Thank you, Mr. Chair and members for allowing me to appear.
First, I'd like to thank the government for splitting the omnibus bill into these manageable chunks. It's rather pleasant to appear on one or two small subject matters rather than trying to deal with several at one time.
Teamsters Canada is a trade union organization representing approximately 130,000 members in Canada and, with our affiliation to the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, about 1.5 million in North America. We have many divisions--film, dairy, beverage, fashion, tourism, and on and on--but we are the choice of Canadian workers in the transportation sectors: air, rail, road, ports, mass transit, cargo air, and of course land.
We're appearing partly to support the bill in general. We also feel that quite often you hear criticism of bills when people come. We think it is part of our obligation to the general public to appear on transportation bills that affect our members and the public to voice either our support or our criticism.
In this case, we have reviewed the bill quite thoroughly. Teamsters Canada Rail Conference locomotive engineers, Teamster Canada Rail Conference maintenance of way division, and our airline division have reviewed the bill, and generally the comments coming back have been positive.
There are issues or questions regarding definitions of person and how they relate to employees versus directors or corporations. And although they're somewhat dealt with in the act, part of the issue becomes, in other acts, dangerous goods and others, that we're dealing with various issues surrounding the responsibility of an employee versus that of a corporate mind.
The other issue is constables. As was pointed out, in one of the Teamsters ports, there are the eight levels of police authorities of various description running around with various responsibilities.
The noise issue was raised by our Teamsters Canada Rail Conference, maintenance of way. One of the issues becomes, quite simply, not the level of maintenance but the difficulty of getting on the line because of the pure volume of trains; hence the issue is the times and when you can get on a track, etc.
Most of these, of course, will be dealt with by regulation. As for the bill itself, we do not seem to have a lot of concerns or problems with it. We would request, of course, that we be part and parcel of the full consultation on all regulations that are enacted.
I promised I would be brief, and I thank you for giving me the time. If you have any questions, I'd be pleased either to answer them or get back to you as quickly as I can with an answer.
Thank you.