Debates of March 23rd, 1999

Canadian Human Rights Commission

[The Deputy Speaker]

I have the honour to lay upon the table the 1998 report of the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

Government Response To Petitions

[Peter Adams, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36(8), I have the honour to table, in both official languages, the government's response to five petitions.

Interparliamentary Delegations

[George Proud, Liberal, Hillsborough, PE]

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 34(1), I have the honour to present to the House, in both official languages, the eighth report of the Canadian NATO Parliamentary Association which represented Canada at the joint committee meeting of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly of defence and security, economic and political committees held in Brussels, Belgium, February 14 and 15, 1999.

Questions On The Order Paper

[Peter Adams, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I ask that all questions be allowed to stand.

[The Deputy Speaker]

Is that agreed?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

Government Services Act, 1999

[Don Boudria, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 57, I move:

With respect to Government Order, Government Business No. 21, that debate shall not be further adjourned.

[The Deputy Speaker]

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

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Some hon. members]

No.

[The Deputy Speaker]

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

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Deputy Speaker]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Deputy Speaker]

In my opinion the nays have it.

And more than five members having risen:

[The Deputy Speaker]

Call in the members.

(The House divided on the motion, which was agreed to on the following division:)

Division No. 354

[The Deputy Speaker]

I declare the motion carried.

The House resumed from March 22 consideration of the motion.

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

Mr. Speaker, yesterday I had two minutes left in my speech and I really wanted to come back today and take all the time available to me to explain the scope of the bill that is now before us.

In these two minutes, I should summarize yesterday's remarks for the benefit of those members who were not here, and perhaps also for those listeners who are just joining us on the parliamentary channel today.

Yesterday, I accused the Liberal government of being anti-worker and anti-union. I accused it of being unfair, cynical and Machiavellian, for several reasons which, unfortunately, I will not have time to repeat. I will deal with the essential.

Back to work legislation is a prime example; it is not the first time that this government prepares and introduces this kind of legislation. Canada Post workers were hit by such a measure, and so were railway workers. Now, the government is targeting 14,000 low income federal public servants.

Yesterday, among the examples I gave to show that this government is anti-worker and anti-union, I mentioned how slow it has been, and still is, in settling the pay equity issue, and how quick it is to grab the surplus in the federal public service employees pension fund.

I used the example of the Singer employees, who were probably the first victims of this government's refusal to assume its responsibility as trustee, because it was already planning to grab the surplus in the federal public service employees pension fund.

These examples show that this government is clearly anti-worker and anti-union.

I call on the Liberal party to use common sense. It is not too late. I am asking government members to withdraw this bill so that bargaining can continue until a collective agreement is signed by the parties involved.

[Dale Johnston, Reform, Wetaskiwin, AB]

Madam Speaker, I know it is not summer but suddenly the reruns are here. It seems that we have been in this place before doing exactly the same thing, legislating some group of people back to work. This is certainly a heavy handed approach to take. It does not solve anything.

[Michel Guimond, Bloc, Beauport—Montmorency—Orléans, QC]

Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order.

I do not wish to be impolite in regard to your predecessor, but at the end of the speech by the member for Saint-Jean, I believe the Speaker in the Chair before you neglected to provide the period set aside for questions and comments and immediately sought to have the debate continued.

I would like your comments on that, Madam Speaker, and I would suggest to you, as you were not there, that you confirm this with your clerks, who will be able to enlighten you.

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Thibeault)]

In response to the hon. member, when Standing Order 57 is invoked as has just been done, there are no more comments or questions.

[Dale Johnston, Reform, Wetaskiwin, AB]

Madam Speaker, as I was saying, we have done this before. I do not see this as a resolution. I do not see anything being resolved. In most situations somebody should gain something. There should be some winners. When I look at this situation I am hard pressed to find a winner.

What we have now is legislation before us that will put people grudgingly back to work. It will do absolutely nothing to improve the relationship that the employer, the Government of Canada, has with its employees. We have done this over and over again.

The last time we legislated people back to work was over 16 months ago, in 1997 before Christmas, when we legislated the post office people back to work. Those people are still without a contract. As of today they are without a contract. What have we gained? We got the mail moving all right, but we somehow got the government out of its obligation to bargain with and come to settlement with its employees. If that is the kind of situation the government wants, why does it not put it in its policies?

When we had the labour code up for amendment a year ago, the government said that it would be seeking a balance. That was the framework on which the amendments to part I of the labour code were based. This does not seem to be a balance.

The bill covers some 14,000 blue collar workers in Canada, some of whom are not on strike and some of whom will not be eligible for a strike position until this coming Friday. The government has some obligation to come to an agreement with its employees.

We have now experienced closure or at least the limiting of debate in the House 50 times. While I agree that we have an emergency on the business of getting the grain moving again in western Canada, I do not think there was any need for the government to drag its feet to the point where it suddenly feels its back is against the wall with a two week break coming up. It is now in a position where it wants us to agree to put the legislation through the House in all stages in one day. This is simply for the convenience of the government which is, I will point out once again, responsible for the situation we face today.

It is only reasonable to expect people to work without a contract for so long and then there will be some real problems. These people have been to the bargaining table. The President of Treasury Board says that in his estimation they have been totally unreasonable and that Canada simply cannot afford to agree to their demands. We have not been party to those negotiations so we are not sure just how to evaluate the remarks of the President of the Treasury Board.

However, I think the onus falls on the government to make sure that this sort of thing does not arrive at the situation where it is today. The main reason I say this is that it is a recurring thing. Again and again we will be called on to legislate some group of people back to work because of the failure of the government to act in a responsible manner and to arrive at a contract with its employees before it reaches an impasse.

That is why we have advocated for some time now the use of final offer selection arbitration in cases where there is a monopoly situation, where the services cannot be obtained anywhere else and where the withdrawal of those services would have a detrimental effect on an innocent third party such as the grain handlers, and in particular the grain weighers in this case. Some 70 people go on strike and stop the movement of all grain in western Canada to port.

Final offer selection arbitration is a tool that can be used equally well by management and by labour. By putting in place a mechanism that will require both parties to place their final offer, their bottom line, in writing before a mutually agreed to arbitrator or panel, they may possibly bargain so earnestly and fine-tune their position to the point where there will not be any need for an arbitrator to make any decision at all. The result will be that final offer selection, used to its ultimate, is not used at all. We firmly believe that the best settlement is a negotiated settlement.

I would like to quote from page 18 of the Reform Party's blue book which clarifies where we are coming from as far as labour relations are concerned. It states:

The Reform Party supports the right of workers to organize democratically, to bargain collectively and to strike peacefully.

At the same time we believe certain services in Canada should not be interrupted because it would have a detrimental effect on the country's economy and innocent third parties would be damaged by the removal of those services. We therefore suggest that in those situations final offer selection arbitration be used.

Some people have said that final offer selection arbitration will take away the right to strike from people. I counter by saying I do not think it will at all. It will not take away the right to strike any more than a negotiated settlement will take away the right to strike. Maybe it will take away the need to strike, but so does a negotiated settlement. If the settlement is arrived at and agreed to by both parties, there is no need for a strike.

Let us be perfectly clear. I cannot think of any union or any unionized person who would relish the thought of going into a strike. It is very traumatic for them, for their families and for their bank accounts to make the decision to strike. When they do they are trying to pry an intransigent party away from its position and back to the table to continue to negotiate.

[An hon. member]

Why are you smiling?

[Dale Johnston, Reform, Wetaskiwin, AB]

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.