Mr. Speaker, I was not going to rise to speak to this group of motions, but because of what I am hearing from the two sides I would like to comment on Motion No. 18 in Group 6. As I understand this motion, a strike would not be allowed or would be ended if economic hardship could be demonstrated.
I question how anybody could be that painfully naive about labour relations to put forward a motion that would call for a strike to cease if there was economic hardship demonstrated. What is the purpose of withholding services if not to peacefully apply some kind of economic pressure on the other party? That is the very nature of withholding services, to try to motivate somebody to your way of thinking. There is a level of naivety there. I hope it is naivety and not just plain ignorance.
We are speaking against the idea that this motion should even be entertained. Anybody who has some labour relations background in this House would see through that immediately and would not give it the time of day.
The people who are putting this package forward should remember that Bill C-19 was born out of a truly co-operative consultative process which was almost an experiment. It was almost a pilot project on how to amend labour legislation. Labour and management worked together for more than two years to try to find the balance they were seeking, the balance recommended by the Sims task force. They have done an admirable job. Many of the motions we are dealing with today would tend to upset that delicate balance and would jeopardize the success of the whole process.
There are other tripartite models of labour, management and government working together around the world. Those countries are moving forward as nations and are doing a good job of elevating the standards of the living conditions of the people they represent. Those countries have realized that it has to be a tripartite model. The hostility and the adversarial qualities that we sense from the tone of some of the Reform Party motions will only hold us back as a nation. There is no future in that kind of thing, with one party determined to stamp out the other. Instead the more civilized model is the three parties working together and moving forward.
What we are hearing from the Reform Party, in many of the motions it is putting forward, is a reworked version of the right to work movement. Do we want to go in that direction? We should be cautious. We should look at those places where right to work is a reality before we take that particular road.
North Carolina is a right to work state. Everybody has heard of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire in 1913 that founded the whole idea that workplace safety and health is an issue. The whole world agreed that it was too horrible to ever let it happen again. I have news for members. In the right to work state of North Carolina, 20 women died recently in a fire in a chicken processing plant because they chained the doors closed from the outside. They were convinced that these low-waged women were stealing by-products from the chickens, like wing tips, to make soup when they got home.
From 1913 to 1995 we have come the whole circle. With that kind of environment, where there is no worker representation on joint labour-management safety committees, standards quickly erode if we are not diligent about trying to elevate the standards and working conditions. Right to work is a step in the wrong direction in that regard.
Some of the other motions deal with the movement of grain through the west coast ports. This is key and integral to the whole balance I was talking about in Bill C-19. The whole process of Bill C-19 was a trade-off, where none of the parties really came away very satisfied that they got everything they wanted.
We would have liked to have seen a lot tougher anti-scab legislation. Nobody likes to give away the right to strike, the right to peacefully withhold services, and in this case they have not, but in actual fact the grain will keep carrying through.
The positive side of this, the upside and the side that seems to be lost on the Reform Party, is that there are about 130,000 Canadian farmers who are anxiously awaiting the speedy passage of this legislation so they can feel secure that their crops this year will not be interrupted by any kind of a dispute at the west coast ports.
Talk to pool elevator operators, the UGG or the whole agribusiness. They want this bill to go through, and yet we have the Reform Party, largely made up of representatives from western agricultural districts, being an obstacle and a barrier to this very real benefit to the whole prairie agricultural industry. It is a real contradiction. I hope Reform members are thinking this through. As they stand to speak they should be aware that the industry is watching these debates very carefully. I am sure they are scratching their heads wondering right now how they can see fit to justify being a barrier to the speedy passage of this particular bill.
We know that the favourite right-wing think tank of the Reform Party is the Fraser Institute. The Fraser Institute, that tax deductible, right-wing melting pot for all their ideas, is pushing the idea of right to work. Donated copies of the book promoting right to work as the answer for labour relations in the 21st century have arrived in our mailboxes. They are trying to imply that Canada is backwards because we believe in a more progressive labour relations climate.
The Fraser Institute and the Reform Party are going down a dangerous road as they advocate this particular labour relations environment. It is the role of labour and the role of governments to provide the legislative environment in which unions can do their job to elevate the standards of wages and working conditions for the people they represent. It is a matter of the redistribution of wealth. It is a matter of spreading the wealth of this great nation among the working people. Anything that we do to hold that back does not move us forward in any way at all. It is a myth.
The fact is that fair wages benefit the whole community. I do not see what it is about that concept that bothers the Reform Party, but it seems bound and determined to reduce the ability of unions to do their job in elevating the standards of the community. Holding us back in that regard does not help anybody.
It is middle-class people with money in their pockets who can go out, purchase things and get the economy moving. Screwing them down in terms of wages does not benefit anybody. That is the empirical evidence. The statistics of all the right to work states in the United States, the 21 right to work states, show that some of them have no minimum wage. All of them have a lower than average industrial wage. They have worse health and safety legislation. They even have a higher infant mortality rate and all the predictable things one would see in the low-income category.
We believe in our caucus that society does not move forward unless we all move forward together. The motions that are being put forward by the Reform Party are completely the opposite of that point of view.