Mr. Speaker, I understand that in a few minutes we are going to be voting. We have something like 47 votes to go through so this is sort of the end of debate before closure. Closure happened 14 times in the 12 years when we had a Liberal government under Pierre Elliott Trudeau and we thought he was arrogant. This government has more than doubled that already.
I have talked on this bill at second reading and on Groups Nos. 1, 2, 6 and now 7. Group No. 7 deals with replacement workers. If there is one item where we can listen to rhetorical comment, polarized comment, entrenched comment, confrontational comment, unenlightened comment, blind comment or comment coloured by experiences, this is the one area of the bill where we are going to hear all that. We do not need that.
What we need is a vision that does not look at the past and does not lead us into poor management and poor union leadership where workers very often tend to come last. That is not what we need. We all know how bad it can get. We can count the ways very readily. We had the example that is often referred to with the Royal Oak mine in the north where we had replacement workers brought in. People lost their lives in an underground bombing over an issue.
At the other end of the scale we have small businesses with certification whereby the total business would be at risk just from a short targeted strike on that business. We need to balance all that. It is an important issue. It should be addressed in the collective agreement and if the agreement is suspended, which often occurs, both parties will agree to live up to their end of this bargain on replacement workers.
What we do not need is the CIRB to be put in the untenable position which this bill does of being able to prohibit the use of replacement workers if the CIRB determines their presence undermines the union. The CIRB should never be placed in that position.
Mr. Speaker, I notice you are signalling that my time is up. That is unfortunate because I had so much worthy material to present. I did not even get to the bottom line of my speech. However, I do appreciate the fact that you have given me this opportunity to exit. I look forward to the upcoming votes.