layoffs at Health Canada, 650 layoffs at the CBC, at least 4,800 layoffs in the NCR, 252 layoffs in client service at Veterans Affairs Canada, 100 food inspectors laid off, and I could go on.

What are we seeing, then? We are seeing that for no reason, the public service, consisting of civil servants who are professionals and do their jobs, is being reduced for what I would submit are ideological reasons. Why are they ideological? I am not sure if people are aware of this, but by the year 2014, the current government, since 2006, will have given the corporate sector over $220 billion of corporate tax cuts. That is $220 billion. Let us juxtapose that with raising the age of qualification for pensions to 67 and the hardships that will cause to a lot of seniors on marginal income. Let us juxtapose that with other cuts to the public sector and to the environment.

I would like to also say that choices are made by government. It appears the choice has been to make these drastic cuts to not only the public sector but to our way of life. There is a choice in spending billions of dollars on F-35s or even $30 million to somehow glorify the War of 1812, which nobody really cares about. We can tell that to pensioners who are trying to make ends meet and see what they have to say about it.

We talk about economic recovery. We talk about the fact that Canada supposedly has led the world economic recovery, whereas research that has been done has shown that two countries have been stronger than Canada in recovering from the economic downturn. One is Sweden, the other Australia.

Let us talk about Sweden, a country where there are no strikes, where everything is done by collective agreement and where the law mandates that labour is represented on corporate boards so that there is a working relationship between government, corporations and labour. Let us talk about a country where there is free tuition, free care for seniors, free child care, over 400 days of paid parental leave per child and full benefits for part-time workers.

If my colleagues in the House are not sure of these statistics, I urge them to see the film Poor No More, narrated by Mary Walsh. In the film she takes us to Sweden and compares what is happening here. I know that the argument will be that we want to raise taxes; well, Sweden is a country that has high taxes and provides services, and it is a country where people are working and there is virtually no unemployment.

In a March 29 article entitled “A budget that screws the planet for short-term profits”, Marc Lee, of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, stated:

This is a colonial vision of the economy as a quarry for foreign interests. Instead of ensuring development of resources in a manner consistent with real long-term needs like energy security, the [federal government] is open to any foreign investor who wants our resources, and Canadians will politely have to clean up the mess afterwards. While there will be some Canadian jobs in all of this, most of them will be of short duration in the construction phase, but the budget also increases the capacity to bring in temporary foreign workers.

Let us talk about the short-duration jobs.

We here are against the northern pipeline that will send raw bitumen through our territory and to the waters off the coast of British Columbia to Asia. One of the reasons we are against the pipeline is that the jobs that will be created are short term. We are shipping jobs outside of the country. It is interesting to have a government that says we need to create jobs and that at the same time, through its policies, will be shipping jobs outside of the country.

Mr. Lee goes on to say in his article:

Our penchant for planetary destruction just cannot happen fast enough. Under the mantra “one project, one review” environmental considerations will get lumped in with everything else, meaning that review processes for destructive mining and oil and gas projects will be fast-tracked.

Therefore, instead of having a review that looks at and ensures proper oversight of these projects, we will get this fast-tracking.

I am going to say a few words about the environment as well. At least a third of Bill C-38 is devoted to environmental deregulation. The government is doing everything it said it would do, and more.

SECOND READING

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Western Arctic.

I want to begin my remarks today on Bill C-38 by saying, and it should be said, that this clearly is not only a budget implementation act.

I found it very interesting to listen to the parliamentary secretary's comments just a few moments ago when she chided the Liberal member for the record of the Liberal government, bringing in a massive omnibus bill as well. I remember that bill, C-43, but it is curious, because I seem to remember that the Conservatives in opposition at that time certainly had lots of concerns about what was hidden in that massive bill. I think it was about 1,000 pages. I remember the debates in this House about how the Liberals were trying to hide things and rush them through.

Here we are today in 2012 with another budget implementation bill, which is anything but. It has become a massive cover for putting through major public policy issues under the guise of a budget implementation bill.

I want to say, just for the record, that it is really bad public policy. It is a terrible way to make decisions. It is a direct attack on the ability of members of Parliament to examine legislation.

