Mr. Speaker, the official opposition has put forward motions that would give the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development a role in the remuneration of board members, the establishment of regional board offices and the tabling of the annual report with respect to the information obtained under the Corporations and Labour Unions Returns Act.
Bill C-66 reflects the consensus of the labour management working group and the recommendations of the Sims task force with respect to the establishment of a new representational Canada Industrial Labour Relations Board.
The new board is structured to ensure effective and efficient administration of the code and to better reflect the labour and management communities it serves across the country. With respect to the remuneration of board members, as is the case with other governor in council appointees, remuneration and fees will be set by the governor in council.
GIC positions are evaluated using a position classification plan which ensures that appropriate relativities are maintained between different levels of responsibility not only within a given organization but between organizations. It allows for outside and inside compensation relativity comparisons and application of the principle of salary equity. Such factors could not be ensured if the remuneration of the board members were to be determined through a different process from other governor in council appointees.
Bill C-66 as drafted authorizes the board to establish regional offices that the chairperson considers necessary for the proper performance of the board's mandate. I fail to see any rationale for giving a standing committee of the House a role in determining what is strictly an operational issue.
Motion No. 50, the filing of the CALURA report with respect to the Corporations and Labour Unions Returns Act. There is a requirement in the act for the minister responsible to table a report in Parliament. Standing Order 32(5) already provides that where a report is provided to Parliament pursuant to a statutory obligation it is deemed to have been referred to the appropriate committee.
Motion No. 6, expenses of part time members. My colleague in the Reform Party seeks to introduce in the code the cost recovery concept, but only with respect to expenses incurred by the part time representative members of the board. To require the parties to reimburse the expenses of the part time representative members would impose a financial burden on small employers as well as on individual employees who wish to exercise their fundamental rights or seek redress of unfair labour practices. Such financial barriers would limit the benefits of this new representational structure of the board to those parties who can afford it.
Motion No. 9, revocation of employer representative. The official opposition is also asking to modify the provision in Bill C-66 which would allow the board at the request of one or more employers to revoke the designation of an employer representative in the longshoring industry if the board is satisfied that the employer representative is no longer qualified to act in that capacity.
This provision was included in Bill C-66 in order to address the current lack of explicit statutory authority to change employer representatives, an issue which was brought to the attention of the task force by the employers active in the longshoring industry in St. Lawrence River ports. No views or positions were put forward by the unions involved in the geographical certification regime in those ports with respect to this provision. Quite frankly, we fail to understand the rationale for this motion.
Motion No. 45, certification as remedy. With respect to the motion by my colleague from the Reform Party to delete clause 46 of Bill C-66 which authorizes the Canada Industrial Relations Board to issue a certification order as remedy for employer unfair labour practices, I would like to underline once again that this is a recommendation of the task force. While in the majority of cases existing remedies in the code for unfair labour practices are sufficient to discourage violations or to redress illegitimate actions, in some cases employee efforts to unionize are met with vigorous employer opposition tactics such as firing of known union supporters.
Such illegitimate acts may not only put a chill on organizing efforts, they may make it impossible to measure union support because of workers' fears of retaliation. With the exception of the Alberta board, labour boards in Canada have the statutory discretion to certify an applicant trade union when employer tactics are such that the true wishes of the employee cannot be determined by holding a representation vote. Labour boards exercise this discretion cautiously and use certification to remedy only the most egregious cases of employer misconduct.
The board will retain the discretion to hold a representation vote in any application. However, it will have the means to remedy these exceptional cases where employer misconduct has made it impossible to determine the true wishes of the employees by holding a representation vote.
On a related issue, we have heard the view expressed that the Canada Labour Code should provide for a mandatory representation vote. I would like to point out that the Sims task force studied this issue in detail. The task force was not persuaded that the card base system is an ineffective way of gauging employee wishes with respect to certification applications. The task force found that
timeliness is important in dealing with certification applications and noted that the practical impediments to timely votes in the geographically extended federal jurisdiction and the cost of such votes cannot be ignored and concluded that no legislative amendment was warranted.
Motion No. 49 is with respect to off site workers. The Reform Party is also seeking to require the board to obtain the consent of individual off site workers prior to providing their names and addresses to an applicant trade union. This provision of the bill has been the subject of some controversy which has been fuelled primarily by a poor understanding of its purpose and scope.
Contrary to what some of it intimated, this provision is in no way intended to give trade unions physical access to the private homes of off site workers which without the workers' consent would clearly violate their rights to privacy.
As recommended by the task force, under this new provision the board will be responsible for determining under what circumstances the names and addresses of off site workers will be provided in order that the union may communicate with them by mail, by telephone or by electronic means. The board must specify in the order the conditions to be met by the trade union to ensure the protection of privacy and the safety of the employees concerned.
We ask the members to support clause 50 of Bill C-66. As drafted it strikes a fair balance between the rights of the off site workers to exercise their freedom of association and their rights to privacy and safety.
Motion No. 54 is with respect to transfer of appropriations. The Minister of Labour has put forward an amendment with respect to a transitional matter. Adoption of Motion No. 54 will allow unexpended appropriations for the current Canada Labour Relations Board to be transferred to the new board when it is established. This will permit the new board to be established without undue delay and ensure there is no interruption in the administration of part I of the Canada Labour Code.