I hope you won't find me too disagreeable today.
I would say that I really didn't endorse the approach of the previous government when it came to labour, and that would include these exclusions from collective bargaining. The Supreme Court said that “a process of collective bargaining will not be meaningful if it denies employees the power to pursue their goals”. I think it's fair to say that the RCMP members who took the time to pursue this issue through the courts for many, many years were concerned about issues outside of pay and benefits. They were concerned about some of the chronic issues around harassment, and they were concerned about staffing in remote and northern communities. This legislation excludes all those things from the bargaining process.
What we haven't heard are the reasons for denying employees the ability to bring up those issues at the table. The language in those exclusions is so vague as to perhaps even preclude establishing within bargaining...not determining what side arm RCMP officers are going to carry on the job, but they may well want to establish through bargaining that there be a joint committee with employer and employee reps that discusses big decisions around equipment, the uniform, or whatever, and that there be a process whereby the voice of employees is formally recognized.
I'm wondering if you can provide some reason for why there are so many exclusions and why they're so vague.