Madam Speaker, that is a tough act to follow from an hon. gentlemen I regard as one of the most effective speakers of this place and a true quintessential prairie gentlemen, the member for Portage—Lisgar.
I am pleased to rise in debate on this emergency motion with respect to the strikes we are facing in the ports in Vancouver. I would like to broaden my comments to address the impact of the strike on the delivery of services by Revenue Canada at tax centres across the country.
We have heard plenty of evidence and testimony this evening about the kind of debilitating impact this strike action is having on the tens of thousands of Canadian grain farmers.
It truly amazes me, as somebody who grew up in a small prairie farming town, to see that the more than 120,000 grain farms across western Canada should be held hostage by 70 individuals picketing the terminals at the ports of Vancouver.
It is beyond belief that we have allowed a system to continue year after year and decade after decade which can see an entire industry, hundreds of communities, tens of thousands of families and an entire way of life, an entire regional economy, put at risk and damaged by the irresponsible actions of a few and the inaction of an irresponsible government.
Just by delaying the delivery of this grain to the ships waiting in port by even a few days incurs an enormous cost that gets passed on to prairie grain farmers, perhaps the people least equipped to deal with this kind of economic difficulty at this time. Prairie grain farmers are already suffering from the losing end of an international grain war and historic lows in commodity prices. Prairie grain farmers are suffering from historic highs in input costs and who are suffering from historic highs in government taxation.
Across the beautiful prairie provinces a sad story is unfolding as we see once proud and vibrant farm communities shrinking slowly and the lifeblood being sucked out of them as the agricultural economy suffers year after year.
Why is it that in one area where government could make a difference, by ensuring an unimpeded flow of goods to port and abroad, it does not take responsibility to ensure that happens? We clearly are limited in the authority we have to address the depression in commodity prices caused by European and American subsidies. There is one thing at least that we in parliament can clearly do to prevent this from happening, to end the imminent threat which is the cause of this motion tonight by whatever means legally necessary but, more important, to remove from a handful of union organizers the sword of Damocles which hangs permanently over the entire western grain industry. That solution would be to declare the jobs at these ports part of an essential service and to require binding arbitration if settlements cannot be reached so that we can never return to the economic pain being caused day by day as this strike drags out.
As other members of my caucus have remarked, this is not the first time we have seen a strike of this nature. Unless the government finds a more fundamental solution it will not be the last.
While this is an emergency debate, it ought not to be a debate just for the situation we face now. The solution the government seems to be headed for of back to work legislation ought not to be seen as a long term solution. It is a short term, knee-jerk response to a short term problem. We need to fundamentally change the nature of government labour relations when it comes to critical government regulated industries of this nature.
I hearken back to 1980-81 when then President Ronald Reagan had just assumed the office of the American presidency. He was faced with a strike of air traffic controllers across that country who refused to arbitrate or negotiate and who were clearly an essential service. They had shut down the entire American transportation infrastructure.
President Reagan made it very clear that they were in his view an essential service and if they did not go back to work within 48 hours they would be let go. The union organizers called his bluff, but ultimately President Reagan did what was best for Americans, their economy and their transportation infrastructure. He laid down the law and demonstrated what an essential service really means by taking drastic action.
We do not see that kind of strike action happening now in the United States because it has been declared an essential service. We ought to do the same thing in Canada where we are talking about small handfuls of people who can literally stop the momentum of an entire regional economy.
I want now to turn my attention to another problem which is growing in proportion. As we speak this evening there are probably PSAC organizers across the country planning pickets tomorrow for yet another day around regional tax centres operated by the Department of National Revenue.
When they do this, what happens? The processing of tax returns, tax rebates, the child tax benefit and all taxes and transfers administered by Revenue Canada simply shut down. This is a function that is absolutely essential to the operation of government. We are talking today about nearly a million tax returns being frozen in the system at Revenue Canada. This means delays of days and probably weeks. If this carries on, who knows how long the delays will be?
It is easy for us as parliamentarians to bemoan the frustration felt by Canadians and the inconvenience of all this, but we ought not to lose sight of the fact that hundreds of thousands of Canadians rely on the cheques that are being held hostage in those tax centres tonight. That is money that does not belong to the government, to the union bosses or to the bureaucrats. It belongs to the people to whom those cheques should have been issued days ago, and should be issued tomorrow, but will not be because this government refuses to act to ensure that those Canadians have the financial resources that belong to them.
We are talking about low income people, among others, who quite literally depend on the timely delivery of GST rebate cheques, their income tax refund, the child tax benefit or any other number of programs administered by the Department of National Revenue. They depend on those cheques not as discretionary income but as essential income. They depend on those cheques to pay the rent and to buy groceries. We are talking about money that is absolutely essential to the livelihood of many Canadian families.
We cannot allow this to continue unanswered. We cannot allow rogue action by a certain handful of union organizers to threaten the financial livelihood of vulnerable Canadians. I appeal to the government not to continue to delay, to prevaricate and to hope for a negotiated solution that apparently has not happened and will not happen in the bargaining units we are talking about, but to act with speed and with absolute dispatch.
I assure the government that on behalf of my constituents I will support any legal action to get those cheques moving out of those tax centres where they are today held hostage.
It is simply not good enough to solve the problem with back to work legislation and to find ourselves reliving this, repeating history yet again three or four or five years down the road. It is not good enough for the grain farmers who are hurting today. It is not good enough for the low income people and the seniors waiting for their cheques from Revenue Canada. We need a fundamental top to bottom change in the relationship of government to the essential services which we guarantee to Canadian people.
We stand here as parliamentarians in a position of enormous responsibility and authority. We have a fiduciary obligation to ensure that the basic essential services necessary to the peaceful conduct of the lives of private citizens are carried out by the departments, by the apparatus of the federal government.
It simply is not good enough to let these things happen over and over again. A great thinker once said that history repeats itself the first time as tragedy and the second time as farce. I think we are well beyond the stage of farce. This is the fourth or fifth time in my political lifetime that I recall points of crisis in labour-government negotiations of this nature.
In closing, I simply reiterate on behalf of my constituents and my colleagues in the opposition that it is time to get on the ball. It is time to stop prevaricating on the part of the government. I asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Revenue about the problem at the tax centres today and she said “We are concerned and we are looking at it”.
I am glad to see that they are concerned and they are looking, but that is not good enough for vulnerable Canadians. What they need is not concern. What they need is not looking. They need action, and we are here tonight demanding that the government act.