Madam Speaker, in spite of the fact that a new day is dawning on Parliament Hill, you can easily see that we are still very much in the gloom, because this is an extremely dark day for democracy.
No parliamentarian deserving of the name can be proud of what has occurred in the last few hours. What happened? The government imposed special legislation on workers, not just ordinary workers, but people who carry out their duties under extremely difficult conditions.
I am referring of course to correctional officers, who work in prisons. Their right to a negotiated collective agreement was denied, rejected and trampled on. There will be a price to pay for this.
This government has a rather ambiguous attitude. When it comes to equity, the general behaviour of government members is somewhat like The Silence of the Lambs . They are silent. They are not there when the time comes to act in fairness. However, when the time comes to act repressively, like a dictator and with a total lack of consideration for our most democratic values, I must admit that —and I will name him, even though I have some affection for him—the government House leader is among those most despicably involved in this repressive process.
We will remember that. We will remember this day in March, when the government stomped on people's most democratic rights.
Before going into the full significance of today's vote, I must thank those who have been with us through this night. I am referring to the guards, the library staff, the cafeteria staff, our support staff, particularly Jean-François Lafleur who was extremely helpful.
Those people showed strength in adversity because they knew that with the Bloc Quebecois they could build democracy. They have, through the years, allowed the voice of those who believe in negotiation to be heard in parliament.
I cannot find the words to say how sad and disappointed we are. All the more so since in our everyday contacts with the President of the Treasury Board, we found that he was rather a pleasant person to deal with. How could this man fall into this trap, which is the first step towards a lack of democracy, which will lead him to the worst abuses?
Nothing in his personality inclines him to such behaviour, except for a lack of vigilance we do not accept. We refuse, as members of Parliament, to be required, in 1999, to deny workers who fulfil an essential task in our society their rights. I have the greatest respect for workers of the public service, and even more for those who, downstream or upstream, deal with organised crime. I cannot understand why the President of the Treasury Board acted the way he did.
A few hours ago, he informed the House that an agreement had been reached with representatives of one of the bargaining tables. On the basis of what logic and for what reason did the minister not give negotiations another chance? Would it not have been possible to reach a negotiated agreement in the next few days?
There will be a price to pay for arrogance. Intolerance also has its price. This government cannot behave the way it does without exposing itself to being punished by the voters. It will be, and it will have deserved what it gets.
The saddest thing is to see how some government members are pharisees, whitened sepulchres. When they were in opposition, they could not find words strong enough to condemn those abuses and it was quite something to see them praising the values of dialogue, commitment and negotiation.
Do members think that our fellow citizens believe this kind of utterly hypocritical rhetoric, where, when they are on one side of the House, they say one thing, and when they are on the other, they say something else?
This is not the kind of political game we, in the Bloc Quebecois, want to play. We sovereignists have too much respect for the institutions of parliament to accept such a behaviour.
I would like to say a few words about the member for Outremont who, first of all, is a lawyer and has a great deal of respect for the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. As a member of parliament who has a good knowledge of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and who knows that it is part of the modern Canadian identity, how can he accept that, today, the government is trampling on one of its principles, the right to negotiate one's working conditions? There is one word to describe that kind of behaviour and that word is pharisee.
What is really at stake here? Since it was elected in 1993, the government has been utterly incapable of showing respect for public servants. The federal public servants are the people who deliver services to our fellow citizens every day. They do so under trying conditions. As we know, they are doing it under trying conditions because of our ageing population, because of pressure on the public service, because our fellow citizens are living longer and need services more frequently.
These people are not paid a lot, and their demands are hardly excessive. Often they join the public service because they want to serve. On the darker side, the track record of the government is one of compulsive, chronic, recurrent and sustained incapacity to negotiate with its employees.
I say it again, the Liberals will pay for it at the next election because, in a few years, when we go over their track record we will remember their arrogance and intolerance. Again, the public can count on the opposition, the Bloc Quebecois, as an efficient ally to fight against this kind of behaviour, which is unacceptable in a democratic country.