One is constrained when you have messages that you want to convey in this process. I thank you very much for allowing me to continue a little longer than I was allotted.
The reason we need to take some time is because fundamentally we believe we're on the right track here. We're making an amendment to a law that needs to be amended. It needs to be amended properly. We have to have good dialogue and we have to not rush to push a piece of legislation through Parliament. I think we have to make sure that we study it properly and make the proper decisions, and we'll avoid problems as we move down the road. This is why we need to make these recommendations.
Our key recommendations really are this.
In safety-sensitive positions we have to have the flexibility to look at these matters appropriately and to make decisions that will protect the safety of Canadians. We want the law to allow federally regulated employers to comply with applicable international standards that include mandatory policies. We cannot ignore the fact that we operate in a global economy.
We want to include explicit provisions that recognize that employers are permitted to differentiate between employees on the basis of age with respect to pension arrangements, benefits, and other insurance plans because the structure of these benefits is dependent on age. It's a natural process for benefit plans to change depending on age and depending on the duration of benefits. We don't want to be in a situation where we don't have the flexibility to manage our workforce and our pension plans properly. You see now that employers are gradually moving to health care spending accounts, which provide employees of different ages with different options to manage their affairs. We don't want to be caught with certain employees saying we're discriminating against them in one way or another.
Another recommendation is that we want an explicit provision that allows employers to establish workforce skills testing and competency programs that may increase in frequency as an employee's age increases, because we don't want to be caught with a situation where we believe that as employees get older we have to make sure they're meeting the competency requirements. We don't want to test everybody from age 20 to age 75...if we really want to make sure that elderly people are able to demonstrate that they have the physical and mental capabilities to do their work.
We want to include transition provisions that allow employers and unions to make gradual adjustments to the human resources policies, pension and benefits plans, and collective agreements to ensure that there is compliance with these amendments. And that will take some time. We want to include a coming into force provision that allows employers a significant period of time to make the adjustments necessary to comply with the amended legislation. We want the legislation to explicitly state that an employee is only entitled to severance pay if he or she is involuntarily terminated because the current language doesn't necessarily make that clear.
FETCO respectfully submits that we be permitted to engage in meaningful discussions with this committee and other parliamentarians to make sure that when we transition from the old law to the new law we understand the ramifications for the companies in the federal sector. If I ask you if you have actually talked to Air Canada about how this might be restructured, if you have talked to Canadian National Railways, if you have talked to Nav Canada, if you have talked to the grain elevators--they all have different issues that have to be taken into consideration and they will all be affected improperly if we don't make sure we get it right the first time.
That's fundamentally our position.