Thank you, Mr. Allison.
When I look at Bill C-257, I look at what is the optimal balance between negotiating parties. My concern with this proposed legislation is that it would take away from that optimal balance.
Mr. Martin mentioned the experience in Ontario. I look at the successive premiers since then. Mr. Harris, Mr. Eves, and Mr. McGuinty all said they didn't want to revisit that period in Ontario, when we had a recession, and it also coincided with the use of this legislation.
I wonder if that's because it damages the optimal balance. I would certainly like to get your input on how this affects the balance that we need to have in these negotiations.
I look at Ontario and Quebec, two provinces currently with different approaches in labour legislation.
Mr. Barnes, you mentioned there is no evidence that replacement worker legislation results in shorter durations of work...and that's what I found as well as I looked through this. Over the 2003-05 period, work stoppages in Quebec were 47 days on average, compared to 38 in Ontario. This suggests that jurisdictions that don't adopt a ban on replacement workers are able to more successfully have peaceful labour relations.
To further highlight this point, I think Human Resources provides statistics continuously from 1976 to 2005. Continuously, if you look at the number of work stoppages per 10,000 employees, Ontario has had a far greater level of success than Quebec. As recently as 2005, the year for which we have the most recent available statistics, it's 0.12 out of 10,000 employees, versus 0.25 for Quebec.
When you look at something on a broad level over a quarter of a century and it speaks to a trend, I think there's something we can learn from that.
I want to get input from Mr. Barnes, Mr. Pollard, and Mr. Jennery on how you feel this might damage the optimal balance.