Mr. Speaker, it is a delight to enter into the debate on Bill C-317, a bill that would cause certain amendments to be made to the Canada Labour Code.
I will preface my statements by saying that the hon. member who has proposed this bill and its amendments to the code has a very good motivation in standing up to try to defend the workers. This country is very dependent upon its labour force in order to continue to enjoy our high standard of living. The bill is certainly in the best interests not only of the workers but also of the companies involved, the organizations, the rest of Canadians and customers both in Canada and around the world. They benefit from Canadian products if the workforce is very well organized and works efficiently and smoothly.
What is being addressed here is the problem of a dispute. What happens when the firm that employs the labourers and the labourers cannot reach an agreement? Sometimes these disputes are over wages. Members will agree that there have been occasions where employers have been unfair to workers with respect to wages. Even more important, there have been a number of occasions where the workers' safety is at risk and the employer is unwilling to spend the money or to take the necessary measures to protect the safety of the workers.
Bill C-317 proposes that if any of these disputes regardless of their origin result in a strike, then as that strike is a hard won right of the workers, it should not be reduced or eliminated by the hiring of replacement workers. To me, that is indeed one of the solutions. If we are going to provide that workers cannot be replaced, that indeed considerably strengthens the bargaining position of the workers in areas of dispute.
However, we need to ask whether this is the best way of solving the problem. I propose that it is not. While we are saying the worker is having his hamburger taken away from him, what this bill proposes is to simply give him ketchup on the hamburger. What I would like to propose is that we offer that worker a good Alberta steak instead.
What am I talking about? I am talking about ways of dispute resolution. Having worked in this area for a number of years as a representative of people who were employees in a professional association, which to a degree is a euphemism for a union, because we did collective bargaining, I believe very strongly that the very worst way of dispute resolution is that of the strike, because no one wins in a strike. When there is a strike and business is shut down, or in my case the educational institution is shut down, the students, the employees, the instructors, and all of the other employees in the work suffer because of a loss of wages during the time of the strike.
In the case of industry across this country, not only our own domestic customers suffer but our customers around the world suffer when our businesses are put on strike or when our transportation systems fail because of strike or our communications systems are brought down to their knees because the employees refuse to work and no one else is ready and permitted to work in this area.
What then is the solution? If it is not a strike, what can be done? There are many, many other areas of disputes in which we do not resort to strike. For example, if there is a dispute between one of us and our neighbour as to where the boundary should be, we do not proceed to put something in front of their driveway so they cannot get out of the house in the morning. That would not be an acceptable way of solving that problem. Instead, we go to the authorities. We may get surveyors in to make sure the boundaries
are clearly marked. When that is done and if your neighbour still does not agree to it, then we may go to a court of law.
I propose, and I have experience in this and it works very well, that what we need to do in the case of a dispute between employees and employers is to have an orderly mechanism that works to solve this problem, so that the workers, the employers, all of the customers, all of the citizens, and indeed our reputation around the world for timely delivery of goods and services can be maintained. It would help us in the long run because of the reliability that would be automatically assumed when people around the world place customer orders with Canadian firms.
I am proposing that we should be using a dispute mechanism that involves some sort of a hearing, a court, an arbitrator, something that is final and binding.
I would like to tell you that I have had first-hand experience with this. I had the honour of being chosen by my fellow instructors, way back in 1982, to be the founding president of our staff association. I had considerable input. It was not a one-man show by any means, but I had considerable input into the formulation of our first collective agreement, which then became the pattern for all subsequent agreements at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology, where I worked. Indeed, many of the items in that contract persist to this day. And one of the things I pressed for very strongly was that we would immediately bargain away our right to strike.
We built into our contract and the constitution of our association a mechanism that provided for a dispute resolution with time lines. So many days prior to the expiration of the contract we had to give notice of our desire to enter into negotiations, and if we did not the employer might. If neither of us did, that was a tacit understanding that we would carry on with the current agreement. After so many days of that happening we had to have negotiators in place. After so many days we had to lay our opening positions on the table. After so many days if an agreement had not been reached we had to name an arbitrator. And so it went. It was all set up in such a way that prior to the expiry of a contract the new contract would be in place by one means or another.
A very important problem developed. With that contract we had an excellent mechanism and did not have any strikes or work stoppages. Unfortunately the Government of Alberta played its hand. I need to say this because there are dangers in this type of a system. When we went to the arbitration system the government passed a law that stated that in the case of an arbitration the arbitrator must take into account the policy of the government. Unfortunately the government was our employer. We were in the situation of being in the boxing ring and our opponent happened to also be the referee, which made it very difficult to get fair settlements from then on.
If the mechanism is truly independent of any pressure from either party so that there can be a really justified way of reducing the problem and dispute to a resolution, that is by far the best way.
In conclusion, if we are not going to go for things like final position bargaining or arbitration as the method of solving labour disputes, we will continue with these very wasteful and hurtful strikes. Instead of supporting this bill, which would only strengthen the dispute mechanism of striking and fighting with each other, I would like to propose the opposite: that we move toward a more rational system of dispute resolution, which would benefit us all.
