Debates of March 23rd, 1999

Division No. 360

[Charlie Power, Progressive Conservative, St. John's West, NL]

Madam Speaker, I am not sure we have much left to give them. We have given them all our logic and all the benefit of our wisdom and the government members never seem to accept very much of it. I suspect it will not be any different this morning than it was last night, yesterday or last week.

We have a few points to make about what has happened here in the last 24 hours. Our caucus has a few things to say about how the government has handled this issue. Yesterday when I first spoke on this matter I said that the government was acknowledging by the way it did this that it had two fundamental failures.

One is its fundamental failure in how it runs this House. Whenever the government House leader has to bring in closure, an act that takes away the rights of the members of this House of Commons, he acknowledges a failure in managing this place properly. That is something all 301 members deserve and expect. All Canadians expect us to have the rights of this House of Commons every single day. If the government cannot manage its business any better, if it has to run from crisis to crisis, then maybe the government House leader should look at exactly how he does his job.

The other failure was the failure of the President of the Treasury Board, the minister responsible for collective agreements, the minister responsible for making sure we have in place a collective bargaining process that has an opportunity to work.

If there is a case where this pending strike has been ongoing and the collective agreement has been ongoing and needing to be negotiated for two years, why did we end up with 14 days of negotiation in two years? What happened to all the other days in those two years that were not used to solve this problem? That is why we have been here for the last 24 hours.

The third mistake, if there was a mistake to be made worse than the other two, is how the House was managed last night. Some people in the House had access before a crucial vote to very crucial information about a vote that we were taking about collective bargaining in Canada.

Why did the President of the Treasury Board and the government House leader not acknowledge that they knew an hour or so before any of us voted that there was a tentative agreement? It is absolutely unfair and unacceptable. It may not be illegal but it certainly is immoral and unfair to all of us as members of the House of Commons to allow some persons to have knowledge before they vote and some persons to have that knowledge 40 or 50 minutes later, after the vote was taken.

That is one of the reasons we spent most of the night here. The government did not give the opposition the facts. It did not give us the truth as to what was really happening. As long as those kind of things happen in this place, the opposition will fight for its rights. We will fight for the rights of Canadians who did not get a fair shake in this collective bargaining process.

Another strange thing happened last night that none of them seem to understand. The President of the Treasury Board should have come in last night and made a wonderful announcement that there was a tentative agreement as a result of the collective bargaining process, which is what everyone wants to see happen. He should allowed it to be the end of the evening. Instead he had to come in and rub the faces of the people in the PSAC union in the mud and say they were given a collective agreement, which might not be really what was wanted. In case it is not accepted it took away the right to strike anyway. What kind of logic is that?

If a collective agreement is negotiated in good faith and is accepted by members of PSAC, why are we taking away the right to strike from people who are not now on strike? Why was it not part of the negotiating process for the President of Treasury Board to simply ask the member of PSAC to give up their right to go on strike during the ratification process? Any agreeable, acceptable union would be happy to do that provided the government was fair enough to take away its right to rush in here and pass back to work legislation.

My suspicion is that the government was not willing to give the union any assurance that it would not come in and pass back to work legislation. As a result, the union quite probably said that if the government would not relent on its back to work legislation it would not relent on its right to go on strike during the ratification process.

It was all done very wrongly. The whole collective bargaining process is now wrong for all public servants of Canada. How can the issues they want to negotiate through the collective bargaining process be done? There cannot be binding arbitration and there can only be strikes if it suits the employer. That is a no-brainer. Who will go on strike? Who can go on strike? The minute they do it is taken away through the process we have before us in the House of Commons.

I will repeat today what I said yesterday. If workers are deemed essential, whether they are grain handlers, transportation workers or workers in prisons, and their services must be available for good governance in the country, they should be made essential workers and given binding arbitration. Then most persons would accept as a fair and reasonable way to govern the taking away of their right to strike. In this case the workers have given up everything and the government very little. As a result we will continue to have a series of union and employer problems for many years to come.

