Mr. Speaker, usually we can blame our colleagues, but I think in this instance the gallery is filling with people in expectation of the budget. I appreciate the circumstances.
There is another very important aspect to what I did in the past in terms of the union environment I worked in. We had sort of a forerunner exercise which dealt with the environment in environmental committees and joint union and management committees. I became quite active in all of that because if everyone in the workplace is not on board we certainly cannot achieve or obtain the results we seek.
This became the basic building block in terms of bringing new practises into the forestry industry to introduce such things as proper treatments around stream sites, proper road construction, proper watershed management, and those kinds of things.
I recognize that there are very good workplaces and there are very bad workplaces. I like to think I worked in some very good workplaces.
We have to think about what the legislation is all about. Whose interest is at stake here? It is important to recognize that the public interest is at stake. We do not want to replicate what we have had up until now in many jurisdictions in Canada where the labour environment has led us to strikes or lockouts and to very insoluble power gains.
The community I live in is subject right now to a seven month strike or lockout, whatever we want to call it, at the Fletcher Challenge pulp mill. It looks intractable. It has a lot to do with the economics of business and some very important issues which divide union and management.
There has to be a better way. Although I recognize the bill deals with a specific federal jurisdiction issue, and not an area of provincial jurisdiction, certainly is not a breath of fresh air in this regard.
Will the bill create harmonious relationships? I do not believe there is anything in the new bill that will come anywhere near to accomplishing that objective. Does it ensure against any stoppages en route to the port facilities? No, it does not. There is nothing in the bill that deals with anything of the kind.
What we have is one more vague and ambiguous labour law that will lead to further investor uncertainty, which we do not need, and does nothing to create a harmonious relationship. I find this to be very contradictory or very ironic, given that we were in the House yesterday speaking about the multilateral agreement on investment which, if we listen to the members on the government side of the House, is intended to lead to investor confidence.
We cannot have contradictory philosophical underpinnings, but time after time we are seeing no philosophical or principled underpinning to any of the government actions. Whether it is a multilateral agreement on investment, labour legislation, fisheries legislation or aboriginal affairs, it is always the same thing. It is the Liberal fudge. That is what we are seeing.
When it comes to the Canada Labour Relations Board that is revamped and renamed under the bill, I hoped we would have seen something invigorating, something refreshing, something in tune with the times, something accountable, maybe even something elected or democratically arrived at.
What do we have here? We have one significant change. We agree that a 10 year appointment is too long. An appointment is probably inappropriate but the timeframe was certainly wrong. Ten years have been brought down to five. We certainly concur with that part of the legislation, but it is not going very far when we look at the length and breadth of the bill.
The labour relations board will have some basic powers. It is a quasi-judicial board. It is a board with a lot of power. The flexibility is so great that it leads to uncertainty about what it might or might not do.
The fact that board members are appointed by cabinet tells me that it can be skewed in any philosophical direction the cabinet wishes. There will be three members from management and three members from union. That is not much of a guideline when we think about how government can fulfil its agenda simply through the appointment process. We have seen it before and we know we will see it again from this government.
We know who appoints them. Do we know how much power they have? Yes, we do. The board can actually order an employer to release to a union representative a list of the names and addresses of employees who work off site. I like to think that my privacy and the privacy of Canadians is more valuable than to allow this non-accountable appointed board to overrule my privacy.
Another point concerns me. It has to do with the interpretation of representation. We know that is also left to labour.