Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Madam Minister, for being with us today. We appreciate your being here. We share all of your concerns on health and safety in the workplace. The NDP hopes that all Canadian workers will not be risking their lives while trying to earn a living, and will be able to continue to benefit from the possibility of associating and organizing to negotiate their working conditions, that is to say, safe working conditions.
I want to ask you some questions on a matter that is of great concern to us. As the Minister of Labour, you are responsible for labour relations, and so I want to take advantage of your presence here to ask you some questions regarding division 17 of Bill C-60. In that provision, Treasury Board gives itself some unprecedented powers to intervene in the collective bargaining of crown corporations. Those corporations have very particular missions and mandates and should indeed be independent and at arm's length from the government.
I was just at the Standing Committee on Finance where a professor from Queen's University, Mr. George Smith, told us that this interference was a breach of the spirit of the Canada Labour Code. According to that code, negotiations must take place between the employer, that is to say the crown corporation, and its employees. Thus, the federal government should not get involved in those negotiations.
Do you not think that this interference is unnecessary, and, as Mr. Smith pointed out, that it may jeopardize labour relations and collective bargaining and make them completely dysfunctional?