Debates of Feb. 10th, 1998

Final Offer Arbitration In Respect Of West Coast Ports Operations Act

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Madam Speaker, as I understand Bill C-233, the Minister of Labour would have the authority, without coming back to the House of Commons for any debate, to suspend the right to strike or lockout in the west coast ports or, where a strike or lockout has occurred, to direct the parties back to work. Then any outstanding differences would be settled by final offer selection and the findings of the arbitrator would be binding without any recourse to appeal.

That much seems straightforward. The bill makes the argument that the movement of goods to market through our west coasts ports is so critical to the nation's well-being that workers in that sector should not have the right to withhold their services if negotiations break down.

Stripped down to its basics, that is the essence of the bill. I am happy to rise today to speak against it on behalf of the New Democratic Party and on behalf of working people everywhere for whom free collective bargaining is their only avenue of recourse if they ever hope to elevate their standards of wages and working conditions.

Elements of the right wing in this country have tried to take away workers' right to strike for years. It is an ongoing battle. This is only one in a serious of attacks on worker rights that we have seen from the Reform Party. I do not what it is about fair wages and worker rights that so offends the members of the Reform Party, but bill after bill and motion after motion submitted by them seeks to strip away the most basic fundamental rights and freedoms that we as Canadians have put in place in the interests of fairness and justice for working men and women in this country.

Since ancient times people without power in the traditional sense have been using the tactic of withholding their services as a bargaining tool to achieve their objectives without resorting to violence. In ancient Greece the playwright Lysistrata tells us that the women in that community were so sick of their husbands warmongering and pillaging expeditions that they withheld their services from their mates until the men would listen to reason. The author tells us that before long the front of the men's togas look like tents pitched in the desert. Before long the collective action taken by the women began to have the desired effect. The men were willing to sit down and accept the counsel of their partners and things gradually returned to normal relations much to the relief of all concerned. That may be the first recorded strike in known history.

My point is that the right to withhold services is a legitimate and peaceful means of protest. It is one of our most basic rights and freedoms as working people. The New Democratic Party caucus is opposed to any legislation that would erode that fundamental right.

We heard a great deal about final offer selection during the recent postal strike. The Reform Party critic at that time was arguing that all future negotiations between Canada Post and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers should be settled by final offer selection. It seems they want everything settled by final offer selection. They have such confidence in the process.

I do not want to burst anyone's bubble but there is nothing magic about final offer selection or any type of binding third party arbitration. There is certainly nothing new about it. The fact is final offer selection is of very limited value to labour relations practitioners, as was very capably explained by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Labour. It has great limitations in what it can do to resolve a round of bargaining that has reached impasse.

Negotiators already have the option to use final offer selection in any round of bargaining they see fit. As such it becomes another tool in the tool chest for negotiators to use. But we do not need legislation to voluntarily stipulate ourselves to some form of binding arbitration because that option already exists.

It is interesting to note that final offer selection has its origins in major league baseball where it is still used largely today. It is hardly in an industrial setting but it is useful to look at their experience in major league sports.

The only fair and useful way to use final offer selection is if the items in dispute are very simple and straightforward, as the parliamentary secretary pointed out. For instance, if all that is left on the table are the monetary issues, the money matters, then there is some value in putting your final offer forward and the selector will choose either one or the other.

It is generally agreed that FOS process is heavily biased toward the employer when dealing with any matters other than money. For example, it would be very unlikely for workers to achieve any type of non-monetary gains such as changes to work rules, the introduction of new benefits, a language that might recognize family leave or any clause that would be difficult for the arbitrator to weight against a cash offer from the employer.

Arbitrators, like judges, are very much creatures of past practice and precedence. They are reluctant to break new ground with their rulings. They feel, quite correctly, that new and innovative approaches to industrial relations should be arrived at through negotiations, not through any kind of imposed settlement.

Therefore in a case involving complicated non-monetary issues, the arbitrator in all likelihood would rule in favour of the employer. The employees would never achieve clauses that were important to them and having lost the right to strike they would not be able to apply further pressure in the form of withholding their services.

