Mr. Speaker, I would like to follow up on some of the comments made by my colleague from Maclead.
I recognize that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Labour has sat here all day. It is a shame that she has not been accompanied by too many of her government colleagues in this debate while listening to the concerns of the opposition parties to government legislation.
Unless I am mistaken, the whole purpose of report stage is for the government to look at amendments placed on the floor by opposition members to try to make a better piece of legislation than what the government has provided.
Our job in this place is to hold the government accountable and to make sure the legislation that the government passes on behalf of the Canadian public is the best it can possibly be. It is sometimes very disarming for us when debating to an empty House to try to convince an empty House that the legislation is inadequate, needs to be corrected and needs changes. Today is just another example of what we put up with day after day in trying to hold the government accountable for bad legislation and to offer some innovative changes.
We have a genuine concern with Bill C-19 under Group No. 2. Let there be no mistake that I will be speaking about the lack of vision the government has shown in Bill C-19.
I represent a province which has had labour legislation that has been very damaging to the economic well-being of our province and of employment. We have a problem in our province with labour legislation. We do not want to see as representatives of that province those problems compounded by labour legislation brought in by the Liberal government.
We have a concern with the democracy that is not being supported in the legislation. We are talking about legislation that would allow a union to come in and organize in a place of work and to convince some people, sometimes the ones with a lot of influence, to consider unionizing. These people of influence, although they may be a minority, could end up placing that place of work in a situation where somebody declares that it will be a unionized shop even though the majority of workers, for very good reasons perhaps, feel that they are not ready to be unionized and do not want to be unionized.
That just rubs the wrong way any Canadian who believes in democracy, who believes that people have a right to make decisions for the best of the majority in the situation. That means workers and that a majority of the workforce in a particular work environment should feel that a union is required to speak on their behalf.
In many instances people find themselves in a union when they do not really want to be. They are paying union dues when they do not see any benefit from it. We even have young people who are union members. They get accreditation, their journeyman certificates, but because of union salaries they find themselves too expensive and the union shops do not hire them.
I have talked with several young people who have found themselves unemployed for years on end because they cannot work outside a union shop. The employers are being asked to pay them journeyman wages which they cannot afford to pay. The young people find themselves in a conundrum: they cannot work because the union will not allow them to work and have no options open to them.
Many people are looking at unions in a different light. A majority of workers should be required before a workplace decides to belong to a union. I do not think we should be taking that right away from the average employer.
Another concern I have with Group No. 2 is the motion the Bloc has put forth. I have difficulty with it. I like some of the concepts but not all of them. This is an opportunity in the House of Commons for people to debate the motions in amendment raised by other parties.
I do not like the idea that we have a government which feels that this is a waste of time and that we should not have the right to be raising points on other people's motions that we feel may be going in the right direction but do not quite make it.
Bloc Motion No. 8 talks about the automatic removal of an employee representative upon the receipt of an application. This is when employers are being blended. I have a problem with the way it is being dealt with. I like the concept that there needs to be some negotiation, but who should decide which side is to have the employer or employee representatives when there are amalgamations or mergers. There may have to be a concession that all of them are represented or a means of figuring that one out.
This is the vehicle. This is the process. In parliamentary debate we debate these issues. I resent that we have a Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Labour who is trying to say that we do not have the right or that we are wasting time debating these issues.
In Motion No. 7 we indicate that the wording is not quite right. One word can make all the difference in the world. “May” rather than “shall” can make all the difference in the world to workers who are looking for somebody to represent them.
I do not think it is wrong for us to move a motion to say to government that a word is not quite right, that it can be interpreted in such a way that it is not representing the best interest of the employee, and that we feel it should use another word in the legislation instead of the word it has chosen to use.
In the motion we are saying that the government is offering the labour board a choice that it may or may not call for a representative vote of the workers. That should be automatic; that vote should be required. It should not be conditional and not something the board can choose to use or not to use.
It may be naive of me after five years in this place but I would like to think the government is open to suggestions, that the government is open to having motions brought forward and debated pointing out the usage of words that may make a difference in the interpretation by the board being created by a court if it comes to a court situation.
We would like to think that the government is open to those kinds of suggestions. However my experience tells me otherwise. My experience tells me, no matter what the issue, that once the government has made up its mind it is not willing to accept that maybe it has made a mistake.
It does not matter whether it is in the drafting of a bill or in the hepatitis C debate. We very seldom see a government that says that maybe it made a mistake, maybe it could do better, maybe it should listen to the opposition side, maybe it will make a change because of something suggested that offers improvement.
Rather than listening to the cat-calling, the hissing and the screaming from the other side, maybe they should be listening to the logical and well presented arguments from the opposition side to improve government legislation so that Canadians can receive the best possible legislation from the House.