Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege to address the House on Bill C-19, to amend part I of the Canada Labour Code. Some eloquent speeches were made this morning.
I could not help but think of an experience I had during the last election campaign. I went to a door that was answered by a young person. We started talking about the upcoming election. I asked him whether he would be voting this time. He said “Yes, this is the first time I will vote. I am proud of it. I really want to vote”.
We got talking about what the various parties represented. That young person was aware and thrilled about the ability of being able to vote. He was on fire because he wanted to get involved in the election. That right to vote is being denied in this legislation to the workers of Canada.
The purpose behind labour legislation is to create harmony between employers and employees, harmony that will result in increased productivity and greater efficiency and will create the goods and services we need. That is what this legislation is all about.
For some reason or other built into the legislation are not principles that create harmonization, not principles that create harmony in working together, but rather principles of confrontation, principles of invasion of privacy, principles of denial of the democratic process. It is an indictment of a government that proposes this kind of legislation.
It goes beyond simply denying a vote. It goes into the details of allowing a quasi-judicial board with no political or administrative accountability to do this. I read directly from the bill. “The board” that is the Canada Industrial Relations Board “may certify a trade union despite a lack of evidence of majority support”. Is this not absolutely amazing?
Imagine the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada saying that even though the people did not vote for the Liberals they would still be the government. It would be terrible. It is hard to imagine how anyone would dare to do such a thing.
Then it goes into substituting a card for a ballot. My hon. colleague from Vancouver West has just mentioned how easy it is to intimidate someone by going to their door and asking them to sign a card. We also heard the conflict that can exist when two unions are in competition with each other to get the members to come to them and they use the same process to prove that they are the winners. That is the kind of situation we are in at this point.
Interestingly enough the bill provides for and insists that there be a secret ballot when the members decide to strike, or if a group of employers want to lock out a group, that requires a secret ballot. Is this not interesting, that which will affect my life as a member of a working union can be subject and open to everyone, but when it comes to whether or not I am going to vote for a strike it has to be done by a secret ballot. There is a complete contradiction of principles here.
I want to move to an area that was touched on so eloquently by the member for Vancouver West, which is the business of privacy. This list of names is now obligatory. For what purpose will that list of names be used? To send out information? To appeal to me to become a member of this particular group? To be bombarded with unsolicited mail from people we do not want to hear from? We have no way of knowing how this list of names will be used.
We know that if the power is granted to get this access to information, how the information is used becomes completely unpredictable. The points are very clear in the act as to how the list of names shall be used. It states that the list shall be used for purposes relating to soliciting trade union memberships; the negotiation or administration of a collective agreement; the processing of a grievance; or the provision of a trade union service to employees. That is what it shall be used for.
However, there is no guarantee that the list will be used like that. It may be used for other purposes. The access has now been given to private information. Once private information is out there, it can be used in whatever way the individual who has it chooses to use it. That is frightening. The potential for abuse and misuse is severe.
Let us look at another provision in this act which relates to the same thing. It comes in clause 54 where the following provision is made:
For greater certainty, the following may not be disclosed without the consent of the person who made them:
It is not everything that can be made public, but there are certain people who are protected from invasion of their privacy. The first one is:
(a) notes or draft orders or decisions of the Board or any of its members, or of an arbitrator or arbitration board chairperson appointed by the Minister under this Part; and
(b) notes or draft reports of persons appointed by the Minister under this Part to assist in resolving disputes or differences, or of persons authorized or designated by the Board to assist in resolving complaints or issues in dispute before the Board.
One could argue that is privileged information in the actual negotiating process. And it is correct to say that. That information should be private and it should be confidential. But what is more secret, what is more private and what is more confidential than the names of myself and my family and the address of where we live? It seems to me that has the same significance as do the notes and draft orders from the negotiating process. The bill fails on that point.
Another area has to do with the replacement workers. I refer to clause 42(2):
No employer or person acting on behalf of an employer shall use, for the demonstrated purpose of undermining a trade union's representational capacity rather than the pursuit of legitimate bargaining objectives, the services of a person who was not an employee in the bargaining unit—
Half an hour ago a Liberal member said that this can only be used in the case where the employer is deliberately using the replacement worker to undermine the union. The member made the point that if an employer is using a replacement worker for that purpose he cannot use that person and therefore this bill is absolutely sacrosanct and absolutely pure and great. Is that not a very interesting interpretation of this clause.
How will anyone ever be able to show clearly and without any doubt or equivocation that the person was hired to do one thing and one thing only, to destroy the union? It is totally irresponsible and ridiculous to make a claim like that. That is the protection. That protection has such a big hole in it you could drive an 18 wheeler through it and you would not even know you had gone through the hole. That is what has been done here. That is an absolutely irresponsible clause. I do not think it is a good clause but even if it were, the way it is written makes it absolutely impossible to enforce.
I will discuss the accountability of the proposed board. A Liberal member made the point that the board is accountable, that it must submit an annual report to the minister. Guess what the annual report contains. It will be a statistical report that contains an analysis of those statistics. Is that not interesting. It will tell the minister how many members there were over various years. There is no requirement for the board to report how much money it gathered, whom it gathered it from, how it was spent or to whom it was sent. There is absolutely no accountability whatsoever. My interpretation of the statement that the annual report will make the board accountable is nonsense. It does nothing of the kind. We take very strong exception to this.
I want to end on a positive note. We want harmony between employers and employees. This will make us a competitive nation. It will build our businesses and employ our young people. In order to do that, my colleagues and I in the Reform Party have advocated the following phrase which members will have memorized if they have been listening: We need final offer selection arbitration. That is what we need. That will give people the kind of harmony we need. It will avoid the confrontation that makes people fight. It will bring them together to say “Let us do this together”.