I have tried to explain what I do not like about final offer selection and I would like to spend the last few minutes I have explaining what I specifically do not like about Bill C-233.

In the province of Manitoba where I am from we actually had final offer selection legislation for a number of years. As a labour relations practitioner, as a union representative I had the occasion to not only follow that legislation very carefully but to actually use it in my own collective bargaining.

The actual fact is in Manitoba FOS was used very sparingly. In fact the Manitoba labour relations board received only 97 applications in all the time that it was legislation in that province. Of those 97 applications only seven were ever ruled on by an FOS selector or arbitrator. Four went to the union package and three were in favour of the company in those rulings. In the vast majority of cases, 72 in all, the application was withdrawn because the parties returned to the bargaining table and found a satisfactory resolution by more conventional means.

This illustrates my first criticism of Bill C-233, that nowhere in the proposed legislation are the parties encouraged to continue meeting to resolve their differences after the FOS process had begun. As I say, in Manitoba this led to a satisfactory resolve in a large majority of the cases.

Also in Manitoba either the employer or the union could make application to the minister of labour if they wished to use the FOS process. The minister would then order a supervised vote of the employees in the bargaining unit to determine if it was their wish to conclude this round of bargaining by final offer selection.

Bill C-233 never asks the parties. It is the minister involved who would impose his or her will on the two parties involved in the negotiations.

Also the Manitoba legislation stipulated that the parties could only apply for FOS between two windows: either between 30 and 60 days prior to the expiry of a collective agreement, or after a strike had gone on for 60 days or more. This was crafted with a specific idea in mind, that it is far better for the two parties to use their normal avenues of free collective bargaining as much as possible without third party interference.

So only if the two parties agreed to FOS 30 days or 60 days before the expiry date, or only if the two parties had already been on strike for over 60 days would the legislation even be relevant.

We in the New Democratic Party are very critical of any labour legislation that imposes binding time limits, such as clause 9(3) of Bill C-233. It not only has binding time limits, but it has severe penalties if anybody misses those time limits. We believe that this flies in the face of the deemed fairness provisions that most labour relations practitioners are striving to achieve. In that sense we are critical of both the tone and the content of clause 9(3).

In summary, Bill C-233 is an intrusive and heavy handed proposal that has little or no merit in the labour relations environment of a 1990s democracy. It is poorly crafted and it is riddled with serious flaws and omissions. Even if it were better written, members of this House should speak against it because it does nothing to further the cause of harmonious labour relations in this country. It would further erode workers rights by stripping away that most basic and fundamental right which is the right to withhold your service as a peaceful bargaining tactic.

Final offer selection is a little used bargaining strategy because it is of little value and it is of questionable merit. It is available and free to use for those who choose to use it, but it is certainly not necessary to impose a heavy handed bill such as Bill C-233.

[Jim Gouk, Reform, West Kootenay—Okanagan, BC]

Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to speak on Bill C-233 in support of my colleague from Wetaskiwin. He has put a great deal of thought and a great deal of time into this problem, not only for the west coast ports but for other matters which may later be addressed by this as well.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Labour said that she was very puzzled by this. I will try to clear up some of those things that seem to puzzle her.

She said that final offer arbitration is very one sided and results in one side being very bitter about the settlement. I suggest that she ask the Canadian Union of Postal Workers what it thought of her government's settlement which used a different method. She should ask if the postal workers are bitter.

She may be even more puzzled by something that is in keeping with the comments of the NDP member who just spoke. He spoke about how this is a right wing plot by the Reform Party. He also mentioned that final offer arbitration was used for a number of years in Manitoba. But he did not mention that it was put in by the NDP government which is kind of to the left. It is not right wing like Reform.

This method was taken out by the Conservative Party. That party sits to the right of the Reform Party here in this House. The NDP members who sit on the far left of the House are saying that this is a terrible right wing plot, but it was put in by them and it was taken out by the Conservative Party whose members sit on the righthand side of the Reform Party. If the parliamentary secretary was not really puzzled before, that must really get her spinning.

A number of misconceptions need to be cleared up. The NDP member has used this one before, as have many others. It is the old sabre rattle about how Reform is trying to take away the rights of workers to collective bargaining with bills like Bill C-233.