Certainly from our point of view not only salary issues are involved. There is a terrible unconstitutional law that has been implemented by Treasury Board. A person in St. John's, Newfoundland, who does clerical work for the Government of Canada gets paid an entirely different wage from a person who does the same work in Calgary. How can there be discrimination in the country based upon where one happens to live?

I do not care about the business of disrupting labour markets. The minister thinks that if he pays an equivalent wage or a slightly higher wage to a person in St. John's, Newfoundland, than he pays to a person in Calgary he will disrupt the labour market in Newfoundland and will not be able to find employees for the private sector.

The government does not know yet that there is a 35% unemployment rate for young people in Newfoundland. It does not know that there is a 20% unemployment rate for all adults in Newfoundland. There are no jobs. In the last three years we have lost 30,000 Newfoundlanders. Is that labour market disruption? Is that affected by the Government of Canada paying lower wages in Newfoundland than in other places? Those are the kinds of things that have to be negotiated through collective agreements.

All I can say about this process is that there does not seem to be a collective bargaining process any more. It is intimidation by the majority. It is bullying by government that forces people to accept certain things which are not acceptable to them in a normal, negotiating process.

From the point of view of this caucus we are very disappointed that the Government of Canada tries to pit farmers against workers in Newfoundland. Sometimes it picks on, in this case the poorest paid in the public service. They are bullied by a government which tries to use farmers to intimidate them. It is a totally wrong process. It is a disgusting process.

The way members of the House of Commons were treated last night in the vote was disgusting. This party and this caucus do not vote for those kinds of shenanigans in the House, not now and not ever.

[Claude Bachand, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to join with all my colleagues who consider that the government acted in a very cavalier way, to say the least.

The farce that took place last evening and last night left many members puzzled, particularly when they heard the President of the Treasury Board deliver his unexpected message around 2.30 a.m., if I remember correctly.

In my view, it was certainly unique. Having been in the labour movement for 20 years, I know that with back to work legislation pending, usually, if the government reaches a last minute agreement, workers agree to go back to work. But the government went even further.

I said it in my first speech and I repeat it. The government wanted this strike. The government did all it could to provoke this strike and then it did all it could to crush it. It could have crushed it just like that, without any offer from the workers. When it reaches an agreement at the last minute, I think it is important that the government say “Now, we will not add insult to injury and we will see to it that workers go back to work peacefully”.

One basic issue remains. What about the consequences? What will the consequences be in a union where the majority of the 14,000 workers accepted the government's offers and still are subjected to back to work legislation?

There is a problem there, and there could be trouble. I am thinking in particular of the 400 workers at the military base in Saint-Jean. These 400 people are mechanics. These are people who make the lowest salaries in the federal public service.

They looked at the negotiation process in general and saw the government make interesting offers to other tables. When their turn came, the government, which is both negotiator and legislator, said: “We do not have much money for you folks”. These people felt let down. I think this will certainly have an impact on their productivity.

To go back to work with a bowed head, with the feeling of having been whipped, is not always easy. People will say “Will I be loyal, totally loyal to my employer? Did my employer show me any respect?” These are all questions that people are asking.

Perhaps they are not all great trade unionists, but they are fathers, mothers, ordinary people who ply their trade as best as they can, and after more than 6 years without a raise, several collective agreements were imposed on them. My colleague from Trois-Rivières explained that clearly—over a period of about 15 years, there may have been 11 imposed agreements.

These people have had their collective agreements imposed on them often. They say “What is the point of trying to negotiate in good faith with an employer?”

I think the aftermath is always difficult, in such cases. I have seen employers being very hard on their employees. I have seen employers be very tough with their employees, but seldom as tough as what I just saw here in the last 24 hours.

