Mr. Speaker, I am glad to be able to join the debate even though it is the middle of the night. I have mixed feelings about being able to speak now.
I firmly believe that we are being dragged through nonsense for nothing, to sum it up. We know now that in the last few hours there has been some movement on the government's part in terms of reaching the tentative settlement we are talking about. In fact we saw the government move very close to the union's position when talks broke off on March 12.
Everybody seems to want to know what was in the tentative agreement. I know exactly what was in it. It went from 30 months to 24 months. It went from 2.5% to 2.75%, which was the union's position on March 12, although it wanted a 30 cent upper. In the last year the 1% gets knocked off. We were very close, so why was the country dragged through weeks and weeks of rancour, animosity, hostility and inconvenience if the government had the money in its pocket? It has found it now. Why have we been dragged through all of this nonsense and why do we find ourselves here now? I cannot understand it. Personally it is very frustrating. That is table two, the 14,500-odd trades people. The government seems to have found a way to solve the problem and put these folks back to work.
Another thing in the agreement is the zones, the real reason the workers from Atlantic Canada felt it was necessary to take the drastic measure of withholding their services. The zone pay is offensive to everyone who has spoken to it. The government found satisfaction there. Now it will merge the Atlantic provinces with Quebec into one zone. That makes sense. That is what the union was calling for all along. The government wanted to merge Atlantic Canada with Saskatchewan. That was its great idea for merging into one zone. Yes, it will go down from 10 zones to 7, but that was ludicrous.
Another thing the union recommended was that one of the zones should be the three prairie provinces combined: Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. That is common sense. It is a natural district with a community of interest and similar costs of living. Now the government seems willing to let the union do that.
The third difference is that Banff will be rolled into British Columbia for the purposes of pay zones. Again that is exactly what the union asked for on March 12 before talks fell apart and the workers had to hit the bricks.
If we found the will, the money and a way a couple of weeks later, it begs the question why. Why did we force this strike and why did we put all these people out? It is beyond reason. That is why I say it is absolute nonsense.
It leads me to believe that it was ideologically driven. I am not trying to imply ideological driven as in bust the union or something like that, but there was a secondary goal, a secondary objective the government was trying to achieve by coming in through the back door, that is the 600 to 800 corrections workers, the table four corrections workers.
The government had it within its ability to settle in that regard as well. The conciliation board came down with a ruling on March 19 to which the union agreed. It said it could live with it but the government said no and two days later tabled back to work legislation.
Given there is no justifiable or good reason to keep table two out or to even go through the whole painful process of back to work legislation for table two, the government is really shooting for table four. It is trying to do what it did with the postal workers strike, trying to achieve some secondary goal through the guise or through the packaging of back to work legislation.
Why is the government not honest about what it really wants to do? Why does it not come through the front door and say it wants to designate these 800 workers as essential services? Then we could deal with it. We could have an honest debate about it. It should not try to achieve something by subterfuge or by stealth, which is what it boils down to.
We have been hearing a lot of passionate speeches from very odd sources. We have had to listen to members of the Reform Party, although I see they do not have the same courtesy to stay and listen to us. It has been painful to me as a trade unionist to listen to them paint themselves in the last couple of days of debate as the champions of the working class. Somehow they are the saviours of workers and champions of the union movement. What a crock, frankly.
I do not know how much we can get away with saying after midnight, but what absolute excrement.