Mr. Speaker, I enter this debate to talk a little about Bill C-11 and what it means for the government's labour programs.
I will deal with it right off the bat because the main thrust of the Reform Party's amendments is that there is no need for a minister of labour, that the role of a minister of labour in the Government of Canada and in the overall lives of people in the country who relate to federal jurisdiction is not important.
Members have probably heard me say this bill will allow us to take giant strides in helping Canadians with the employment challenges the entire country currently faces. It will combine the human resource functions of several departments under one roof, the Department of Human Resources Development.
There is the Minister of Human Resources Development at the helm to control and lead the new department. It might seem puzzling to some that there also needs to be a minister of labour. After all, the department of labour is one of the departments being integrated into HRDC.
Let us look at the duties of the Minister of Labour before we suggest or accept the amendments proposed by the Reform Party. These duties are described in clause 4 of the bill: "A minister of labour may be appointed by commission under the great seal to hold office during pleasure". Clause 4(2) states: "The minister of labour will be given all the powers, duties and functions related to labour matters under federal jurisdiction".
This means that one of the main responsibilities of the minister is the Canada Labour Code. The code governs industrial relations, occupational safety and health and labour standards, but only in those areas under federal jurisdiction.
The code is an important part of Canada's economic fabric. It affects the working lives of 1 million Canadians. It applies to train engineers-I have to include conductors in that because that is what I was in my previous profession-longshoremen and truckers, to grain handlers and telephone operators, to the persons who cashed people's cheques at the bank today. These people turn to us for stable industrial relations, for safety and health and for fair and productive workplaces.
Applying the Canada Labour Code is an important responsibility but the Minister of Labour also has other pieces of legislation. One of these is the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety Act. The centre produces and disseminates occupational health and safety information and helps to protect the lives and health of Canadian workers.
There are many different pieces of legislation that fall under the responsibility of the Minister of Labour, acts which deal with security, justice, equity and other matters. All of this was under the old department of labour. Not much has changed there. Except for the program for older worker adjustment, the Minister of Labour holds on to all the same responsibilities and might even add a few.
Everything the Minister of Labour needs to do, the job can be found within the framework of restructured, unified and effective organization. This keeps costs down without depriving the Minister of Labour of services or facilities needed to tend to important matters. Remember, these matters include the Canadian union movement, labour management relations, conditions in the workplace, equity for all workers and many more.
That is a lot for anybody's plate but the Minister of Human Resources Development has an even fuller plate. Therefore it makes sense to have somebody dedicated full time to such a tightly defined set of issues. This bill sets those definitions and makes those distinctions.
If anything, the past year has shown that there is more than enough work there to keep the Minister of Labour very busy. The minister is working to better harmonize federal occupational health and safety legislation and regulations with those of the provinces and territories. The minister has also been very active on industrial relations.
Last May the minister appointed an industrial inquiry commission to study industrial relations in longshoring, grain handling and other federally regulated industries on the west coast.
In June the minister established a task force to review the part of the Canada Labour Code which deals with labour relations. This is part I, but the minister also wants to modernize the other two parts of the code, and work is continuing in that regard.
The minister is reviewing the labour program so that it works better and is more cost effective while at the same time working on a North American agreement on labour co-operation.
As members can see, the restructuring has not interfered with the labour program. I would argue that the restructuring has energized the labour program. We have seen a healthy continuity between the new and the old. We have also seen how an integrated approach can lead to improvements in the economic and social well-being of Canadian citizens: industrial relations, job creation and training. All of these issues are related and all should be considered within the same holistic framework.
Removing the labour program from HRCD would therefore be a very serious mistake. After all, the Department of Human Resources Development has been with us since 1993 and we know it works. We also know the labour programs work. The department saves money. It offers a cohesive vision of Canada's human resources needs. At the same time, when technology changes almost everything we do, we need that kind of vision more than ever.
I am not asking my colleagues to leap into the unknown when I ask them to support this bill. Instead, I ask them to believe the evidence before their own eyes. I am asking them to understand the importance of a minister of labour in the overall scheme of things.
It is a very shallow argument by the Reform Party that because the government did not have a minister of labour for the first two it obviously did it for political reasons. My argument is that after two years it realized, as governments do, that it made a mistake and it did need a minister of labour because that area of expertise is very specific and needs to be looked after on a daily basis by an individual whose main job is to look after the rights of workers in the federal jurisdiction.
I applaud the Prime Minister and the new Minister of Labour. We now have gone back as far as the 1900s to one of the first four departments created by the government, the labour department. We have recognized over the years that labour is very important. We recognize that a minister is very important.
I recommend to members that they reject out of hand the opposition's suggestion that there is no need for a minister of labour in the Human Resources Development Department.