Bill C-62 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Federal Public Sector Labour Relations Act and other Acts

This enactment amends the Federal Public Sector Labour Relations Act to restore the procedures for the choice of process of dispute resolution including those involving essential services, arbitration, conciliation and alternative dispute resolution that existed before December 13, 2013.
It also amends the Public Sector Equitable Compensation Act to restore the procedures applicable to arbitration and conciliation that existed before December 13, 2013.
It repeals provisions of the Economic Action Plan 2013 Act, No. 2 that are not in force that amend the Federal Public Sector Labour Relations Act, the Canadian Human Rights Act, and the Public Service Employment Act and it repeals not in force provisions of the Economic Action Plan 2014 Act, No. 1 that amend those provisions.
It repeals Division 20 of Part 3 of the Economic Action Plan 2015 Act, No. 1, which authorizes the Treasury Board to establish and modify, despite the Federal Public Sector Labour Relations Act, terms and conditions of employment related to the sick leave of employees who are employed in the core public administration.

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

Thank you, Chair.

I would like to go back to Ms. Hassan.

Could you elaborate a bit more on the technical aspects of Bill C-62 as they relate to the provisions that would change the treatment of accumulated sick leave?

[Karine Trudel, NDP, Jonquière, QC]

Given the amendments made to the framework of Bill C-62, did those people lose out? Did the negotiations put them at a disadvantage?

We are now dealing with those issues in the context of Bill C-62,but, in their case, were they able to negotiate under the previous legislation?

[Ramesh Sangha, Liberal, Brampton Centre, ON]

Thank you very much for giving me this opportunity.

Any of you can answer my question as follows. After Saskatchewan's essential services legislation was struck down by the constitutional issue—and there are a few parts in Bill C-4 similar to the previous one—I have a concern as a lawyer by profession whether or not we're sure this time that we have taken care, in Bill C-62, of all of the problematic issues so we can avoid the constitutional questions.

[Drew Heavens]

I will answer that question.

On the recourse provisions that you're referring to, none of them were actually brought into force after Bill C-4 came into force. They were to come into force through an order in council that never actually happened.

The package of reforms that were in that section dealing with employer recourse made some changes that were meant to streamline some of the recourse processes. Take, for example, the one about taking away the right of employees to file human rights complaints in lieu of a grievance. Some saw that as taking away some fundamental human rights from employees, because the human rights act has different provisions from the labour relations act.

I can't say for certain why those were put into place before, but again, like the rest of the legislation, it will all be repealed by Bill C-62.

[Steven Blaney, Conservative, Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC]

Okay. Thank you for giving me a clear answer.

In the first hour, a lot of questions have had to do with the changes to public service sick leave. It was estimated that there were potential savings of $900 million there. Based on the figures that we have been given. I have calculated that the public service has increased by approximately 5% in two years. If possible, we would really like you to provide committee members with a table.

We have talked about that expenditure of $1 billion, but Bill C-62 proposes other measures. Specifically, sections 32 and 33 repeal several provisions in a previous bill that should have come into effect, but that is now apparently to be repealed. I would like to know why they did not come into affect and why you want to repeal them. I am astonished that you want to eliminate them. I am talking about three provisions in particular. First of all, there were the amendments on grievances. We also wanted to change the complaint procedure for layoffs and internal appointments. We also wanted to give the employer more flexibility in managing the public service. I imagine that those measures were of interest to the Treasury Board. What astonishes me even more is that you want to illuminate the jurisdiction of the Canadian Human Rights Commission to examine complaints of discrimination.

Is it possible for you to explain to me why those aspects were taken out of the legislation, please?

[Sandra Hassan]

In its current version, all Bill C-62does is repeal the provisions in a previous bill that established the possibility of imposing a new sick leave system. The only thing in Bill C-62 is that the legislative measures that had been adopted are repealed.

