Mr. Chair, honourable members, thank you for the opportunity to make a submission before you today in relation to division 20 of Bill C-59 on behalf of the nearly 55,000 members of the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada.
The vast majority of institute members are professionals providing public services in federal departments and agencies who are currently in the process of negotiating collective agreements.
The members I represent are directly affected by division 20, which grants Treasury Board unilateral power to impose whatever terms and conditions it wants in relation to sick leave, on whatever employees it wants within the core public administration, whenever it wants, and for as long as it wants.
We believe that division 20 is unconstitutional and fundamentally flawed, and as such should be struck entirely from Bill C-59. In the brief time that I have today I'll take you through the institute's concerns, which are laid out in much more detail in our written submission provided to the committee.
Firstly, division 20 is unconstitutional. Indeed, just last winter the Supreme Court of Canada stated that subsection 2(d) of the charter protects the right of employees to engage in meaningful collective bargaining and the right to strike. This proposed legislation violates both of those rights by effectively preventing meaningful bargaining and striking over an important workplace issue.
Bill C-59 stacks the deck against unions at the bargaining table by granting to the Treasury Board—the very party negotiating with us—the power to unilaterally impose terms and conditions related to the employer's only substantive issue in this current round of bargaining: sick leave. At any time, even in the course of bargaining, Treasury Board can decide to implement the terms it wishes and simply wipe out existing sick leave provisions contained in collective agreements, gains made by unions in good-faith negotiations.
Secondly, division 20 is an affront to the rule of law.
The proposed legislation also allows the employer to override the statutory freeze provisions recently highlighted by the Supreme Court of Canada. This important statutory protection under the Public Service Labour Relations Act ensures that an employer does not change the terms and conditions of employment while bargaining is under way. In effect, division 20 is legalizing an unfair labour practice by the Treasury Board.
Even more shocking, division 20 is drafted so that any order issued by Treasury Board relating to sick leave would not have to meet the test of charter compliance as it normally would pursuant to the Statutory Instruments Act. This is nothing less than a direct affront to the rule of law.
Thirdly, division 20 will undermine public services to Canadians.
The government's proposed plan related to sick leave and disability is bad for public servants, bad for public services, and bad for Canadians. In many cases, public servants will have to either take unpaid sick days or go to work sick.
What's more, there's no evidence to support the government's claim that this approach will result in savings. The $900 million of supposed savings reported in the 2015 budget is nothing more than a convenient artificial accounting exercise that contributes to a pre-election balanced budget without representing any real savings. The drive to get this so-called “unfunded liability” of banked sick days off the books does not reflect the fact that public servants off sick are most often not replaced. The additional workload is simply picked up by their hard-working colleagues.
Worse yet, the government has conspicuously failed to account for the additional costs their proposal to move to a privately managed plan will dump on taxpayers.
To conclude, on behalf of the 55,000 professionals and scientists that PIPSC represents I urge the committee to defend the credibility of Parliament's law-making powers, which must respect the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Division 20 of Bill C-59 is unconstitutional and an affront to the rule of law. I urge you to reject it.
Thank you.