Mr. Speaker, I am happy to speak in support of the back to work legislation before the House today.
I have been across the table from unions some 15 years or 16 years negotiating labour agreements. I have been involved in arbitrations. I have been through strikes, walkouts and lockouts. I hope to correct some of the inaccuracies members of the Liberal Party are creating in the House.
It is necessary to say that we have today is no different from what we have seen for some years now. It is called a lack of leadership, a lack of positioning on issues. Whether it is at a negotiating table or whether it is in the House of Commons it is plainly a lack of strategic planning.
In the discussions on Kyoto, global warming, our leader came into the House and articulated a plan, a position. The Minister of the Environment was awestruck, quite frankly. She did not even understand what he was talking about. That is a lack of leadership from the Liberal government.
We look at the postal strike today. We look at the Canada pension plan where the government does not have a clue what it is doing. Royal commissions, which were poorly implemented, were disregarded to some extent once recommendations were made. What we have is lack of leadership.
Recently a member talked about all the good things the government was doing because now somebody is suffering was quite appalling. I will agree, for the first time in my life, with one of the members from the separatist group that the postal workers should not be on trial. It should be the government.
The strike started on November 18. Now it is December 2, some 13 days later, and it is still going on. It will continue for a day or so. It will take that time to get through the Senate and implemented.
How can the government stand in the House today and says it is essential to get back to work all of a sudden? It has only been seven months.
I hear that charities are losing money. As my colleague from Prince George—Bulkley Valley says, we have been in the House for weeks telling government members that. All of a sudden the light comes on in a dim room and they see they need labour legislation.
Every day in the House for weeks we have been talking about dozens of charities that will have problems. We have been talking about newspapers, periodicals and magazines that rely on the mail. We have been talking about jobs that will be lost at this time of year in particular. We have talked about human cost. We have talked about the fact that this is the fourth strike in 10 years and that they had to be legislated back to work. This is not a surprise. Yet there is a substantive lack of a strategic plan in the organization. The government is responsible for today's postal service.