Of course, there was a very consultative process set up. It was very effective and very transparent, and it came up with something that it called balance. I guess balance is a matter of judgment. If you happen to be sitting on one side, you'll probably see the balance as a little bit differently from when you're sitting on the other side.
The problem under federal jurisdiction has not been a problem with elongated strikes. The problem has been the narcotic effect caused by the continuing need to bring government in, to bring Parliament in, to do the parties' business. That was the problem that Sims was dealt. Every Prime Minister since St. Laurent has had to deal with it. Except for those couple who didn't last very long, every Prime Minister of any length in office has had to deal with this. Prime Minister Trudeau made it quite clear that he didn't feel his role as Prime Minister was to do the work of the parties.
Three times I've been involved with this, and I quite agree that government should not be involved in this and Parliament should not get involved in it, and it seems to have worked. The fact that it has worked would seem to indicate to me that we have balance. Parliament has not been asked once, since the amendments to the Canada Labour Code in 1999, to do what it did on an annual basis basically for the previous twenty years. It has not been asked because the legislation has created a structure that gets the parties to make the deal. That was the problem when Sims was set up, and that's the problem Sims addressed. I think it's a lot to Sims' credit that Sims' report, with very little change, went straight into legislation.
If you take the human rights report or if you take the pay equity report, these things just died the moment they came up because they were so unbalanced and unfair. That's why they're politically untouchable. That's why they never went anywhere. In the Sims case, Sims had a consensus process set up. I was the chair of that. The other chair was Nancy Riche, of the CLC, because Sims developed something to ensure that, at the end of the day, the recommendations would be fair and balanced.
Some of these recommendations are controversial. I made a reference to the 60-day conciliation provision. That was by no means generally accepted as workable, but because the parties, because the unions and management came to government and said they thought they could make it work, the government was prepared to make the amendments to the Canada Labour Code, and it has worked.
The big fear that we have is that if you reduce the ability of the employer to provide essential services—and by definition, they are essential services because they're under federal jurisdiction—when there's a work stoppage, we're back to where we were. Parliament is going to be doing the job of the parties. We're back to the bad old days.