Much of the stuff that is in the budget implementation bill should be coming to the House as stand-alone legislation. When we go through the list, go through those 422 pages that comprise the current budget implementation act, we can just see how far-ranging the directions are in the bill.

For example, we know it is raising the age of eligibility of OAS and GIS from 65 to 67, something that the Prime Minister never campaigned on in the last election. For heaven's sake, it repeals the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act, meaning that the government is no longer required to report on its emissions under the act. That is in a budget bill? The Conservatives are putting that through in a budget bill? Is there something they want to hide from Canadians? I think so.

As we have heard many times in the House, it guts the environmental assessment regime and fish habitat protection. Again, this should be stand-alone legislation that the government should have the guts to bring forward on its merit and be willing to debate in this House, instead of trying to sneak it through in a budget implementation bill.

Just in terms of the changing environmental assessments, this would have a major impact on my province of British Columbia, on things like the Enbridge pipeline, where there has been incredible public interest in being involved in a democratic public process to comment on the environmental impact and assessment of that project.

What is the government doing? It uses the budget and the budget implementation act to actually shut down and to gag the public and say that not only is it putting short timelines on these major assessments but it will also delegate authority to other authorities, including the provinces, so it is basically narrowing the opportunities people have to comment on these important things.

To add insult to injury, not only does the bill gut environmental requirements; it also goes after civil society organizations by saying that the Canada Revenue Agency will tighten up what kind of political activities they can be engaged in. There is an attack on both sides, by legislation and by trying to fetter and gag the work that very important organizations do in our country to bring awareness to these major environmental projects that have a huge impact on all of us.

Here are a few other little gems in the budget. It would repeal the Fair Wages and Hours of Labour Act. I am familiar with this, because as a city councillor in Vancouver over many terms, we actually used the federal fair wage act to set a benchmark for what we did municipally to pay fair wages to municipal contractors.

Now all of a sudden this act is gone. It has been there for decades. I do not know how far it goes back, but it has been a benchmark of what is considered to be fair wages.

Presumably this is now being completely eliminated because the Conservatives want to give more handouts to their corporate buddies and they want to undercut union wage rates. This is an attack on labour, just like we have seen with Bill C-377, where the government is attacking labour and trying to allege that they are not transparent organizations when we know they are. This is hidden in a budget implementation act.

It would also amend the Employment Equity Act so it would no longer apply to federal contractors. This is a major shift in public policy. I was part of the standing committee that reviewed the Employment Equity Act. It has to be reviewed every five years. The federal government is mandated to cover employment equity both in terms of its own direct services and of all the areas it covers like transport, airlines and banks. To amend the Employment Equity Act so it no longer applies to federal contractors is just a sheer gift and bonus to the Conservatives' buddies in saying that things like employment fairness, fair wages and ensuring diversity in the workplace would not count anymore and they would not have to worry about it. This is a major and dramatic shift in public policy.

I also want to mention a few local things that are very concerning to me, such as the cuts to the CAP program, which is purely mean-spirited. Low-income people who can currently gain access to the Internet through the community Internet access program would no longer have access to that. This is just a small thing, but it really does affect people. We live in an Internet age but there are lots of Canadians who still do not have their own computer or access to the Internet and they use the community access program to have that opportunity and capability. Why on earth would the Conservatives go after that? Why would they target people in that way?

As the health critic for the NDP, I want to speak briefly about some of the health aspects in the few minutes I have left.

We have said in this House many times how absolutely staggering a $31 billion decrease in health transfers to the provinces would be. This is a massive shift. The Conservatives unilaterally made a decision about health transfers in this country without any negotiation, debate or co-operation with the provinces and territories. It is something that is unheard of. This is a major assault on our health care system.

It goes even further than that. One of the little sneaky things that is in the budget is the amendments to the Food and Drugs Act to give the Minister of Health more power, supposedly on the basis of streamlining and improving the efficiency of various classifications of foods and drugs. However, it would basically give the minister more power to set up her own regulatory process and go outside the system. Again, this is something that should be coming forward in its own piece of legislation.

I will conclude by talking about what the budget does not address.

I live in Vancouver, and in Metro Vancouver probably the greatest issue we face is the lack of affordable housing. I have met with the Canadian Rental Housing Coalition in Metro Vancouver, which by the way, is made up of building owners, apartment owners, tenant groups and co-op housing groups. It is a broad coalition and they are all saying the same thing: the federal government must be part of a solution to build affordable housing in this country.