When a negotiator in the private sector goes and negotiates with a union, there is a power relationship that comes into play. If the right to strike is legal and workers exercise that right, everybody understands. However, the dynamic here today is very different, because the government is the entity that will be legislating should negotiations fail, and the government is in a position to make negotiations fail.

I think that is what happened. This government made the negotiations fail in order to impose, by special legislation, a back to work order. I do not need to explain in any great detail that not only it imposed such legislation but also it did so after the employees, at the last minute, said “We have an agreement in principle, we are going back to work”.

So, I think this will be added to the government's record, a rather negative one, in my opinion, with respect to workers, because this is not the first time it shows it is anti-workers, and anti-unions too.

I raised several examples the other day. A few examples come to my mind. There is the surplus in the federal public service pension fund, to which the President of the Treasury Board said they were going to help themselves. I made a connection with former Singer employees, the Singer retirees. For more than two years, I have been asking the government, as the trustee for that pension fund, to give that money back to the workers. The government kept repeating no, no and no. Yet, the government was the trustee, the watchdog of the fund.

Why did the government say no? Because it intended to dip into the surplus in the federal public servants' fund.

There are no end of examples of this government's approach to labour relations with its employees and with the public in general.

What kind of example is the government setting for employers today? Is it a positive one? Is this not a negative message that is being sent, that acting in bad faith might work? But it only works in the short term, because in the long term people are less productive, more disloyal, because they feel they have been let down by the government.

Other examples given here over the past weeks and months include the EI fund to which employers and employees contribute. Once again, there is a huge surplus in this fund and the government should be using it to improve the system instead of using it to pay down the debt.

So there is all sorts of evidence that this government is going after workers. This is a rather sad day for me. When one removes one's union hat, as I have, and dons the hat of an MP, one has to remain pretty open-minded because in society, in our riding offices, in the House here, we run into people from all walks of life.

But is the first principle not to serve voters as well as possible? Has this government served voters well today? I think not. It is not just that it has wronged 14,000 people, but it will leave the public with the idea that it is alright to act in bad faith, that a government can block negotiations, bring them to a complete standstill, withdraw from the bargaining tables, and make offers way below what unions are asking for.

At the last minute, even though it knows that this will not work, the government withdraws and says “Now I will act as a legislator and I will impose back to work legislation and set the working conditions myself”.

On behalf of the 400 people I represent at the Saint-Jean military base, I think things will not go easily today at the military base. Of course, when I am back in my riding, I will contact the union president. However, I am proud that the Bloc Quebecois stood up throughout this debate.

We have managed, so far for almost 36 hours, to prevent the government from rushing this legislation through the House. This is not the first time; as I said in my speech, the Bloc Quebecois is the only party that has always defended the workers. When there was the postal strike or when the rail workers were legislated back to work, the Bloc Quebecois was on the side of the workers.

Hopefully, the workers will not forget that the Canadian government does not serve them. Hopefully, people in Quebec will see that the Bloc Quebecois is on their side. Fundamentally, it may have to do with our financing method, since many workers contribute to the Bloc Quebecois' campaign fund, and they do not contribute thousands of dollars.

We get $5 and $10 bills from unions and individuals. When the time comes to defend them, however, our hands are not tied, as the Liberal Party's are, by connections with the major corporations, and the big banks and insurance companies. When the time comes to force government workers back on the job, the Liberal Party will boast of it, for a multitude of reasons.

They claim income tax return processing was slowing down and that grain was piling up in the west. These are nothing but pretexts. The government would have grabbed onto any pretext for accomplishing its ends. I believe the government is a far from exemplary employer, since it is sending such a negative message to all those who are required to negotiate collective agreements, whether in the public or the private sector.

The Bloc Quebecois cannot, of course, subscribe to such a farce. Tonight we have been the spectators and performers in another performance, a dramatic comedy. The government turned up with offers at the last minute. So there we were at 2.30 or 2.45 a.m., saying “Hooray, at least we get to go to bed. It's over.” But this was far from being the case, for the President of Treasury Board arrogantly pulled his last ace out of his sleeve, and told us “We are still going to force these people back to work. We will continue with the legislation and we will take it to the very end”. I repeat, this was just adding insult to injury.

