I think many witnesses who have appeared here seem to be of that view, including my friend from the Frontier Centre. That's one area where we actually agree. It's not that often necessarily that we agree, and I think when there's a concern being expressed by him and by me and by many others about the lack of consultation, you're exactly right. And it's not only consultation for the lack of consultation; it's consultation because the Supreme Court of Canada has actually said that before you run roughshod over workers' fundamental rights, you have to consult. It's consultation, because, as the Canadian Labour Congress emphasized this morning, it's particularly critical when—and I encounter this all the time because I do primarily bargaining in the public sector—government is always a player. Either they're a player because they fund, in the Ontario context, hospitals and school boards, so they have an acute interest in the outcome of collective bargaining, or, in the case of the Ontario or federal governments, they are the employer and therefore have a direct interest in the outcome of collective bargaining. In that context, I think the reason that historically every other government before this one has actually engaged in a meaningful degree of consultation before introducing these sorts of substantial changes is because they recognized that, and they've recognized the inappropriateness, given their inherent conflict of interest, of acting unilaterally without at least trying to build consensus, without at least getting input and involvement from the affected stakeholders.
There was a question earlier about other jurisdictions. One test of this is whether what the federal government is proposing here is consistent with the generally accepted approach across Canada, with Conservative governments, Liberal governments, the odd NDP government. Is it consistent with the approach that other governments take in collective bargaining with their own employees or employees in the broader public sector? The answer is an unequivocal no. It's outside of the bounds of what's considered fair and reasonable in at least two respects. One, when it comes to essential services, I've heard Minister Clement say that as a government, they need to worry about making sure they can have safety and security protected during a strike. No one disagrees with that. The fact is, though, that in every other jurisdiction that objective is met by allowing for some independent oversight, and not the government, which has a direct interest in who can strike, making that decision unilaterally.
Secondly, when it comes to arbitration, there is no other jurisdiction that requires an arbitrator in this context to give predominant weight to the government's unilaterally determined budgetary priorities and stacking the deck on the outcome.