This bill was last introduced in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session, which ended in September 2019.
MaryAnn Mihychuk Liberal
This bill has received Royal Assent and is now law.
This is from the published bill.
This enactment amends the Canada Labour Code, the Parliamentary Employment and Staff Relations Act and the Public Service Labour Relations Act to restore the procedures for the certification and the revocation of certification of bargaining agents that existed before June 16, 2015.
It also amends the Income Tax Act to remove from that Act the requirement that labour organizations and labour trusts provide annually to the Minister of National Revenue certain information returns containing specific information that would be made available to the public.
All sorts of information on this bill is available at LEGISinfo, an excellent resource from the Library of Parliament. You can also read the full text of the bill.
Wayne Long Liberal Saint John—Rothesay, NB
Mr. Speaker, with respect to Canada Post and the Public Service Alliance, negotiation is about dialogue, being open, and having a back-and-forth discussion about issues. It is not always about being pro-union or anti-union. It is about being fair and transparent.
Certainly with respect to Canada Post, there was no back-to-work legislation. There was open and fair dialogue. That is what our government stands for.
Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet NDP Hochelaga, QC
Mr. Speaker, the government is talking about introducing labour policy reforms. My colleague from Jonquière introduced anti-scab legislation that we will be voting on two days from now, on Wednesday.
I would like to know if the member intends to act in the spirit of labour policy reform by voting in favour of my colleague's bill.
Wayne Long Liberal Saint John—Rothesay, NB
Mr. Speaker, again, we are here to talk about Bill C-4.
We made a commitment during the election to repeal Bill C-525 and Bill C-377. We are living up to that. We are restoring fairness and balance to our labour system. We are working with our unions. Going door to door during the election, I could not find anyone in favour of Bill C-377 and Bill C-525, despite what member of the Conservative Party thought.
We are going to restore fairness and balance to the labour environment across Canada.
Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet NDP Hochelaga, QC
Mr. Speaker, I would be happy to talk about one specific bill, but if the government is really serious about promoting workers' rights, I have to repeat my question. Does the member plan to vote in favour of the anti-scab legislation introduced by my colleague from Jonquière?
Wayne Long Liberal Saint John—Rothesay, NB
Mr. Speaker, again, we stand very clearly on our position on Bill C-4.
Bill C-4 is aimed at repealing Bill C-377 and Bill C-525. I am proud of the bill. Certainly, my riding of Saint John—Rothesay, which is a very strong union riding, is very proud of our government for intending to repeal those bills. We are going forward with Bill C-4 to repeal Bill C-377 and Bill C-525. We are going to work with unions. We are going to restore respect for unions. We are going to treat unions with the respect they deserve.
One thing for certain that I noticed going door to door during the campaign was that unions were demoralized, felt disrespected, and that their morale was very low. We are going to restore that right across the country.
Daniel Blaikie NDP Elmwood—Transcona, MB
Mr. Speaker, I know that the member for Saint John—Rothesay, in response to the question asked twice by my colleague, the member for Hochelaga, is keen to stay on the topic of Bill C-4. However, I could not help but notice that when the member for Winnipeg North asked him a question about postal workers, he was willing to expand more on a topic that does not directly with Bill C-4.
I would just ask, in that same spirit, if the member would now tell us whether or not he is prepared to support the anti-scab legislation that is coming forward to the House for a vote in the next couple of days.
Wayne Long Liberal Saint John—Rothesay, NB
Kevin Lamoureux Liberal Winnipeg North, MB
Mr. Speaker, I have a very quick question about what the NDP is talking about doing, similar to something the Harper government did.
When we look at bringing in labour legislation, there is a process that involves both unions and management, and the stakeholders and the government, and that is how we develop good legislation.
I am sure that the former questioner would be aware that even the New Democrats in Manitoba, British Columbia, and Saskatchewan have never implemented anti-scab legislation. The chances are there is a good reason for that.
I am wondering if the member would explain how important labour harmony is, which his speech focused so much attention on. It is important that we build a consensus between labour, management, and the government, as well as stakeholders, as opposed to the piecemeal approach being suggested, whether by the Harper government or the New Democrats.
Wayne Long Liberal Saint John—Rothesay, NB
Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for the thoughtful words.
One thing that has been missing in our country over the last 10 years is good labour relations. That starts with a culture and leadership. One thing that was certainly missing in the past 10 years was leadership from the top. It trickled right down to our unions and our union executive. They never felt respected. They felt demoralized. We are here to restore faith. We are here to restore bargaining. We are not here to legislate workers back. We are here to repair the damage that was done.
Daniel Blaikie NDP Elmwood—Transcona, MB
Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Hamilton Mountain.
I am very pleased to be speaking at third reading of Bill C-4. I wish I had had the opportunity to do it sooner, because this is a good example of legislation that ought to have passed through the House far more quickly than it has. It was a clear commitment of the government during the election campaign. There is multi-party support within the House to get it done. It has been reported recently, and it is quite true, that it has been a relatively light legislative agenda from the government. Here we have a piece of legislation that is not competing for time with other government bills, because there are not that many. It is almost a year into the government's mandate and we are still talking about repealing Bill C-377 and Bill C-525. With the exception of those members who belong to the party that brought those bills in, there is virtually a consensus here in the House. If there was a bill that was going to move quickly through Parliament, this would have been the bill. It is a bit of a mystery why it is we are still debating it almost a year out from the election when we should be passing it.
I know all the members in the chamber by now are quite familiar with what Bill C-4 does. It repeals two acts from the previous Parliament. One is Bill C-377, which was a kind of red tape bill for unions. It was based on the pretense that simply because union members get some money back on their taxes for the dues they claim, the government has the right to mandate that they make all of their expenses public to everyone. It was not being asked of non-profit groups, whose donors also receive money back. The government was not saying that because corporations get to write off expenses, which is money back from the government, their books should be made open. It was discriminatory in the sense that it really did just focus on unions, who happened to be, it is fair to say, an opponent of the previous government. Therefore, there was a sense that it was a politically motivated targeting.
There were many parties in the House that agreed the bill simply had to go. I am glad to see we are moving forward with that, although I believe we could move forward more quickly.
Bill C-525 from the last Parliament made it easier to decertify unions, and therefore, made it harder to have a higher rate of unionization within the federal workforce. We know from many studies that in the lead-up to secret ballot voting it did that in two ways. It raised the threshold of members in a workplace who would have to consent to have a secret ballot vote in order to certify and it took away the option to certify through a card check. Card check means members in a workplace sign a card affirming they would like to be represented by a union and which union they would like to represent them. If a certain threshold of workers sign cards, that obviates the need to go to a secret ballot vote because a majority, whatever that majority happens to be, in this case it was 50% plus 1%, have indicated their support for the idea of having a union in the workplace.
We know through a number of studies and research into this that in the lead-up to secret ballot votes there are often instances of intimidation by employers of their employees. That can lead to a change in the outcome of the vote. In fact, success with those secret ballot votes is often inversely correlated with the length of time between announcing the intention to vote and the vote itself. The longer the period between the stated intention of having a vote to certify and the vote itself, the less likely that vote is to be successful. We know that is often because it gives the employer more time to use certain kinds of intimidation tactics on their employees to make them afraid of certifying.
That is the package we are talking about getting rid of.
I have already spoken a bit about how I think it would have been better if we had been able to pass Bill C-4 earlier in the term. I am thinking of a few other related labour-type issues and legislation that we have been dealing with in the House. I am trying to learn a lesson about the new government and what it means for something to be a priority of the government, because if anything was a priority, if we look at election commitments, this was a very clear commitment. It was shouted from the rooftops by the Liberals during the election. A major part of their strategy for doing outreach within the labour world was that they were going to get this done.
This should be a priority. Why it is not done I cannot fathom. Some may say on the other side of the House that it is because Conservatives want to talk out the bill, but Conservatives were not in favour of Bill C-10. We were not in favour of Bill C-10. I believe my colleagues from the Bloc and the Green Party were not in favour of Bill C-10. Nobody else in the House except members of the government were in favour of Bill C-10, an act that has made it easier to export aerospace maintenance jobs out of Canada to other shores, even though that was not an election commitment, even though that came out of left field, and in an important sense was not therefore a priority of government, certainly not one of stated ones. I have not seen that on the list of any priorities of the Liberals, to make it harder to employ Canadian aerospace maintenance workers. That does not appear on any document that I have seen. If it does appear somewhere, I would sure like to see it. Maybe we could have that tabled.
That was not a priority of government and that is signed, sealed, and delivered for the executives of Air Canada. That is done. This was a priority for Canadian workers, for labour activists, and a stated priority of the Liberal government, and here we are still talking about it when the ship for Bill C-10, which may be mixing metaphors, has long since sailed. I find that one hard to wrap my head around.
I think about another labour issue that has been before the House, Bill C-7, which sets a framework for RCMP members to bargain collectively. That had a Supreme Court imposed deadline. In fact, I think it is fair to say with hindsight that the deadline was used as an excuse to get that legislation through. We were told that maybe there were things that were not great about the bill, but it had to get passed by May 16 or the sky was going to fall and we were not going to be able to proceed in an orderly fashion with the certification of the union for RCMP members. That is what we were told. May 16 has long since gone by and that bill went to the Senate where amendments were made, but we have been back now for two weeks and I do not see when we are going to start talking about Bill C-7. If the government has a plan to bring that forward, I would sure like to know and I know there are RCMP members across the country who would like to know it is going to be brought forward.
