Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for York South—Weston does make a good point. In the last little while the speakers have all been from the Reform Party. Certainly the member for York South—Weston has spoken to this bill and my credit to him for that. I am sorry for making that impression.
It is interesting how many members from this side have chosen to speak to this important labour bill, the biggest changes to the labour code we are likely to see in this Parliament, and how so many people have talked about the need for balance in labour legislation. I will add my name to the list with my little story.
I was a member of the IWA labour union for some 10 years. I also spent an equivalent amount of time in management with the same union. In the course of that 20 year experience working in the logging industry, much of it in a unionized setting, at the end of my career when I started on this career, if we can call it that, we never in the company's history had a case of a grievance going to arbitration in all those years of work. I know what it is like to work with a unionized crew. All my crews were unionized.
The word balance is important. I sometimes wonder when legislation comes before the House of Commons if there would be a preamble to it that would describe for us what caused this legislation to be brought forward. In other words, what was behind this bill, who was behind it. What presentations were made to ministers or which pressure groups, which groups of people were behind this bill, were in favour of this bill and pushed this bill forward, these amendments, and where did the bill come from.
When I go through this bill and the summary of it to see what it is trying to accomplish and what the government says it is trying to accomplish, I do not see a balance as I had hoped to see in labour code changes in this country. I have seen too many headlines from newspapers talking about Liberal labour code betrayal, last call to stand against the labour code, new labour code rules benefit unions, and on and on. There has been a whole series of stories in the press and from people concerned basically with the balance.
I would like to speak a bit about the need for that balance and why I do not think this bill contains it. First, one of the sacred parts of the union movement is an ability to organize. It is an ability that the Reform Party has as one of its basic platform principles. It is the right for unions to organize, to strike peacefully, to go about their business of representing workers if those workers so ask them to. It is the basic policy of this party and I think of every party in the House.
But this labour code amendment changes the balance from a secret ballot registration on who would represent a person at the bargaining table to if a person even signs a card that they are interested in it, it is taken as a fait accompli. Worst yet, when a certification vote is taking place those names are circulated without the permission of the employees to whomever would like to organize a union or a shop.
Mr. Speaker, if you sign your name to it or if you vote in an honest election, that is fair game. But when your name is given out without your permission to other people to use, for mail outs, for telephone calls, for what could even amount to harassment at times, that is not right. I cannot support that portion of the bill.
There is also the huge issue of what we call remedial certification. In other words, if some employer breaks some technical portion of the certification process, in other words they put up a poster on the bulletin board and they should not have done it or they said something wrong in their company newsletter and somebody feels that it is causing an affront to the union organization movement, if this board decides that has happened, it is a done deal. They are unionized whether 10% wanted it or 15% or 39% or 49%. It is a done deal.
That is unfortunate, given that most workers would rather have an honest vote in an honest situation where they can bring forward their complaints and also bring forward their union certification process without fear of intimidation or harassment on either side. This tips it in my opinion to the wrong side.
The whole issue of how we settle strikes in an industry that has a monopoly is not addressed properly in this bill. There are some improvements from times past. For example, if a train load of grain is on its way to Vancouver, to my neck of the woods, this legislation gives a period that allows that grain to work through the system and get dumped in the terminal and shipped off. The trouble is that the following strike could go on indefinitely, holding grain producers and the country hostage while we wait for something to solve it.
Whether it is a postal strike, a grain handler strike or whatever it might be, we have seen too often when a monopoly is involved that we have needed an alternative way of settling those disputes.
The dispute settling mechanism we have put forward is a form of final offer binding arbitration that is fair to the producers, the workers, the Canadian economy and Canadians affected by whether or not they are in the industry. The legislation does not give us the option other than to come back here and go to legislation again as we did in the case of the recent postal strike.
It would be far better to have a permanent dispute settlement mechanism in place where there is a monopoly to protect all segments of society: workers, producers, consumers and the Canadian economy as a whole. It would be far better to do it that way rather than to do it piecemeal every time there is a significant strike or problem in any industry like that.
The bill eliminates the need for unions to report on their financial status in a meaningful way. It removes an important protection for workers who want to know where their dues are being spent. They send a significant amount of money to unions. Unions use that money in the ways they see fit to promote their union organizations. The real problem comes when there is no financial accountability.
Was the money spent to promote another union? Maybe that would be something they would approve of. Was it spent to support a political party? Who knows? We have seen ongoing court cases in the land of people who sent in their union dues only to find they were siphoned off and sent to a political party.
That money may not have been used to elect you, Mr. Speaker. It may not have been used to elect me. However it has been used to try to defeat certain candidates and to elect others. I grant they were largely unsuccessful but it is an affront to someone who is sending $30 or $40 a month to a union headquarters, assuming that it will be spent for proper purposes, only to find out it has been used in many ways to vote against the very things that might be promoted in the union.
In general there is a need for balance in the legislation. The balance between union rights is very important. As I mentioned the blue book refers to the principle of union rights to organize, to strike peacefully, to look after its members, as well as the rights of the Canadian economy, the right to secrecy and the right to protection of workers who do not want their funds misused. That kind of balance is not in the legislation.
It is too bad that privacy rights are not being looked after. It is too bad that final offer binding arbitration is not offered as an alternative in this package. While there are some improvements, they are not enough to garner the support of the Reform Party and certainly not enough to garner my vote when the bill comes up for vote.