A member opposite says not in the NDP. In some ways we have held true to our principles, unlike the government party which we have seen slide to the right as pressure from the Reform Party mounts.
The hon. member is right. There are some things we in the NDP have not given in on, unlike members of the Liberal Party. They have have given in on things like labour legislation. They have given in on things like the right to strike. They have given in on the fundamental democratic right to debate issues in this House. That is why there is closure today.
The hon. member wants to heckle and call out where the NDP stands on certain issues. I welcome those suggestions.
Going back to when this legislation was introduced, it was in 1922, three years after the Winnipeg general strike and about six years before the great strikes in Cape Breton which led to the death of William Davis, one of the great labour leaders in my province. I had the pleasure and the honour of being in Winnipeg recently. I got to see where that great strike happened, where the workers of this country stood together to fight for fair labour standards. I come from a part of the country where people have shed blood for the right to strike for fair labour standards. Yet today, many years later, we stand in this House with back to work legislation being imposed with closure by the government so we cannot even have a full debate.
It was introduced in 1922, before the second world war, and the government still justifies regional rates of pay. Think about it. In Vancouver, British Columbia and all across the country there have been all kinds of developments. Back then people were still taking trains to get from one end of the country to the other but since then, the Liberal and Conservative governments have seen to dismantling the train lines. Now people fly, those who can afford to. It is a measure of how out of touch the government is when it still defends a policy that was in place before Mackenzie King. It is archaic.
What does it mean to the workers in my part of the country? I have some statistics. It means that in Nova Scotia a private sector carpenter will earn on average $20.49 per hour. Someone who works for the people of Canada through the government will receive $13.92 an hour. What it means in Nova Scotia is that a private sector electrician will earn $22.53 while a PSAC worker will earn $15.38. A private sector labourer will earn $17.79 while a PSAC worker will earn $12 on average. A private sector plumber will earn $23.50 while a PSAC plumber will earn $16.89.
Not only are there regional rates of pay which discriminate against workers in different parts of the country, but when we compare what the PSAC blue collar workers are receiving in comparison to the private sector, we see the need for amendments and changes.
We understand and I ask Canadians who are watching the debate to understand the frustration of workers in one part of the country who are being told they cannot be paid the same as their brothers and sisters in other parts of the country and who are facing that huge wage gap between the public and the private sector. Why are they so frustrated? Why have they taken to strike? It is not because they wanted to but because of those very issues.
These are the people who have borne the price of the deficit fight on their backs. There is no question that the gap between the rich and the poor in this country has increased steadily. We know that over the last eight or nine years—and I think it has been seven years since these people have had a raise—wages have been frozen and clawed back for the public sector employees.
The Minister of Finance and the members of the Liberal government stand and applaud themselves for fighting the deficit. The reality is that it has been fought on the backs of the very people who today are standing outside and asking why they are being denied a marginal increase in pay.
The government will answer that in many ways. Yesterday in answer to questions one of the members of the government said that it would be inequitable to have the same rates of pay across the country, that somehow that is unfair.
The interesting thing about that is the people who are receiving the regional rates of pay represent 3% of the entire public service. If I were one of the other 97%, I might be a little concerned that the government's notion of fairness was going to find its way into the rest of the public service. If the government thinks it is unfair to give people who do the same work across the country the same pay, then those who are receiving the same amount of pay whether they are in Halifax, Sydney, Vancouver, Regina, or Toronto had better watch very carefully.
I dare say if the government were to suggest that members of parliament were to receive a change in their take home pay based on where they lived and what part of the country they represented, we might very well see a different debate in this House.
The government has some concerns about the movement of grain. It is important. No one should diminish the importance of the movement of grain to the farmers. Farmers themselves understand the difficulties faced by these labour unions.
Let us not forget that the mightiest combination that has moved us toward significant progress has been the alliance between labour and farmers. That was the foundation of the beginning of progressive movements in this country.
In my own province the labour movement and the farmers of Nova Scotia joined together and formed a political party and nearly captured the government. This was a very brief period in Nova Scotia history. Only by doing that did Nova Scotia begin to move progressive legislation forward in the areas of minimum wage, the right to organize and the right to strike.
I think the farmers who are being hurt by this legislation understand how important it is to join forces. That being said, the blame as to why farmers are suffering lies squarely at the feet of the government.
As I said in my opening remarks, this new labour situation did not fall like rain from heaven, unknown and not forecast by the weatherman. This dispute has been simmering for a long time. Regional rates of pay, cuts and clawbacks to the civil service are not brand new, or they should not be brand new to the government. Anyone who works and operates in any city or county of this country knows the terrible price the public service has paid to balance the books for this government.
