Mr. Speaker, it is a good thing that we are having this debate tonight. The hon. member for Selkirk—Interlake has done the House a service by requesting and receiving the opportunity to have an emergency debate on this subject.
No matter what our views are, and we may differ on how things should be handled or what the origins of the problem are, it certainly is a matter of great concern to Canadian farmers and producers and is something that the House should be giving its attention to.
I would like to go over some of the history of the dispute which has led us to this debate. The Public Service Alliance of Canada has been engaged in rotating strikes across the country for eight weeks. It has been doing this as a result of what it sees and what we see and what many other Canadians see as intransigence on the part of the government in respect of the bargaining that the government has been engaged in with the Public Service Alliance of Canada.
Last Friday the government walked away from the table and therefore the government has to take responsibility for what has happened. If it had the will, the government could find a way out of this impasse by going back to the table, by bargaining in good faith and by showing respect for the collective bargaining process instead of engaging in the sort of coded threats the President of the Treasury Board was engaging in earlier when he talked about examining all his options.
We know what that means. It is a code for back to work legislation. Echoing what my colleague from the Bloc said about the need to balance the very difficulty won right to strike, in this case the right to strike of public servants against what may or may not be in the public interest, this is a balance that always has to be delicately sought.
I do not think that we have arrived at any situation which would create any kind of moral imperative on the part of the government to engage in this kind of threat at this time or to engage in more concrete actions such as back to work legislation. However, if it does, we will have to deal with that when it comes and in the form in which it comes, because we know that back to work legislation can come in many forms.
I listened carefully to what the President of the Treasury Board said. He kept talking about the people who are on strike taking Canadians hostage. I think this is very strong language. It begs a larger debate about who is taking whom hostage and why we reserve this kind of language. The President of the Treasury Board used the word hostage three, four or perhaps half a dozen time in his speech, so I hope he is not taking umbrage at my reminding people what he said when he spoke.
It is interesting that he should characterize what the striking workers are doing in that way. He may want to disapprove of what the striking workers are doing. That is fine. However I take some exception to using the idea of taking hostages in this very selective way.
I take objection to using the concept of taking hostages only when workers are withdrawing their labour because in their judgment they are not receiving the remuneration for their labour that they feel is their just due. When workers do that, people like the President of the Treasury Board say “This is hostage taking. This is not serving the common good. This is hurting the transportation and the delivery of grain”. All these factors which have to do with the common good and the public interest are immediately brought in, and perhaps appropriately so when we are talking about the effect of a strike.
Do we hear this same kind of language when capital withdraws its services, when it withdraws from whatever economic activity it was in, in order to make a profit, because it is no longer making the profit it used to make or because it is not able to make as much profit as it would like to make or have the increase in profit that it would like to have. When companies act in this way, when corporations act in this way, when capital acts in this way, we say they are just being good businessmen. They are just saying “Either we get this or we don't deliver. We don't do what we normally do”. We say they are being hardnosed, that these are people who know how to stick up for themselves, that these are people we have to reckon with.
However, when workers do it they are hostage takers. They are people who have no concern for the Canadian economy. If I had a dime for every time there was a corporate decision taken that was not in the interest of the Canadian economy but was in the interest of a particular corporation, I would be a very rich person.
When that is done I do not hear people, with the possible exception of New Democrats, saying in the House of Commons that these people are terrible, that they put their own economic interest ahead of the country. It is just regarded as the marketplace taking its effect, as people acting like good little Adam Smith disciples, acting according to the Zeitgeist, acting according to the market ethic. They are not reprimanded.
Certainly the President of the Treasury Board does not get up and call them hostage takers. He does not go after the railway for taking farmers hostage by abandoning rail lines and leaving them at the mercy of Cargill, truckers or whatever it is they are left to the mercy of.
When the railway says “We are going to pull that line out of there because we are not making enough money on it”, regardless of what the consequences are for the local community or farmers I do not hear the President of the Treasury Board saying that the CNR are hostage takers, that they have no regard for the welfare of the Canadian economy or western Canada or farmers. I do not hear that kind of talk from the government when corporations act in this way. Perhaps we should hear that kind of talk but we do not.
What I am counselling here is if we are to be preached at by the President of the Treasury Board with respect to the common good, with respect to the well-being of the Canadian economy, with respect to the well-being of Canadian farmers and their communities, I would like to see a little more even-handedness on the part of the government.
I would like to see a government that was active in resisting the ways in which the railways are hurting farmers. I would like to see a government that was active in resisting the way that some of the agribusiness corporations are impinging upon the interests of farmers. I do not hear that.
I think it is a point that needs to be made because if through back to work legislation, if that is what the government has in mind, we can conscript labour, why is it still a sin to conscript capital? Why do we live with the very idea, which was not always regarded as quite as radical as it is today, that capital should somehow be answerable to the common good, should be answerable to the needs of the national economy, should be answerable to the needs of communities? That idea is completely out of fashion. It is not out of fashion as far as I am concerned but it is out of fashion. Let us face it, that is not the prevailing wisdom, that is not the conventional wisdom.
All I am saying to my colleagues is: what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. I object to an ethic which says ordinary working people have to be responsible for or take into account the effects of their actions on the Canadian economy and in this case, with respect to what is happening in Vancouver, their effect on farmers on their families. It is a very serious concern. I am not trying to downplay that at all.
I am asking why we lay this moral imperative on them and yet we do not do it when it comes to others, particularly much more powerful actors in the Canadian economy than, let us face it, the blue collar workers at the Public Service Alliance of Canada.
I make a plea for some moral symmetry which I do not often see in this place. I see a tremendous moral imperative being laid on workers when their actions or their withdrawal of their services imperils in some way or another a part or the whole of the Canadian economy. However, when this is done in the name of corporate profit, corporate profit strategies, a good investment climate or whatever we want to call it, it is just regarded as business. It is just regarded as the way things are.
I do not think we can have it both ways. I encourage the President of the Treasury Board to go back to the table, to stop talking about hostage takers, unless he is interested in a little Stockholm syndrome, and get down to business with the strikers. I am sure that they are not anxious to be on strike.
I have been on many picket lines in my time as an MP and even before that when members of my family were on strike. I can tell the House that people who are on strike do not want to be on strike. People who are on strike, especially if they have been on strike for any length of time, are always looking for an honourable way back to their jobs because they do not like being without work. They do not like being without a regular pay cheque. They do not enjoy being on the picket line. Whatever excitement there is fades very quickly. To imagine that somehow the alleged intransigence of the union comes from any desire to have the strike prolonged in any way is very mistaken.
The President of the Treasury Board was listening to me at the beginning, but I guess I must have either bothered him or something because he is really involved now in talking to his Liberal seatmate over there. Over here, President of the Treasury Board; earth to the President of the Treasury Board. There he is.
I was saying to the President of the Treasury Board through the Chair, as I always do, that it is time for the President of the Treasury Board to go back to the table. He knows what he has to do to arrive at a settlement. He should stop using this inappropriate language and do what he has to do, not just for the sake of the strikers but for the sake of the country.
He has a responsibility, not just to the people who are on the picket lines, to show leadership in this regard. I am sure he could apply himself. He is no dummy. He is no slouch. He knows how to get out of the mess he got himself and the rest of the country into, if he wants to get out of it, and I encourage him to do so.