Mr. Speaker, the application for an emergency debate was sent last Friday. It was asking for some action to be taken last week by the federal government in terms of the Vancouver port situation. I see today that we will be into that debate.
I want to make a point very clearly to the government, to all members of the House and to those thinking about what is happening here today. We are likely to hear that there is a resolution of this conflict in British Columbia. However, what I continuously hear from the government side is that there will be a commitment by the employees and/or the employers to go back to work, or to allow employees to go back to work. That is a lot different from employees and employers saying that they have a collective agreement, at least a memorandum of agreement. There is a very substantive difference in that.
Unless we hear on this side that there is an agreement and not just a resumption of work today, and possibly tomorrow there could be other job action or the next day or the next day, we will be indeed debating it long and hard in the House.
In view of the fact that we asked for this last week because of inaction, we will accept the fact that there is now a motion to debate the Vancouver port situation in the House already and we will deal with that when it comes up a little later.