This was an amendment we raised at second reading debate in the House and certainly in this committee as well.
We feel that in any democratic organization, in the certification process for a bargaining agent or the vote for a bargaining agent, a secret ballot process should be in place to allow all members to express their own opinion on certification.
In the briefing that parliamentary secretaries were kind enough to have with departmental officials, we were informed that all previous certification votes of public sector bargaining agents had been done by secret ballot. We're aware that there's a concurrent bill, C-4 on the order paper, but for this particular certification, given that employee choice was one of the key considerations in the Mounted Police Association of Ontario Supreme Court decision, we feel that line 3 on page 18 should be replaced with a direct reference to a secret ballot representation so that all members of the force have their say.