Mr. Speaker, I would like to commend the hon. member for Wetaskiwin for his comments on this bill, as well as the hon. member for Calgary West who just outlined the problems with this bill.
I will focus my speech on an alternative and why I think this alternative can work. I understand that government members are arguing that it will not work. I will offer suggestions to them as to why it will work. It will save this country billions of dollars every year. I would ask them to listen carefully. They have probably heard about this in the House before. I am talking about final offer selection arbitration.
I practised labour law. Prior to that I worked in industrial relations for a forest products company where we faced these problems every day. For five years I was involved in the negotiating process.
To put it in a nutshell, final offer selection arbitration is when two parties, party A and party B , have both made their very best offer. They have come to an impasse. If they cannot reach a negotiated settlement the arbitrator is forced to pick only A or B , nothing in the middle. One of the two must be picked.
Final offer selection arbitration does not hamper the negotiating process. In fact it helps it. There will be more agreements negotiated between unions and employers with this type of a process than without. When all the benefits of this process are realized I believe it will be welcomed.
The parties know what will happen if they do not reach a negotiated settlement. They will come to the table with the most reasonable offer, an offer which is close to where it should be. Instead of coming to the table saying that they want $35 an hour when they would really settle for $20, they are going to start at a very reasonable settlement because they know that if they reach an impasse the arbitrator is forced to pick one or the other. If they are too far away from what really should be the appropriate settlement, the arbitrator is going to be forced to go the other way. That is fundamental.
I have heard criticisms from the government side saying that this is not just about money, that so many other issues are involved in negotiations. There is everything from medical, to pensions, to benefits, to working conditions, to hours and also to salaries and compensation. I would suggest to members on that side of the House that it is the entire package the arbitrator is forced to accept, either A or B , nowhere in between.
The union and the company comes to the table with a package. It is not strictly money we are talking about. Both parties will come to the table with a package that is very close to reasonable because obviously if they are at an impasse, they will want their package to be selected. If they are way out in left field or right field their package will not be selected.
Let me give an analogy of how well this works. The civil courts in British Columbia have somewhat of a similar system. The principle is the same on how it works. Two people who are going to sue each other file a lawsuit in the supreme court. Let us say someone sues someone else for $100,000. The person being sued disagrees and offers $60,000 to settle out of court. The parties get together before they go to trial and make offers back and forth. If they are unable to reach a settlement prior to going to court, then in the court the justice makes a decision and the party on the wrong side has to pay a premium of the court costs of the other party.
In other words, if the person who was being sued for $100,000 made an offer for $60,000 and it was not accepted, and the judge made a decision of $59,000, then because they did not accept that offer the other party would have to pay their court costs because they were right. I know I might be losing some people in this analogy but the bottom line is that it forces the lawyers when they are making their offers to be as reasonable as possible to what they think a judge would impose. By doing that they come very close together and quite often they settle. Exactly the same principle would work here in final offer selection arbitration.
By doing that the unions and the companies will come to the table with very reasonable packages because they do not want an offer imposed on them. Worse off, if their offer is so far out of range, they know that the arbitrator will be forced to select the other offer without question.
I would ask the government members to listen to this. Look at what happened just in the last year, the number of strikes we have had, the lost productivity and the lost opportunities for this country. It was in the billions of dollars.
We need to have legislation that would assist companies and unions into a negotiated settlement. I emphasize this because it does not take away anyone's right to a negotiated settlement. The only thing it changes in the whole process is the very last step of does an arbitrator impose a settlement if that situation is reached, or is there a mechanism in place.
This mechanism would force the arbitrator into choosing one or the other, as I have stated. Therefore, the parties would come together and it would be a better situation. It is such a simple system and would offer so much to our economy. Our economy is growing and it would grow that much quicker. The lost opportunity is in the billions of dollars.
I would ask members of the government to revisit this bill. It is amending the Canada Labour Code and the government has missed probably the one biggest thing that it could do to assist the unions, to assist companies and more importantly to assist taxpayers and Canadians to make sure that we are not losing this economic opportunity.
Instead, as we have heard from previous speakers, this is going against the principle of democracy with the secret ballots and replacement workers. It is beyond me why this government is addressing all these issues. It will be nice to find out what it is really up to.
Again, this is to offer a constructive alternative. The criticism from the government side is that this will not work because we are not just talking about money. I emphasize that this is not just about money. This final offer selection arbitration or whatever name we might want to give it is the entire package that the parties bring to the table. This principle has been tried in other systems. It has been proven that it works. It will force parties to come very close to the middle. I ask the government to take a look at this.