Mr. Speaker, I would like to register my objection to the process that is unfolding here this morning. I do so on the basis of the fact that the government has had an alternative in this regard for some time, ever since its election in October 1993. The government could have been moving on the policy front toward a transportation system or policy which would have reassured people working in the railways that there is a future for them and the railways in this country.
If rail workers had that assurance and did not feel that in some ways the rail industry was not targeted for total extinction or anything quite like that, but nevertheless not being enhanced by the appropriate policy decisions and therefore suffering over time continuous decline, then perhaps rail workers would feel more confident in their negotiations with the company in the context of negotiations about job security and employment security and a variety of other things. Because they feel that one decision after another seems to point to an increasing downsizing and diminishing of the role of rail transport in our overall transportation policy they are obviously not willing to accept that when push comes to shove it is their particular economic self-interest that has to be sacrificed.
I will go back to something I said last week when we were debating back to work legislation. If there was a capital strike in this country, as there sometimes is in various ways, would we have an emergency debate? Would we have an emergency motion? Would we have long and sober debates on trying to make capital pay attention to the national interest and to the needs of the Canadian economy? It would be quite the contrary.
We are forever exalting such decisions as good business decisions that we have to somehow appease, the decisions that investors make, money speculators make, currency traders make or others make when they do not take the national interest into account and when they do things that destabilize the economy, put people out of work or advocate a high real interest rate policy that maybe causes people to lose their homes. All kinds of things happen because of the decisions that other people make in their economic self-interest and we simply say: "That is the way it is. That is the marketplace. That is life so get used to it. Let us see if we cannot do something to give these people what they want so they will not make these kinds of decisions".
When working people strike we see how important they are to the economy, do we not? The whole thing depends on day after day people getting up and doing their jobs, whether it is running trains, maintaining the tracks or whatever the case may be. But when working people strike all of a sudden the full force of the law is brought to bear on them.
Opposition members of Parliament are expected to walk freely into the tent, consult with the government and then do whatever the government wants them to do. Two weeks ago if I had had an opinion on railway concerns I might as well have spoken it into the great white telephone, for all the attention I would have received from the government.
Now the government wants me to agree. Now it wants workers to agree. In the meantime it has no qualms about getting rid of the Crow rate, or deregulating, or privatizing CN or doing all kinds of things like that. That is okay.
It is in protest of that and not just on some kind of a principle having to do with back to work legislation that I object to the process this morning.