Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of Motion No. 9, which will amend Bill C-23 in clause 33 by replacing lines 15 to 17 on page 19 with the following:
While exercising any authority under the act, an inspector shall make all reasonable efforts to be accompanied by a member of a health and safety committee or an environment committee whose sphere of activity is affected by the authority exercised by the inspector, and the inspector may also be accompanied by any other person chosen by the inspector.
I guess this is very self-explanatory. What we are calling for is that when the inspection of a facility or a site is underway by the commission that somebody from the health and safety committee or the environmental committee of the working people on site be allowed whenever possible to accompany the inspector to provide the inspector with perhaps insight which the inspector would not have.
Obviously when someone is working full time in a workplace they have a great deal of knowledge of who they are working with and a great deal of knowledge about some of the problems they are working under, some of the opportunities the company has and as
well as some of the areas that may not be looked at by an inspector who may have other commitments and may be rushing through it. At least somebody will be there to accompany this person. I am not saying he or she should be instructing or advising the inspector but at least provide a balance which is what we need. We need a balance to this kind of system in Canada.
We are very supportive of this amendment and are asking members to consider that because it is very important to the safety of workers on the sites. We have had support from the workers in the nuclear industry on this issue. We have had the support of the trade union movement across Canada with respect to this amendment. Therefore we are asking the government to favourably consider this amendment which would, in effect, make the inspection system more efficient, safer and obviously more productive and helpful to those concerned.