Bill C-58

An Act to amend the Canada Labour Code and the Canada Industrial Relations Board Regulations, 2012

This enactment amends the Canada Labour Code to, among other things,
(a) amend the scope of the prohibition relating to replacement workers by removing the requirement of demonstrating a purpose of undermining a trade union’s representational capacity, by adding persons whose services must not be used during legal strikes and lockouts and by providing certain exceptions;
(b) prohibit employers from using, during a legal strike or lockout intended to involve the cessation of work by all employees in a bargaining unit, the services of an employee in that unit, subject to certain exceptions;
(c) make the contravention by employers of either of those prohibitions an offence punishable by a fine of up to $100,000 per day;
(d) authorize the Governor in Council to make regulations establishing an administrative monetary penalties scheme for the purpose of promoting compliance with those prohibitions; and
(e) amend the maintenance of activities process in order to, among other things, encourage employers and trade unions to reach an earlier agreement respecting activities to be maintained in the event of a legal strike or lockout, encourage faster decision making by the Canada Industrial Relations Board when parties are unable to agree and reduce the need for the Minister of Labour to make referrals to the Board.

Canada Labour Code

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

Mr. Speaker, the member is saying to support workers and jobs. Trade agreements support workers and jobs, yet we saw just last week that the Conservative Party, en masse, voted against the Canada-Ukraine trade agreement. Can the member indicate why he voted against the Canada-Ukraine trade agreement?

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am sure that question was out of order for relevance, but I can understand why this member would not wish to ask a question relevant to the speech that I just made; he knows he is one of the members who has already voted against anti-replacement worker legislation in this House more than once. Therefore, I fully understand why the member will not talk about the bill or ask me a question about this bill. It is because his flip-flop that he is undertaking right now is not something that he wants well understood by his constituents, perhaps.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, just following up on some of the remarks that the member made about Canada's oil and gas industry, I wonder if he can confirm, as I believe is true, that the Canadian oil and gas sector today extracts more barrels per day than at any other time in Canadian history. I wonder if the member wants to confirm the number, above and beyond the over $30 billion that the current Liberal government has put into the TMX pipeline and the amount of public subsidy for the Canadian oil and gas sector.

While he is at it, perhaps the member has numbers for temporary foreign workers who work in the oil and gas industry because it has certainly made use of TFWs and workers under the international labour mobility program as well. Perhaps the member would like to comment on those phenomena.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Mr. Speaker, there is demand for the product that the energy industry produces. Despite everything that the current government has done to kill that industry, the billions and billions of dollars that the businesses lost and the hundreds of thousands of lost jobs, we are a long way from catching up to where we could have been and the promise that existed.

With respect to the TMX, the member is right to bring up the waste on that. This is a project that should have been built with private capital. We had a private proponent who was going to build the TMX with its own money. If it ballooned from $4 billion to $30 billion, that would be on the proponent and its shareholders to worry about. However, it is the people and the workers of Canada who are paying for the overage now that the government has been put in a position to nationalize it after it chased private capital out.

With respect to the member's third question, I oppose the subsidizing of any industry where the crown is subsidizing a private business on the promise of creating jobs when it is really just importing temporary labour, bidding up the cost of housing and making the taxpayer, the workers in Canada, pay for the jobs for the foreign replacement workers.

[Luc Desilets, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, we know that Quebec passed anti-scab legislation in 1977. From what I understand, the Conservatives are against passing a similar law in Canada.

Can my colleague tell me whether he thinks Quebec made a mistake by passing that law in 1977?

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I do not want to put this all on that particular policy change in 1977. Maybe even going back earlier than 1977, the Province of Quebec has been the laggard in the Canadian economy for most of these past 45 years. Its per capita GDP has been much lower than other provinces. If the member would ask me if there is a grand economic success behind the policies of Quebec, we could have that discussion. I do not think it is really appropriate for the purpose of this chamber, but I do not see a connection to a grand period of economic expansion behind that policy in 1977.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Vancouver East.

I want to start by reminding Canadians that the middle class in Canada was built on the union movement. It was not until we had a strong union movement that we developed a strong middle class.

There have been a number of studies over the years by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, the Centre for Future Work and others that have shown that, starting in about the 1980s, union density, which is just a fancy word for what percentage of workers belong to a union, has gone down, from 38% in 1981 to just 29% in 2022. That is a Stats Canada number. That number, according to these studies, correlates with a decrease in the number of Canadians who belong to the Canadian middle class and with the decline in real wages for Canadian workers.

