That's fair enough.
I respect Mr. Eglinski's experience. I think it's an asset to have that at our table. He mentioned how it is difficult for management to have to deal with issues of discipline. I think it would be a mistake to understand this process as mandating a separate negotiation with the union every time you're engaging in disciplinary conduct. With his management experience, he will know there are policies in place, and managers have to act in accordance with those policies. All this does is allow those policies to be set in collaboration with a bargaining agent at the bargaining table. That's what's different about this.
While I appreciate his experience, he would not have had experience with a collective agreement as an RCMP manager. I just want to reassure him that having a collective agreement and having some provisions around the items that are in the exclusion would not cause him to have to enter into separate negotiations every time he acted in his managerial capacity.
We've heard in part when talking about this extra infrastructure that it exists and is already in place for public service bargaining, so all these things apply, and there are other provisions that would apply to RCMP members as federally regulated workers. However, that position runs against the basic grain of argument that we've heard from members of the other parties at various times, including me, Mr. Chair, that there is a unique nature to the RCMP.
On the one hand we want to say the RCMP is unique and we need all these special provisions and we need to exclude certain things from bargaining and it's okay to exclude them because they'll just be like every other civil servant in having access to all the other things and can avail themselves of everything else that other civil servants have. There's a fundamental tension there, because we've heard from witnesses that they don't necessarily expect or want to be treated like any other public servant and clearly feel that those existing mechanisms have not served them well heretofore, so I don't feel that those arguments to the contrary are compelling at the end of the day.