There we have it again. Another priority of the government and it is sitting on the books, when legislative favours for Air Canada executives are what is really being rammed through and that is where the real priority of the Liberals has been. It is to get those things done that they never talked about, while things that have been on the books for a while and stated priorities of the government continue to languish. If there is a lesson in all of this, it is that it is not very good to be on the priority list of the government because it will launch consultations. They are not doing consultations on Bill C-4. They do not need to. That issue has been debated plenty in Canada and part of the decision that was made on October 19, 2015, was to reject that approach to labour legislation, but here we are. The same laws are on the books.
Part of what some people wanted and certainly RCMP members imagined was that when we had a government that thought about labour issues differently, it would be good for them because they would get an appropriate bargaining framework that they did not trust the Conservatives to deliver on. Yet the legislation that the Liberals decided to move forward with was almost a carbon copy of some of the worst aspects of the previous Conservative bill. Here we are. It is sitting on the books. I will say one last time in case anyone missed it, Bill C-10, which was not a promise of the government, which it did not consult thoroughly on, has passed. Government members talk about not moving forward with anti-scab because we do not have a robust consultation process. There was no robust consultation process for Bill C-10 and the sell-out of Canadian aerospace workers, so where was the ethos of consultation on that one?
The lesson learned is, God forbid something is named a government priority. It is far better to simply be a friend. Then the Liberals will get it done. If it is a stated priority for election purposes, the sooner the bill passes the sooner they have to stop talking about it, which means the sooner they have to stop reaping whatever political benefits caused them to make the commitment in the first place. That is disappointing. I hope we can end this debate, get this passed, and move on to some of the other things they said are priorities. Some of them are good priorities. It would be nice to do something about them rather than nothing.
CANADA LABOUR CODEGovernment Orders
September 26th, 2016 / 3:35 p.m.
Cape Breton—Canso Nova Scotia
Liberal
Rodger Cuzner LiberalParliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Employment
Mr. Speaker, I appreciate joining the debate with my friend and colleague, the member for Elmwood—Transcona. I have a great deal of respect for his ability to step dance and I know first-hand the opposition he posed to both Bills C-377 and C-525 and the work that he does within the labour movement in this country.
He is very supportive of the bill, but in the last exchange, he brought up the anti-scab legislation that his party is proposing in the private member's bill that it is putting forward now. He would know that when Bills C-377 and C-525 were in committee, witness after witness said private members' bills are not the way to change the Canada Labour Code. That is not the way to change labour law in this country. We need a tripartite system where employers, employees, and government can sit down to find a way forward through consultation and consensus.
Does he know that one of the gurus of labour relations in this country, Andrews Sims, said not to change the labour code through private member's legislation, that it is the wrong way to go, and to do it through a tripartite approach by making amendments to the code?
Daniel Blaikie NDP Elmwood—Transcona, MB
Mr. Speaker, there are two things I would like to say in response to that.
The first is that I hear the member's criticism and the echoes of it from the last Parliament about private members' business and changing labour law through private members' bills. That was an apt criticism for government. There were some problems with, instead of using government bills to change the legislation, using government backbenchers to change the legislation. However, that is different than opposition parties making suggestions on how to improve labour law in Canada by presenting private members' bills.
It is a different scenario when we are talking about a government advancing its agenda through private members' legislation because it does not have the courage to take it on as its own, versus opposition parties using the tools at their disposal to improve the laws of the land. That is number one.
The second aspect is that if the member is concerned and feels this needs to be done through proper consultation, we would entertain the idea, or I certainly would. As I understand can sometimes be done, bills can go to committee before second reading and committees can do good work discussing what ought to go to into the bill.
If the government wants to announce today that it is committed to bringing in better protections for workers who are on strike and not allowing replacement workers, and they are going to launch a process, then we might be interested in waiting to see what the conclusion of that process would be.
Jim Eglinski Conservative Yellowhead, AB
Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Elmwood—Transcona made mention of the transparency of unions in Bill C-377. Does he believe or not that union employees should know and have a right to know where their finances go within the union?
Daniel Blaikie NDP Elmwood—Transcona, MB
Mr. Speaker, I know, as a proud member of a union, that I had access to that information long before the Conservatives cooked up Bills C-377 and C-525. It was a made-up problem.
The answer to the member's question is, yes, they should have access to that information. That is something for unions to make available to them in-house. It does not mean it needs to be broadcast on a website to the entire country.
Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet NDP Hochelaga, QC
Mr. Speaker, as the treasurer of my union for 15 years, I submitted budgets and financial statements every time we had a general meeting. The books were open on the table, and I was available to answer members' questions.
I have a feeling my colleague experienced exactly the same thing, so I wonder if he could elaborate on what he saw. Would he agree that the books are already open and everything is clear to members?