We see that belonging to a union has meant more powerful paycheques for Canadians, has meant more job stability in many cases and has meant a stronger Canadian economy overall. When we see fewer workers belonging to unions, we see more vulnerability for those workers, lower pay and consequences for the Canadian economy.

When workers are well paid for the work they do and they have spending power in the local economy, that helps feed local businesses, helps feed our economy and creates strong conditions for business. That is the lesson of Henry Ford, who is by no means a socialist, but even he realized that if we do not pay workers well enough to buy products in the economy, it is not long before the economy overall suffers, as well-paid workers are the cornerstone of prosperity.

How is it that the union movement has been able to win powerful paycheques for workers or to help them win them for themselves? There are many components to the labour movement. There are many ways they do advocacy, and there are many ways that workers within the union movement advocate for themselves and for fellow workers. However, all of that, at the rock bottom, is supported ultimately by the ability to strike.

That means the ability to say they are not satisfied with the terms and conditions of work, whether that is pay, benefits, pension, workplace procedures or workplace safety and health, and that they are not going to go into work on those terms and conditions. They want to stand with the people in their workplaces who feel similarly and demand better. Ultimately, all of us in a workplace, if we are of the same mind, should be able to withhold our labour.

The right to strike is the most important principle that subtends all of the power and influence the union movement has had in order to improve the position of Canadian workers. The most significant way this can be undermined is when employers are allowed to hire replacement workers during a strike. While some workers are out on the picket line saying they deserve better pay or want to address workplace safety and health issues, other workers come in the back door, perform their work and sometimes get paid, egregiously, on better terms than the workers who are out on strike were paid before the strike began.

New Democrats have been arguing alongside the labour movement for decades now and have presented, many times, legislation that would end the practice of employers being allowed to bring in replacement workers. The Liberals will say this was a campaign commitment of theirs. However, if we look at their platform, it is not true. It was a commitment they made to ban replacement workers when companies lock out their workers essentially to impose a strike.

It is only since the NDP used our power in this Parliament that the proposal became a comprehensive one that defends the right to strike instead of offering punishment to employers who would lock workers out. What we need in order to vouchsafe the power of Canadian workers' paycheques and the right to strike is a ban on replacement workers in the context of a strike as well. I am very proud to be part of an NDP caucus that has delivered that and made sure that this legislation does the whole job and properly respects and protects Canadian workers' right to strike.

It is the kind of legislation we needed for almost six years when IBEW Local 213 was out on the picket line against Ledcor trying to secure a first contract. Nobody ends up with a six-year labour dispute unless an employer is using replacement workers. The business wraps up a lot sooner than six years if it is not using replacement workers. What that means is the business is forced to bargain.

In this House, I have watched as Liberals and Conservatives voted together. As I have said, the real coalition in Ottawa is the Liberal-Conservative coalition. It voted to order workers back to work, to essentially take away their right to strike. We saw it with the Port of Montreal and we saw it with Canada Post workers.

Notable have been the examples where the federal government has refused to say that it will legislate workers back to work, because then we saw the company come to a deal. One of those instances was in 2019 with CN. CN was asking for back-to-work legislation. The government departed from its usual tack and refused to promise back-to-work legislation. Very soon after the federal government clearly refused the idea of bringing in back-to-work legislation, we saw a resolution to the strike. The company's strategy for bargaining could not use the federal government to get out of paying workers their fair share and to circumvent a real negotiation at the table.

It is likewise with replacement workers. If replacement workers are banned so that they cannot be part of the bargaining strategy of a company, we will see more speedy resolutions to labour disputes and ultimately, I believe, fewer labour disputes. In fact, there is some evidence for this from jurisdictions with anti-scab legislation. Those who say this is a travesty that would prolong labour disputes or that there would be more labour disputes are speaking against the evidence and, frankly, have an ignorance of how collective bargaining works and the ways companies mobilize replacement workers in order to get out of having to bargain fairly at the table.

We have heard a cornucopia of red herrings in this debate. We have heard Tories talk about replacement workers at battery plants that have not even been built yet. I share their concern about tax dollars being invested to create jobs for Canadians. Those are legitimate issues, but they do not have a place in a debate about anti-scab legislation.

