Government Operations Committee on Dec. 6th, 2018

[Carla Qualtrough]

I have every confidence in the newly established leadership of Canada Post. We have a brand new board and a brand new chair and acting interim CEO, and they have done a significant amount to address the needs of Canada Post employees—

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Well, what I'm telling you today—

[Carla Qualtrough]

—whether it be because of bullying and harassment or through addressing issues of overtime. They are moving ahead on these really important issues.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

What I am telling you today on behalf of the many postal workers who have contacted my office—so it's not coming from me—is that when they reported back to work because they were required by your law to report back to work, one of the first things they heard was that Canada Post was going to dock their personal leave and their vacation leave for the entire duration of the strike, notwithstanding the fact that almost every day of that strike they went in to work and reported to work.

That's a consequence of your legislation. Your legislation specifically exempts the entire strike period from counting against that accumulation; never mind that they were going to work.

How do you think you're going to improve labour-management relations and get a negotiated solution, when you allow your management, as their first act after you legislated those people back to work, to poke them in the eye? How do you think that promotes better labour-management relations?

[Carla Qualtrough]

I appreciate and sympathize with the toll that the labour dispute has taken, particularly on employees—

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

They don't need your sympathy. They need you to do something about a management that repeatedly decides to poke and prod them, and take them on—

[Carla Qualtrough]

This is a new Canada Post management. This is not the Canada Post management of times past.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Actually, if you talk to the workers there, they'll tell you it is.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Mr. Blaikie, I know how passionate you and others are when dealing with this. This was a long-simmering dispute. I can understand all of that. I can understand why the questions you were posing to the minister are such that it may tend to inflame the emotions, again, of members of this committee or members of the union.

However, all I'm suggesting here, sir—and to the minister—is that we continue to do what we always do at committee and treat all of our witnesses with respect. The questions should be direct, and they should be aggressive, at times, if you feel that they should be posed in such a manner, and I would also ask the minister to answer direct questions with direct answers, if possible, but I'd like to keep this on a level that is respectful of both the minister and the witnesses along with her.

Mr. Blaikie, you have about two and a half minutes left.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Thank you.

I'll come back to a comment that the minister made about how this isn't the Canada Post of years past. One thing that Canada Post is paying for right now, with interest, is the decision to deny Canada Post workers their sick leave during a previous rotating strike and subsequent lockout, when they were legislated back to work. After years of significant cost to the union representing those workers, and to the corporation itself, an arbitrator determined that actually there was an acquired or vested right to those benefits, and the company was not within its rights to deny those benefits.

We've seen something similar happen with respect to the short-term disability plan. There are many people who worked there in 2011 and who work there today, and they span that whole period. When they look at what happened in 2011 and what's happening now, they see that Canada Post management is adopting the same techniques. They decided to take away sick days, which is what obtained at the time, in 2011, and they decided to go after short-term disability, which replaced those sick days now. When they look at that situation, they don't see what's different. Canada Post has engaged in the same kinds of strike-breaking tactics in 2018 as it did in 2011.

Why don't you explain to those people, who don't see it in their daily work lives, what exactly you think the difference is between Canada Post management techniques in 2011 and Canada Post management techniques today?

[Carla Qualtrough]

Thank you.

Well, I am of the firm belief that Canada Post management is behaving differently than it has in the past. We gave a very forward-looking mandate to the new chair, in January of this year, which corresponded with our service-focused vision for Canada Post. We put at the very top of the list to improve relations between management and labour, which, as I indicated, were fractured.

I have met with unions, and I know personally that the leadership of CUPW, in particular, is grateful for some of the initiatives that management has taken, particularly with respect to bullying and harassment, which I referred to, and dealing with a very clunky past process on overtime, which the chair at the time had dealt with directly. I think it's unfortunate—

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

One major issue has been that Canada Post uses mandated overtime repeatedly.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

I have given some additional time for my intervention, but unfortunately we are out of time for this intervention.

We'll now go to Mr. Jowhari. You have seven minutes, please.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to welcome the minister and the staff.

Minister, I'd like to start by asking a clarifying question. While Minister Brison was here on his estimates, our colleagues from the other side indicated—one may say insinuated—that you denied the request to release the CSC RFP to the PBO. I've had the opportunity to review the transcript and did not see that the request was made to you at any point while at this committee.

I want to give you a chance to clear this up. I'm going to ask this specific question: Have you been asked by the PBO to provide the CSC RFP? If so, have you done that?

