Evidence of meeting #8 for Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was unions.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Federal Director, Canadian Taxpayers Federation
Yes, we'd certainly welcome the discussion. We'd have to look at what it says, but on principle, yes.
Liberal
Filomena Tassi Liberal Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON
Yes, you encourage that. Okay.
Mr. Mortimer, I'd like to ask you a question, and in the interests of time, could you just answer yes or no to this one, because I have a couple more that follow.
Do you want the government or private members to introduce legislation similar to Bill C-377 for organizations like yours and the ones you mentioned as being on your board—Merit, CFIB, Conseil du patronat du Québec, Retail Council of Canada, and the Canadian Restaurant & Foodservices Association?
Yes or no, would you like to have similar legislation to Bill C-377 implemented for organizations such as yours?
President, Canadian LabourWatch Association
It's not possible to answer yes or no. I can give a reason why they're not comparable.
Nobody has to pay—
Liberal
Filomena Tassi Liberal Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON
So it's no, then, because they're not comparable.
President, Canadian LabourWatch Association
Not every restaurant has to pay dues in order to operate a restaurant by power of statute law.
Liberal
President, Canadian LabourWatch Association
Listen, if you want to make all unions give money to LabourWatch so that it can protect workers from unions, then we should have a level of disclosure, but I don't think Mr. Yussuff is going to support funding us to protect the Jeff Birches and the April Lubertis of the world from them.
Liberal
Filomena Tassi Liberal Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON
No, I'm asking you independently, without anything that you're doing. You're achieving the same benefit. If you're achieving the same benefit, why would you not be held to the same accountability rules?
President, Canadian LabourWatch Association
I get the same benefit if there's a statute that mandates that I get money from millions of people amounting to billions of dollars, and that if they don't pay it, I can have them fired, which is how forced union dues work in this country—the last nation on earth that allows forced union dues leading to the termination of people who don't pay them.
Liberal
Filomena Tassi Liberal Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON
Just as a follow-up, Mr. Mortimer, and again, give a yes or no—please, just respect the nature of the question, as you may just say no—do you like unions?
Liberal
Filomena Tassi Liberal Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON
You like unions. Okay. So it's the process of unionization that you have a problem with, not the unions themselves.
Liberal
Filomena Tassi Liberal Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON
Okay, so you like unions.
Mr. Wudrick, with respect to the filing of the compilation—the requirement under Bill C-377—a couple of weeks ago we had Professor John Logan of San Francisco State University. He talked about the amount of detail that went into the filing under Bill C-377, or of a report like it. We previously had a thick document that showed the current requirements under Bill C-377 for unions to file. His point was that staff were spending more time compiling the information than they were doing their duties.
Do you have any comments with respect to the requirements, which go above and beyond anything I've seen under Bill C-377?
Federal Director, Canadian Taxpayers Federation
If it's a question about red tape and you're asking us whether we like it, then the answer is probably that we don't like it very much. But I recall that, especially at the previous hearings on the bills, many of the union witnesses were making a curious argument, which was that this was very onerous and that there was a lot of red tape involved, but at the same time that they already provide this information to their members.
I found it odd that it could be both. If they're already providing it to the members, why does it require from them a whole bunch of extra effort to get this information together for the purpose of satisfying the bill?
Liberal
Filomena Tassi Liberal Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON
What I would say in response to the testimony I've heard is that it went above and beyond that. For example, when you look at what charities are required to file so they can account, as you said previously, the document is probably about half of that, from what I've seen, for a regular charity. When I saw the document that was a sample of what Bill C-377 requires, it was ten times this length. The legislation clearly goes above and beyond what is generally accepted.
My next question—
Liberal
Liberal
Filomena Tassi Liberal Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON
Do you think it's more than a little self-serving and hypocritical that organizations such as CFIB, Merit, and LabourWatch, which are anti-union and would benefit from any measures that restrict unions, at the same time have their members enjoy the exact same tax benefits as unions but don't want public transparency for themselves?
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bryan May
I'm sorry, but I'm again going to have to ask you to give a one- or two-word answer.
Federal Director, Canadian Taxpayers Federation
I think they should be consistent in defining their principles, but we're one of the few groups that seems to do that.
Liberal
Wayne Long Liberal Saint John—Rothesay, NB
Mr. Mortimer, I guess I don't understand why you just don't come out and say that you're anti-union and that LabourWatch is really an employer organization.
It's not an employee organization, is it, sir?
President, Canadian LabourWatch Association
The reality is that in the same way we say that unions speak for workers, who then speaks for Canada's workers who aren't represented—and even if they are?
I was the North American head of human resources for Future Shop back when the Vancouver family that fled Iran still owned it, before they sold it to Best Buy. We were deeply concerned about our employees and how life was for them, because they were necessary for us to serve our customers and stay in business. There are things that we made sure we did on behalf of our employees, from a legislative point of view and from a policy point of view, so that they could deliver for our customers what kept us in business and kept the doors open.
As I said earlier, the reality is that there is no.... Let me give you this example. A worker in Canada who has issues with their employer can go to employment standards or to human rights bodies and have a government-paid bureaucrat assist them against their employer. The only employment legislation in Canada in which there is no service to the worker is labour codes. If you go to any labour board in Canada with an issue with your union, they will say “we're neutral, we can't do anything”. But if you go to workers' compensation, human rights, employment standards, labour standards and you have an issue with your employer, they are going to help go after your employer for you.
LabourWatch came about, at the end of the day, because no one was looking out for Canada's unionized workers. They're not at the tripartite table. To say that unions, who don't speak for the 83% of the private sector who are union-free, actually speak for them is a contradiction in terms.
I believe that employers can and do speak to them, and that's what LabourWatch does.
Liberal