Human Resources Committee on April 18th, 2024

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Mr. Boulerice and Ms. Brazeau.

We will go to Ms. Gray for five minutes.

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses for being here today.

I will start with Ms. Brazeau of the Canada Industrial Relations Board.

I had the privilege of serving on the Passenger Transportation Board in British Columbia, which is an independent tribunal. Having had that experience, I know that when applications came to me, they were of different types, and you referred to that.

Some of the applications, when I was going to assess them and write decisions, would take a very short amount of time, while some would take a much longer amount of time. They could take many months if they were much more complex.

Can you go into a bit of detail on the types of applications and what the timelines are? I know you've listed the types of applications and the amount of time that they take, but not necessarily how many applications there were.

Can you give us your feeling about what that workload is now? Also, can you see what the changes are, based on the types of applications, and how that might affect your ability to plan and go through them all?

[Ginette Brazeau]

I should point out that in chart 2, I provided only three types of applications that I thought were relevant for the discussion, but we have several types of applications. In the case of maintenance of activities, as it shows here, we get between 25 and 30 of those cases per year. Unjust dismissal complaints are the largest type of complaint under part III of the code. They represent about one-third of the caseload of this board, and those are normally sent out to external adjudicators. With the challenge we had last year, that's a type of application that is now accruing and for which we're experiencing delays that I consider unreasonable, given where we are.

As for other types of applications, there are certification applications when a union comes in to be certified to represent a group of employees. We deal with those on an expedited basis. They're less than 5% of our caseload. Our objective is to deal with those within 50 days, and we meet that about 80% of the time. Cases that raise jurisdictional questions would take longer.

Unfair labour practice complaints, which appear on this chart, are another large piece of our work. I would say that they represent 10% to 15% of our work, and you see the delays there, or the processing time for dealing with them. They involve anything from termination of a union organizer to interference in bargaining or bad-faith bargaining complaints that come to us.

I don't know if that provides a good picture of what our workload looks like.

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Thank you very much. I think that gives us a better understanding as to your workflow.

The other thing you mentioned was the number of vice-chairs you have, and you referenced external adjudicators, so I'm wondering if you can go through with us what your structure is.

Hypothetically, if you did have some more resources allocated, how quickly could you even ramp up? In my case I had to go for specialized training at the Justice Institute in Vancouver. Are there individuals, whether they're vice-chairs or external adjudicators....? Maybe those are the same people—I'm not sure—but can you explain for us how that works and what the ramp-up time would be to bring more people on board, and more resources?

[Ginette Brazeau]

Vice-chairs who are appointed on a full-time basis are appointed for a term of five years with the board. That's a Governor in Council appointment. They're identified through a process, an advertisement that is put out by the Privy Council Office. We look for a background in labour relations expertise and experience with litigation or adjudication in an administrative tribunal.

They usually come with a lot of experience, but they need to become familiar with the types of files we deal with and build confidence in adjudication so that over time they become more confident and familiar with the various types of cases. Maintenance of activities and replacement worker issues are very particular and require a specialized approach.

External adjudicators are—

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Ms. Brazeau, could you wrap up, please?

[Ginette Brazeau]

I'm sorry.

External adjudicators are private arbitrators who have their own practice. I have a list of about 15 external adjudicators I call upon to take on some cases as need be.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Ms. Gray.

Thank you, Ms. Brazeau.

Mr. Coteau, you have five minutes.

[Michael Coteau, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses today. I appreciate your time.

I have a quick question to Mr. Ghiz. You mentioned that the bill, by not having replacement workers, could compromise critical services. However, it's my understanding that in the MOAs between organized labour and employers, usually and in most cases, those types of services are included in the agreements, and unions usually agree to ensuring that critical services are maintained. Is that your impression?

[Robert Ghiz]

First of all, let me say that what we're looking for in our amendment is not related to replacement workers. We're looking for our existing employees to be able to work on that continuation of service. I'll ask my colleague Mr. Smith to perhaps give you a bit of a background legally in terms of how that really works.