[Carla Qualtrough]

To the best of my recollection, I have not been asked to provide that, no.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you.

Going back, in your opening remarks you indicated that 353 contracts worth $163 million have already been awarded under the BCIP program, that 80% of the firms benefited from the program, and that 78 of those products have been exported to 48 countries. This is great work that has been done on the innovation side.

I'd like to ask you a question about defence procurement. The opposition often highlights potential challenges yet doesn't talk about some of the significant achievements we have made under our procurement programs, especially the defence procurement program, in helping to ensure that our men and women are well equipped with what they need.

Can you highlight some of those specific achievements under the defence program?

[Carla Qualtrough]

Thank you.

A lot of work has gone on, both behind the scenes and in delivering for Canadians, in defence procurement. It started really with the robust work and consultation and technical expertise that went into the fully costed defence policy that we have: “Strong, Secure, Engaged”.

We also have a defence investment plan that lays out the planned investments in defence procurement for the next 10 years. It allows businesses in particular to anticipate what will be needed by the military so that they can make strategic investments in their own innovation and R and D.

We've also launched the future fighter jet procurement for the 88 replacement jets and expect the delivery of our first interim jet next year. The first large vessels that were designed and built under the NSS are in the water. We've launched an offshore fisheries and science vessel. We've launched the first AOPS.

We've done a contract for purchase and sale of a fixed-wing search and rescue aircraft. We've selected a preferred bidder for the Canadian surface combatant. We've issued an advance contract award for the maintenance of our frigates. We've cut steel on the first joint support ship at Seaspan. We announced that we will build a sixth AOPS. We have new tactical armoured patrol vehicles, new military pattern trucks, and new equipment for the Canadian Rangers.

We've actually delivered a lot in defence procurement.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Great.

Are there any numbers or percentages that your team can provide indicating how much of this procurement has gone to Canadian businesses? That's as a percentages or in dollar numbers.

[Carla Qualtrough]

I'm sorry. I don't have that number in my head.

[André Fillion]

What is also important to note is that when we do the procurement for large defence contracts, we invoke what we call industrial and technological benefits, which require suppliers to invest the equivalent amount of the contract into Canadian industry, so that we see a lot of work being done here in Canada, directly or indirectly related to the contracts that are awarded.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

If you could provide the committee with an example and a percentage of how much is done, we would really appreciate it.

Minister, following up on the passion demonstrated by my colleague Mr. Blaikie, I'd like to talk about the recently passed Bill C-89. This bill was quite different from the previous bill, Bill C-6, which was passed in 2011, and has many positive and different approaches to bringing in back-to-work legislation.

I would like to ask you to highlight some of those positive or different approaches.

[Carla Qualtrough]

Thank you.

In June 2011, CUPW workers ran rotating strikes as part of a labour action. Less than two weeks later, Canada Post locked out CUPW workers and the Harper government passed back-to-work legislation. This, as the courts described, was very heavy-handed legislation that mandated a wage increase, mandated the kind of offer the arbitrator must receive, and mandated the terms of the contract. It was quite prescriptive in the way it outlined how the process would proceed.

In contrast, in the current environment we have been assisting the parties for over a year in this labour dispute, and Canada Post never locked them out. We didn't run to legislate quickly; we waited as long as we thought we possibly could.

Also, the legislation itself is as opposite as you could possibly get from the legislation of 2011. It did not dictate any terms for the contract. It set out a process whereby we would once again try mediation, move to arbitration, and give the arbitrator absolute discretion to determine the process and the way that arbitration would go down—not move to single-offer arbitration.

In addition, the parties have the opportunity to submit names for the mediator, and the Minister of Labour would go to the chair of the Canadian Industrial Relations Board if there weren't one upon which the parties could agree.

It was very much laying out a process instead of dictating terms.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you.

I have about 40 seconds left, which I'll return to the chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

Mr. McCauley, we're now into five-minute rounds, and you're up.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Thank you, Minister.

Alberta has been beaten enough, with the economy and the layoffs, and I'm disappointed that the government would decide to hurt us further by moving jobs out of Cold Lake to Ottawa.

Just going back to Mr. Jowhari's comment, to clear the record, it was I, myself, who asked for your intervention to release the RFP. We've asked twice. We've asked Minister Brison, and we've asked Minister Sajjan. We actually just followed up with the PBO, and we just got an email back that they have not heard anything from DND about getting the RFP, so maybe I can ask you to provide us with.... Whom did you speak to from DND, and when was the information provided?