You know it takes two parties to negotiate, and if the government—and I'm not saying it's totally the government—is throwing roadblocks in the way of finding a solution, they can't point fingers at the other guy and scream “fire”. All I know is in a negotiation with two parties you really do have to find solutions, and if one party is intransigent, that may pre-empt finding a solution.
Having said that, I'm not saying the situation as it exists today is perfect and that's the only way it can operate. We're proposing something that would look at an internationally recognized standard and try to find an alternative way of getting to the same point. It seems to me that if there are objective criteria that make sense, that are reasonable, that people around the world have agreed to, then that makes sense, but to say, “Wait a minute; none of that matters. None of what the rest of the world has agreed to matters. We know this one minister is going to make the best decision and everyone should just trust this one person”, that makes no sense.
We always believe that if one side has a problem with something, then these are issues that need to be addressed, but they should be addressed in a fair way.
My sense is what's happening here is the government has some issues, some irritations, some problems with the public sector in some areas and they've lost their cool. They're overreacting rather than acting reasonably. There are internationally agreed upon reasonable ways of approaching the issue of essential services that will protect Canadians, make sure that the services are there when they need them. Nobody wants our borders undefended. We had the head of the public sector union say that on 9/11 all kinds of people voluntarily came in to work, and the union led that.
We think there are ways to be reasonable here that would solve a concern the government has and not offend people's basic rights.