As to whether there will be a set amount of sick leave and what the nature of the new system will be, that is all subject to negotiation. Nothing has been established in advance. It really is part of the discussions that we are having with the bargaining agents. It is really important for them to have dialogue and discussions on absolutely all the aspects.

[Karine Trudel, NDP, Jonquière, QC]

I am going to ask you about Bill C-62; that is why I am here today.

Could you tell me more about your negotiations on sick leave?

The current collective agreements provide for a set amount of sick leave. Does Bill C-62 provide for a set amount of sick leave or will that be negotiated with a bargaining agent, agreement by agreement? I ask the question because I have seen no figures on the subject.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley—Aldergrove, BC]

Minister, what is this going to cost the Canadian taxpayer? Mr. Blaney asked for the numbers, and that's the foundation of what's being presented in Bill C-62. How many new employees are involved under Bill C-62? What is this going to cost the Canadian taxpayer? The Library of Parliament said it would be a billion dollars. Is it over a billion dollars?

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley—Aldergrove, BC]

—and I want to compliment you as being an obvious good choice to represent the government to try to make it look like things are going well when they're not.

You mentioned the best economic growth and investment in the public sector. I represent the Canadian taxpayer. Yes, we need to have good relationships with and respect for the public sector, but it's the Canadian taxpayer, and there's only one Canadian taxpayer, whether paying municipal, provincial, or federal taxes. Taxpayers are getting fed up with things becoming more and more unaffordable. In British Columbia, gasoline is now at $1.55 a litre, and we're talking about $2 a litre. Things are not affordable under the government, and people are asking why.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer has just reported that one of the reasons things are becoming less and less affordable is the out-of-control spending. The government reported that this year's deficit would be $18 billion. The promise was that it would be just a little deficit, and that promise wasn't kept. This is our third budget deficit—$22 billion this year. We've been told that the interest alone on the national debt will rise by $40 billion. Here we have Bill C-62, and we're being told that this is a bill about respect. It's a billion-dollar promise—not to the Canadian taxpayer, but to Canadian unions. It's the taxpayers that have to take up the slack, and they're getting outraged.

I'm hearing from Canadian seniors, and I hope you'll take back these important messages, Minister, to the cabinet. Palliative care funding was cut from this year's budget. They want it back in there. It was in the 2016-17 budget, and now it's gone. There are more Canadian seniors than youth. They're growing in number. In 12 years they will be one in four Canadians. Right now they're one in six. Currently, 70% of Canadians who need palliative care don't have access to it. You're very influential around the cabinet table. I hope you'll take back the important message to put funding for palliative care back in the budget.

Minister, I want to leave you enough time to answer.

I'm hearing from my constituents that they're furious at what the government did in regard to the Canada summer jobs program. It's not on par with what is was during the 14 years that I've been involved with it. The way Service Canada grades the applications this year, the grades are way lower than what they were in years past. In years past, nothing was graded as less than 73%, and most of them were in the 80s—like a B-plus, or an A-minus. This year they're all less than that—

[Karine Trudel, NDP, Jonquière, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Minister, thank you for your presentation, and welcome to the committee.

First of all, I want to focus on two aspects of the provisions of the Canada Labour Code dealing with the rights of Canadians to refuse dangerous work. I would like to focus more specifically on the definition of “danger”. The definition has changed: before 2013, it was more complete. If I may, I will read it to you:

…any existing or potential hazard or condition or any current or future activity that could reasonably be expected to cause injury or illness to a person exposed to it before the hazard or condition can be corrected, or the activity altered, whether or not the injury or illness occurs immediately after the exposure to the hazard, condition or activity, and includes any exposure to a hazardous substance that is likely to result in a chronic illness, in disease or in damage to the reproductive system.

The definition in Bill C-62 is much more simple, but it does not say a lot. I find that it does not cover workers very well:

…any hazard, condition or activity that could reasonably be expected to be an imminent or serious threat to the life or health of a person exposed to it before the hazard or condition can be corrected or the activity altered.

