Human Resources Committee on Feb. 5th, 2024

[Tony Van Bynen, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Thank you. I'll pass it over to my colleague.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

Thank you.

Good afternoon, colleagues. Thank you, Ministers, for coming.

My beautiful riding of Saint John—Rothesay is a strong union riding, very proud of its union heritage, whether they are Saint John firefighters local 771, the Saint John police force union, CUPE local 18 for outside workers or ILA longshoremen's union local 273. The list goes on and on.

One of the first things I heard in 2015, not really knowing that much, was about Bill C-377 and BillC-525. It was like, “If you guys get in, you have to repeal Bill 377 and Bill 525.” I did some research. It was the Conservatives. They were basically union-busting bills that made it very difficult for unions to certify, and every union that I came across was against them.

I know that the Conservatives at times like to paint themselves as friends of unions. I would say that it's the exact oppositive. Unions built the middle class, with five-day work weeks, eight-hour days and safe work environments.

We've done a lot of great things for unions. As you said, Minister, we've banned replacement workers.

I am going to put a motion on notice to study how unions deliver powerful paycheques, better benefits and safer workplaces for all Canadians. I'll be moving that motion very soon and I hope to have support from everybody around this table.

Minister, if you can, I'd like you to share your efforts with respect to being Minister of Labour in delivering for Canadian workers and for unions.

Thank you.

[Seamus O'Regan, Liberal, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

Thank you, Mr. Long.

I know Bill C-377 and Bill C-525 caused a lot of damage in the relationship between the federal government and working men and women across the country. They were undermining unions and making it difficult for them to form and forcing them to show their cards financially at a pivotal time at a negotiating table. Anyway, we ripped them up.

I look to Mr. Aitchison, because when we were working on 10 paid days of sick leave, we got unanimous consent. I think things have changed demonstrably in this country. I think we have a significant labour shortage and I think all parties recognize this, but we have gone the extra mile for workers because we sit down and we listen to them. We listen to what they have to say. We have a union-led advisory table, for instance, that is coming up consistently with good ideas, and they are the ones who know their membership.

A lot of the membership have significant concerns right now about artificial intelligence and about automation, but one thing they have asked for since before Canada even became a country was a ban on replacement workers, for anti-scab legislation, and we're going to deliver on that. I have sat down at very difficult negotiations with employers and with unions trying to sort out the best way to do it. We feel we've landed on it and we will be making the case to the House. I'm looking forward to support from all members, hopefully, as we had before.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Tracy Gray]

Thank you, Minister.

It's over to you, Ms. Chabot.

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

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?

[Seamus O'Regan, Liberal, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

The lockout at the Port of Québec shows why legislation banning replacement workers is needed. With all-party support, we can do that.

We support the parties in the negotiations; we're there to help.

As we speak, workers in the port of Quebec are on the front lines of this issue. They have been replaced. As Lana Payne said yesterday in a statement that was in the media today, there's nothing more demeaning for a worker than to be on strike or locked out while knowing that your work has been replaced.

They have been on the picket line for over a year. Their every day is ongoing proof of why we need to pass legislation in order to ban replacement workers. I think with the support of all parties in this House, we could prevent this from happening again.

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

Thank you, Minister, but my question was simple: How can we be assured that you will act diligently, that this bill will be a priority for you and for the government and that it will become law? Forgive us for doubting that. The bill includes a provision whereby it would not come into force until 18 months after royal assent. Given this time frame and the journey of the bill in the legislative calendar, there is a good chance that this legislation will not see the light of day.

I have two questions for you. Will you commit to making the passage of the bill a priority and speeding up the process? Will you support the proposal to remove the provision whereby 18 months need to pass after royal assent for the bill to come into force?

Please be brief, Minister, as my speaking time is limited.

[Seamus O'Regan, Liberal, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

I understand.

We need time; the experts need time.

Our federal mediation and conciliation organizations are some of the best. I would argue that one of the best in the world is the FMCS, the federal mediation and conciliation service.

We also have the Canada industrial review board. These are the people who ultimately help parties negotiate an agreement or help them achieve one. We have a 96% success rate in this country. It is astounding. These are the best.

I've had the pleasure of meeting so many good public servants. This team is so effective. They've said to us that they need 18 months, for exactly the reason that we've just said. This is one of the most transformational changes to happen to labour relations in Canada in our history. It is precisely when people say that and then say “Well, can you rush it?” One answers the other. The reason we can't rush it is that it is so big. When the people who are at the table and are achieving the deals consistently, 96% of the time, say to me, “We need 18 months”, I listen to them. We are taking our time to make sure that we get this right.

Madame Chabot is absolutely right: There is a time when you pass it and there is the time that it goes into effect, but we need not only to make sure the people are properly trained for what would be a different negotiating environment: We're going to need more people. We're going to need more people to make sure that the supply chains in this country are protected and that workers' rights are protected. That takes good people, smart people, who are trained very well.

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

Minister, this is really worrisome. The 18-month time frame is already—

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Tracy Gray]

Thank you, Minister.

Thank you, Ms. Chabot.

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

We understand that there is no desire on your part to speed things up.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Tracy Gray]

Ms. Zarrillo, we'll go over to you for six minutes.

[Bonita Zarrillo, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you so much.

Welcome to the committee, Minister. It's nice to see you for the first time at committee, Mr. Beech.

I wanted to talk a bit about the service delivery excellence that you speak about. I raised this with you initially in terms of my concern about the CRA's capacity to reach people with disabilities who are living in poverty and to get them the Canada disability benefit when it becomes available.