The Tories are using a new term they are developing today for replacement workers to distract from the fact that they refuse to take a clear position on whether they support replacement workers coming in the back door while real, current Canadian workers are out on strike bargaining for better pay and a better future. That is a red herring. Canadian workers should not allow them to get away with being dishonest, quite frankly, about their position on anti-scab legislation by trying to distract with this other conversation, an important conversation but a different conversation nevertheless. This is our time to have a conversation about replacement workers in the case of a strike.

The Conservatives want to talk about the NDP wagging the Liberal dog. There is some truth to that on this point, for sure. As I said, the commitment the Liberals made is not what they are moving ahead with. We have a formula that would protect workers' right to strike. I am proud of that. They can go sing that from the mountaintops. We are also doing that. We want workers to know that we have their backs when they are out on strike, like the Ledcor workers, who needed legislation like this.

I would remind Canadians, too, of Bill C-377, from the Parliament when the Conservative leader sat at the cabinet table, and Bill C-525, bills that would have made it much easier to decertify a union in the workplace, not with the touted 50%-plus-one majority that is talked about when it is time to form a union, but with a 40% minority. That is how the Conservatives would have allowed unions to be decertified in a workplace. Not only that, but they would have required a bunch of sensitive financial information about individual union members to be published online, which would have put workers at a serious disadvantage in their strike position because it would have required unions to reveal the amount in their strike fund to employers so they could plan to bring in replacement workers and wait out the strike fund.

Give me a break when Conservatives say they are standing up for workers. We know that a strong union movement is integral to the powerful paycheques that Canadian middle-class workers have been able to bring home. We know that banning replacement workers is important to protect that. That is why New Democrats are proud we have this legislation before the House.

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

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that the member made indirect reference to the part of the Liberal election platform that said we would bring forward back-to-work legislation. I am glad there is a high sense of co-operation taking place between the New Democratic Party and the government to ensure this legislation passes. I see that as a good thing. The labour movement benefits not only union members but non-union members, and in fact all of society collectively.

My question for my friend is with regard to this being federal legislation, which only considers a certain percentage of the overall population in Canada. I think the member might know where I am going with this question. I would like provincial jurisdictions to follow suit with Quebec and B.C. The other day I made a mistake. It was an NDP government in B.C. that brought this in and a Liberal government in Quebec, which again shows that this goes beyond one political party.

Would the member not agree, with the legislation we are seeing today in Ottawa, that it would be nice to see other provincial jurisdictions follow suit and bring in similar legislation?

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Indeed, Mr. Speaker, I would like to see this legislation in jurisdictions across the country. I was very proud that the new premier in Manitoba, Wab Kinew, in the election campaign that led to his premiership, committed to bringing in anti-scab legislation in Manitoba. I very much look forward to seeing the Government of Manitoba move ahead with that.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague and I both reacted to the answer that a Conservative member gave earlier to my colleague from Rivière-des-Mille-Îles's question, which was very well put. Quebec was ahead of its time with its anti-scab legislation. Such a law is already in effect in Quebec. However, one political party is trying to make a dubious connection between Quebec supposedly being an “economic laggard ” and this legislation. I say “supposedly”, because I do not agree with that at all.

I would like my colleague to talk about the dubious connection that my Conservative colleague made.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I would say that calling it a “dubious connection” is very generous. I see no connection at all between the bill preventing Quebec employers from using scab workers and an economic situation that is not working in Quebec. Those are my colleague's words, not mine. I think he was linking one thing to something that does not exist. Even if it did, it would still be a dubious connection.

Therefore, I would say that that comment was absurd.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am indeed proud that it was the government in British Columbia that brought in the provincial version of this legislation. I very much look forward to the member's province following suit in short order.

We obviously have the opportunity, should this bill pass at second reading, to strengthen it at committee. I wonder if the member could share his thoughts on what ways this bill could be strengthened beyond what we see before us.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the thing the New Democrats will be looking for assistance on most of all is the coming-into-force provisions. Right now, as the bill stands, there is an 18-month coming-into-force period after royal assent. We think that is a lot longer than it needs to be. As I recall, when we first started talking about implementing a dental plan, we heard from the government it would take seven years. We pushed back and it is getting done in 18 months.

