In spite of my smile I think this is a very important and very serious situation. I would also like to read from the blue book regarding labour policy. It says:
The Reform Party supports the harmonization of labour-management relations and rejects the view that labour and management must constitute warring camps.
It would seem to me that in this situation the government has taken exactly the opposite view of what the Reform Party has articulated as our labour policy. It is very difficult to arrive at a negotiated settlement when we are in a situation where we are constantly ordering people back to work.
Daryl Bean of the Public Service Alliance of Canada warned the government that it would use grain as a lever in this round of negotiations. That should come as no surprise to anybody, because it has been done over and over and over again. We cannot simply point our finger at the labour union in this case and say that it brought about this stalemate, that it is entirely its fault. It would be absolutely false to say that.
There is also an unwillingness on the part of the government to come to an agreement. We have to overcome that. The best way to do that is through the process known as final offer selection arbitration whereby people can arrive at a negotiated settlement through a little pressure from a third party.
It is very interesting that recently the government decided to remove binding arbitration from PSAC workers and then a short time later legislated them back to work. I know we are not supposed to impute motive in this place, but we have to wonder if there is a lot more to this situation than meets the eye.
Twenty minutes is a long time to talk about back to work legislation. We will be presenting an amendment to the bill. We would very much like to see it include the use of final offer selection arbitration. We feel that anything less than that is simply a stop gap measure that does nothing whatsoever but grudgingly put parties back on the job. It does nothing whatsoever to deal with the contract or to smooth labour-management relations.
This is not the first time we have had such an amendment presented, but I hope this time we get unanimous or at least majority consent to pass the motion. We see it as a tool that could be used over and over again and we would not have to go through an extremely painful process for everybody.
I still have six minutes remaining, although I am not obliged to use the six minutes.
We have a big problem with the negligence we are seeing. This unethical, undemocratic government has rammed this back to work legislation down the throats of its workers. It is also limiting the amount of debate. Some of my colleagues are very anxious to speak to this item and we are being restricted in the amount of intelligent thought that we can put into this very serious matter.