No.
I would like to appeal to the collective wisdom of this committee. We need to remember that our mandate is to do what is good for our country and for the people in our country. I'm glad we have now moved away from actually suspending the negotiations, because I think that would be extreme interference with the process that is under way on the authority of the government--both the previous and the present one.
I'd like to talk about the first bullet. There's full and immediate disclosure of all draft text. I'm going to try to persuade everyone, even Mr. Julian, to vote against this motion. I know that with his involvement in the past in union negotiations--as with mine--those negotiations are never conducted in public while they are taking place. And that's at the union's behest.
I was the chairman of our branch for a number of years. Later on, I became the president of the staff association at NAIT, where I worked. We had negotiators whose job it was to bring forward what we called our initial position. Those initial positions were always beyond what we expected to get. If you simply went forward with what you expected to get, then during the negotiation process that would be whittled away and you'd end up with a whole lot less. So in a negotiating process, you say this is where we want to end up; we anticipate the other side is going to come here, so in order for us to end up here, our initial position is going to be on the other side in an equal amount. If we were looking for, say, a salary increase of 3%, we would ask for 6% or 8%, knowing that they were going to come in with 0%. They always did.
We started negotiating, and we moved toward a position that was acceptable to our members and the people we represent. To disclose those opening positions while the negotiations are taking place is very detrimental to the process. You end up with a whole bunch of emotional reaction to positions that are unreasonable in the public's mind.
I would like to urge this committee to forget about this whole motion because of its lack of wisdom in terms of the process. Indeed, we have to have public debate and stakeholder consultations, because these are the people who are involved. But that takes place a little later in the process. I think it would be a great disservice to our negotiators, who work on behalf of our country, to expose them to having to make all their initial drafts public.
On that count, I would appeal to all members of this committee to reject this motion outright, because of its lack of practicality and lack of being able to accomplish what our negotiators are to do for us.
On the surface, it looks wonderful. I'm in favour of this. I'm in favour of openness and accountability. I always have been. I've been a member of Parliament for 13 years, and I became an MP because I wanted more openness and accountability. This is not, however, how to achieve it. What you do is you open up the accountability, not on the process but on the finished product.
I would like to persuade Mr. Julian to either withdraw his motion or to vote against it so that it's defeated. And certainly, to the other members of the committee, I would appeal very strongly on the basis of what I have just said.
Thank you.