Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and members of the standing committee.
My name is Dave Coles, and I am the president of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union. The CEP represents some 130,000 members concentrated primarily in the forest, energy, and telecommunications sector.
Sitting beside me to my left--always to my left--is Mr. Ménard. He's the secretary-treasurer, with whom I will share some time in my slot.
I'd like to offer to the committee a non-partisan, paid political announcement. I have handed out to the committee a report of the sector council on some of the tasks needed to reform the forest industry. I only do that because it's an important piece of work that is non-partisan and we've worked together on it. Not only are brother Ménard and I officers of our national union but we have been workers in this industry for a long time, both out of companies that produced newsprint—brother Ménard here in the Gatineau Valley and I in a paper machine on Vancouver Island. I've also had the mis-pleasure of being the president of the national union while the forest industry spun out of control and shed many, many jobs, and we'll deal with that.
I want to start by saying that the permanent closure of the Gatineau and Dolbeau AbitibiBowater mills is merely the latest casualty in a long, long list of forest crises that have cost more than 100,000 jobs. I'm going to repeat it: we've lost 100,000 jobs, and 40,000 people are still unemployed. If we talk about the workers at these two mills, we also have to talk about the workers at the other mills that have been shut down by AbitibiBowater, such as mills in Beaupré, Grand Falls, Dalhousie, Mackenzie, Shawinigan, and a number of other machines not listed that have been closed by AbitibiBowater.
There is plenty of blame to spread around for these closures, but the victims are always the same. The victims are always the same—the workers and their communities—and you'll hear from some of our members who work in those communities.
First, there is AbitibiBowater, because the company is still restructuring under CCAA. The severance pay owed to workers will likely not be paid, even though both parties agreed in a collective agreement to pay that severance if those mills were shut down. Had AbitibiBowater waited until after the vote to exit the restructuring process before it decided to shut the mills down, the workers would have received their severance. Instead they are stuck at the bottom of the creditors list. This is especially frustrating in the light—many times raised this morning—of the $6 million in executive bonuses that are part of the restructuring agreement that is soon to be voted on by the AbitibiBowater creditors.
In negotiations, and I chaired those negotiations, we have tried to negotiate for these severances to be paid after the company would have come out of CCAA proceedings, and to Bowater's credit, the company was in agreement with that strategy. But the legal opinion we received is that such an agreement could not be reached, as it would be considered an end run around the creditors, and therefore both the company and the union lawyers advised us that it was illegal for us to bargain that severance after they emerged from CCAA. It would have created a super-priority for the creditors, our members.
Hence the second culprit: the bankruptcy legislation. Workers are the butt of jokes with the CCAA and the BIA legislation.
We do appreciate the changes that were finally proclaimed last year, four long years after they received royal assent, but these changes are marginal for workers. Unfunded liabilities in the pension plan remain very low on the creditors list, as does severance pay.
The legislation under the CCAA and the BIA as they now stand really forms a chapter protecting the rights of investors and trampling those of the workers whose livelihoods and whose communities are shattered when a mill shuts down. What these pieces of legislation are saying is that the sweat and blood of the workers are worth nothing compared to the capital provided by people who in many cases live thousands of kilometres away from the company's operation. This is simply wrong, and needs to be addressed by ensuring that the wages and pensions, and even severance pay, that are owed to workers are given super-priority in the CCAA and BIA legislation.
Brother Ménard.