This should have come as no surprise. Realistically, anyone with any foresight could have seen that without some settlement there was going to be strike action. And if there was strike action, it was going to end up hurting the shipment of grain across the country. It was going to end up shutting down public service buildings. It was going to end up hurting people who receive unemployment insurance cheques. It was going to end up hurting people waiting for income tax returns. It was going to hurt most Canadians. Surely be to God, the government, which represents and is supposed to act in the best interests of Canadians, should have seen that coming and should have done something about it.
The farmers are frustrated because the grain cannot move. Elderly people are waiting for cheques from the government. Many thousands of people who are without work are waiting for unemployment cheques, those who are entitled to unemployment under this government's legislation, those few who still qualify. People are waiting for other cheques from this government or for government services and are not receiving them because of this strike. Those people need not look far to determine where to point the finger. Point the finger at the government and its failure to act and its failure to take into account what was going to happen.
There is plenty of evidence. The Standing Senate Committee on National Finance report “Retention and Compensation Issues in the Public Service” implied that it would be in the public's interest to settle the labour dispute in a fair manner. That is a report that comes from the Liberals and the Conservatives in the Senate. Nevertheless, it is something I am sure that was brought to the attention of the government in its own caucus meetings.
Let us look at the cost to the government to settle this dispute. My understanding is that to settle this dispute would have cost the government perhaps $8 million. It is worth noting that the wheat board costed the loss of one contract at $9 million, slightly more than the cost to the government of reaching an agreement.
We are here today facing closure in the people's House on a fundamental piece of legislation that forces people back to work, that does not respect the right to negotiate, that will not look at arbitration in terms of a settlement. We are here debating that when it was foreseeable, when it was coming at us like the Titanic . There is nowhere for this blame to rest except at the feet of the government.
That being said, members of my party will continue to fight against the kind of tactics which have been used. Yesterday morning the opposition parties were given a piece of legislation that I think is 150 pages in length. We were given a piece of legislation in which the actual imposition of the back to work legislation was not highlighted. We were given a piece of legislation in which the figures were not costed. We had to rely on doing that ourselves, in a short period of time. We do not mind doing it ourselves, but when we are given that kind of document less than 24 hours before this government tries to impose a settlement, it is absolutely unfair. It is absolutely undemocratic. It takes away from what Canadians want in the House, which is reasoned debate on real issues that matter to Canadians.
We play political games with the lives of thousands of workers who are on strike and the thousands of farmers who are depending on grain shipments. That is the approach that the government uses.
It is no wonder that people get cynical about politics. They say “Why is the debate ongoing and taking so long?” It is ongoing because there has not been a proper process followed by the government. That has not been followed simply because the government did not want to admit that it did not see this coming.
We end up taking up a huge amount of time in this Chamber dealing with what could be dealt with in a more rational way. While we are doing that other important legislation has been moved aside. One has to wonder about the subtle implications of that.
It was only yesterday that we began debating the Minister of Justice's new young offender legislation. That has all been moved now, that important legislation, because this government has not followed the proper process. Other areas of important debate get deferred while we continue to try to deal with this back to work legislation.
It is regrettable that we are here today in this situation. It is unnecessary that members of the House of Commons find themselves in this situation. It is unfair to those whose livelihoods are being affected and who are waiting for the outcome of this legislation.
It is poorly drafted legislation. It was pointed out by the hon. member for Winnipeg Centre yesterday that the clauses are written in French and English, and one clause has been modernized while the other has not. It has been mentioned that the government forgot our newest territory when determining what the regional rates of pay would be. The government forgot to include Nunavut.
Perhaps the government should have taken its time to craft in a better way the legislation that comes before the House and given the opposition members appropriate time to review that legislation, instead of playing politics with the lives of people in this country, with the lives of the workers in this country, with the lives of the farmers in this country and with the lives of the taxpayers in this country, those who can least afford to have politics play with their lives.
It is with regret that I stand here seeing democracy eroded, seeing workers' rights eroded, seeing the things that Canadians have fought so hard and so long for eroded, to keep in place regional rates of pay from 1922 and to keep in place unfair worker discrimination from an era long gone.
This may have worked at a time when there was not the kind of information and communication that there is today. Today a worker in Sydney, Nova Scotia knows what his brother, a carpenter, is making in Vancouver, British Columbia. Today someone who is a plumber in Toronto knows what someone in Winnipeg is making. The government can not hide that from them. It does not have a rationale. We all keep waiting for a rationale from the other side to tell us how regional rates of pay can be justified. There is no logic. The answer is deafening in its silence. That silence is what the people who are in the public service alliance will remember in the next election.