Thank you, Mr. Chair.
For the sake of transparency, I think it might have been interesting, Mr. Mortimer, to mention that you have 15 member associations. Of these 15, six are actually provincial Merit components, Le Conseil du patronat du Québec, and the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. Basically, we heard from you and over half of your membership on this bill, obviously all agreeing with each other. It would have been interesting if you had actually mentioned that at the beginning.
I would like to repeat something I said earlier. This bill is three pages long, plus definitions. Mr. Hiebert himself admitted that the number of amendments required to make this bill acceptable would mean not just changing the bill, but completely rewriting it.
So you are talking about a version of the bill that will most likely not be final, if there are amendments. In fact, it needs to be rewritten entirely.
Plus, based on Ms. Stoddart's testimony, it is seriously flawed in terms of privacy. This bill, as written, is a big huge mess even though this is its second incarnation after Bill C-377—the first version—was ruled out of order.
My first question is for Mr. Smith. You mentioned this briefly, but I would like you to give us some more details about the impact of this bill on the ability of unionized contractors to compete with non-unionized contractors, such as members of Merit.