Thank you, Madam Chair.
Good morning, ministers. Thank you very much for being here. I'm sorry I have to participate in the meeting by video conference for health reasons. I still want to welcome you.
Mr. O'Regan, I would like to talk to you about Bill C-58, which concerns replacement workers and is known as the anti-scab legislation. You actually talked about it. You said, rightly so, that the fact that the federal government is still allowing the use of strikebreakers in 2024 is disrupting working conditions and labour relations. In fact, we have a flagrant example in Quebec: Longshore workers at the Port of Québec affiliated with the Canadian Union of Public Employees have been locked out for 500 days. For 500 days now, the employer has been using strikebreakers with impunity. This puts workers in an extremely difficult financial situation. It also takes away their ability to negotiate their employment contract in good faith, since the employer has the upper hand.
When you introduced this bill last November, it was welcomed by everyone—both the unions and the Bloc Québécois. In fact, since 1990, the Bloc Québécois has introduced 11 bills on this issue.
This bill was introduced as a result of a joint agreement between the Liberal Party and the NDP, but it still has to be passed so that it becomes law and so that the use of replacement workers is banned once and for all. The unions are calling for the bill to be passed more quickly. Will you commit to speeding up the process to ensure that the legislation sees the light of day in this Parliament?