[Eric Smith, Senior Vice-President, Canadian Telecommunications Association]

Obviously we don't have insight into every memorandum of agreement, but it's illustrative that in an important case in 2003, the Aliant Telecom case, the board decided that section 87.4, which deals with maintenance activities, is not broad enough for them to require that there be a maintenance and service agreement to cover services necessary to restore outages and what have you. There's not sufficient nexus.

In their conclusion, they said that they did not support a finding that a strike or lockout could result in “immediate and serious danger” to the health or safety of the public if there's a telecom outage. There's no requirement to enter into a maintenance and service agreement.

After that decision was made, there was a subsequent case between Telus and its union. Here there had been a maintenance of services or activities agreement prior to that Aliant Telecom decision. The board said that the union expressed frustration at having entered into that agreement to provide access services after the board had concluded that “the possible interruption of telecommunications services” did not constitute “an immediate and serious danger to the safety and health of the public”. The board further explained that the union considered “that the signing of the agreement weakened its bargaining position and...caused it to be criticized by its membership”.

I don't think you can conclude that there will always be maintenance of activities agreements. That's all we're asking for. We're just saying that if everyone agrees that it's vitally important for Canada that if you're taking away replacement workers when there's an outage, there has to be a mechanism that allows telecommunications and broadcasting rights to restore services in hours, if not minutes.

[Michael Coteau, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Thank you. I appreciate it.

We also heard from one of the witnesses, Charles Smith—I think last week—who is a professor out in Saskatchewan. He had a very compelling argument that traditionally in today's society, employers have always had a bit of an advantage over employees. He talked about how industry groups in general have shied away from bills like this and made the argument that a bill like this could prolong strikes. He presented some evidence in regard to Quebec and B.C. having this type of legislation in place and made the argument and presented it to us that there would actually be fewer strikes when legislation like Bill C-58 is put in place.

Mr. Carey, has your industry group done any research to support the claim that a bill like Bill C-58 could potentially cause more disruption, versus the claim Mr. Smith has made, which is that it actually reduces disruption by creating “industrial peace”, as he referred to it, and creating a better balance between employers and employees?

[Dave Carey]

We haven't, not to that degree. I can say that the agriculture sector does have provisions. The longshoremen are prohibited from striking because over the years it was used as leverage, and then Minister MacAulay, in labour, in 1998 amended that. Again, I think the agriculture sector's view is similar to the telecoms' view, which is not about replacing workers. It's about allowing current staff within, say, the railways, to continue to keep the lights on.

I think our view on Bill C-58 is that you do need to take a sector-by-sector approach when allocating through these sorts of blanket bills. We don't have a position on collective bargaining. We respect the unions' abilities to do things. However, we are seeing Canada's reputation challenged globally, with the current legislative framework we have, about our ability to get agriculture products to market.

Agriculture is one in nine jobs, 7% of GDP and $99 billion in exports last year alone. I guess our concern is that BillC-58 would more instability with Bill , but again, our comments would be within the agriculture sector and also within the abilities of the railways, the grain companies and the ports to use current staff, whether they're management or non-unionized, to keep the lights on. Replacement workers can't jump on a railcar and run the thing. They just can't. That's where major labour instability is. We are concerned about the trend of labour instability in our grain supply chains.

[Michael Coteau, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Mr. Coteau and Mr. Carey.

It's now over to Ms. Chabot for two and a half minutes.

[Louise Chabot, Bloc, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I believe this is the last time we'll be meeting with witnesses for our study on Bill C-58.

In order to be historic and do what it's supposed to—prohibit the use of replacement workers—the bill actually has to come into force. It makes no sense that the bill won't come into force until 18 months after it receives royal assent. That doesn't even include how long it will take for it to receive royal assent. What a joke to tell unionized employees who work for Videotron, the Quebec City port and other such employers that, even though the bill was passed, it won't come into force for 18 months. If the government is serious about this legislation, it has to allocate all the resources required for implementation.

