Mr. Speaker, I congratulate my colleague on his appointment as Minister of Labour.
Bill C-3, an act to amend the Canada Labour Code, is heading in the right direction. Certainly there is a lot of confusion under the circumstances where there is one group of people under two sets of labour legislation, provincial and federal.
With all due respect to the minister and his portfolio, we should be working toward a time when there simply is no federal labour portfolio. It is a duplication. I refer to the budget speech. The Minister of Finance, on page 9, talks about duplication of services and uses as an example meat inspectors, health inspectors and food inspectors.
This carries on into the Department of Labour and we should see a devolution of powers in all areas of labour from federal to provincial in order to downsize government, to get these decisions closer to the people and to make them more effective and more efficient. I am wondering why it would not apply right across the board. Atomic energy facilities are a place to start. I would like to see legislation move along that line so we could have provincial jurisdiction.
Duplicate departments create overbudensome bureaucracy and overlap that nobody needs, especially in such difficult fiscal times. Smaller government is something we should be looking at. I cannot help but reflect on the Government of Alberta in the 1950s and the 1960s under the guidance of Ernest Manning, recently deceased. He gave Albertans only essential government. Waste, inefficiency and duplicity were something he was ever vigilant of. I believe all governments can learn a great deal about effective government from the example set in Alberta during that time.
While the Reform Party generally agrees with the bill as set out by the minister, we will be contemplating amendments later on as the bill goes through this process. We would provide our qualified support at this time.