For someone who says he has been involved in labour negotiations for a number of years, to steal the words of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Labour, I am really puzzled as to what he thinks collective bargaining is. Strikes and lockouts are not collective bargaining. Strikes and lockouts are the result of the failure of collective bargaining.

Collective bargaining involves three things. It involves negotiation. It involves conciliation. And it involves mediation. When those things fail, the company locks out the workers, or the workers withdraw their services from the company. That is not collective bargaining. It is a failure of collective bargaining.

The strike or lockout is a dispute settlement mechanism. It is a form of coercion used by one party against the other to drive them back to one of the three real parts of collective bargaining: negotiate, conciliate, mediate. That is collective bargaining. We have no intention of taking collective bargaining away from anyone.

Both members who spoke in opposition to the bill suggested final offer arbitration rarely needs to be used. Consider Canada Post which was mentioned by both members. There was a strike in 1987 and the government legislated the workers back to work. The next strike was in 1991 and the government legislated them back to work. The next time up was 1997 and the government legislated them back to work. There is a bit of a pattern here, is there not?

The early 1970s saw the first ever strike of air traffic controllers. The government legislated them back to work. The second time around the workers took a strike vote. They had not yet gone on strike but the government legislated them back before they went out and imposed a settlement on them. That does not make for a happy side. And the parliamentary secretary to the minister was worried that final offer arbitration would make one side bitter. I was an air traffic controller in those days and I can tell her that the government's methods made one side very bitter.

Then a ports strike crippled the country in 1994. The government legislated them back to work. We had a rail strike in 1995 and the government legislated them back to work. There is a long history of the government intervening in labour disruptions in this country.

Then the problem comes in. We have already heard figures mentioned about the cost of the ports strike. The more recent Canada Post strike cost Canada Post in loss of revenues, workers in loss of wages. The NDP is so concerned about the rights of workers. Lots of workers suffered financial devastation themselves through loss of wages. The union lost a tremendous amount of money paying out the strike pay and the cost of the negotiations that were going on with this process.

Charities and mail dependent business collectively lost somewhere between $1 billion and $2 billion in the last postal strike because the government failed to act on a prompt basis. And it failed to have a method in place like the one proposed by my colleague in Bill C-233 to deal with the problem in the west coast ports.

At the port of Vancouver in my province of British Columbia, we used to have among other things, grain, a tremendous number of shipments of potash. A lot of the potash from Saskatchewan does not go to Vancouver any more. It goes to Portland, Oregon. Portland, Oregon said to ship it there instead, that they would build the facilities and they would guarantee it would be delivered on time.

We are losing our ability to trade internationally because the government has failed to put in place some method of settlement that is fair to both sides. How can it possibly be one sided when each side has the exact same power as the other, no more and no less?

The member from the NDP said that this is terrible because it will not allow the parties to reach a settlement. They could both go with the same settlement. They would say that they did not mean it to go that far. All they would have to do is to go to the arbitrator making the decision with their common presentation and they would have a settlement.

What this in fact does is it puts out a message to both the employer and the employees that if one side's demands are outrageous and the other side's demands are not, they will lose. That is the way it should be. That is reasonable and proper.

Under the current system, workers lose wages and the company loses revenue. The workers and the company collectively lose business which means jobs and this devastates the national economy.

In the case of the port we talked about the impact going all the way back to the prairie grain farmers. It affected me in my riding 400 miles inland from the port in British Columbia. In my riding I have a mill and a smelter that almost got shut down because all the ore was locked up in the port.

This is something that cannot go on. If the government thinks that we can have a system that allows people to willy-nilly go on strike, which has a devastating impact on the national economy and of people totally unconnected to the job, then it has to rethink its priorities.

Let us talk about a corner store. The workers in that corner store say “Give us a dollar or we are on strike” and the owner says “No, I am only giving you 50 cents”. They go on strike. What is the impact? It is an economic tug of war between the employer and the employees.

