Mr. Speaker, getting back to the commitment to compensate the farmers, it is absolutely vital because of the financial situation they are in which gave rise to this emergency debate.
If there is financial hurt out there, how can the government not consider compensating farmers for financial loss caused by the government and the Public Service Alliance of Canada negotiators? It is only fair. It is only right. Why should farmers suffer due to the actions of other people?
There is nothing in Bill C-76 that will prevent this situation from happening again on the expiry of the tentative agreement, if it is ratified. We will see the same old routine of the last 26 years. In about two years time we will see another strike, another crisis, another back to work piece of legislation, and another loss of a $100 million to farmers. There is no hope from the government as to its future commitments in two years.
Maybe the election will come along before then and I will walk over to the other side to take care of agriculture issues along with my compatriots in the Reform Party. We will see how that works out in the future.
We have the opportunity today, not in two years time, for the government to put final offer selection arbitration into the legislation and into the negotiations it has a tentative agreement on. In all the comments of the President of the Treasury Board in this regard he never said that he had tried to get that back into the legislation for the 70 grain weighers in particular. It was kind of like the official opposition brought it up so maybe now he would think about it.
Farmers and other Canadians need a lot more than he will think about it and try to do something. They need it to be put into legislation. It could have been in Bill C-76. It could have been in the amended Bill C-26, but it will not be part of the legislation.
We have covered the costs and the idea of final offer selection arbitration. Another part that has not be thought of is that maybe the 70 grain weighers should be considered an essential service. They have held up 115,000 farmers who tried to ship their grain to the west coast. It would seem to me they are a monopoly service. They are essential to the well-being of a significant chunk of the population of the country.
Over the next few months before this parliament recesses we will see that there will be a lot of pressure from the opposition side to move in that direction to protect the farmers. We will be looking for support from the government side to bring that about.
The treasury board minister said that the reason we needed this legislation was because between now and the point of ratification there might be another strike. The tentative agreement did not really cover a lot of the things that needed to be covered, including trying to have the no strike provisions put in so it did not have to continue on with hammering the democracy of this parliament with closure.
I heard the hon. House leader from this side speak earlier about the fact that this government has used closure 50 times between the 35th parliament and this one today. This closure that we are speaking on today is the 50th. If that is democracy, it is democracy being abused.
Closure is the kind of legislation that should be available, but it should be used more along the lines of the notwithstanding clause as opposed to being used more in the way of the government dictatorially trying to get its way in this parliament. We have seen that abuse tonight and that is why we are sitting here at this early hour of the day speaking about Bill C-76.
We went through hours of amendments, some of which were very good. My friends in the Bloc, in fact, brought up the final offer selection arbitration. I thought that maybe that amendment would be one that would really improve this bill. What did we get? We saw the government members yell that great amendment down. As a result, we now continue on with this bill without that key part in it.
We have in this bill a requirement about the grain that is mostly from western Canada. However, I would like to point out that we are also going to be talking very shortly about grain from central Canada. I speak particularly of Ontario, because I am a little more familiar with it. The seaway is going to be opening up. The terminals at Thunder Bay are going to be opening up and there are going to be boatloads of grain going down the seaway and out to our customers on the other side of the Atlantic to South America.
We know there are a few Liberal members of parliament who represent the seaway area in Ontario. Maybe we will see a lot more action to make sure that the seaway stays open and that those jobs and those farmers in Ontario are well taken care of.
Why could that not also have happened for the western farmers? This government is supposed to be taking care of all Canadians, but it seems that it likes to take care of itself.
Earlier today and yesterday we heard serious allegations about the Prime Minister in regard to golf courses and hotels in his own riding. These allegations border on a conflict of interest problem.
We have the second reason that the Treasury Board says we have to have this legislation here. It is because the grain has to keep moving. I certainly agree that the grain has to keep moving. This legislation is the only way that is going to happen. As a result, I am going to vote for this legislation because it is that important.
Western farmers cannot be held to pay for ruinous type legislation and ruinous type negotiations in labour-management talks that this government seems to be bringing forth all the time.