I am proud to say that not only did the Bloc oppose the measure from the beginning, but that it will oppose it to the very end. Everybody had a hard night, but I think that the Bloc will be in a position to tell the workers, in my riding as well as in all of Quebec, that we tried to set an example and to make the government change its mind.

Unfortunately, unless a new card comes out at some point—and I would be very surprised because it would be a trump card for the workers—it will not. It would be so nice if the government said “We will withdraw the bill. People will go back to work. There was an agreement and we are now confident that people will go back to work. They don't want to have back to work legislation hanging over their head”.

In conclusion, I will say that the government used the House of Commons to force employees back to work and to threaten them to the very last minute, and when the employees signed the agreement, the government decided to go ahead with its strategy, just the same. I find it unconscionable as I said yesterday. It is a sad day for the Bloc and for the workers and I hope that the government will pay a political price for its actions.

Members of the Bloc who have federal employees affected by the bill in their riding will make a point of explaining to these workers what really happened. I am sure that the workers will support the Bloc and say that it took the right decision in staying up all night, for 36 hours, to defend them and to oppose the government, which once again proved that it is against unions and against workers.

[John Cummins, Reform, Delta—South Richmond, BC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to spend a short while discussing this back to work legislation. I do not want to get into how inappropriate and ineffective it is or the necessity of it. I want to talk about the impact the government's inaction can have on the community and the area I come from. In particular, I want to talk about the government's inability to come to an agreement with the grain handlers.

Quite often when we discuss this issue the first issue of concern is the prairie farmer which is only right. Whether they be primary producers of grain, the forest workers, or in the fishing community, the primary producers always seem to get the short end of the stick. I certainly have a great deal of sympathy for the impact any delay in the transfer station system can have on the prairie farmer.

I understand something like 70 grain handlers are affected. We are not talking about a large group, but they do have the ability to shut the system down. The question is why did the government not take action long before it got to this critical point? That is the key issue.

Somewhere along the line somebody is missing the boat. Somebody does not understand how the transportation system works. Somebody does not understand that since the Crow rate was removed, the ports of Vancouver and Prince Rupert, and the Fraser port to a lesser extent, on the west coast are not so much in competition with one another as they could be in competition with American ports. This is simply because of the ease with which farmers could transport their grain south of the border and ship it through the port of Portland or even the port at Sacramento, California.

The possibility exists that the competition for British Columbia ports is not among themselves but it very well could be with ports south of the border. If a trickle of grain starts being shifted south of the border even down to the Mississippi, in short order there is going to be a flood. That is the key issue in my view. How do we protect the transportation route and keep that grain going out through the port of Vancouver? I think the government has completely ignored this issue.

The matter of the grain handlers is only one small issue. The other is the transportation issue. The government has sorely neglected that aspect of it as well. The taxation regime and so on which our railways have to cope with is far in excess of that which the American lines have to cope with. Sooner or later that grain is going to be shifted south of the border and with it will go a great deal of prosperity. The dollars that accrue to Vancouver through the shipment of prairie grain are huge and we should not ignore that.

This action taken by the government was unnecessary. Had it bargained honestly and openly in the beginning, an agreement could have been reached with the workers. That was demonstrated last night when an hour before he made the announcement in the House, the President of the Treasury Board was aware that an agreement had been reached, an agreement which should probably allow the continued shipment of grain through the port of Vancouver. If that agreement could be reached last night, it certainly could have been reached a week ago. The money was obviously there to satisfy those people.

