Human Resources Committee on Jan. 31st, 2007

[Tony Martin, NDP, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

I'd like to ask Mr. Shniad, who actually had his hand up, to talk to us a little bit about the experience in British Columbia. When did this anti-replacement-worker legislation come in? What has been the experience, first of all, with the government that brought it in? I know there were subsequent governments in B.C., and they obviously didn't throw it out. Have there been difficulties in terms of emergency and essential services? Have there been any complications in terms of on-time delivery in some of the industries where that's now the operative way of doing things?

I'd be interested in hearing some comment from you on those.

[Sid Shniad]

Mr. Martin, if memory serves, it was brought in by the Glen Clark NDP government originally. We are now in the second term of the Liberal Campbell government. They have not made any move to change the ban on replacement workers in British Columbia. The economy here is booming.

In terms of the questions you asked about the negative impact—as raised by Mr. Jennery, I believe—Mr. Jennery referred to the potential disruption, but Mr. Bradley in his testimony said there have been seven stoppages in trucking in the sector covered by the federal code, and that few replacement workers had been used there. So they're asking for a defence that they have not already deployed even though they are entitled to deploy it.

It's not an issue there, but it has been an issue in telecommunications, both in B.C. and Alberta, at Telus, and in Quebec, where it seems that management has taken a different attempt to maintain and run their operations, and use replacement workers to do so. So there is an existing, concrete, actual threat—not abstract or theoretical—to peace and balance in telecommunications in particular, which is where we have the experience.

[Tony Martin, NDP, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

I know from my experience in Ontario--I was a member of Parliament there from 1990 to 2003—that after the Harris government came in, in 1995, and they changed the labour relations so that there could be replacement workers again, we had, for example, this really long, difficult, and damaging strike at Red Lake, in northern Ontario. It went on for about 10 years. They brought replacement workers in and people literally lost their jobs, lost their livelihood, lost their homes, and that community was damaged irretrievably.

Could you tell me, in your experience, if there has been that kind of work stoppage, or what kind of work stoppages have been the experience in British Columbia since the banning of replacement workers came into effect?

[Sid Shniad]

I am unaware of anything remotely comparable to the bitterness and nastiness of the Telus strike, for instance, in British Columbia's provincial experience. There has been nothing remotely comparable in the last 15 years.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

You have one minute.

[Tony Martin, NDP, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

I've finished.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Okay, we'll move on to Mr. Lake.

You have five minutes, sir.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

I want to address the issue of essential services again—in general, the indirect impacts of this bill that maybe weren't considered when it was put together.

On essential services, clearly telecommunications is not an essential service, according to the CIRB. They've ruled on it and it is not an essential service under the provisions of the labour code. Yet the telecommunications industry is vital to the functioning of emergency responders.

To Mr. Barnes, how would a strike in the non-essential telecommunications industry affect emergency services such as 911, police, fire, paramedics, and so on?

[Peter Barnes]

Thank you for your question.

I don't want to be an apostle of doom, but a lot depends on the duration and the severity of the labour disruption. If you're thinking of police officers, fire officers, ambulance personnel, medical personnel, they are using their wireless devices, whether they are e-mail devices such as BlackBerrys or cellphones or specialized high-speed wireless Internet equipment, to protect our lives on a regular basis. It's an integral part of their job.

If you were to say to police officers that they had to go out on the street without their cellphones and without the remote wireless terminal in their car and do their job, they would have serious concerns. That's just a very simple way of understanding the significance.

The board made its ruling some time ago. Circumstances have changed since then, and I would probably want to argue that they should reconsider it. But that's not the issue at this table. The issue at this table is that we know from our experience that people in the field of delivering emergency services, whether these are health, security, or police services, are heavily reliant on their wireless services. If that is not maintained and upheld, we are in a very dangerous vacuum.

Once again, it's not as simple as when you could just string a line to the police station. The people are out there, and they are using these services wherever we have coverage, which is for 93% or 94% of the Canadian population.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

All right.

Speaking to another indirect impact, yesterday we were talking to the ports people from B.C. We were asking questions about how this would impact farmers, for example, in moving their goods.

Mr. Jennery, you said that your industry is not regulated, but that you would yet be significantly impacted by this legislation. How would regular Canadians be impacted indirectly by the impacts that would happen to your organization because of a strike?

