Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak this morning to Bill C-76. However, 76 reminds me of other things. It rings another bell. It was the year the Parti Quebecois took office under René Lévesque.
I would quickly like to relate a bit of history before speaking to this debate. In 1966, the sovereignists received 8% of the vote; in 1970, 23%; and in 1973, 30%. Finally, in 1976, we came to power.
I will now move on to Bill C-76, which is anti-union and discriminatory legislation. I will quote two newspaper headlines “Treasury Board President imposes special legislation”, and “Ottawa forces blue collar workers back to work”. The same article had this to say about the government House leader “The Leader of the Government in the House, one of the Liberal members who sided with PSAC workers in 1991, when Brian Mulroney's Conservative government had imposed wage freezes—”
It is pretty surprising that these people are now singing a different tune. Back then, the Leader of the Government in the House was one of the so-called rat pack, which also included the present Minister of Canadian Heritage, the maverick Liberal MP for York South—Weston, a former candidate for the leadership of the Liberal Party and a former candidate for the position of Speaker of the House of Commons, whom the Liberal Party finally kicked out of its ranks. The member for Glengarry—Prescott—Russell backed the alliance in those days. These members were dubbed the rat pack, and were known for giving the Progressive Conservative Party a hard time.
I could draw an analogy with France in the year 500 when Saint Rémi, while baptizing King Clovis of France, told the king to burn what he had worshipped. This is exactly what the present Leader of the Government in the House is doing. Having once defended the alliance, he is now going after it with special legislation.
The purpose of Bill C-76 is to force striking public servants of bargaining table 2 back to work. The bill also gives the government considerable leeway to impose whatever working conditions and salaries it wishes, including for correctional officers who have a strike mandate.
The federal government is pointing to the lost revenues of Prairie farmers and the backlog of tax returns due to picketing as justification for its bulldozer tactics.
I will give a brief historical background on public service negotiations.
Employer-employee relations between the federal government and public servants are governed by the Public Service Staff Relations Act, which came into effect in 1967. Placing public servants under this negotiating framework took them out of the broader framework of the Canada Labour Code.
At the time, the government justified this particular arrangement by committing to be a good employer as far as pay and working conditions are concerned, and by not taking advantage of its size and power to control the market.
Since then, particularly since the Liberals took office in 1993, these principles have been betrayed in every possible way. Using its legislative power, the government has falsified, undermined and subordinated the process of negotiation as no other employer could do. It has done so with its series of cutbacks, which have impacted heavily on public servants, and with its attempts to manipulate the taxpayers with demagoguery and the government's sizeable communication resources, as well as to abuse the House of Commons system, by giving MPs insufficient time and information to debate the matter thoroughly, as is the case now.
The federal government has abrogated the right to negotiate 8 times in the past 15 years. For 11 of those years, shipboard and hospital personnel have worked under a non-negotiated regime imposed by the federal government by legislative means, each time under the pretext that it was for the good of Canadians.
Those who work for the federal government have had to endure a whole series of unilaterally imposed laws. To name but a few, in August 1982, Bill C-124 froze the salaries of some 500,000 public servants. In December 1989, there was the back to work legislation, Bill C-49. With Bill C-29 in October 1991, the employer threatened unilateral imposition of its offer if it were not accepted.
The Labour Relations Board characterized this approach as unethical. The International Labour Organization noted that the federal government's action imposed serious restrictions on bargaining and urged the government to return to unrestricted bargaining.
Later, Bill C-113 imposed, in April 1992, a two year freeze and the unilateral extension of the collective agreement. The ILO lambasted the government for its lack of support of union rights.
In June 1993, Bill C-101 accorded the government the right to impose a vote on its final offers in any negotiations.
Now we come to the government currently in office, the Liberal Party. Bill C-17, in June 1994, continued the freeze for another two years and extended the collective agreement—six consecutive years of salary freeze. Once again, the ILO criticized the process.
With Bill C-31, still with the Liberals in office, in 1996, the federal government took up contracting out. In 1992, it closed the Pay Research Bureau, thus getting around having to take into account the facts and figures that disproved its assertions.
