Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you very much, members, for being here today.
I am keen to talk to you a little bit about why CFIB is concerned about the changes to the rules that are being contemplated and why we ultimately favoured the approaches that were taken in Bill C-377 and Bill C-525.
By way of background, we have 109,000 small-sized and medium-sized businesses as members of CFIB. All of them are independently owned and operated. None of them are publicly traded. These are true independents that are out there trying to make a living against incredible odds sometimes in your ridings across the country.
Union issues are tricky ones for many employers. Most of our members, the vast majority of our members, are non-union right now. Of course, that's true of most private-sector workplaces, as our data shows. Unionized firms in Canada are on the decline. But we did support the rules that were put in place in the two bills, and I want to give you a bit of background as to why we developed those positions.
It wasn't that we loved some of the provisions of Bill C-377. Typically, CFIB is calling on government to reduce regulations, not increase rules and regulations and red tape, so it was a bit unusual for us to support a bill that would add rules and regulations to a sector that currently has, I think, fairly few. The reason we did is to try to accommodate the gap that exists in Canada with respect to the fairness of our union rules relative to their international counterparts. It often surprises people to know that Canada is now the international outlier when it comes to union certification. In virtually every country in the world paying union dues, being part of a union, is a choice. It's not mandatory if there is a certified union in that location. In all of Europe, an employee can opt out of paying union dues. It's part of the European Union rules.
That often surprises people because we think somehow in Canada our union legislation is somewhere between Europe's, which is more restrictive, and the U.S., which might be a little more free. In fact, that's not true at all. Some states do require mandatory dues, as we do in Canada—a decreasing number of them—but Canada is now one of only a couple of countries that still require mandatory dues payment if there is a union in that workplace. That's the real issue that was behind our members' support for these two bills.
That a union can compel people to pay dues, through government law, we believe requires the highest levels of scrutiny, disclosure, and accountability. That's why we liked many of the provisions of Bill C-377. If that were taken off the table—and I'm not suggesting that the government is likely to go in that direction—I don't think Bill C-377, the provisions that are there today, would become necessary if employees were able to say, “I believe my union's doing a good job. I want to pay them dues” or they might say, “Hmm, I'm not sure. I'm going to withhold my dues or threaten to withhold my dues to ensure that I'm getting my questions answered properly from my union”. That is what's behind our support for these measures: the fact that Canada is now an international outlier, whereas perhaps in the past Canadian union laws were more in the mainstream.
Small firms, of course, strongly believe that union members should have the right to opt out of union dues. But I also want to share with you that employees, too, believe that additional disclosure is required. Some Leger marketing surveys suggest that 84% of the public agree that additional disclosure is required.
It wasn't a surprise that the new government has decided to turn back the clock on Bill C-377, but I have to admit it is very surprising that the new government is eliminating the right to a secret ballot vote in union certification. To me, that is the biggest issue that is on the table today.
One of the first things many provincial governments—for example, an NDP government at the provincial level that has been elected with the support of unions—do very early in their mandate is eliminate secret ballot votes in union certification. I cut my teeth on that issue back in Manitoba when a government changed there and Gary Doer was elected many years ago.
This is always a worry for small and medium-sized firms. The very principle of secret ballot votes, which we hold so near and dear in electing you, should be there for choosing whether or not to have a union, especially when that union has the power to compel absolutely everyone in the unit to pay dues whether they wish to or not.
That, I think, is the part I want to leave with you. Our biggest concern about this is the fact that this bill would end the right to a secret ballot vote in all circumstances before a union is certified. Even union members, when polled, believe that votes should be held prior to certifying a union. This isn't just the view of employers, among whom it might not be a terribly big surprise—small employers in particular—but is also, we believe, the view of the general public and of current and past union members.
My final thoughts for you are that as long as dues remain mandatory, requiring unions to provide additional detailed information is certain to bring more transparency and accountability—certainly more costs, certainly more red tape, I don't deny that one bit—and that because secret ballot votes are so fundamental to our democratic processes, we would urge you to maintain them on this very important and sensitive issue in the employer-employee relationship.
Thank you.