Could you talk about the definitions of “danger”? I would like to know why we have kept this definition in the bill, rather than the one that existed before 2013.

[Scott Brison, Liberal, President of the Treasury Board]

Thank you, Mr. Chair and committee members. I am very pleased to appear before your committee.

I'm pleased to be joined here today by Sandra Hassan, Drew Heavens, and Dennis Duggan from Treasury Board Secretariat.

Our government is committed to restoring fair and balanced public sector labour laws that respect the collective bargaining process, laws that recognize the important role unions play in protecting the rights of workers and helping grow the middle class.

I would like to talk to you today about how BillC-62 helps fulfills these commitments.

Bill C-62 combines Bill C-5 and C-34 that were introduced previously. Bill C-5, which was introduced by our government, dealt with public service sick leave, while Bill C-34 dealt with collective bargaining and essential services.

Combining these two bills into one, as we have, simply incorporates the adjustments necessary to combine the two sets of proposals into one piece of legislation moving forward. Broadly, the objectives of both are shared and related. Combining the bills makes sense. Both are amending the same act and both are related to restoring the balance to the public sector labour relations regime.

I'm going to begin with the changes to sick leave introduced as part of the Conservative omnibus legislation Budget Implementation Act 2015. Division 20 of the Economic Action Plan Act 2015, number one, known at the time as Bill C-59, provided the Treasury Board with the authority to establish and modify terms and conditions of employment related to sick leave of employees, impose a short-term disability plan outside of collective bargaining, and modify the long-term disability programs in the core public administration.

In short, the changes took the issue of sick leave off the negotiating table and gave the government the power to unilaterally impose a plan of its choosing. The bargaining agents for many of the public service unions rightly opposed this legislation, which was drafted without consultation with the public service. In June 2015, 12 of 15 federal unions joined together to file a legal challenge of these provisions, arguing against their constitutionality.

Bill C-62 will eliminate those powers and will show our respect for the collective bargaining process.

Our government knows that the unions play an important role, not only in protecting the rights of the workers, but also in strengthening the middle class.

Again, that is why we committed to not exercise the powers and to repeal the legislation.

I'd like to turn to the issues of essential services, collective bargaining, and dispute resolution. Bill C-62 would repeal the most contentious changes made in 2013 to the Federal Public Sector Labour Relations Act. I'm referring to changes that would allow the employer to unilaterally designate essential services, remove bargaining agents' choice when it comes to the conflict resolution process, and impose new factors that arbitrators must consider when making a recommendation or an award.

It's worth recalling that several unions have gone as far as to file charter challenges against the provisions passed in 2013, and we have every reason to believe that these challenges would have succeeded in the courts, in large part because of the experience in Saskatchewan. Back in 2008, the Saskatchewan government introduced changes similar to those found in the omnibus bill that was passed in 2013. They were successfully challenged by the Saskatchewan Federation of Labour before the Supreme Court.

Let me outline the details of the key changes our government is proposing. First, the notice to bargain would be amended to return to a four-month notice period, although the parties may still meet earlier to bargain. Second, bargaining agents would be given the choice to determine which dispute process they wished to use should the parties reach an impasse in the bargaining. Third, when making awards or recommendations, public interest commissions and arbitration boards would have the flexibility to weigh the most important factors in the circumstances before them. They would no longer be forced to give undue weight to certain factors if the circumstances didn't justify it. Fourth, the employer would no longer have the unilateral right to arbitrarily determine which services are essential for the safety and security of the public and to designate the positions necessary to deliver those services. The employer would work with public sector bargaining agents to identify essential service positions and would enter into essential services agreements with them. So the determination would occur as a result of discussion with public sector unions. Finally, Bill C-62 repeals some of the changes made to recourse processes, even though these were never implemented, because they were to be brought into force at a later date.