Workers' right to strike, a fundamental right protected by the charters, is at stake. However, it will be a long time before all these legislative improvements come into force, improvements that will lead to disputes truly being resolved. As the only explanation, the minister stated clearly that the time frame had been recommended by the Canada Industrial Relations Board. We find that totally unacceptable.

What's more, of course strikes cause disruptions, but you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs. It's important to respect the parties to the dispute. When employers use replacement workers, as Videotron has, they aren't respecting the issues. During a lockout, the employer can organize, contract out the work and move call centres outside the country. That is the reality. On top of that, good jobs are lost.

Mr. Ghiz, we are well aware of how important the telecommunications sector is, as are other sectors that deliver essential services. However, does that justify telling workers that it doesn't matter if they want to exercise their right to strike because they can be replaced anyways?

[Robert Ghiz]

Thank you.

The amendment that we're proposing is not about bringing in replacement workers. As we heard from Mr. Carey, you can't just take someone and tell them to run a train. You just can't take somebody off the street and put them to work repairing telecommunications services. It's about making sure that employees in the telecom industry have the ability that is required if there is a natural disaster or if networks go down and people need the network for health care or education or for work or for 911. If people need access to these essential services, we need to have the opportunity to keep them up and running.

While yes, we said that we're against the bill, if the bill is going to go ahead, as we're hearing from all parties, then we think it is vitally important that we have amendments in place to ensure the continuity of telecommunication systems in the event of an outage.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Ms. Chabot.

The last questioner will be Mr. Boulerice for two and a half minutes.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to say, in closing, how proud I am of this study that the committee is conducting. I am very proud of my party, the NDP, for making the passage of anti-scab legislation a condition of its agreement with the minority Liberal government. This is something that has long been important to us, something we have spent years fighting for alongside the men and women who make up the labour movement. Restoring the balance of power at bargaining tables across the federal sector is vital so that each side has the ability to exert economic pressure on the other. When the use of replacement workers is permitted, only one side can exert that economic pressure, unfortunately.

My last question is for you, Ms. Brazeau.

As it stands, the bill provides that subcontractors hired by the employer prior to the date on which notice to bargain is given can continue those activities, as long as the activities remain the same and are carried out in the same manner and to the same extent. In other words, they can keep performing the same tasks as before for the same number of hours per week, but they can't take the place of employees in the bargaining unit involved in a labour dispute, strike or lockout.

If that provision is not amended, there needs to be a way to check whether the employer actually adhered to those requirements in the event of a complaint.

If the union files a complaint because it believes that the activities being carried out by a subcontractor changed, that the extent of those activities changed or that the subcontractor's work hours changed, what ability do you have to deal with that? Can you respond effectively and how soon?

[Ginette Brazeau]

That's a specific question.

As I said, section 16 of the Canada Labour Code confers fairly broad investigative powers on the board. One of the possibilities we are considering right now is setting up an investigation process where our officers would go to the work site to ascertain the facts related to those issues. In other words, the officers would look at what work was being done, how many hours it was being performed for and whether it was the same work. We have to find a way to obtain that information. Should our officers conduct an investigation to obtain it, or should a traditional hearing be held where the union and the employer each present information related to the dispute?

A faster and more efficient method would be to have our officers conduct an investigation, as they do for applications for certification.

That's something we are thinking about right now, figuring out the best approach to deal with the kind of complaint you're talking about.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Mr. Boulerice.

Thank you everyone.

That will conclude the first hour of the committee's meeting this morning. It will also conclude the witness testimony on Bill C-58.

We'll suspend for a few moments and then go in camera for the business portion of this meeting.

Thank you, Mr. Carey, Madame Brazeau, Mr. Ghiz and Mr. Smith, for appearing this morning on this important piece of legislation.

We'll suspend for two minutes.

[Proceedings continue in camera]