Where do we expect workers to live if they are paying 50% or 60% of their income in rent? The hotel workers and the people who work in the stadiums, on the waterfront or in the service industry can no longer afford to live anywhere close to where they work. This is a major issue in Metro Vancouver and also in other Canadian cities, yet there is not a single word in the budget implementation act that would make this a priority. It is just zero. It is as if it does not exist anymore.

We look at the contrast of the handouts to the Conservatives' friends in the corporate world while ignoring the real priorities of Canadians for basic human needs like housing, shelter, good pensions or even access to the Internet. All of these things have either been ignored or cut.

This is a terrible budget, a terrible bill. We should be offended as parliamentarians that this budget implementation bill is so broad. It has so much in it that we cannot even begin to debate, especially now that there is a gag order on the time we have for debate, which was passed earlier today. What an affront to parliamentary democracy.

We are here to stand up to say we oppose the bill and will use everything we can to oppose it all the way.

Income Tax Act

[The Deputy Speaker, Denise Savoie]

The House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded division on the motion at second reading stage of Bill C-377 under private members' business.

The House resumed from March 13 consideration of the motion that Bill C-377, An Act to amend the Income Tax Act (requirements for labour organizations), be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to briefly summarize the second reading debate on my Bill C-377, which would require public financial disclosure of labour organizations.

First let me express my appreciation to my colleagues on both sides of the House for their comments and their interest in this subject. I commit to you, Mr. Speaker, and this place that I will not say anything that would force me to apologize because of my remarks.

My purpose in introducing the legislation is to create financial transparency in a group of institutions that are receiving substantial public benefits. All members here and the general public know the value in financial transparency for public institutions and for institutions that receive public benefits. That is why, for example, financial transparency for charities, which has existed for over 35 years now, is fully accepted by charities themselves, as well as the public.

Some members across the way have raised the point that some provinces have labour codes that require limited financial disclosure to union members only. This, however, is an irrelevant point that has nothing to do with this bill.

The purpose of the bill is not about requiring disclosure to union members. Rather its purpose is requiring disclosure to the general public because the public is providing a financial benefit through the tax system. The public has a right to know how the benefit they provide to labour organizations is being used.

Some MPs and several leaders and labour organizations have also raised the issue of the cost of compliance with the legislation. Again, I believe the cost to labour organizations of compliance with Bill C-377 to be quite minimal in this age of electronic bookkeeping.

Clearly, labour organizations already track their finances internally and translating this data into a format which can be filed with the Canada Revenue Agency is largely a question of technology and software. Compiling and filing a single unaudited information return once a year is not going to unduly encumber any labour organization. Any actual cost to the labour organization will be far outweighed by the benefits of transparency.

The NDP House leader stood in the House during the first hour of debate and made some wild claims that the bill was about to strip Canadians of their charter rights. He actually called the bill “an attack on the labour movement.”

Contrary to the NDP House leader's wild claims, transparency for unions is no more an attack on unions than transparency for charities is an attack on charities. We know, with 35 years experience of the matter, that financial transparency for charities has been a positive development and not an attack.

The truth is the vast majority of Canadians, a full 83%, as expressed in a recent Nanos poll, support financial transparency for labour organizations. I know those numbers are even higher in Quebec. As for the labour movement, according to the same poll, 86% of Canadians who identified themselves as unionized employees supported financial transparency. Clearly, the broad labour movement does not regard the bill as an attack on themselves. It is quite opposite in fact.

The NDP member for Acadie—Bathurst also complained during the debate that it did not apply to other types of organizations. We have heard that here as well. In fact, in ratcheting up the rhetoric, he suggested that transparency for a wide range of organizations was a matter of justice.

When drafting my bill, I chose to focus on addressing public financial disclosure by labour organizations, because they were unique institutions with a specific purpose and function, distinct from the other types of institutions that he mentioned. However, there is nothing in Bill C-377 that would preclude another member from seeking financial disclosure by other types of organizations that receive a public benefit. Some members, even this afternoon, mentioned the CFIB and I note that as a non-profit it does not receive a public benefit, unlike charities and the labour movement.