Mr. Chair, and committee members, our government is committed to restoring a culture of respect for and within the public service, and to respecting the collective bargaining process. When we took office in 2015, all the collective bargaining agreements with public servants had in fact expired. Some of them had been expired for four years. We made it clear that we would work collaboratively with public servants and that we would negotiate in good faith. After two years of respectful negotiations, we have reached 23 of 27 agreements. That means, I believe, that more than 94% of unionized public servants for which Treasury Board is the employer now have collective bargaining agreements in place. It's worth noting that with most of the agreements, including an undertaking to develop an integrated approach to the management of employee wellness, our collaborative approach is achieving results. It's an approach that embodies the values of fairness and justice that make Canada the country it is today. We have a world-class public service in Canada, and one that is recognized as such in terms of its effectiveness and its professionalism

Bill C-62 affirms the values of treating our public service with respect and in partnership by understanding and responding to the need for fair and balanced labour laws in Canada.

I want to thank members of the committee for their attention. I look forward to your questions and to engaging with this committee.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Good afternoon, everyone.

Pursuant to the order of reference of Thursday, February 1, 2018, we are considering Bill C-62, An Act to amend the Federal Public Sector Labour Relations Act and other Acts.

It is our pleasure to welcome to the committee the Honourable Scott Brison, president of the Treasury Board, along with witnesses from the Treasury Board Secretariat's compensation and labour relations sector: Sandra Hassan, assistant deputy minister; Drew Heavens, executive director; and Dennis Duggan, labour relations consultant.

Welcome to all of you.

Mr. Blaney.

Federal Public Sector Labour Relations Act

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, first off, I would like to acknowledge, and express that we do appreciate the support coming from the New Democrats on this very important piece of legislation. I often find the NDP members are very quick to criticize the government in terms of the whole issue of timing. It does not matter what piece of legislation it is, they always say it is not fast enough.

I can assure the member across the way that whether it is the Prime Minister or the government as a whole, restoring balance and respect to Canada's public service has been a priority. In fact, I am standing beside the former minister of labour who brought in labour legislation. These are commitments that have been given to the labour movement in Canada.

We have seen humongous attempts to make sure our civil servants are receiving their agreements. When we took office, 0%, not one federal worker was under a negotiated agreement. Since taking office, we have been able to bring it from 0% to 90% of our civil service in two years. We compliment those who have been sitting at the table, sitting down in good faith.

This is a government that works hard to build that level of respect, and appreciation for the importance of our labour movement. We recognize that in order for Canada to advance, and to add to the strength of our middle class, we need to have healthy labour relations.

Would my colleague across the way agree that a healthy Canadian economy involves having good, positive relationships with the labour movement, and that Bill C-62—

[Scott Duvall, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-62, an act to amend the Federal Public Sector Labour Relations Act and other acts. I have heard some good feedback on this.

What struck me this morning were some of the statements made by the member for Louis-Saint-Laurent. He is a good friend. I really respect the person, but obviously, we have different ideas. He made statements about union bosses and union leaders and about the Liberals just saying “thank you” because some of the unions were putting money in and campaigning against the Conservatives in the last election. I want to say that I totally disagree with that. The unions were campaigning against the Conservatives, yes, but they were also supporting anyone who could beat the Conservatives, and that was because they have a very bad reputation for taking away gains from labour that people have fought for all their lives, and they wanted to make sure that those people never got back in power until they got their act together and started to respect what labour could do.

We are pleased that the government is finally moving forward to repeal legislation based purely on a backward ideology that forces public servants to go to work sick and that totally undermines the principle of collective bargaining. We have to ask what took the Liberals so long to bring this bill forward. What took them so long to act? Of course, this is a question many Canadians are asking more and more often about the current government. Why are the Liberals not keeping the promises they made during the election, and why are they so slow to act or are not acting at all?

