The issue here is that, first of all, the CIRB makes rulings all the time, and in those rulings--I have a whole bunch of them here--they refer to essential services. There's no one definition of essential services; it's case by case.
For example, there's one here involving CN Rail. It was a ministerial referral. It says, “maintenance of activities agreement--essential services--”. The board looks at that and makes a determination in each case. In this particular decision they made involving CN, they had 10 references to essential services. There's another one here dealing with the Montreal airport. It has 15 references. Another one I have that involves Atomic Energy of Canada Limited has 60 references to essential services.
There are two points to be made here. First of all, I do not agree with the legislative clerk or Ms. MacPherson that it's outside the scope of the bill to use the words “essential services”. It is correct that section 87.4 uses the term “maintenance activities”, but the board, in all of its rulings, uses the term “essential services”. How they view that may change slightly from case to case, depending on the circumstances, so that's a board determination; you can't spell it out definitively in a bill, because it varies depending on the circumstances, in terms of what are considered essential services.
I still think this amendment before us is indeed a clarification to assure members that there are essential services. There's a provision that's spelled out in the existing code, and the CIRB, when it makes its rulings, deals with that. I've got the cases here to show you that they themselves use the words “essential services”, and they make their rulings based on each application before them.
There's no weird stuff going on here. This is a clarification to what already exists so that people are clear on what we're approving.