Another aspect of this bill which concerns me has to do with the prison guards who are also part of this negotiating table. I do not think anybody in my community would resent those guards being given a substantial raise. The work they do is dangerous. They operate under tremendous pressure. The support they have had from the government is almost non-existent. It is a job I sure as heck would not want and I do not think too many people in this chamber would want. I do not think those people have received the respect they deserve from the government. It is sad that it has come to that.

When we look at the wages these people are paid in comparison to police officers, it is simply an outrage. Why money could not be found to pay these people the kind of dollars they are worth is simply beyond me.

Why back to work legislation has been used when nobody is off the job is a mystery to me. If these people are essential workers, then treat them as essential workers. Bring in essential legislation that would define them as such and let us get on with life. But do not impose back to work legislation on them when it is inappropriate, as it is today.

I reiterate the despair I feel in the fact that the government has simply neglected the country's transportation system. The Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Fraser ports face a peril if more care is not taken to ensure that the transportation system in Canada remains viable and competitive with that of our American neighbours. As I said earlier, it only would take a trickle of grain to find its way over the border, down through the rail system to the ports along the west coast or down to the Mississippi and there will be a flood. The cost and loss to Canadian taxpayers, and the job losses in Canada, will be huge.

I urge the government to wake up. It has been a long night but it is time to wake up and address this issue in the way it should.

[Gerald Keddy, Progressive Conservative, South Shore, NS]

Madam Speaker, I do have a question for the hon. member who just spoke.

It is a valuable point to raise concerning the problem we will be running into with our transportation system and the total lack of vision the government has shown.

We are missing a more important point. In the collective bargaining system the government supposedly bargained in good faith with the grain handlers and PSAC workers. An agreement was reached and the government turned its back on that agreement. The government came into parliament the very night on which it reached the agreement and said it was going to force the workers back to work. Why bargain? Why is there a bargaining system in place? It begs the question.

Either there is a system where people sit down and discuss issues in a reasonable and rational manner and come up with solutions, and then abide by those solutions, or there is not. The government has completely turned its back on that system. It is a travesty of justice without question. Why did the government go down that route to begin with? Why did it say it would bargain and then not abide by the rules as set out by the government? I do not understand it. I do not think anyone can understand it.

A greater issue is the regional rates of pay. This has nothing to do with grain handlers. The grain handlers are just an excuse for the government. It conveniently found that in western Canada $18 billion worth of grain exports were being held up. It was a convenient excuse for the government to force everybody back to work after it had already worked with them. There is something seriously wrong.

We sat here all night and discussed the bill and participated in vote after vote after vote and clause by clause consideration in committee in the whole. Obviously the government had one thing in mind and is walking out of here with the same thing in mind, that it will bargain in good faith on one hand and enforce legislation on the other hand.

The Liberals can blame it on the grain handlers or blame it on PSAC. They can try to create all the bogeymen that we want to create, but the fact is that those are not the problems. The problem is the Government of Canada that was looking for a stakeout to begin with. It is very unfortunate.

[John Cummins, Reform, Delta—South Richmond, BC]

Madam Speaker, I agree with the concerns my friend has raised.

These freighters may look pretty sitting out there in English Bay riding high at anchor, but they are costing prairie farmers a lot of money when they are not moving. That is the problem. The government just does not get it.

A couple of years ago during the winter we had huge problems with the shipment of grain. The rail lines were not operating properly. The money was not there although taxes were high. The government is simply ignoring the very critical transportation problem on the west coast.

Sooner or later we will wake up one day and the grain will be going south of the border, in which case we will be short a huge number of jobs in western Canada and a lot of money. A lot of people will be out of work. We simply do not need that. We need action from the government on this very critical issue.

[Angela Vautour, NDP, Beauséjour—Petitcodiac, NB]

Madam Speaker, what does my colleague in the Reform Party think of legislating workers who are not even on strike? This is what is happening. I have a serious problem with back to work legislation, to start with, but even more of a problem with legislating something that is not happening yet.

We are living in a democratic country. The prison guards are not on strike. Let us face it. They have been working and getting paycheques, but the government acts as if they have been on strike all this time. I guess it got a pretty good deal, if we look at it that way.

