Mr. Speaker, first of all, I wish to congratulate my Bloc colleague from the riding of Joliette because I think he grasped the full significance of this bill. Since he is the critic on public service renewal, there should be at least one person in this House who defends the public servants working for the system. RCMP members are directly affected by what is done or not done in this House.
I must tell you at the outset that although we seem to defend the RCMP, we, in the Bloc Quebecois, would have good reasons not to oppose a bill which paints the RCMP into a corner and puts them in a separate class. You have certainly heard members of this House talk about incidents involving the RCMP back in the 1970s. As you know, sovereignists and independentists are not great friends of the system, of the RCMP, but I think that as the Official Opposition we must denounce such bills. This is what I am doing today by denouncing Bill C-58.
Our first reaction after looking at a bill like this is to see it as a harmless piece of legislation. There are not many sections. It does not seem very consequential at the jurisdictional level. Nevertheless, I think we should ask ourselves why Bill C-58, now, in November, singles out RCMP members by putting them in a separate class. Because C-58 does put RCMP members in a separate class.
Looking at the bill, we realize that it touches on staff relations and wonder why the Federal Court of Appeal made a certain ruling under the law as it stood when the court addressed the issue. It handed down a very fair, very well-researched ruling, so that the Liberal federal government-I will come back to this a little later-does not want to appeal it.
Why C-58? As my colleague said earlier, I think that the Gingras case spurred the Liberal government into introducing legislation in this area. For the benefit of those who are not familiar with the Gingras case, a brief review of this case may be useful, for the sake of understanding the general dynamics of Bill C-58.
You all know that the federal government instituted a bilingualism bonus plan in the seventies, on the 15 of November to be exact. Yesterday was the anniversary, not only of the first term of office of the Parti Quebecois, but also of the creation of the bilingual bonus. This plan was for employees hired by Treasury Board, that is to say the government of Canada, who held a bilingual position, a position recognized as such, which required the use of both official languages. The bonus was $800 a year.
The purpose of this bonus, and I do not wish to discuss the purpose of the bonus again, was to promote bilingualism. It was designed as an incentive for public servants to learn the other official language to serve the people of Canada, and the people of Quebec in particular.
Well, Mr. Gingras had been a member of the RCMP since 1962. In fact, he worked for the RCMP until 1984. But between 1976, when the bilingualism bonus plan was put in place, and 1984, when Mr. Gingras retired from the RCMP, despite the fact his position was designated as bilingual, he never received the $800 bilingual bonus, while all other public service employees working on the Hill or elsewhere did.
Naturally, pursuant to the RCMP regulations, Mr. Gingras asked his superiors to look into the matter and, unsatisfied with their decision, brought the whole matter before the Federal Court. The case even went to the Federal Court of Appeal, which ruled very clearly on March 10, 1994 that Mr. Gingras and all members of the RCMP were entitled to this bonus.
Although I do not want to read much of the ruling of the Federal Court of Appeal, we see that the reason for this ruling is that all members of the RCMP are public servants who must comply with the rules adopted by Treasury Board and are entitled to the bilingual bonus if they occupy a position recognized as bilingual and requiring bilingualism.
Given such a ruling, we must conclude that Bill C-58 seeks to overturn the Federal Court of Appeal's decision-it is as simple as that.
I come back to the question I raised at the beginning. Is this a harmless bill? I think not. I think that it is a dangerous, sneaky bill for a society that claims to recognize the rights of equality and association. I repeat those two terms.
Why did I say that it is a sneaky bill? Because after this ruling was rendered in March 1994, the government, through its minister, said that it was reviewing the matter to see whether it could appeal. It wanted to analyze the consequences of this judgement. However, in May 1994, the government announced
that it did not intend to appeal the Supreme Court's decision and therefore it would pay the bonus to members of the RCMP, including the bonuses for part of the years when the government illegally refused to pay the members of the RCMP.
It is true that the Liberal government did not appeal this decision. However, what the government does not do openly by appealing this ruling to the Supreme Court of Canada, it does indirectly to arrive more or less at the same result. By asking the House to pass Bill C-58, the government is using a sneaky approach. It led us to believe that it was going to live with the ruling of the Federal Court of Appeal, but then it turned around and drafted Bill C-58, which is now before us.
This is sneaky because even those directly concerned by this legislation, namely RCMP members, did not know about it until the Official Opposition approached them to find out what they thought of Bill C-58. These people were not even aware of that legislation. You cannot help but wonder about the internal consultation process. This is why I find it sneaky. This is not a bill about which all concerned were clearly informed. It was drafted, and the government is now trying to have the House pass it rather quickly. I doubt many Liberal members will discuss it. The government is trying to proceed quickly. Yet, this legislation will have very significant consequences.
I also think this is a dangerous bill for a society which claims to be respectful of union membership and equality rights.
By introducing a bill which has the effect of overruling a Federal Court of Appeal decision, the government does not necessarily solve an issue related to bilingualism: It is trying to do a lot more than that. And this is what can be very dangerous for RCMP members. Let us not forget that the ruling of the Federal Court of Appeal has an impact on many other very important issues. For example, the court was unanimous in saying that RCMP members are Treasury Board employees and must be considered as such. Consequently, it court ruled that the RCMP and its peace officers should be subjected to all other Treasury Board rules. These rules govern such things as employment equity, enforcement of the Official Languages Act and the rules concerning labour conditions, with of course one exception relating to the right to unionize.
