The comments I just made raise a question. Those who may be listening to us on this lovely Sunday afternoon may ask themselves: What did he just say? Why would the government do such a thing? Why would a decent and responsible government do that? Why would a government team up with the employers to distort the conflict resolution process? This is a good question, but we have the answer.
The answer was provided by the Minister of Transports. The Minister of Transport himself told us in this House last week, I think it was on Thursday, but I could be wrong, any way he told us on Wednesday or Thursday in answer to a question put to him: "Yes, but the truth is that our goal is to get rid of some provisions in the collective agreements". They do not like these collective agreements, so they are going to change them, to do a hatchet job, to scrap them.
Once this is done, they will be able to soothe the employers and sell the CN. They will sell the CN and make a lot of money out of it, because they will do so at the expense of the workers and of their rights and entitlements. They will shave down the collective agreements and then hand a very nice package to the private companies interested in buying the CN. This is the goal sought by the minister. He has said so in this House. We thought that was what he was trying to achieve, in fact, we were quite sure of it, but now he has admitted it.