Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise and take part in this debate on Bill C-19. In contrast to the previous two speakers, it is the wish of our caucus at this end of the House to encourage that this bill pass. We have not seen amendments to the Canada Labour Code in more than two decades and it is now time to move on and get up to speed.
The Liberals in the previous House allowed the amendments under Bill C-66 to die in the face of business lobbying. Some Senate opposition and Liberal tradeoffs to push other bills through before the last election prevented Canadian workers from having the representation and legal rights they should have and that the revisions to the Canada Labour Code will give back to them.
Part I of the code creates a framework for collective bargaining by the federal private sector and applies to approximately 700,000 workers. In June 1995 the Minister of Labour established a task force to conduct an independent review and recommend legislative changes.
The task force report was released a couple of years ago and the minister met with representatives of labour, management and other interested parties to hear the views on the task force recommendations. Bill C-66, the previous bill, reflected the task force's recommendations and these consultations.
Support for revisions to the code are long overdue. Although they do not go far enough we think it is certainly worthy of our support.
I listened with a great deal of interest to the member for Medicine Hat and the member for Calgary Southeast talking about this bill and parading themselves as friends of ordinary Canadians and working people, which is anything but what the Reform Party is all about.
The hon. member's leader is opposed to government regulated minimum wage laws. I am sure the member would support him. He is on record saying that minimum wages should be linked to supply and demand and not to government regulated minimum wage. We know the member for Calgary West comes from the National Citizens' Coalition and worked on something called citizens against enforced unionism when he was a member of that not so august body.
In speaking to the bill I was particularly struck by the amendments introduced last September by the member for Wetaskiwin who I believe was then and is still now the Reform Party's labour critic. He introduced a number of motions at that time and I wanted to go through some of them to give people listening a sense of what this party thinks.