Bill C-26, on public service reform in 1993, gave the employer a significant advantage, judge and jury once again, on issues in the workplace.
As members know, up to now, the governments that have held office each in turn, be they Conservative or Liberal, have always been anti-union.
Bill C-76 is intended to bring about the return to work of public service employees currently on strike.
The bill also gives the government a lot of power to impose working conditions and salaries, including on correctional officers, who have a strike mandate.
Negotiations with correctional services employees, at table 4, led to a majority conciliation report, which was unanimously approved by union members. The employer tabled a minority report and the government should simply take into account the majority report that was submitted by a third party.
Negotiations at table 2, which concern general labour and trades, ships' crews, hospital services, general service and firefighters, did not lead to a majority conciliation report, since the chair of the conciliation board, the employer and the union tabled three different proposals. The gap between the offers from the employer and the union are not insurmountable, provided the government acts in good faith, something it is not doing right now.
Here is what is included in the bill. The government's offer for table 2 is lower than its previous proposal, and it is not the first time this happens. Sometimes, groups negotiate and when they are subjected to back to work legislation, the offers are invariably lower than those made previously.
The federal government was originally offering 2.75%, but has now lowered its proposed increase to 2.50%. As I said earlier, the government is obviously trying to take advantage of a situation where it is both judge and jury. It is to be noted that the salaries for workers represented at table 2 have been frozen for six years.
In addition to the pay increase, the other stumbling block is the regional rates of pay. It seems the government's offers are negligible in this regard. The government's offer for table 4 is unknown. There is a majority conciliation report, but the government seems to be ignoring it. The bill would allow the government to impose its own conditions, without taking into account the conciliation report that was unanimously approved by the union.
Here is the position of the Bloc Quebecois on Bill C-76. With this special legislation, the government is attempting to impose a collective agreement on table 2 and 4 employers, under the pretext of serving the taxpayers' interests. Quite some feat, when what the government really wants is to make use of them to violate the rights of workers.
In fact, the picketing could come to an end today, if the government wanted that to happen. It would merely have to accept the majority conciliation report for table 2 and binding arbitration for table 4.
Generally speaking, we are opposed to the use of special legislation, which would have the effect of denying the fundamental right to strike, particularly in the case of workers who have had to put up with this same treatment on numerous occasions already. On the other hand, we regret the inconvenience that the picketing by public servants has caused to Quebeckers and Canadians.
What we in the Bloc Quebecois want, is for an agreement to be reached between the government and the workers of tables 2 and 4, and for the services to which the public is entitled to be restored. There is a way of doing this: the government finally sits down at the bargaining table and negotiates in good faith, once and for all.
At table 4, a majority conciliation report accepted unanimously by the union is not taken into consideration by the bill. One wonders why, since this is a worthwhile agreement, one proposed by an independent conciliator, which the union finds acceptable and which would make it possible to avoid a strike. All of the fundamental principles of labour relations would be respected.
At table 2, the union says it is fully prepared to go to arbitration. It therefore agrees to bow to the judgment of an independent adjudicator, and the picketing would thus cease immediately. The problems cited by the government in order to impose the bulldozer legislation would cease to exist.
And what does the government have to say? That the union demands are unreasonable. If the union demands are so unreasonable, why refuse arbitration? What has this government got to lose?
In fact, this bill is nothing more than a show of strength in order to impose a collective agreement and avoid the usual process.
Our position is clear: the freedom to organize supposedly exists in Canada, and when they have good reason to do so, workers go on strike. That is part of a fair balance of power, except when the employer is the government and abuses its legislative power. Special legislation should be kept as a last resort, until the government returns to the bargaining table with an offer that is acceptable to the workers and resolves the problem democratically, in a civilized manner, through negotiations.
As a former trade unionist with the CEQ and the CSN, I cannot agree with Bill C-76. Like my Bloc Quebecois colleagues and my colleague from Trois-Rivières, I will oppose this bill.