Well, I would say this. It doesn't have to be an apocalypse to be a mistake. It doesn't have to bring the sky down to be the wrong move.
You're absolutely right. Dramatic rhetoric has a tendency to kind of denude the message of its quality, and it doesn't help. I appreciate that.
The bottom line is that it alters the balance that appears to work. The rationale for it is not evident. The violence it is purported to cure is not endemic. There was a crisis situation in the 1970s that had to be addressed in Quebec, perhaps dramatically. It was addressed and it worked. There is no crisis here.
Latterly, to go to a point I raised earlier, because I think it's important to parliamentarians, we don't make labour law like this in this country. Labour law is a saw-off. It's a compromise. It's a process of back and forth. It shouldn't be a political football.
An example of how not to make labour law is to look at what's happened in Ontario over the last 10 or 15 years, as the law has been bounced back and forth between very extreme views on how it should function, depending on who happened to hold the keys. We're now finally landing somewhere, back where we should be, around a consensus.
It's how this country has made labour law. I would urge you to consider that tradition. The tradition has real value. What worked in Quebec 30 years ago may have been necessary 30 years ago. Are we in those conditions nationally now? Is that the kind of crisis we face today?
I haven't heard any witness on either side of this debate offer any evidence of that crisis. The sky is not falling, but why make a mistake you don't have to make? It's the question that bedevils us.