Who else is hurt? Some of the neighbours are inconvenienced because they will have to go to a different store. The families of those workers are going to be harmed but it is the impact directly related to their families' jobs. There may be a little economic spin-off in the immediate area if it happens to be a big store. Primarily it is right there located within that worksite.

In the case of the Vancouver port, there can be an impact felt 2,000 miles away by people totally unrelated to the port, thousands of different people in all kinds of different industries, such as farming or other businesses across the country. The government does not only have the right to act, it has a duty and a requirement to act.

This bill tries to address a real problem that the government itself has already recognized by intervening time after time after time when these types of situations have come up in the national interest.

Now is the time for the government to recognize the old system is not working in the interests of Canadians and to say that it is time for a little evolution to take place in collective bargaining.

Collective bargaining will still exist. All we will be doing is putting in a more effective final dispute settlement mechanism. If the government cannot see that, it is time it moved aside and allowed someone else to do it.

[Dale Johnston, Reform, Wetaskiwin, AB]

Madam Speaker, I was listening very closely to some of the comments from the parliamentary secretary and those made by the labour critic from the New Democratic Party. I think it is necessary to correct some misconceptions they have about this process.

The parliamentary secretary said that in her opinion fair and free collective bargaining has always been the best way to arrive at a settlement, or words to that effect.

Certainly we agree. We are not advocating a heavy-handed approach here at all. It is most important to note that the process applies equally to the employer and to the employee. It is a tool that can be used equally by them.

I have said many times before in the House that final offer selection would take the place of very heavy-handed back to work legislation. I see it as a real step forward.

Back to work legislation has become sort of a crutch whereby management and labour do not feel compelled to earnestly bargain, to get right down to cases and to settle the disputes themselves. Of course any dispute that can be settled between the parties is absolutely the best way to go.

We are offering final offer selection as a final step that would take the place of having to go through the trauma, so to speak, of a strike or a lockout and then having parliament legislate them back to work.

This tool can be used equally by both parties. If it were in legislation both parties would realize it was the final step and would bargain accordingly. They would get right down to the last parts of the case.

My colleague in the NDP actually made the case for final offer selection in Manitoba. He said that knowing the legislation was there 93 of 97 cases resolved themselves because the parties came to an agreement. That is exactly how we want it to happen. For those 4% to 5% that cannot come to an agreement, someone has to make the agreement for them.

My colleague in the Reform Party from British Columbia made an excellent point. When the local grocer has a work disruption, whether it is a strike or lockout, certainly it affects a few families that like to deal at the particular store. It also affects the employees and the owner of the store. However people in the city do not starve because they have alternative places to buy their groceries.

Canadians, particularly in the western part of Canada, do not have an alternate west coast port to use. It is the only game in town and the people who run the west coast port are very much aware of it. It is no coincidence that work disruptions take place at a time of year when western farmers are trying to market their crops through the port.

The parliamentary secretary says that this process will not work. There are many precedents in Canadian history to show that it does work. In the case of legislating parties back to work, all that accomplishes is to reluctantly have the parties go back to the job. It does not resolve any of the outstanding issues. Those outstanding issues are yet to be resolved and in many cases are done through the exact method we are suggesting here.

It is most unfortunate the bill is not a votable motion. I would have been very pleased to have seen how the House would have voted on it.

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Thibeault)]

There being no further members rising for debate and the motion not being designated as a votable item, the time provided for the consideration of Private Members' Business has now expired and the order is dropped from the order paper.

Would there be unanimous consent, since it is 10 minutes before the hour we were to adjourn tonight, for the House to proceed to the adjournment motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

A motion to adjourn the House under Standing Order 38 deemed to have been moved.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Madam Speaker, on October 22, I asked the Minister of Human Resources Development whether the Liberal government was going to restore hope to young Canadians by making access to post-secondary education a priority.

His response was that he was going to give students as many options as possible. The only options he appears to be offering our young people are exorbitant fees and a future fraught with insecurity.

This government has not done enough for our young people. Over the past four years, all Canadians have suffered from the Liberals cuts. Among those most heavily affected by these unfeeling Liberal measures were young Canadians, with an average debt load of $25,000 at the end of their post-secondary education. As if these unbelievable debts were not enough, they find themselves jobless, with an unemployment rate as high as 16.5%.

