Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I'm going to be voting against the motion--surprise, surprise--and the first point I want to make is this. I really believe the House, by a vote, sent us this bill in good faith. It was debated in the House. It had two hours of debate under private members’ business. It went to a vote at second reading, which is a vote in principle. The House sent it to this committee believing, as with all other bills and private members' business, that we would continue in good faith to deal with the bill, to hear witnesses, to eventually get to clause-by-clause, and to then make a decision about sending the bill back.
So to try to short-circuit that before we have done our work is very unfortunate, and I think really speaks to the real position being put forward here by the Conservatives--that is, they just want to kill this bill.
I don't for a minute believe this is a rationale for further consultation. There's not a shadow of a doubt in my mind that if this motion were approved, and then the second motion were moved and approved on the basis that we need further consultation, it would probably end up being the longest consultation in history. I can tell you that there's no indication from the Conservative government that they actually want this legislation. This is simply a way to get this off the political agenda, to get it off the table, to get it off the committee...and to not have it go back to the House. Let's be realistic about that.
We've also heard arguments that because it's private members' business--the bill came from a member, from Monsieur Nadeau--it's somehow not quite legitimate; it hasn't gone through the right process, and doesn't have the credibility that other proposed legislation does. I'd like to dispute that too, because I think it gets to the very core of what we do in Parliament. The bills and motions we move as part of private members' business have equal standing to, and as much right to go through the process as, a government bill, or a Senate bill, or anything else for that matter. So I'd like to deal with that one as well, because it keeps on popping up.
The fact that it's a private member's bill doesn't mean that we give it any less attention or any less due consideration. In fact, I could even argue the contrary, that because it's a private member's bill I think we're spending an enormous amount of time scrutinizing the bill and looking at it from various points of view.
I just heard, from the parliamentary secretary, that we've heard mainly from union bosses. I'm like, what? Let's go back and check the record.
I think the split right now is about 80% to 20%, with 80% being employer representatives and 20% being union representatives.