Madam Speaker, having been an employee of Parks Canada and been in the GS group, I understand the situation well, but it is still very difficult to comprehend what is going on with what we have before us today.
Today, for the 50th time, the government has resorted to time allocation and closure. Not only is it denying Canadians the right to strike, but it is denying democratically elected members of parliament the right to debate it.
Members will not have the time to debate this bill forcing a return to work and will not have the time to properly study it to make changes to it.
What I am saying here is that we were elected democratically to debate issues in the House. Unfortunately due to this undemocratic process we cannot debate it in the House like we should be allowed to.
As my colleague from Winnipeg Centre was saying yesterday, the bill was prepared on the run. There is no mention of Nunavut, for example. It does not harmonize regional rates; it does not reflect the best offers the government made at the bargaining table. The blue collar workers have not had a salary increase in years, but the workload has increased because a number of jobs have been cut.
Regional rates of pay discriminate against 14,000 blue collar workers in Canada, including 1,500 in the Atlantic provinces. Atlantic federal blue collar workers are the ones most discriminated against. We get discriminated against quite often in the Atlantic.
Can someone argue that a maritimer deserves less money than a westerner doing the same job? That is what we are seeing here. This government seems to think it can.
It is important to look at the situation. Employees are asking the government to eliminate the discrimination that exists with regional rates of pay. It all seems very complicated. The government is trying to tell us that it keeps regional rates because they are in line with those in the regions' private sector, but we have proof that this is not true.
From 1981 to 1997, when I worked for the public service, I held several positions in the CR and GS groups. When I was a CR, that is a clerk—