moved:
Motion No. 1
That Bill C-35, in Clause 1, be amended by replacing line 12 on page 1 with the following:
"employee is usually employed or, if the employee works in more than one province, the minimum hourly rate of the province that is highest, and that is".
Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to take part in today's debate, at report stage of Bill C-35, which, for all intents and purposes, eliminates the federal minimum wage, aligning it with the minimum wages established by the provinces.
We supported Bill C-35 with the feeling that we had to do our work as the official opposition and help improve this legislation. This is why we proposed an amendment. Let me elaborate.
As you know, the federal minimum wage was set at $4 in 1986 and has not been reviewed since. The situation was a bit paradoxical: in a given territory, there could be two categories of workers. Indeed, workers doing the same job in the same company were not necessarily paid the same salary.
Three main considerations must be kept in mind when we deal with minimum wage. First, those affected are often part-time workers, employees whose jobs are precarious, and people who live below the poverty line, or just at that level. In this regard, the government should have introduced, along with the minimum wage review, a bill that would have truly targeted the causes of poverty.
We can never say it too often: the issue of minimum wage should remind parliamentarians that, in Canada, one person in six currently lives below the established poverty levels. This proportion increases in the case of certain groups, particularly single parents.
What does being poor mean in today's Quebec and Canadian society? We know what it means. It is not a reality that escapes us. We know precisely what it means. From a statistical point of view, a person is considered to be poor when he or she must spend more than 56 per cent of his or her salary on housing, food and clothes.
It would have been a good thing for the government to deal with this issue. It is hard to square the minimum wage bill with something like the Employment Insurance Act, which is a factor in poverty, because we know for a fact that only 38 per cent of the labour force will qualify under that legislation.
The amendment we are presenting today introduces a mobility provision whereby a worker employed by a company operating interprovincially, or conducting business in two or more provinces, will receive the minimum wage that is most to his advantage. It is a cause for some concern that the government did not think of this.
When the minister appeared before the committee, we pointed out to him that the situation was, of course, clear when a worker was employed by Ontario. When he works in an area coming under federal jurisdiction but the head office of the company or the place where he works is in Ontario, Saskatchewan, Manitoba or Prince Edward Island, understandably everything is crystal clear, and he is paid the minimum wage in effect in that province.
But what will happen when this same worker is required to work in one or more provinces, when there is no set place of work? Such a situation can arise. With the advent of telework, the whole question of interprovincial mobility and, of course, interprovincial transport, this is more than just an isolated case. Had the official opposition not been vigilant, there would have been an omission in the act that must most definitely be corrected today.
I would remind members that the intention of the amendment is to have the legislation spell out very clearly that, when a worker is
called upon to provide services or work in more than one place within the Canadian common market, he will be paid the highest rate.
You know how widely the minimum wage varies in Canada. It ranges from $5 in certain provinces to $7 in British Columbia, the most generous province in this connection and undoubtedly the one with the most favourable financial situation.
I would like to emphasize, for the benefit of viewers, just how much the situation varies. This must be borne in mind. We are certainly not talking about a uniform situation where the minimum wage is concerned.
I will give the example of Alberta, where the minimum wage is $5. In British Columbia, it is $7; in Prince Edward Island it will be raised to $5.40; in Manitoba it is $5.40; in New Brunswick, $5.50; in Nova Scotia, $5.35; in Ontario, $6.85; in Quebec, $6.70; in Saskatchewan, $5.35; in Newfoundland, $5.25; in the Northwest Territories, $7; and in the Yukon, $6.86.
It could, therefore, be a great temptation for a employer with interprovincial mobility to decide that the place of employment of a given worker is a specific province. If a worker works in three or four provinces, for example, the employer could have his choice of province. He could say: "I consider that the place of work to which the worker is attached is the province with the lowest minimum wage." This is a trap which must be avoided for, as we have seen, there is a disparity between provincial wage levels.
When speaking of minimum wage, we must keep in mind that often non-unionized workers are involved, people who lack the protection of a large union to which they pay dues, which looks after the rights of workers, which is certainly not the case for minimum wage earners.
Generally speaking, this minimum wage covers 10 per cent of people in the work force. Ten per cent of workers therefore come under federal jurisdiction. Obviously, therefore, the bulk of workers are in areas where legislation other than that of the federal government applies. Nevertheless, 10 per cent of the work force is involved in the sectors of transportation, banking and communications particularly, but not exclusively, affected by Bill C-35. Of that 10 per cent, a very large majority, which the minister estimates at 60 per cent, are not protected by a union and work at minimum wage.
It is, therefore, important to ensure that, if the government were preparing to defeat the official opposition amendment to Bill C-35-which I doubt, since I believe the parliamentary secretary is nodding that he will support the amendment by the official opposition-but at any rate, if the government were preparing to defeat the opposition amendment, well, then we would find ourselves in a legal vacuum. In the case of workers with several different places of work, working in more than one province, workers having to move about within the broad Canadian common market, it could be extremely tempting for the employer to make a decision that would not be to their advantage, choosing to attach them to the place of work where the minimum wage was lowest, to the workers' disadvantage.
I will close my remarks by saying that, today, we are just beginning the process. Bill C-35 is the first indication that the government intends to review part I of the Canada Labour Code, as the hon. member for Québec is well aware-and I know she is very concerned about the plight of workers today. Parts II and III will also be reviewed.
This review process has given rise to considerable debate on, for instance, the possible unionization of the RCMP and the issue of replacement workers. In report after report, year after year, the government has been urged to bring peace to the workplace and introduce anti-scab legislation that make the use of replacement workers an unfair practice and as such subject to sanctions by the Canada Labour Board. I know that the hon. member for Bourassa, a long-standing member of the labour movement, has some very specific proposals in mind.
So as part of this review process, it will be very important to ensure, of course, that the Canada Labour Code is the locus for establishing a certain balance of forces, where the legislation defines a number of positions to be used in dealing with future labour disputes. But I think it is also important to ensure, in 1996 and in the years to come, that the Canada Labour Code is also a weapon against poverty. Why not consider including provisions in the Canada Labour Code that would set limits on working hours and overtime?
The minister told me he was regularly asked to authorize overtime in the private sector because a federal provision says that the minister's authorization is required for work in excess of the statutory number of hours. I think, at a time when one Canadian out of six lives in poverty, in other words, 2.8 million Canadians in all Canadian provinces, that we should ensure that the Canada Labour Code is also a weapon against poverty.