Mr. Speaker, to begin with I would like to describe my riding because it is important to this debate.
Nanaimo—Alberni stretches right across the centre of Vancouver Island. We have fisheries, we have forestry and we have retirement. In the centre, Port Alberni, which is largely forestry oriented, a strong labour town. It is a town with heart. It is a town which has grown through the labour movement. It used to be a strong NDP community. Now it is a strong Reform community.
My background is that of a professional forester. I worked in the forest industry for 25 years. Yes, I was on the management side but labour and management together built a good union and a good foundation for that town.
Under this legislation a union could be certified with less than 50% of the employees being in favour of it. Frankly, it is nuts. I can see that members opposite are agreeing with me.
It seems to fit into the Liberal idea of what democracy is. If we can get about a third of the people, that is democracy and we will go with it. Unfortunately that does not work in the rest of Canada.
I am quite amazed at this government. Where are the Ontario Liberals? There are strong unions within Ontario. The auto workers come to mind.
I am amazed that this legislation has been allowed to get this far without Ontario labour unions being up in arms. They should be solidly against this legislation, and I am sure they are.
Members opposite are sitting there trying to decide why the labour unions are in favour of it when they are not. They are clearly in a dilemma. It is most interesting, in 25 minutes we are going to have a budget debate. I point out that labour unions are well paid people.
It is the taxpaying public. You should hear them muttering over there, Mr. Speaker. It is very difficult for most Canadians to hear because they sound like hens in the hen house busy cackling away.
It is about investment. Investment in B.C. requires a solid base. There cannot be a government that ignores unions, that ignores the investment potential of any province, be it Ontario, B.C. or Alberta, because it will be at its peril. In fact, in my home province of B.C. we are in difficulty because the NDP provincial government has tried that. It is now having great difficulty getting foreign investment.
This bill died in the Senate, which I am sure most Canadians will understand. However, the Senate does have its purpose. It killed this bill. It killed it for a reason. The reason was it did not work. So the new bill came in, and what have we got? Very much of the same type of legislation. It is a gloss over of the old type of legislation. I suspect that if this goes to the Senate it is not going to go anywhere either.
This government has to realize that it has to listen up. Even the Senate cannot take this type of legislation. But it is going to try it again, to keep pushing. Maybe if it pushes it harder it will go through again. It is not going to work.
This government has tried it on a number of types of legislation. Look at endangered species last time in the last Parliament. It did not go through. Why? Members on the government side could not vote for it. Look at the conference on global warming in Kyoto. Talk about a fiasco because this government did not have its groundwork in order. This is typical of this bill. Government has not done its homework. When other countries get together, where is Canada? We do not have our act together. We have not done our homework, very similar to this bill.
I suggest this bill needs major refurbishment and hopefully this government will listen up and do it before it introduces it again.