Maybe I could have an attempt at that.
I'm the executive assistant to the national president, but I am the staffing liaison and the chief consultant for the union in our discussions with the agency.
One of the biggest problems is that without the ability to negotiate, the employer, the CRA, has the unilateral and unfettered right to set the rules. As we go to their stages of recourse—where union representation is not allowed at the first two levels—and we make some inroads, the agency has the unfettered authority, with the stroke of a pen, to change the policy once again. Without the ability to bargain the rules at the table and to have rules we all must live by, or to negotiate those changes, our employees are left with a really futile sense of recourse. They have no real recourse.
In fact, as you'll see in our brief, one thing is that even when we do win before the third party reviewers—who are chosen by the agency themselves, and we are not consulted and have no choice as to whom they pick to hear the cases—and those reviewers find in our favour, the employer has no rules in their own policy that they must follow the findings, the binding recommendations of the reviewers. In fact, we are now, instead of dealing with these before the reviews, spending the time of the Federal Court Trial Division and the Federal Court of Appeal arguing staffing issues of the public service. And we are getting cool receptions in the federal court. They have bigger fish to fry than whether John Smith from Newfoundland or Sylvie Lefebvre from Quebec got an appointment from a PM2 to a PM3. But we're left with no other alternative than to fight our battles in the courts.