I welcome the opportunity, Mr. Chair, to comment on the topic. I believe—and I disagree with my honourable colleague on this—that this is necessary, and I'll tell you why I think it's necessary.
At the end of the day, it's the federal taxpayer who is the employer of the employees at both crown corporations—and, indeed, public servants here in Ottawa. We know that; we run on that; and that's who we represent. When you are doing your analysis of collective bargaining—and you know this from your union time—the process that's followed in a lot of union shops is very similar. You strike a national committee, and you have a group of people who determine how they're going to go about setting the mandate. Membership is consulted about what they would like in this round of negotiations. When it comes back, it's analysed and that becomes the mandate for the bargaining committee. They go out and they negotiate face to face. But they have to go back to the executive and the membership for ratification. That's the process. There is nothing in Bill C-60 that affects that process, nothing at all. It's completely within the union's purview to approach it in that way.
In Bill C-60, we are formalizing management's process to come to a negotiating mandate. This includes, appropriately, I would say, an analysis performed to determine what is the opinion of the sole shareholder, via the Government of Canada, with respect to the mandate. The reality is that those crown corporations report directly to the minister, and the minister is responsible to the people for those crown corporations. So it makes sense that the people, through the government, have a say in what the mandate is.