The list of broken promises is far too long to list in the time I have today, but we all know about the Liberals' failure to support electoral reform, their failure to restore door-to-door postal delivery, and the failure to keep the promise to make government more transparent. We also know about their failure to support pay equity legislation, anti-scab legislation, and measures to increase retirement security. One of their most shameful failures is the unwillingness to protect workers' pensions.

We have heard over and over again expressions of sympathy from the Prime Minister and his Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development for Canadian workers, like those at Sears Canada who have lost severance and termination pay and health care and life insurance benefits. They now face reduced pension benefits.

Canadians need and expect more than their sympathy and their shallow talking points. They need action. They need the government to change Canada's inadequate bankruptcy and solvency laws. We have shown the Liberals how this can be achieved, but still the government fails to act or move to protect millions of vulnerable Canadians. As my friend from Timmins—James Bay is fond of asking, when is the government going to put the protection of Canadian pensions ahead of Bay Street profits? It is a very good question and a question millions of Canadians would like to know the answer to.

Let me come back to Bill C-62. New Democrats want to undo Harper's anti-labour legacy and build a fair framework for collective bargaining. We welcome the introduction of Bill C-62, which would formally put an end to measures introduced by the former government. We know that the government Bill C-5 and Bill C-34, both introduced last year, have been languishing on the Order Paper since their introduction. We hope that their being amalgamated into Bill C-62 means that the government is finally ready to move forward.

Bill C-62 would reverse the attacks by the former Conservative government on the collective bargaining rights of federal public service employees, and it should be passed without delay. This bill would repeal the power given to the government to remove sick leave from federal public service collective agreements so that it could be changed unilaterally, outside of the bargaining process. The bill would also restore some of the changes to the Federal Public Sector Labour Relations Act affecting collective bargaining, which the Conservatives had included in one of their budget implementation bills in 2013, such as those affecting the designation of essential services. New Democrats rallied against the Conservatives' agenda to curtail public service workers' right to strike. The Federal Public Sector Labour Relations Act was amended in December 2013 to remove the choice of dispute resolution being available to essential services.

In our 2015 platform, we promised Canadians we would stand up for public sector workers in light of the lost decade of Harper's union abuse. Supporting this bill makes good on that promise. A respectful relationship with the public service starts with safeguards to free and fair collective bargaining, not stacking the deck in favour of the employer.

Bill C-62 is aimed at repealing two blatantly anti-labour pieces of legislation introduced by the former Harper government: division 20 of Bill C-59 and Bill C-4. The first of these sought to unilaterally impose an inferior disability and sick leave management system on public servants, which was an unwarranted and significant attack on the rights of public service workers.

Bill C-4 would have drastically changed the rules for collective bargaining within the public service, giving the government full control over union rights, such as the right to strike and the right to arbitration. The government would have also determined what positions would be considered essential.

A key provision in the collective agreements of public service workers is sick leave, which allows full-time workers 15 days per year of leave for use in case of illness or injury. The previous Conservative government was determined to unilaterally change this provision by reducing the number of sick days from 15 to 6, eliminating banked sick days, and imposing a short-term disability plan for federal public servants.

The previous government claimed this change would have saved $900 million, despite evidence to the contrary. According to the 2014 parliamentary budget officer's report, “the incremental cost of paid sick leave was not fiscally material and did not represent material costs for departments in the core public administration.” That means most employees who call in sick are not replaced, resulting in no incremental costs to departments.

Under the Conservative legislation, workers would have been forced to choose between going to work sick or losing pay for basic necessities. Its legislation would eliminate all accumulated sick leave for public servants, reduce the amount of annual sick leave to 37.5 hours per year, subject to the absolute discretion of the employer, and institute a seven-day waiting period without pay before people could access short-term disability benefits.

I want to comment that, because I come from a union background. I served the union for 36 years. We had that seven-day waiting period also, and we made great gains. We proved to the company that having a waiting period of seven days would bring in workers who were sick, causing other workers to be sick, which actually caused a downturn in production because there were not have enough workers on the job to produce the machinery. Therefore, doing that was a step backward.