Once the Federal Court of Appeal made its ruling, we heard that the mandarins at the RCMP were concerned about the legal implications of this ruling. Which brings me to another question: Who is affected by this ruling? Why does it bother people so much, why does it bother the mandarins of the RCMP who seem to call all the shots within their agency?
According to inquiries made yesterday, the Gingras case affects some 17,500 members of the RCMP. Of these 17,500 members, about 15,500 are regular members and special constables and about 2,000 are civilian employees. These were the people working for the RCMP who were affected by the Gingras ruling. To these figures you can add about 3,500 employees of the public service, who are not however affected by Bill C-58 or the Gingras case, because they are already considered to be public servants.
We are forced to realize that an injustice was done and we have to understand the rationale behind the ruling of the Federal Court of Appeal, because we had a situation where people working at the same place, for the same employer, were subject to different labour conditions, where the rules were not the same for everyone, and that did not make sense. This is why the ruling of the Federal Court of Appeal set things straight. However, unhappy with this decision, the government now introduces Bill C-58 which negates the ruling of the Federal Court.
As I said earlier, and as my colleagues already said, the first objective of Bill C-58 is to exclude RCMP employees from the Public Service, employees who, at the present time, come under the control of Treasury Board like the rest of the Public Service. If this bill passes under its present form, the RCMP will be covered by legislation governing public service only if it is specifically mentioned in such legislation.
The basic rule under the bill is that Treasury Board policies no longer apply. They applied ever since the court decision. Under Bill C-58 these policies will no longer apply, unless RCMP management decides they do. Therefore, we give mandarins, who worried about the consequences of the Federal Court of Appeal decision, the option to follow or not the rules set out by Treasury Board.
I am no longer as naive as I was on election day, and I know full well that they are not ever going to accept those rules since they were the ones who pushed for Bill C-58. So, even from that point of view this is a sneaky piece of legislation.
If I were a member of the RCMP, I would be furious. I do not know what they are going to do, but if I were in their place I would try to make it known that I am unhappy. I am going to give you some examples. In the area of employment equity: In December 1992, the Financial Administration Act gave the Public Service Employment Equity Program, launched by Treasury Board in the mid-1980s, its real legal basis.
All departments and agencies, including Treasury Board and the employer, that is the public service, are subject to the Employment Equity Act, because they are part of the public service. Until quite recently, the RCMP commissioner had decided that the RCMP was not subject to Treasury Board
policies, although the RCMP is listed in Part I of Schedule I of the Public Service Staff Relations Act.
It should, however, be mentioned that the RCMP's status is not quite the same as the rest of the public service, which allowed the commissioner to claim that the bilingual bonus policy did not apply. The Federal Court of Appeal decision did not back him up. In the Gingras decision handed down on March 10, 1994, the court ruled unanimously that the RCMP would in future be considered part of the public service. Since then, the RCMP has been obliged to apply Treasury Board policies to all 17,500 of its members affected by the decision.
Bill C-58 is an attempt to put an end to this process of equity. After all, the approximately 3,500 RCMP employees in the third category I referred to earlier were recruited by the Public Service Commission and have therefore always been fully subject to the Treasury Board policies on equity and bilingualism.
As you can see, Mr. Speaker, under Bill C-58, members of the RCMP who are police officers or special constables are being treated as a separate class within the RCMP itself. They are being put in a class quite distinct from secretaries, clerks, caretakers and so on.
And it is the same with the official languages policy. The decision to implement this policy in the RCMP as an organization will rest with the big boss himself, the RCMP commissioner. It is extremely dangerous to leave this power in the hands of one person alone.
As for the labour relations and unionization aspects, I think that my hon. colleague from Joliette has covered them well. Since I am rising immediately after him, there is no need for me to argue the unionization issue all over again, except to say that Bill C-58 confirms in no uncertain terms that RCMP employees who may, at one time or another, have contemplated forming a brotherhood or a union can forget it for good.
If there was room for interpretation before, it is all very clear now. As you probably know, Mr. Speaker, applications were made by RCMP employees wishing to unionize. Actually, some are still pending, but Bill C-58 clearly puts an end to any attempt to unionize. Bill C-58, if passed, will make it impossible.
To sum up, seeing that I have one minute or so remaining, the most dangerous thing about Bill C-58 is the tendency to put almost everything in the hands of the commissioner of the RCMP. Mr. Speaker, I think that you for one would understand the situation, because you are sensitive to these issues. If we look at what is happening with the Communications Security Establishment and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, which are truly considered as separate employers by the government in Ottawa, the same thing will happen, indirectly, to the RCMP people, but that is not spelled out clearly, as it was in the other two cases.
Indirectly, the commissioner of the RCMP will have the final say on certain aspects of the application of RCMP regulations. That is what is extremely dangerous in a country that claims to be democratic and open to the right to organize, to official languages and so on.
This is a bill that centralizes many jurisdictions under a single person, and that is very harmful. You will understand that, for all the aforementioned reasons, like all my colleagues from the Bloc Quebecois, I will vote against Bill C-58.