Since the government introduced its youth employment strategy, there are 48,300 more young people unemployed. Clearly the Liberals have missed the boat as far as young Canadians are concerned.

The situation is so critical that 78% of young Quebeckers believe that poverty has increased in our society. The majority of them even think that the worse is yet to come. This government has taken away from our young people the most important thing they need to succeed: hope.

Moreover, the problem of inequality in our society is growing every day. A minority of people benefit from the new global economy, whereas most of us live in insecurity. This insecurity is most deeply felt by our young people. High unemployment, an education system accessible only to the rich, a lack of hope and a deep feeling of insecurity, that is what the Liberals have given our young people.

Young Canadians are our future. An investment in our young people would mean a bright future for all Canadians. That is why we need to put more money into the post-secondary education system. More money for post-secondary education means a better education for our young people and a system that would be accessible to all.

Last week, I met with students in New Brunswick. They are deeply concerned about the exodus of our young people in Atlantic Canada who go west because they cannot find jobs in their region. The enormous debt load is also one of their main concerns, as it is for everybody.

This government must start listening to young Canadians and respond to their expectations and concerns. Government programs, such as the millennium scholarship fund, must be there to help those who need them. But that is not enough. The government must help all young Canadians by increasing transfers to the provinces, to ensure that tuition fees stay at a reasonable level.

The actions of the Liberal government have demonstrated that it is more concerned with corporate interests than with the future of our young people. We need a government that will make young Canadians its priority, that will invest in their future by investing in our post-secondary education system.

The Liberal government must start working for all Canadians to build a secure future for our young people and for the whole country.

[Julian Reed, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to Minister for International Trade]

Madam Speaker, I certainly agree with my hon. friend that the millennium scholarship fund announced by the prime minister will become a cornerstone. It will assist those students who not only are most in need but also qualify for post-secondary education.

I should point out to my hon. friend that the Government of Canada does not set tuition fees. The whole educational process is the purview of the provinces.

We play a major role in helping students with costs and in facilitating access to post-secondary education through the health and social transfer.

In the 1997 budget the government increased federal support for higher education and skills by improving interest relief and tax measures such as the period of interest relief and by pursuing with interested provinces an income related repayment scheme.

We introduced special opportunity grants for students with permanent disabilities, high need part time students and female doctoral students in certain fields of study. With all the financial pressure that has been on the government over the years we recognized the need for post-secondary education support.

The 1997 Speech from the Throne announced the government's commitment to help youth access education and to reduce barriers to post-secondary education through further changes to the Canada student loans program. It increased assistance for students with dependants—

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Thibeault)]

The hon. member's time has expired.

[Lynn Myers, Liberal, Waterloo—Wellington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the Asian crisis underscores the extent to which the economies of the world are interconnected. It dramatically points our the extent to which globalization of the World Trade Organization and world trade in general is now in place.

Canada has felt the effects of the Asian crisis. Even the Governor of the Bank of Canada recently stated that the fallout from Asia would no doubt have a dampening effect on Canadian output.

I am pleased, however, to see other more positive developments that will hopefully will work to mitigate this effect. Growth in Canada's major trading partners outside Asia have been stronger than expected. With low inflation, falling government deficits and declining unemployment, Canada is now in much better shape to withstand such shocks as the Asian crisis. This is certainly the case more so today than it was during the Mexican peso crisis of two years ago.

My concern, however, is the impact the Asian crisis could have on Canadian firms doing business in that part of the world. Some international economists have warned that the recent crisis in the Asian markets could have a negative impact on foreign companies doing business there.

What can Canada do to mitigate any negative impact? Are we continuing to get countries in the Asia-Pacific to open their countries to Canadian companies? I ask the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Trade to respond.

[Julian Reed, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to Minister for International Trade]

Madam Speaker, I say to my hon. friend that it has never been more important to encourage these economies to become more open and, if I may use the word proudly, liberal in their trading practices. I am pleased to say we are now getting signals from Asia that the countries are moving to further modernize their economies and overcome these effects.