My concern was realized when I received a response back on an Order Paper question that was asking the CRA to give me the information on the cross-reference between disability tax certificates and income. This is relating to the disability tax credit. What came back was this answer:

The one-to-one relationship between claimants and certificate holders is difficult to ascertain, with the possibility of more than one individual being a claimant on the same certificate. For this reason, CRA is unable to provide the income breakdowns of certificate holders (the beneficiaries) and is not in a position to respond in the manner requested.

My question is for you, Mr. Minister. How will the government ensure that those living in poverty who need the Canada disability benefit will get it, and does the government accept that the disability tax credit system cannot be the only entry point for the disability benefit?

[Terry Beech, Liberal, Burnaby North—Seymour, BC]

First of all, thank you for the question.

Although this is my first time appearing at committee as a minister, I certainly lived at committee for the last number of years.

First of all, I'd like to express, given the conversations we've had, how important the Canada disability benefit is. I recently met with my equivalent minister in Australia, a country that went through this and basically transformed their own system a number of years ago. The impact that's had on their citizens has been dramatic.

Part of the reason that we are embarking on the modernization of our benefit delivery systems is that we are dealing with old technologies that in a lot of cases. It's 60 years old for OAS, 50 years old for EI and 25 years old for CPP. Also, siloed departments don't necessarily speak to each other.

In order to tackle the problem that you're specifically talking about, we need to empower the de-siloization of departments so that we can actually have them share information among each other in a secure way and have the flexibility to make sure the policies that elected members of Parliament want to implement are actually implementable once that policy hits the ground.

The kinds of frustration that you talk about, especially if they affect vulnerable Canadians, disabled Canadians, are completely unacceptable. Sadly, we're in a position of making up for generations of technical neglect all at once, but I am certain that, working together, we're going to be able to overcome that and provide a benefits system that delivers to everybody who needs it.

[Bonita Zarrillo, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you.

Minister, this committee did bring a report to the House on having CRA explore this. This is something that the committee has been seized with for almost two years.

I guess it does play into the dental program that's rolling out. Knowing that the government cannot cross-reference at this point in time a disability certificate with a person's income, is everyone with a disability tax credit certificate eligible for the new Canada dental care program?

[Terry Beech, Liberal, Burnaby North—Seymour, BC]

Starting in June, children and individuals with—

[Bonita Zarrillo, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

I'm sorry. I don't have much time.

Is it going to be income-tested? What I understand is that the CRA can't income-test—

[Terry Beech, Liberal, Burnaby North—Seymour, BC]

It will be income-tested as well, and you will need a certificate.

[Bonita Zarrillo, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

We're going to need to resolve that, because the CRA is saying that it cannot do income tests of the disability tax credit claimants.

Can I get your commitment that this will be prioritized?

[Terry Beech, Liberal, Burnaby North—Seymour, BC]

It is a challenge that we must overcome.

[Bonita Zarrillo, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Okay. Thank you.

I'm going to move to Minister O'Regan.

We have also spoken about the care economy, I know, and I appreciate your reaching out to me in some of your busiest times to talk about this.

However, as we look at the seniors portfolio specifically and as we talk about long-term care, nursing, personal care aids, home care aids, and even federal nurses—we have a whole health care division federally—I want to know about collecting data.

When we were doing the care economy study a couple of years back, there was a real lack of pan-Canadian data to do HR planning in this space. Has there been any movement on being able to gather data on these workers in the care economy?

[Seamus O'Regan, Liberal, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

Thank you for the question and, clearly, Ms. Zarrillo, your commitment to it.

The care economy is something that came up as a priority too at the union-led advisory table. We are working with provinces and territories to acquire more data. You can't do anything without good data. We need better data on the care economy. We need to make those connections within the care economy, which is a broad umbrella and affects more than just seniors. You're talking about 20% of our workforce, really. They do the work so that we can go to work.

I think that there's an increased focus on this. Although this is under provincial and territorial jurisdiction for the most part, I think the federal government can play a real role in bringing all bodies together and collecting better data and making better decisions on this area.

[Bonita Zarrillo, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you.

I think it's gendered, in that it wasn't something that was focused on, so data wasn't gathered. I really appreciate the movement on that.

I have one other question, but I'm going to wait until my next round. It has to do with the dental care for seniors. However, I do want to thank you for the menstrual products. That's very, very exciting around equity, and it certainly is something that they care about in Port Moody—Coquitlam, in Anmore and Belcarra. Thank you so much for that.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Tracy Gray]

Thank you, Ms. Zarrillo.

Now we'll go on to the next round, and I will lead this one off as well.

At the public accounts committee on December 14, which I did attend, I asked officials for the metrics and scoring criteria used to determine contracts. In that discussion, an official at the meeting stated that “the commercial confidence of which suppliers won and didn't win may be more commercially confidential.” I was asking what the metrics and scoring criteria were, and that seems very subjective.

This is for you, Minister Beech.

You referred to the competitive process. One of your officials at that same meeting confirmed that the amount was $40,000 in order to trigger a competitive process. Your department provided a document that I requested when I was questioning them. Going through it, I saw that there were numerous anomalies listed over $40,000 and called “Non-Competitive”, “Sole Source” or “Competitive” or “Selective Tendering”.

Minister, can you explain these anomalies?

[Terry Beech, Liberal, Burnaby North—Seymour, BC]

I will repeat what I stated before with regard to the BDM program: My understanding is that all contracts over $40,000 were competitively sourced. However, if you want to highlight those anomalies, I'd be happy to get you a fully sourced answer.