What is the member's feelings on legislating workers that are not on strike?

[John Cummins, Reform, Delta—South Richmond, BC]

Madam Speaker, I think it is an outrage. Either we have a collective bargaining process and allow it to work, or we do not. It is as simple as that.

Everybody who has worked for a large corporation or in the government service understands and appreciates the fact that they have a union protecting them. They have union protection and unions bargaining for them. It is part of their democratic right and should be allowed to go through its natural course. That is what it is all about. To order people back to work when they have not gone on strike is an absolute outrage.

[Jake Hoeppner, Reform, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Madam Speaker, how does my colleague from British Columbia feel about the farmers who found a market in 1993 for grain which was designated poisonous and unsaleable? Grain companies could not handle it. The wheat board could not handle it. When farmers found a market in the U.S. the government started prosecuting those farmers. Dan Sawatzky beat the case. The government lost the appeal and is still prosecuting 170 farmers for moving grain that nobody wanted to buy.

Is that human rights abuse or what is it? How can the government let something like that go ahead? I would like the member's impression on that.

[John Cummins, Reform, Delta—South Richmond, BC]

Madam Speaker, I do not know a whole lot about that issue, but I know about another issue where the same happened. It had to do with fishing regulations put in place by the government on the west coast. It took fishermen to court because they defied the minister's regulation which the joint House of Commons and Senate Committee on Scrutiny of Regulations declared to be invalid. Yet the government has continued to arrest people and to take them to court over regulations that are invalid, regulations which a provincial court judge and the Supreme Court of British Columbia have declared invalid. The government continues to harass fishermen, to take them to court and to put them in jail over an issue when it is the minister who is breaking the law.

I do not know as much about the issue as my friend, but I know the government is perfectly capable of putting farmers in jail for standing up for their rights.

[Jake Hoeppner, Reform, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Madam Speaker, finally we have awakened what the government has been trying to put to sleep for the last couple of years. I want to address that issue further.

In 1993-94 farmers were stuck with millions of bushels of fusarium wheat that was declared toxic and unsaleable by the government. Farmers found a market for it. Farmers started exporting that worthless wheat and saved taxpayers millions of dollars. After they had developed a market the government interfered. It wanted to stop it so it charged David Sawatzky from my riding. Without any representation in the court the poor farmer beat the charge and proved to the government that it had no right to charge him.

The government appealed that. Then what happened? The government lost. It turned around and charged 175 farmers. They are being prosecuted on that same issue. Has the government dealt in good faith with anybody? Nobody. This is Cuban-style dictatorship. If it is allowed to continue, we might as well shut down the House or burn it down because it would be useless.

People are being mistreated. People are in jail. What can we do? Why did people send us here? It was certainly not for something like this. We could have that in a different country. We do not need Canada for that. Why are we sitting back and allowing it to happen?

There is a trial in Brandon, Manitoba, on the same issue. If members want to know if I am telling the truth, they should come to Brandon, Manitoba. Now there is a suspicion that even court documents have been doctored to prosecute the farmers. What next?

We have a prime example of what has happened over on that side. We have a prime example that we have a government that is worse than the Mulroney government. Why should people support it? In the next election they will show the government where to go, out the door.

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Thibeault)]

Is the House ready for the question?

[Some hon. members]

Question.

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Thibeault)]

The question is on the amendment. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the amendment?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Some hon. members]

No.

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Thibeault)]

All those in favour of the amendment will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Thibeault)]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Thibeault)]

In my opinion the nays have it.

And more than five members have risen:

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Thibeault)]

Call in the members.

(The House divided on the amendment, which was negatived on the following division:)

Division No. 361

[The Deputy Speaker]

I declare the amendment lost.

Is the House ready for the question on the main motion?

[Some hon. members]

Question.

[The Deputy Speaker]

Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.