[Nick Jennery]

The supply chain in our industry is done on a just-in-time basis. If you take a large store that would do about 25,000 consumer transactions a week, as product moves out the door that product has to be ordered. Virtually all of the ordering and distribution is done through a telecom data system. It would be hugely impacted, because you have no inventory to fall back on.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

So for someone going into the store in New Brunswick or Alberta or somewhere like that...

[Nick Jennery]

We have real, live experiences to show that consumers would see that in days, not weeks. There are alternatives, but very quickly you get into a spiral. You can't order. All of our ordering is done through a telecom data system.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

In your opening comments you spoke to the balance. I was particularly interested in your point number two. You talked about the balance being right now between the right to strike versus the ability to withstand a strike.

Can you speak to what this proposed legislation would do specifically to the ability to withstand a strike? What would the options be for an employer in a situation like this, with this legislation?

[Nick Jennery]

What you might do is force that employer to seek alternative means, to go through a non-union supply chain. It's certainly not preferred, but equally—Right now, without the anti-replacement legislation, both are very motivated to keep the industry operational, and the track record shows it. What it would do is clearly favour the unions. Our experience, certainly out west, is that you would have a high-cost settlement, perhaps more than you would without the anti-replacement.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

Mr. Bradley, I'm specifically interested in hearing what you might have to say on that. For the organizations you represent, what would be the options in a situation where...?

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Just give a fairly quick response, Mr. Bradley.

[David Bradley]

They would have no options. It's difficult to find replacement workers, as was said earlier. However, you can, depending on the marketplace right now—

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

With the legislation as proposed, a replacement worker ban, what would the options be?

[David Bradley]

What would the options be in that case? To shut down.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Lake. We're now going to move to Mr. Dryden for five minutes.

Since you weren't here the other day, I'll welcome you now as a permanent part of our committee.

[Ken Dryden, Liberal, York Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have one comment to begin and then a question. I would think that the most useful data would not be in comparing Ontario and Quebec, it would be in comparing Quebec before and Quebec after. It would be comparing Ontario before, Ontario after, and then Ontario after that. It would be comparing B.C. before and B.C. after. It would look at the impact in individual jurisdictions as opposed to comparing across jurisdictions. Labour environments in different provinces may be very different. So I think it'd be quite useful if that information were available.

All sides are arguing balance. All sides are arguing that in fact the implementation of, or the absence of implementation, is going to generate the balance or is going to remove the balance. I think that all of us can imagine the exaggerations of stories, that if this is the case in the hypothetical, then the exaggeration can happen. That's why you have labour relations; you avoid the exaggerations. You use other means to avoid the exaggerations. That becomes part of doing business. The just-in-time business, that becomes part of everything.

To each side here, you've all heard each other. If you had one minute to offer your best argument, after having heard all the other sides of it, what would your best argument be?

Mr. Massy, what is your best argument?

Turning to the other side here, perhaps I'd ask you to decide on somebody to offer one minute's worth of your best argument.

[Peter Massy]

Thank you for the opportunity. I didn't realize I only had one minute left.

In terms of making our best argument on this subject matter, the preamble of the code lays it out very clearly: you can't read the anti-replacement-worker legislation or the replacement worker section of the code independent of anything else. You have to read it together. When Mr. Sims put it together, he said that section 87.4 says you have to do this. Even though we've heard other language that says we don't have to, we believe we have to. On the maintenance of activities, we're mandated. We take that responsibility seriously.

On the other hand, we now have an employer who can bring in replacement workers, and the only way to challenge that in the code is to prove that they're doing it to undermine us. I don't believe they need replacement workers. I believe that gives the employer the opportunity they didn't have before, and it's coming to fruition—that's exactly what's happened.

So it's a question of balance. When you look at those two competing clauses in the labour code, it clearly favours the employer. That's why our position is that the replacement worker legislation should be passed.

[David Bradley]

Mr. Dryden, my argument is that I've heard no justification for doing this. My industry is not one that likes change for the sake of change. Maybe we haven't read the legislation right. We don't know why we have labour stability in our industry, but we have it. I've heard no justification to change that balance.

[Ken Dryden, Liberal, York Centre, ON]

And in the last 30 seconds, does anybody else on that side have a comment?