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

[Denis Trudel, Bloc, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Madam Speaker, as I think I mentioned in my speech, respecting workers' right to negotiate with employers, to restore the balance of power with the employers, is the very essence of labour law. That is what good labour relations are all about.

As my colleague said so well, if we want to negotiate working conditions that make sense and that align with the current inflationary situation, for example, workers need to have that leverage. It is fundamental. This needs to be resolved as soon as possible.

[René Villemure, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Longueuil—Saint-Hubert for his passionate speech. I would like to ask him a question that has really been bothering me.

Last December, I received a letter from an organization in Trois‑Rivières, Les Artisans de la paix. They told me that their budget had been cut by $79,000 under the Reaching Home program.

We are seeing more and more homeless people on the streets in Trois‑Rivières. A lot of people are experiencing homelessness. The distress is very real. I would like to ask my colleague the following question.

When I get letters like the one from Robert Tardif, executive director of Les Artisans de la paix, who says that it is totally irresponsible and inconceivable to make cuts to such a program, how should I reply, in light of the 3% budget cut to the Reaching Home program?

[Denis Trudel, Bloc, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Madam Speaker, my colleague raises a point. I talked about it in my speech. It is appalling that the government is cutting the only federal funding that goes to help these people.

I have seen it too. I did a tour of Quebec last year. My colleagues know that. I saw the tent cities throughout Quebec. There are families there. There are single mothers with children there. It is terrible. There are students there. If the students are not living in tents, they are living in their cars. It is shocking. How can we stand for that?

It is wintertime. The government is getting ready to cut just 3% from the budget, but it should be increasing the budget. We urgently need to take care of this. My colleague is right.

Soon I will have my report from that tour, and it will include meaningful suggestions. He will hear about it.

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

Madam Speaker, I wonder if my colleague can provide his thoughts on the Province of Quebec, the Province of British Columbia and, now, the federal government moving toward anti-scab legislation. How can this provide national leadership so that, hopefully, other provinces will look at the legislation, look at what other provinces are doing and look at bringing in more anti-scab legislation across the country?

[Denis Trudel, Bloc, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Madam Speaker, I invite every province in Canada to follow Quebec's example. However, we are sorry that it is going so slowly that I think that Quebeckers are going to make a different choice in a few years so as not to endlessly repeat past battles. It is a fight we have already won in Quebec, and with Quebec's independence, we will consolidate these gains and all the others I mentioned earlier. It is coming soon.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

Order. It is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Saanich—Gulf Islands, Taxation; the hon. member for Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, Royal Canadian Mounted Police; the hon. member for Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, Housing.

The hon. member for Saanich—Gulf Islands has the floor.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Madam Speaker, I thank the member of the Bloc Québécois for his kind introduction and his wonderful speech.

This is my first speech about Bill C-58. The Green Party supports this legislative measure because it is necessary. I am so pleased that we have the opportunity to debate it, and I hope that all members of the House will vote in favour of this bill. It is so important for workers' rights and employer-employee relations.

I had the experience, before ever becoming involved in partisan politics, and the real honour of working on behalf of organized labour and trade unions. I was a lawyer with the only downtown firm in Halifax, in those days, that represented only union-side labour. All the other downtown firms in Halifax represented the employers. I had the great honour of working on behalf of the longshoremen's union, the Nova Scotia Government Employees Union and others.

I understand something about labour relations and the importance of having leverage, having some way in which workers have tools to create balance so that the employer does not hold all the cards. We know that when a union goes into a legal strike position, it is very important that they are able to exercise those rights, because they are rights. The difficulty we have had in Canada over many years is that, in common parlance or the terminology, employers will use “scab” labour. Scab labour translates to the language in this legislation: “replacement workers”.

It is the same thing. The slang term is “scab workers”. They are a serious threat to workers' rights.

It has been a long time coming to this legislation, as my colleague from the Bloc Québécois, who just spoke, pointed out.

The province of Quebec has had legislation to prohibit the use of replacement workers during a legal strike or lockout. That legislation has been in place in Quebec for 46 years.

I want to once again commend Quebec. The Province of Quebec has often been the first to implement such important measures. That was the case with day care and with workers' rights.

Here we are, finally, in February, debating this legislation, at second reading before a vote, which was first tabled in November. While I was waiting for the opportunity to speak this afternoon, I went back over Hansard and tried to find any evidence of any speech from any Conservative member of Parliament that would let us know if they favoured the legislation or not.

We just tried again with the hon. member for Sarnia—Lambton. I cannot find any clear indication, which means that I live in hope that my Conservative friends will be voting in favour of getting this legislation passed at second reading and to committee where it does need some improvements.

[An hon. member]

Wait for the vote.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Madam Speaker, my friends across the way said that they want to keep me in suspense. That is okay. Suspense is a lot of fun.

I do hope that everyone in this place, across all party lines, will vote for this legislation. It does need amendments. I see that the United Steelworkers union has made it clear that it would like to see the exemptions and the loopholes in this bill, Bill C-58, removed. There are some exemptions that would allow certain categories of workers and volunteers to continue their activities during strikes and lockouts. That certainly undermines the core purpose of this legislation.

The main purpose of this bill is to do away with the use of replacement workers. We do not need small loopholes that allow for the use of replacement workers.

We do not need loopholes. We need to close them up and tighten them up when this bill gets to committee.

Another place where I hope we can see improvements in committee is in getting rid of the 18-month delay before the bill would come into force. We have seen, as I mentioned, that the Province of Quebec has had this legislation for 46 years. The Province of British Columbia also has this legislation. A stable set of union-employer relations and a system of collective bargaining that is respected really matter. Both sides have their tools, and they need to have access to those tools. It is an unbalanced and therefore less economically secure situation for our economy when the tools to one side are removed. Strikes and lockouts actually last longer when scab labour is used. There is greater stability and greater security for our economy when scab labour is eliminated, and I would urge the government to amend the legislation to make this stronger.

