Mr. Speaker, before I entered politics I was a trade unionist working for the Nova Scotia government, unlike some of my colleagues on this side of the House, with respect to trade unionism and workers.
Those years taught me everything I know about why employees need protection and why allowing workers to organize is an important part of our society. That is why I am happy to stand here today and speak in favour of Bill C-19 in its present form, a bill modernizing the Canadian Labour Code for the first time in more than 20 years. It says something for the timeliness of the House that it has been two decades to update this act.
Think of the changes to the workplace since 1978. Changes in technology have affected everyone. Changes in the global economy have made it easier for people and money to move from one corner of the world to another. The stability our parents' generation grew up with has evaporated. The days when you started a job when you finished school and kept that job until you retired are over. The heavy industries and natural resources that generated so much of the nation's wealth have been downsized or wiped out like the east coast fishery.
Today workers have to face the prospect of changing jobs several times, acquiring new skills as they go. People often move from coast to coast within the country and often from country to country. Coming from the maritimes, we are very well accustomed to the citizens of the maritime provinces constantly moving to other provinces to seek work.
For many people such as my colleagues in the official opposition these changes to the workplace are a universally good thing and offer an opportunity to escape from what they see as a restrictive web that developed to protect workers during the first seven decades of the century. They are free to erode the protections given to workers by saying they were specific regulations tied to specific industries and job sites.
We hear groups like the National Citizens Coalition, the Fraser Institute, the Business Council on National Issues all singing from the same song book of deregulation and decertification. To hear them talk we would think the right of an employer to fire their workers at will is a right protected by the charter.
This has been the problem of the last two decades, that businesses and workers have grown apart, that management increasingly sees workers and unions as obstacles to be overcome, speed bumps on the highway of economic progress. Unions and workers often with good reason look at their bosses and wonder why when profits are soaring and their friends and neighbours who work side by side with them for years are collecting welfare.
They see corporate salaries going up at rates thousands of times the increases being given to people on the shop floor and in the offices. They see governments responding to their bosses and the special interest groups that represent them, lowering taxes for the wealthy so they can make more and more money that will, in theory at least, trickle down the line. If anything has been trickling down from the bosses standing over the workers it certainly is not money. Real wages have been going down in Canada while the business sector thrives and job security is a thing of the past for most citizens.
There is an important distinction that many employers and members of the Reform Party are failing to grasp and that is at the core of why this bill needs the support of the House. It is a great life for someone with a specialized skill and lots of education to go from short term contract to short term contract, playing off employer against employer and getting the best deal for him or herself. It is a different story for someone who has a grade four education and has worked for 30 years in a fish plant or in the woods.
The brave new world of global capitalism is great for the first group, but for the second group it means hunger for their children and their families and death to their communities.
To me there are few things more obscene than government funded consultants turning up in towns and villages that were passed by by globalization and lecturing people on the need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
There are millions of people in this country who are never given the skills needed to compete in the world of high finance and high technology. That is a fact that no one can deny. Those people need even stronger protection today than they did in past years.
The moral issue for me at the heart of this debate is the need to protect the more vulnerable members of society from exploitation. It goes deeper than that, to the right of all people to work together in a way that will maximize the benefits for all involved.
The left in general and my party in particular have often been accused of being opposed to profits, opposed to the market, opposed to business. This is nonsense. While I know Reform members will take pleasure in attributing my party's support for the bill to our supposed dependence on trade unions, I am proud to stand in the House and say that the New Democratic Party is pro-business, pro-profit, totally in favour of more and more people earning more and more money. Contrary to what the members of the opposition might think, there is no conflict between that position and our support for organized labour.
This is what Bill C-19 is about, a reassertion of the moral obligation to include and empower workers in the business of making business work.
When Bill C-66 died on the order paper when parliament was dissolved just over a year ago, I thought the progressive changes we see resurrected before us today had been shuffled aside permanently.
The minister deserves credit for bringing these issues and the bill back to the House and I hope it will receive the support of all right thinking members. Specific aspects of the bill are worthy of special mention.
Carrying on from my previous comments concerning changes in the workplace, it is good to see that the issue of disseminating union information will no longer be restricted to onsite workers. With more people commuting with computers it is critical that solidarity among workers be maintained and that no one be discriminated against because of where they work.
The clarification surrounding strikes affecting grain shipments is a critical matter and all parties that contributed to the drafting of the legislation deserve credit for reaching a compromise that preserves the right to strike for all those involved yet preserves the tens of thousands of jobs connected to the industry and the vital flow of grain that feeds millions of people around the world.
The creation of the new and improved Canada Labour Relations Board is perhaps the biggest single change that will have a positive impact on the life of Canadians.
The board's ability to arbitrate in disputes over certification and strike votes means a faster and fairer process that will hopefully reduce the already low strike rate in Canada.
My colleague from Winnipeg Centre made mention in his remarks on this bill that between 95% and 97% of all labour disputes are resolved without strikes, lockouts or work stoppages of any kind. That should put paid to the fearmongering that members of the official opposition have engaged in. They should be reminded that groups from all sectors of society have contributed to the legislation.
I would just like to ask the members of the Reform Party as an active trade unionist to please stop insulting the intelligence of workers across Canada by wanting to appear as though they are in true support of workers across this country. My experience over the last 10 months in this House has been that Reformers have clearly demonstrated that as trade unionists they are anti labour.