The lack of transparency throughout this entire process is mind-boggling. First off, we have our employers—not the Government of Canada—sending information down to Homeland Security. Then Homeland Security sends back a derogatory comment—and we still don't know what that is—to our employers. We won't know what information they were given, because currently we don't have any rights to that information. Our employers could then use that to block our people from working elsewhere.
When we don't have an ability to defend our workers, or when our workers don't have an ability to defend themselves, on—I'm going to call it—a “ghost in insinuations”, then what happens? We become a controlled state.
My duty as the president of International Longshore and Warehouse Union Canada is to give my members an ability to fight for their job and to fight people who will do us harm. When there is a ghost government sending back information to our employers that our employers don't have to tell us about and that they can use to the detriment of my workforce, and I have no ability to defend to them, it disgusts me. This isn't the Canada I know. This isn't the Canada I love. We're an open society.