Both the NDP and the Liberals committed to reversing the changes during the last election. Bill C-62 would repeal the offending legislation, thus restoring sick leave provisions to public servants for the time being.

Bill C-62 would also revoke some of the more offensive Conservative legislation, including: giving government, as the employer, the right to unilaterally define essential services instead of negotiating an essential services agreement with the bargaining agent; undermining the right to strike by making it illegal to strike if at least 80% of the positions in a bargaining unit provide essential services, as defined by the employer; removing the bargaining agent's right to choose arbitration as a means of resolving collective bargaining disputes, making conciliation the default process, and undermining the workers in cases where the employer consents to arbitration by requiring arbitrators to give priority to Canada's fiscal circumstances relative to its stated budgetary policies. It also removed discrimination-based complaints by public servants from the jurisdiction of the Canadian Human Rights Commission. That to me is a shame.

While we fully support Bill C-62, we also know there is more to be done to dismantle the Harper government's legacy of anti-labour legislation. Some of those measures include restoring the Canada Labour Code provisions pertaining to the rights of Canadians to refuse dangerous work. That was gutted by the Harper government, a right that everybody wants when they go into a workplace. Too many deaths have happened, and it should not be determined by the employer. The Fair Wages and Hours of Labour Act should be reinstated, bringing forward pay equity legislation, as well as the federal minimum wage, bringing Bill C-7 back to the House of Commons, and respecting the right of RCMP members to associate and bargain collectively.

[Wayne Stetski, NDP, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to be sharing my time today with the hon. member for Hamilton Mountain.

I am very proud to speak to Bill C-62. I congratulate the President of the Treasury Board for listening to Canadians and introducing this important legislation. I would also like to thank the NDP's labour critic, the MP for Jonquière, for her excellent work in supporting the bill.

When the former Conservative government chose to go after public sector workers' bargaining rights, it was certainly not a surprise. Conservatives are long-time opponents of democratic institutions like collective bargaining and freedom to associate. They see workers as a resource to be exploited and potentially thrown away, not deserving of fairness or respect.

The NDP fought the Conservatives when they introduced legislation to rob bargaining rights from our public servants, and we promised to work to restore those rights. Today, we are helping to keep that promise.

Still, for the Harper government to attack public servants' sick leave provisions, of all things, was shocking, and in the end, self-defeating. It is well established that workers who have sick leave protection will stay home when they get sick, and conversely, workers without sick leave will go to work, spreading disease among their co-workers. There is a cost to having a sick workforce. That cost, lower productivity and lost services, is higher than the cost of paying a worker to stay home.

A 2016 study quoted in Business Insider magazine said that evidence suggests that paid sick leave is tied to increased job stability and employee retention following illness, injury, or birth of a child, increased worker productivity, decreased worker errors, decreased accidents or injuries on the job, and when used to augment maternity leave, paid leave increases healthy babies, maternal health, and the duration of breast feeding, while also decreasing infant mortality.

That is why 128 nations around the world have paid sick leave for all workers, not just public servants. In fact, Canada is one of the few nations that lacks such a provision, putting us far behind many industrial and even non-industrial nations. According to the Center for Economic and Policy Research only three countries, the United States, Canada, and Japan, have no national policy requiring employers to provide paid sick days for workers who need to miss five days of work to recover from the flu.

Many states and cities in the U.S. have the same legislation as is in place in Europe. In Europe, the debate is not if a country should have mandated sick leave, it is how much the government should pay out, and nations compete to show they have not fallen behind.

I have a personal story. In my riding of Kootenay—Columbia, one of my staff was sick before Christmas with that flu and cold that was going around. She was off for six days. When she came back to work, she expressed how fortunate and pleased she was to have sick leave coverage included in the union contract. If we look at what the Conservatives had proposed, which was a maximum of six days of sick leave, it would have used up all of her sick leave before the year really even got going.

