Mr. Speaker, this has turned into a very spirited debate. I want to thank you, Mr. Speaker, for recognizing me so quickly so I can get to the nub of this debate today and the things which concern me about Bill C-19.
As in a lot of bills there is a lot of material in Bill C-19 that is easy to support. The idea of a labour code for Canada is not a bad thing.
Obviously this bill is a revamp of what we already have and it is not a bad idea to update it. It did come in in the last parliament and the government had second thoughts about it and for some good reasons, which I will get into in a minute, decided to drop it from the Order Paper. Now a year later it has been brought back in this parliament. We have seen significant amendments proposed by the official opposition in committee and in the House to try to bring the balance we think is necessary in labour legislation.
I was in the logging industry for many years. In the logging industry in British Columbia if the company is of any size it likely means it is a unionized company. I have lived on both sides of that equation. I worked for a number of years when our company was not unionized. I was there during the unionization vote when the members voted to join the union. Without getting into any of the coercive nature that this bill talks about that the employers might enter into, I could give a tale of woe from the other side on that one.
Even so, the IWA is not a bad union to work with and we were happy to do so for many years. Even after we were unionized, even though I was in essence the employer with the ability to hire and fire, the union did not mind. I was a member of the union even then. The union did not seem to mind. It took my union dues and was quite happy to do that while I was on the workforce for many years. Eventually I went into full time management. I have seen it from all perspectives. In those perspectives it is important that the word balance in labour legislation be a key principle that we follow.
For example one of the amendments we proposed in committee involved the privacy of individuals as to whether or not they wanted their name to be released to a union when an organizing drive occurred. I would suggest there is a balance here.
The union I believe has a right to talk to individuals in the workplace, to put forward its proposals, tell workers why it thinks they should belong to a union and why the workforce should be unionized. That is a right unions have. One of our basic blue book principles is the right to organize, to strike peacefully and so on. That is a right workers need to have.
Balancing that though is also the right of workers to their privacy. In other words, should the employer have to give the names, addresses and phone numbers of workers to a union organizer? That should be the choice of the workers. It is an interesting word which the previous speaker used quite often, the word choice. They should have the choice. By all means they may be very interested in that information. They may say to the employer “Send them my name and address. I would like to hear from them”.
Many people have a different view. They say “That is my choice. I may want that, but if I do not want that, it is my right to say my name is not on the list. I do not want anybody telephoning me at home. I do not want them knocking on the door of my private dwelling. If they want to talk to me, they can see me at work because that is what this is all about”. That is their right.
That is balance between the rights of the organizer to organize as they should have and the rights of the employee, the prospective union member, to—