The problem of the financial downturn for Asia was partly the lack of transparency in business practices and in government regulation. At a time of dynamic economic growth across Asia and in an environment of readily available loans, a pattern of imprudent borrowing and lending has developed with a concentration of investment in overheated property markets. This did nothing to contribute to the productive base of the affected countries.

A more transparent system of controls, accounting and financial statements could have alerted national authorities, overseas lenders and international financial institutions earlier to the true underlying picture and perhaps could have prevented the crisis from developing. Given the current realities of globalization, Canada can promote the return to stable economic growth, enhanced trade and future prosperity by encouraging increased transparency and liberalization. Moreover, we lessen in the future the probability of financial shocks of this nature.

By supporting trade liberalization we improve the climate for Canadian firms seeking to do business in Asia. This is what Canada, its G-7 partners, the IMF and other international financial institutions are striving to achieve—

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Thibeault)]

I am afraid I have to interrupt again.

[Jean-Guy Chrétien, Bloc, Frontenac—Mégantic, QC]

Madam Speaker, on November 24, 1997, I asked the Hon. Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food if he intended to protect Canadian dairy farmers against the import of increasing amounts of the cream and sugar mixture commonly known as butter oil.

At the time, the secretary of state for Agriculture and Agri-Food stood up to thank me, of course, for my question and say he was doing his best. That was on November 24, one month before Christmas.

Today, nearly two months after Christmas, many weeks have gone by and it is clear that butter oil imports to Canada are doubling every year. To preserve our so-called supply-managed industries, that is to say dairy, eggs and poultry, when the WTO agreements, formerly known as GATT, were signed in December 1993, tariffs were set so high that they would discourage any country from exporting supply-managed items to Canada, including dairy products.

A number of exporters affiliated with Unilever met with Revenue Canada senior officials to discuss the tariff schedule and numbers. With the blessing of Revenue Canada, they were told: “Put in only 49% butter, melt it, add 51% sugar, and you will pay a 7% entry tariff instead of 284%”.

That is how things are done under this Liberal government and our farmers, our dairy producers, have seen their milk quotas drop by 3% last year. That is a 3% decrease in net profits.

Very recently, the Dairy Farmers of Canada held their annual convention in Vancouver, where the minister took the trouble to meet with them at the end of their meeting. The poor guy said he was disappointed by the position taken by the Dairy Farmers of Canada, and he asked the revenue department to set up some kind of tribunal, a so-called advisory tribunal, to review the tariff on butter oil. What a disgrace.

In one, two or three years from now, this advisory body will probably submit its report to the revenue department, which will review it under the leadership of the revenue minister, but without too much pressure from the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food. We will end up with another agreement we will have to sign since, in 1999, in 18 months' time, we will have to embark upon a new negotiation process to renew this WTA agreement.

I have always been told that, in law, one cannot do indirectly what one cannot do directly. Dairy products were subject to a quota—

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Thibeault)]

I am sorry, but the hon. member's time has expired. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food.

[John Harvard, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food]

Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his question. I appreciate the fact that he shares the concerns of the dairy industry as we all do on this side of the House.

I want to make very clear that the government recognizes the dairy industry's concerns about increasing imports of butteroil-sugar blends. However, while there have been efforts to address the concerns of the dairy farmers of Canada, it has not been possible to find a solution that would not—and I would emphasize the word not—would not contravene Canadian law and our international rights and obligations.

Butteroil-sugar blends are part of a larger issue of imports of dairy blends outside tariff rate quotas. The government shares the DFC's concerns about the impact of these blends on dairy producers.

Therefore the government has referred the broader issue to the Canadian International Trade Tribunal, CITT, for a thorough examination of ways we could address these concerns in a manner consistent with our international rights and obligations.

The government is very disappointed that dairy farmers have indicated they do not intend to make their arguments to the CITT. We hope this decision will be reconsidered. The CITT is to report the results of its study to the government by July 1, 1998.

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Thibeault)]

The motion to adjourn the House is deemed to have been adopted. Accordingly, this House stands adjourned until tomorrow at 2 p.m., pursuant to Standing Order 24(1).

(The House adjourned at 7.06 p.m.)