Madam Speaker, I thought I should get up and answer a few of the more preposterous things that are coming from the government whip and some of the other members on the other side of the House. They would know that the reason we proposed our amendments is that we are concerned about wasteful government spending and we are trying to save the Canadian taxpayer some dollars. That was the basis of our argument and our motion on the position of minister of labour.
I must say that we in the Reform Party have absolutely nothing to learn from the federal Liberal Party and the government when it comes to labour relations and how to treat people. Our policies clearly state that we recognize the right of workers to organize unions, to strike peacefully, and to carry out the business of collective bargaining. We fully understand and recognize that. It is in our policies. Any words to the contrary are words dreamed up in the minds of the Liberal spin doctors.
What we are getting at today is that the position of the minister of labour was left vacant in the first cabinet of our Prime Minister. He put together a cabinet with no post of minister of labour. The reason was clear. It had been eliminated previously by Kim Campbell and had been seen as part and parcel of human resources development and of managing that portfolio. Suddenly the Liberals needed someone from Quebec supposedly to run their unity campaign. So they created the post and stuck a person in there in order to give them a profile and a position to supposedly fight the national unity campaign.
By the looks of how that went, I would suggest it was a double barrelled failure all around but still, they muddled through that. That is why the post was created. It was strictly a political post created to give a newcomer to the House a position, some way to get them close to cabinet and give them a profile in Quebec.
On the general issues of how the government is behaving or handling the labour relations side, has it improved since they got the position of minister of labour filled? As I mentioned, there is something to learn here, but there are no positive lessons about labour management relations from the government. If ever there was a government that speaks out of both sides of its mouth on the issue, this government has raised it to a new level.
I would like to know how many members opposite campaigned on a promise to cancel the workforce adjustment directive for public service workers. I wonder how many over there campaigned on a promise to lay off 45,000 federal civil servants because they cannot get their ducks in a row as far as the debt and deficit are concerned. I wonder how many of them campaigned on that promise.
I wonder how many said: "You have the right to a collective bargaining process but as soon as there is a strike in the port system, we will legislate you back to work. In other words, you have the right, but of course we will not let you use it". I wonder how many Liberals campaigned on that.
I wonder how many people in the labour movement know that the Minister of Human Resource Development will not even talk to the head of the Canadian Labour Congress. He says: "We have nothing to discuss so take a powder Bob". I wonder how many people in the Liberal Party campaigned on that in Windsor. I wonder how many of them go to Hamilton and say: "I am proud to say that our minister will not talk to the head of the Canadian Labour Congress".
It is just a little far fetched to say that the Reform Party is anti-labour. The Reform Party says it needs to find solutions to work together to find ways to make the collective bargaining system work well. As we all know, there are places in Canada where the strike system does not work, where there are essential
services, where there are no checks and balances and where neither the workers nor the Canadian taxpayers are protected.
We have proposed binding final offer arbitration for those areas. We are up front about that. It is far better to be up front about that than to say: "We will let you bargain, then at the last minute we will come in with the heavy hammer of the federal government and legislate you back to work. So you have no rights and even the rights you do bargain collectively for, we will cancel them when we want to".
The government has a dismal record on labour issues. It is pitiful.
When the government says that the people in organized labour are clamouring for employment equity it probably may be true that the head of some of those organizations are. If the Liberals got off their high horse, got their heads out of the upper echelons of the theoretical, got down to the grassroots and asked the people there how many they thought should be hired on the basis of the colour of their skin, their gender or to fill a quota of certain categories in the workplace, how many would say that? The answer is hardly anybody. Certainly people who are in the affected categories will not even say that is a good thing.
It is a case of the government saying it will listen when it wants to. It has very selective hearing. That is part of the problem when you are in Ottawa for too long: your ears go numb and your tongue starts flapping. The government has been guilty of that time and again. The government has not listened well to what Canadians really want on labour issues. Instead it plays the charade, talks out of both sides of its mouth and tries to blame the Reform Party for what is a very weak record on labour issues.
This motion to eliminate the position of the minister of labour is not because the position of labour is not important. Of course labour issues are critical to the economic success of our country. The ability to work well together, to look after grievances in the workplace, to be able to put forward things of importance to the grassroots in the workplace, by all means these are good things. But to say that none of this can happen unless we have another ministry with all the hangers on and the money that goes with it is just not true.
As a matter of fact the very first cabinet the government brought in did not have a minister of labour. What happened then? Did the world collapse? Did the labour movement suddenly come under the jackboot of authority? It is just not true. That position is not necessary. It can save considerable money. It can save another political appointment position. It would not hurt the Canadian labour movement at all to know that its concerns on health, unemployment insurance, all these issues were being looked after by the minister who administers those programs.
What we have now is a minister in HRD who says he will not talk to the president of the Canadian Labour Congress. What is the other minister supposed to do? Ask him please to talk? It is his job to talk. One wonders where the Liberals are coming from on this. It seems to me that they must have more positions to fill, more favours to hand out than they have positions available and so they created another.
In order to look after the labour movement it is not necessary to have that position. That is why our proposal would eliminate it. It would save the taxpayers considerable dollars and would still allow the labour market to function very well.