Thank you very much.
Thank you to the witnesses for appearing today and for offering us your opinions.
I want to come back to this question of essential services. What mechanisms are in place, and what do we need to look at? The minister this morning left us with the impression that if we adopt this bill, somehow we're going to have economic chaos in this country; the bill will have caused that. I really don't think that's the reality. I think the labour representatives today have given us a very good sense of the reality of actually what takes place with this kind of legislation that actually improves the labour relations climate.
It seems to me that employers have two mechanisms they can use when there is a strike and if they aren't able to bring in replacement workers. One is the use of managers. There is that provision in this bill. The other is the question of essential services.
Mr. Georgetti, you flagged, and Mr. Yussuff, you flagged in your brief, that the current provision under the Canada Labour Code should be part of this bill, that in fact this bill should be compatible with that. I just wonder what experience you've had with your affiliates in using that section. Right now the employer or the union can use, I think, section 87.4. If they can't come to an agreement themselves, they can go to the board. The board can intervene and can bring about the designation of what essential services there are. So there is a third party that intervenes.
First of all, do you consider that an adequate process? I asked the minister if he thought that should be changed. He didn't give any response to that, so I can only assume that he believes it to be adequate. I'd like to know if you think it's adequate as it is.
Secondly, I just want to say that in terms of the Ekati labour dispute, I was up there, I visited the workers, and I can absolutely say that the fact that we didn't have this kind of legislation really added to the animosity and to the difficulty those workers faced there. I think the employer knew that; they knew how far they could go because there wasn't any restriction on them.
Again, perhaps you would like to give a response on whether you think the provisions in the existing code are adequate to deal with essential services.