It is not right on, it is the right to work. Later the same day the same member said in Motion No. 6:
Expand section 70 of Canadian Labour Code to include rights of individual employees to refuse to allow any portion of their dues to be paid for any cause not related to the function of their union that the employee does not personally support.
We go back to the Ontario Public Service Employment Union and Merv Lavigne in the 1980s, aided and abetted by the National Citizens' Coalition, on this whole question, and what Justice Bertha Wilson had to say about it and the awarding of costs to the union.
She went to the Americans because they have similar legislation to what is being proposed by the member for Wetaskiwin. The following is what Supreme Court Justice Bertha Wilson had to say:
When American unions speak out on political matters, they must refund to dissenting members the prorated costs of such activities. U.S. Corps do not have this problem. Corporations may speak out with a far louder voice heavily outspending Labour on dissemination of their views. Indeed the proof of this imbalance can be seen in the results in the decline in rate of union reps.
Among American workers Madam Justice Wilson noted that it had gone from a 35% rate of unionization in the United States in the 1940s to barely 20% by 1980.
It is our view on this side of the House that Canadian unions would meet the same fate if we had similar legislation adopted in this country.
This is the area of attack the Reform Party makes against working men and women in close concert with the National Citizens' Coalition and the Fraser Institute, both of which are good friends. They are in favour of making closed shops illegal. We have heard some of that, new laws to undermine effective strike action and paramountcy of private property over collective rights. We certainly have heard that from the two previous speakers of the Reform Party.
I think the official opposition party and their friends in the National Citizens' Coalition and the Fraser Institute could be counted upon to pursue any goals toward deunionization in the country. In fact the Fraser Institute, the research arm of the Reform Party, has dedicated $250,000 for such work over and above the cost of hiring a co-ordinator for a new five-year plan called towards a new millennium.
They plan to publish a right to work, how to guide on establishing right to work in Canada, more conferences in jurisdictions sympathetic to right to work, contrasting U.S.-Canada labour laws, blaming Canada's high unemployment on what they perceive to be unfair, unbalanced labour legislation.
I think it could be summarized no better than what the previous Reform member, Herb Grubel, who is now happily back working with the Fraser Institute, had to say some time ago:
The most basic contribution that Canadians governments could make is reduction of power of unions by appropriate changes in the labour codes. There should also be expanded deregulation and privatization and an across the board wage cut of 13%.
When the member for Crowfoot suggests that we do not know what we are talking about when it comes to the Reform Party and its views on labour, we think we do know a thing or two.
We think that what they are trying to establish here is Alabama north. It is a race to the bottom, who will do it for the least amount of money. We reject that wholeheartedly and we urge that this bill be passed into law as quickly as possible.