However, in looking at this and going back over Hansard to try to find any indication of how my Conservative friends were going to vote, I found that friends from South Shore—St. Margarets, Mégantic—L'Érable, Essex, Calgary Nose Hill, Calgary Rocky Ridge, Chilliwack—Hope, Provencher, Battle River—Crowfoot and Sarnia—Lambton made repeated reference to things that have nothing to do with this legislation. If I may, I will take a moment just to clarify.

When we talk of replacement workers, we mean specifically one thing only: the use of scab labour when a union is in a legal position to strike or there is a lockout. Those are the situations in which replacement workers in this legislation, Bill C-58, are referenced and banned. It is unfortunate, then, that in so much of the very limited debate, consisting of basically three days, with a number of speakers, over and over again Conservative members have raised the Stellantis battery plant, its use of federal dollars and the fact that it is also subcontracting with South Korea. Numerous speakers have made the mistake of referring to workers, in the context of workers from South Korea working at the Stellantis battery plant as part of a trade agreement that was put in place by the previous Conservative government, as somehow being replacement workers. They are emphatically not replacement workers when they are from other countries under agreements that have been made. Certainly, the Green Party prefers that all workers in Canada are Canadian workers who live and work here, but we have many, many agreements with large multinationals to use workers from other countries. Just to be very, very clear for people watching from home, those workers are not replacement workers. They have nothing to do with this legislation.

Therefore, despite references that somehow the Liberals are violating their own Bill C-58 by allowing 900 workers from South Korea at the Stellantis battery plant, saying that they are, as quoted from one of my Conservative colleagues, “essentially replacement workers”, I want to be very clear that they are essentially nothing of the sort. They have nothing to do with Bill C-58. They are not replacement workers. They are, in fact, workers from another country who have been brought in under the kinds of deals that have been organized between transnational corporations and various governments in this country. It is not my favourite thing to see workers come in from other countries, but let us not mix up our concepts, because it creates confusion in the public.

This legislation is, purely and simply, about one thing and one thing only. That is to defend the rights of workers within trade unions to support organized labour in this country, which has given us so much. From work hours that are reasonable and banning child labour to many social improvements right across this country, we can thank organized labour. Workers who go out on strike should never have to see their colleagues crossing a picket line to continue to support the unfair practices of an employer when a union is in a legal strike position.

With that, I would like to thank the House for its time and allow the Green Party to go on record as being strongly in favour of Bill C-58 and strongly in favour of improving it and strengthening it in committee.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member from the Green Party for her support of this bill. I wonder if the hon. member could talk a bit more about the maintenance of activities agreement that is proposed in this bill, whereby we would be working with the Canada Industrial Relations Board prior to any strike action to establish what maintenance activities are required for safety or environmental protection. This goal of having prior agreements would also help us to have fewer strikes, and shorter strikes if they do occur.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Madam Speaker, there are reasonable elements to the proposition that before a strike there is an agreement on what is absolutely necessary to take place, but I am concerned by the criticisms from Unifor, the United Auto Workers, the United Steelworkers and others that these represent potential loopholes. I would want to make sure that in expert evidence in committee it is absolutely nailed down that such provisions do not constitute loopholes that weaken the rights of workers.

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

Madam Speaker, although I have the utmost respect for the member opposite, I want to clarify something for her. In my riding, with respect to the Stellantis deal and the 1,600 replacement Korean workers, workers went to see what was being done. It is carbon steel welding, which all of the welders in my riding can do, so it actually is replacement workers, which is contrary to what the members opposite would say.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Madam Speaker, I am sorry to my hon. colleague from Sarnia—Lambton. I respect so much her pioneering work in engineering, but I went to law school. It does not mean I know more, but I do know that replacement workers are one thing only: In trade union relations and collective bargaining, replacement workers are scab workers, not workers who come from another country who do work Canadians could otherwise do.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Saanich—Gulf Islands for her speech. I am not surprised that she supports the bill, because she is a woman with progressive values who generally supports this type of bill. We are very pleased to hear that, because, as we know, the Bloc Québécois is strongly in favour of this bill.

During her speech, I also appreciated her recognition of Quebec's pioneering role in this type of legislation. Quebec has had anti-scab legislation like this for 47 years and, since then, there have been two classes of workers in Quebec due to the federal jurisdiction we are trying to get rid of. We will get it done. We led the way for dental care, pharmacare and child care. Canada is taking its cue from Quebec, and that is a good thing; it makes us happy.

When Canada draws inspiration from Quebec like this, does my colleague not think that Canada should also not undermine Quebec by recognizing it and giving it its money? That does not apply to anti-scab legislation, but it will apply to dental care and pharmacare, because the new federal program will bring in another structure and undermine existing structures in Quebec.

With all due respect, does she not think the government should give Quebec the money it is owed and create programs for Canada? Obviously, we will be voting in favour of this, as long as it does not hurt Quebec.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my esteemed colleague. I completely agree with him, except for one thing. The rest of Canada is in dire need of pharmacare.

If there is a problem with the money between the province and the federal government, we have to figure that out. I do not want to, at this point, say that absolutely Quebec's approach should be protected in terms of the money, because we will get a better deal in pharmacare when there is one buyer, a single payer, that can drive down the price of pharmaceuticals.

I would also like to congratulate Quebec for being a pioneer in the fight against climate change and the fossil fuel industry.