We know that initial bureaucratic deadlines are often padded. New Democrats think that can come down, and we will be looking for the assistance of other members of this House to make that happen. If Conservatives are anywhere near as worker-friendly as they like to make themselves out to be, perhaps they will work with us to amend the bill at committee and move up the coming-into-force date.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to enter into debate on this anti-scab legislation.

This legislation is so important because we know that workers are struggling out there. We know that, when we have the union supporting us and fighting for us for better working conditions, better treatment and better wages, we are elevating the workforce not only for union members but also for all workers across the country.

I have been working ever since I was in grade 4, but years ago, I was a student trying to make ends meet through the course of the summer and to pay for my university tuition. I started working as a dishwasher, and later on that summer, I landed a job as the mail girl, which was the actual title at that company. Unfortunately, there was a strike, and for that entire summer, I did not make any money. I walked the pickets though, and I learned a lot about the labour movement and the importance and history of it.

I learned what the labour movement was fighting for and what it meant for the family members of those in that fight. I had a choice as a student to just say, “Hey, I don't have time for this” and find myself another summer job, but I did not do that. I stayed on the picket line to support those families and learn about that history. For me, it was such an important lesson. In fact, I learned so much, it was much more than I could have learned otherwise in any other scenario. Since then, I have been converted to believe in the labour movement, its history and what it means for current day workers.

We are talking about anti-scab legislation today. What does it really mean when we refer to “anti-scab” legislation? It is the importance of respecting and protecting the value of the workers in a particular union in a particular workforce. It means bringing balance to the whole equation of the imbalance of power for employers. All too often, employers will leverage different powers against the workers, and an example of that would be to bring in workers from outside to cross the picket line and undermine the position of existing workers. There are times when workers are even locked out while the employer brings in outside workers to do the work of the existing workers. This is to undermine them, drive them out and, really, dismantle labour and the voices of the workers.

The NDP, as members know, was founded by the CCF, by the labour movement. We strongly believe in the rights of workers. However, this is not the first time that the NDP has brought forward anti-scab legislation. We have done this at least eight times over the last number of years, most recently in 2016. However, both Liberals and Conservatives voted against the NDP's legislation on anti-scab workers. Fast-forward to today, and 25 New Democrats were able to force the Liberal government to take action in a minority government. We are now seeing anti-scab legislation tabled and debated in the House.

Our leader had a press event on the morning before the legislation was moved, which was held just outside of this chamber, with labour leaders. The media asked: “How is this relevant today? Are there any examples of where this is happening today?”

Well, as it happens, in my own riding of Vancouver East, at the Rogers site, workers were being locked out and Rogers was bringing in scab workers, and not from just within the local community. When I visited the picket line, the workers were telling me that the company was bringing in workers from outside of the country. It was bringing in workers from Toronto, and paying for them to come to Vancouver to do the work of the members there. I was at the picket line late afternoon on a Friday and then again on the Saturday. On the Friday afternoon, scab workers were driving in and out of the site, and the workers who were picketing there were being undermined by those scab workers.

That means the workers will not be able to get the wages they need to support their own families, especially at a time when the cost of living and housing costs are so high. People need to be respected.

However, they were not necessarily fighting about wages. They were fighting for job protection. I met workers at that picket line who have been there for 30 plus years. They told me that they are not in this fight for themselves but are in this fight for future generations. They are close to retirement and want to make sure future workers coming in will not be undermined by the employer and that they will have the ability to fight for their working conditions and their rights.

They were there to bring balance to the equation of the power imbalance between the worker and the employer. They want to make this mark, not just for themselves, but for future generations. They also know, when they make this mark in this fight, they will impact other workers outside of Rogers. They want to move the entire labour force forward for workers. This is what the labour union movement has been about. That is what this anti-scab legislation is also about for these workers at Rogers.

I understand they have come to a tentative agreement, so fingers crossed that things will go through smoothly. However, it did not have to be this way. If this legislation had been in place, this would not have happened to those workers. This is what we are talking about, which is the need to protect workers.

The Conservatives claim they support workers. Talk is cheap. They need to show it in action. The Conservatives and their leader have a choice right now on what they are going to do with this bill. Are they going to support this bill, or are they going to play silly buggers, with games, in delaying the passage of this bill?

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, there have been lots of discussions on how we need to treat one another civilly. We should not be referring to one another with unparliamentary names. I would suggest that that is what that was, and I would ask the member to withdraw the comment.