Mr. Speaker, I must say what an honour it is to be in your humble presence again.
The rural route mail contractors are not considered to be employees according to the provisions of the Canada Labour Code because they are specifically prohibited those rights under the Canada Post Corporation Act, section 13.5. This means that RRMCs do not enjoy the rights and protections that the vast majority of workers take for granted. This includes things like minimum wages, health and safety protections, workers compensation, employee insurance benefits, vacation leave, maternity leave, severance pay and so on. RRMCs are also denied the right to negotiate improvements to their wages and working conditions.
Why does the government continue to allow these conditions to exist? The RRMCs have now formed an association called the Organization of Rural Route Mail Couriers in a serious attempt to get the government to change their working conditions. There are now over 3,400 signed members who are dedicated to improving their lifestyles. These members deliver mail to several million householders across rural Canada. They virtually do the same work as their urban counterparts. How can this government deny these dedicated workers the opportunity to receive the same wages and benefit as their urban counterparts?
This is very similar to what the regional rates of pay do to the lowest paid workers in the public service. They get a different salary depending on what part of the country they live in and that is straight discrimination.
The solution to both these is to remove section 13.5 from the Canada Post Act, which this government could do, and replace it with section 1 of the Canada Labour Code, a very simple and easy thing that can be done to improve the lives of thousands of people in this country.
It is important to point out that people who do similar work have these rights, private sector workers who deliver mail in rural areas, public service workers who deliver mail for Canada Post in urban areas, rural route mail carriers who work for the United States postal office. Even rural postal workers in Mexico have a collective agreement.
The RRMCs strongly believe that it is wrong to deny them rights accorded to so many workers. They are determined to change their conditions but they need the government's help. Will the government remove section 13.5 of the Canada Post Act and replace it with section 1 of the Canada Labour Code now?
In the 1998 budget the federal government promised people that it would look at new ways to deliver information and programs so that rural Canadians are full participants in Canada's future prosperity. Was the government's promise to look at new ways of delivering information programs just another way of saying it will find cheaper ways of exploiting rural Canadians who deliver information and programs? Rural Canadians would like assurances that this is definitely not the case. Recently it introduced restructuring the stamp sales which will definitely hurt thousands of rural route post offices.
Speaking on behalf of the riding of Sackville—Eastern Shore I find this government's approach to rural route mail carriers absolutely despicable, as with the way it treats the bottom lower salaried people who work for the public service in terms of 11,000 workers across this country, different regional rates of pay which this government has said it would eliminate in its 1993 promises in the red book.