Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thanks to the committee for the opportunity to make these submissions.
The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada represents about 55,000 professionals across the country in the public sector, most of whom work in the federal public service. Our members are directly affected by Bill C-4, in particular divisions 17 and 18, which amend the PSLRA and the PSEA, as well as the Canadian Human Rights Act.
It is our contention that the proposed legislation significantly impairs the right to collectively bargain, to the point where it in fact constitutes a violation of the freedom of association, protected by paragraph 2(d) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the International Labour Organization’s convention 87, among others.
Our criticism starts with the process itself. Like my colleagues, we feel that burying such important amendments in omnibus legislation is certainly not the proper way to go about this. Instead, the changes should have formed part of a stand-alone piece of legislation that would have allowed for the meaningful consultation with subject-matter experts that we're used to in this country when it comes to these types of changes.
This government's approach of imposing sweeping changes without consultation with stakeholders has been severely criticized by the International Labour Organization and is considered to be an attack on freedom of association in different contexts.
The amendments to the PSLRA contained in Bill C-4 will result in collective bargaining that is in fact devoid of any fair and independent dispute resolution mechanism in the event of impasse at the bargaining table. That, in our view, is a violation of the right to collective bargaining that is protected by paragraph 2(d) of the charter.
Bill C-4 proposes to make conciliation/strike the default process to resolve disputes, while at the same time it grants the employer exclusive and unfettered power to determine which positions are to be designated essential.
Should the parties to collective bargaining eventually find themselves before an arbitration board—or even a conciliation board, for that matter—Bill C-4 proposes restrictions that give the employer considerable leverage throughout that dispute resolution process as well. The process will become less fair and more politicized.
These changes dilute the value of objective analysis of relevant economic factors and replace factual evidence with ideological preference.
Put differently, Bill C-4 completely stacks the deck in favour of the employer. It corrals unions to the conciliation/strike route while keeping exclusive and unchecked control over how many workers actually get to go on strike in the hands of the employer and the employer alone. The bill goes further by ensuring that arbitration or conciliation boards have their hands tied by the government of the day's desire to pay—not the ability, which is the proper standard.
The proposed system forces confrontation and results in a serious impairment of the freedom of association protected by the charter. Beyond these associational rights of public servants, the bill also attacks individual rights of our members.
Bill C-4 calls for the PSLRB, the Public Service Labour Relations Board, and the Public Service Staffing Tribunal to be consolidated to form a new entity, the Public Service Labour Relations and Employment Board.
While the purpose of these types of exercises is usually to find efficiencies, this legislation is actually going to have the opposite effect. There are currently long delays, both at the PSLRB and the PSST, and it is not apparent how merging these two entities will shorten those delays.
In fact, compounding these problems, this legislation will probably increase the volume of complaints by forcing similar individual grievances to be filed separately instead of using the policy grievance tool, which was a tool that was developed under the 2005 Public Service Modernization Act and had resulted, in our view, in a lot of efficiencies by handling a number of individual matters in one policy grievance.
The proposed legislation strips the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal—