Mr. Speaker, the purpose of Bill C-76, an act to provide for the resumption and continuation of government services, is to get the public service workers who are currently on strike back to work.
The bill also gives wide latitude to the government in imposing the working conditions and salaries it wants, including those for the 4,500 correctional officers who have a strike mandate.
With this bill, with its pernicious effects on correctional officers, according to its press release of March 22, the government wants to “ensure the safety of the Canadian public”. This is a totally fallacious argument.
This government knows very well that, if it wanted to ensure public safety, it had only to bow to the majority conciliation report, which was unanimously accepted by the unions representing the correctional officers. From that point on, the threat of a correctional officer strike would have been avoided, without any need of unjustified special legislation.
The federal government justifies these drastic measures in the form of Bill C-76 with the pretext that the prairie farmers are losing income and people's income tax returns are not being processed because of the picketing. In my riding of Jonquière. we have a taxation data centre. I think the workers who demonstrated had the right to do so, and the Revenue Canada workers at the Jonquière centre respected their right.
I cannot say the same for the government. I thought that in Canada people still had the right to unionize and that workers, when they had good reason to do so, could strike, because they had followed the entire process that could lead them to a strike mandate.
Today, I am not so sure. The government's approach right now, introducing special legislation, makes me think there are things to hide. It is part of a fair balance of power.