The third reason had to do with the CXs. The CXs are the corrections workers, and I have corrections workers at Stony Mountain penitentiary in my riding. I have spoken to some of the union workers there and they are not a very happy bunch. They have been mistreated in previous negotiations with the government and they obviously have not experienced good faith negotiations in this round of talks.
In the Stony Mountain penitentiary we have an educational and training centre, not only for the guards and the union operators, but also for the prisoners who are housed there.
We had a situation over the past few years where all of a sudden the contracts for that training happened to end up with a group of educators based primarily in Ontario. At one time our local school boards managed to get those contracts.
Once again we see government interference. It is a strange method. I have not exactly had time to look into this, but I am giving the government notice tonight that I intend to look into it and determine just what it was that managed to have our local school boards not be able to win any of these contracts.
All of these things add up to why these corrections workers were in the past, and still are, unhappy with the negotiations. That is why we once again have this legislation being brought in to force them back to work.
I do not know why they have to be forced back to work. The Treasury Board minister has informed us that there are about 500 of these people who are not covered as essential workers, possibly as many as 600. Union negotiators have told me that there are 720. That is part of the problem in dealing with the government and I appreciate that maybe the negotiators for the unions had the same problem in getting hard facts and commitments.
As another example of a lack of commitment, I have been arguing since early December when the Estey report came out to get a commitment from the transportation minister and the Canadian Wheat Board minister that the report actually was important, that it had to be dealt with and that it should be moved along.
I tried to get this commitment through letters to the ministers and inquiries during question period to try to get them to move along.
I was part of an industry group that was trying to move these ministers along and get a commitment from them. As of this day we still have no commitment as to where they stand on it, whether we will move ahead, move backwards or move sideways.
That is the same lack of commitment that we see in trying to negotiate these wage agreements with the various unions around the country. In particular, I am speaking out on behalf of the corrections workers, some of whom are my neighbours and friends, and in fact I would like to say that they should not have been included in this back to work legislation. The jobs of the 500 to 600 workers they are talking about could quite easily have been done by the other thousands of employees at the corrections offices.
If they had set up pickets, it well may have turned out that other union workers would not have crossed their picket lines. Once again, we would have the same situation that we have with the grain weighers on the west coast. When they put up a picket line the other unions would not cross it.
Now we see that the government understands that this is a problem. In regard to the corrections workers, it has built into Bill C-76 the fact that while this agreement is on the go, and once it is ratified, there will not be any strike action and the work will have to continue on.
It was vital to get the grain moving. We had to ensure that the western farmers were covered, as well as the west coast workers. However, in fairness, there should have been a negotiated settlement and we should have continued on with the negotiated settlement with these corrections workers. Instead they will be arbitrarily forced back to work if they go out on strike, which I assume they will if this is not passed.
We are going to see the same thing with the corrections workers that we saw with the postal workers. We are going to see them 16, 17 or 24 months down the road with no contract. With the grain weighers, in two years, which is the average before another stoppage comes along, we will be in the House again with back to work legislation and a big crisis. That could happen before the next election if this bill is not improved.
I will have to check how the House works with regard to the technicalities, but I would like to think we could move some amendments tomorrow at third reading stage that would bring in final offer selection arbitration that we so desperately need in this legislation.
It is time that I pass along to the next speaker, who will no doubt be saying a lot of the same things I am saying. I have pointed out clearly where this government has fallen down. The people of Canada will know it. The western farmers will know it. The unions will know it. One last attempt to put in final offer selection arbitration will be made.
I am going to support this bill to get these workers back to work and to keep them on the job just because of the drastic consequences there are to the western Canadian economy and the whole Canadian economy due to the lack of productivity, and for the individual farmer trying to make a go of it this spring with all the vagaries of agricultural life, such as drought, too much rain, floods and all of those things.
This government has really turned the House off tonight by the way it has handled the closure motion and by bringing in the tentative agreement at the last minute.
I would now ask that the member for Wetaskiwin be permitted to speak in the time remaining.