Despite the fact that a handful of union leaders and NDP MPs have suggested otherwise, this is very much a pro-union bill. The bottom line in all of this is that public financial disclosure will build public confidence that the public benefits that labour organizations are being provided are being used efficiently and effectively.

I appreciate the opportunity to share my input and I seek the support of all my colleagues at the second reading of the bill so that it can go to committee for further review.

[Mathieu Ravignat, NDP, Pontiac, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate the hon. member who spoke before me. He has a lot of passion for workers and the labour movement in this country, and has demonstrated a thorough understanding of the situation.

On this side of the House, we are wondering why unions are being targeted rather than all the organizations that collect dues. If we consider this motion in the context of the bill that we will be debating very soon, it seems to be an ideological attack by the government against the labour movement in this country, a movement that has achieved significant social gains.

When my great-grandfather came to Canada to work as a stonemason, the conditions were awful. Labour movements have made it possible to live in a society with healthy working environments and with benefits that enable us to raise children, to age with dignity and to have a pension.

This bill will also make privileged information available to businesses and to the government, which will give them unfair competitive and political advantages. However, when we talk about members of labour organizations, we are not talking about a small group of Canadians. There are 4.3 million Canadians who are either union members or have family members in a union. Those people will be automatically placed at a disadvantage compared to the government and business. The government and business will actually have access to all the information about the workers whereas the workers will not have access to any of that information. So they will be at a disadvantage in a bargaining situation.

The NDP is clearly in favour of transparency as long as it applies fairly to all organizations concerned and as long as it causes no harm. While recognizing that the hon. member probably has noble reasons for promoting transparency, this bill is going to violate the right to freedom of association in this country, as well as the rights to privacy and freedom of expression.

We estimate that this bill will create about 17.5 million hours of paperwork. About 25,000 workers' organizations that will have to comply with these requirements will each need about 700 hours of work annually to do so. That is a major burden, both for the government and for those workers. It will be an obstacle to the vitality of organizations that stand up for the rights of our fellow citizens. We must remember that it is these democratic organizations that stand up for the rights of our fellow citizens. In any case, how are Canadians going to be able to find their way through these millions of pieces of data? Of what use are the data? Their use will be when they are sent to the employers and used against the workers.

Bill C-377 takes its place in the series of Conservative attacks on workers, such as the strike at Canada Post or the bargaining at Air Canada. Instead of laying into hard-working Canadians, the Conservatives should be addressing the real problems Canadians face, like unemployment, poverty and our retirement pensions.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I do withdraw the remark. In my enthusiasm I used profane language, but I will finish the story.

This is coming full circle. The unions, through free collective bargaining and the right to withhold their services in the event of an impasse, drove up the average middle class wage in the United States to where it was a living wage, a consuming wage, a wage one could raise a family on. People had workplaces that were safe and healthy workplaces, because they had enforcement of health and safety provisions, because they had a union workplace safety and health committee on that work site. Coming from the construction industry, I know that every building built in the old days was a tombstone because men died on those jobs. That does not happen anymore because we made those workplaces safe.

As the government smashes the labour movement, as clearly it has given the indication it intends to do, declare war on labour on the left, not only will workers' wages diminish. How is that good for the economy? Also, workplace safety and health provisions will diminish. People will be dying in the workplace again just like in 1912 in the Triangle Shirtwaist factory.

Do not groan at me from over there, because I can tell members it is a fact that conditions will diminish if we do not have a strong and healthy trade union movement to protect the gains we have made in the last hundred years. Bill C-377 should go on the trash heap of history. It is an insult to working people in this country.

I want to recognize and pay tribute to the push-back of the building trades unions, especially my own union, the carpenters union, which is doing a job trying to lobby members of Parliament and trying to point out the folly in smashing the only thing that has elevated the standards of living wages and working conditions in this country. That is a free, vibrant and healthy trade union movement.

This is a cornerstone of any western democracy, the free and healthy trade union movement, the right to organize, the right to free collective bargaining and the right to withhold one's services in the event of an impasse. It is a cornerstone we are proud of. It is one of the very things by which we define ourselves as a free and open democracy. This piece of legislation has no place in a western democracy that prides itself on the rights of ordinary people and its citizens. It makes one wonder whose side the Conservatives are on.