My daughter, Kelly, works in Vancouver at a private company where it is 90 days before employees get sick leave. She was sick last week, and in the end, will have very little money to cover her bills coming up over the next week or so. Sick leave is very important certainly to our young people, and having that in place is critical to both their job satisfaction and their financial security.

Sick leave is not the only provision the government is putting back into our public service labour laws. Conservatives also took away basic bargaining rights by giving themselves the power to unilaterally define essential services. This meant that public sector unions lost their biggest tool in negotiations: the right to strike. When an employer is not worried that their workers may walk off the job, they have little reason to negotiate fairly. The International Labour Organization, which is an agency of the United Nations, published a statement of principles concerning the right to strike. It said:

Without freedom of association or, in other words, without employers’ and workers’ organizations that are autonomous, independent, representative and endowed with the necessary rights and guarantees for the furtherance and defence of the rights of their members and the advancement of the common welfare, the principle of tripartism would be impaired, if not completely stripped of all meaning, and chances for greater social justice would be seriously prejudiced.

A similar provision in the province of Saskatchewan was struck down by the Supreme Court of Canada in 2015, with the court saying:

The right to strike also promotes equality in the bargaining process. This Court has long recognized the deep inequalities that structure the relationship between employers and employees, and the vulnerability of employees in this context.

While strike activity itself does not guarantee that a labour dispute will be resolved in any particular manner or that it will be resolved at all, it is the possibility of a strike that enables workers to negotiate their employment terms on a more equal footing. What would be the result of taking away democratic and fair bargaining mechanisms? It would be a workforce that has little reason to stay, little reason to succeed. It is a policy that defeats itself and hurts all Canadians, so I am pleased to see the government repeal this provision.

Before our government colleagues pat themselves on the back too strenuously, however, I must again remind them about the terrible state of negotiations, currently, for many of our public servants. As I have said in the chamber before, Canada's border security officers have been without a collective agreement now for almost four years. These officers, who protect our nation from smugglers, illegal arms, and drugs and who provide compassion and aid to returning Canadians and refugees alike, are being treated with disrespect by the Liberal government.

I have quoted before from a letter I received from a border security officer who lives in my riding of Kootenay--Columbia, and I will repeat that now:

It is further hoped that that current Liberal Government will engage in good faith bargaining and rightly recognize that the CBSA, along with its hard working employees, are indeed legitimate Law Enforcement Officers employed by a legitimate Law Enforcement Agency. All told, we are only seeking what a reasonable person would consider fair and just, and trust that the Liberal Government will come to the same conclusion.

Like the border security officers, RCMP officers are suffering under the neglect of the government. It is losing members to provincial and municipal forces, where they receive better pay, better equipment, and better treatment. It takes incredible commitment, and I really commend any officers who stay with a force that cuts their benefits and will not keep up with critical equipment and training needs or offer them the respect they so rightly deserve. RCMP members are forbidden from taking their grievances to the public service labour relations board, and they are forbidden from engaging in negotiating tactics such as strikes.

Finally, let us look at our own Parliamentary Protective Service officers. Every day we come to work on Parliament Hill, they are here to protect us, to greet us, and to put themselves between members of the House and those who potentially wish to harm us. On top of that, they provide assistance to our visitors and to tourists, Canadians who want to come to this place out of pride and respect. Sadly, the Liberal government is not treating our House of Commons security personnel with respect. The government has refused to negotiate in good faith, and we are once again seeing these officers wearing green hats with a banner that says “Respect” to protest their treatment.

My NDP colleagues and I will support Bill C-62, as we have always supported fair and democratic workers' rights. This legislation, however, does not solve all the problems created by the former Conservative government, nor does it answer the urgent need for the Liberal government to return to the bargaining table with its law enforcement and security officers, a problem that is quickly creating a crisis across this nation and one the Liberals can solve by respecting fair negotiations everywhere.