Debates of March 23rd, 1999

Division No. 360

[The Deputy Speaker]

I declare the motion carried.

When shall the bill be read the third time? By leave, now?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order.

I want to inform the House and the people listening to us that if the division bells had rung for 15 minutes as usual, I would have been here to vote with my party.

[Paul Mercier, Bloc, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

I rise on a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I have just arrived and I too would have voted with my party.

[Marcel Massé, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

moved that the bill, as amended, be read the third time and passed.

Mr. Speaker, I will not make a speech. I would like to thank all the people in the House, especially those from my party who have gone through the night in order to support it. Thank you very much.

[Howard Hilstrom, Reform, Selkirk—Interlake, MB]

Mr. Speaker, before I begin my speech, I ask the concurrence of the House to share my time with the member for Wetaskiwin.

[The Deputy Speaker]

Is that agreed?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Some hon. members]

No.

[Randy White, Reform, Langley—Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Just to give the House notice, we tried so members are going to sit here for a while.

[Howard Hilstrom, Reform, Selkirk—Interlake, MB]

Mr. Speaker, tonight I believe we are about to—

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh.

[The Deputy Speaker]

Order, please. The hon. member for Selkirk—Interlake has the floor. I am sure all members want to hear his speech.

[Don Boudria, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order.

In the spirit of co-operation that we have tried to demonstrate this evening, perhaps the Chair would seek the same consent that it sought a while ago. I would invite you, Mr. Speaker, to invite the hon. member to seek the same consent again to see if it works better.

[Howard Hilstrom, Reform, Selkirk—Interlake, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I no longer ask for that consent. I would like to speak my full time.

We are debating Bill C-76, an act to provide for the resumption and continuation of government services. The short title is cited as being the government services act, 1999.

Tonight we have had amendments in committee of the whole to put in place the tentative agreement that was announced tonight by the President of the Treasury Board between the government and the table two blue collar workers of the PSAC union.

I would like to note that we have had the bill along with a booklet setting out the details and the wages that are part of the back to work legislation. We attempted to get the details of the tentative agreement which is now part of Bill C-76. However, we were unable to get them tabled in the House even though we are expected to debate those very provisions. It is not particularly fun or appropriate to have to debate something when we do not have the exact facts in front of us, but we will debate what we have.

Bill C-76 is in two parts. The first part deals with the operational groups. Being the chief critic for agriculture, the one I am particularly concerned with is the grain weighers at the west coast ports. The second part deals with the corrections workers in our federal penitentiaries who are not designated essential.

Tonight we came to debate this back to work legislation in good faith and with good intentions. But tonight the government handled the issue of the surprise announcement of the tentative agreement in much the same way that I believe it has handled the negotiations with the unions over the past three months, with confusion, a lack of complete facts, and a spinning of the facts which left no trust and no faith in the process.

Back in 1993 when the Liberals took over as a majority government, many workers across the country were in a wage freeze. They knew at that time that the wage freeze would end. In 1997 the Public Service Alliance of Canada gave notice that bargaining would be taking place.

At that time it would seem to me that it would be incumbent upon the negotiators, and I guess the ministers responsible for the negotiations, to set a timetable to ensure a bargaining agreement was in place at the expiry of the wage freeze. That would have had the advantage of there not being a strike because there would have been an agreement.

If there was no agreement and a sensible and reasonable timetable had been set out by the treasury board minister, he could have looked at back to work legislation at a much earlier point.

We ended up with a whole lot of innocent third party Canadians seriously being harmed by the negligence of the government to get the agreement in place and by the fault of a certain number of union negotiators not to work in conjunction with the government. I said earlier that if I were to apportion blame I would probably put about 75% on the government and 25% on the union.

Let us talk about what has happened in the past with regard to grain exports and the agriculture sector as it relates to stoppages due to wage negotiations. In the last 26 years there have been 12 work stoppages at west coast ports. We could think about that for a minute. Almost every two years there is a stoppage in grain movement to the coast.

We must remember that every time there is a stoppage of grain movement to the ships going to our customers overseas it costs our farmers money. It costs the union people who have to go out on strike pay and it hurts our reliability.

This year the Canadian Wheat Board has exports of a little over 50% of what they were a year ago. We are seeing the cumulative effect of our grain sales being considered unreliable to our customers overseas. We cannot apply a dollar and cents figure to that very easily. However we could look at the sales of our competitors, the Americans for instance, which are down only about 10% as compared to ours being down close to 50%.

Of the 12 work stoppages we see that 9 of them involved grain and 7 of those involved back to work legislation specifically because of grain stoppages. Both the Sims commission and the west coast port inquiry identified grain disruptions as a catalyst for back to work legislation in labour disputes at west coast ports.

I do not happen to have the chronology of the House as to who was in power over the different years, but I happen to know they involved the Right Hon. Lester Pearson, the Right Hon. Pierre Trudeau and the Right Hon. John Diefenbaker who came from my home province and was just one fine fellow.

This situation should not have been any surprise to the government sitting here today in 1999. There are 26 years of history. I look at the other side of the House and I know there are members over there who have been here for at least 28 to 30 years. I believe the Prime Minister has something like a 34 year record. If the leader on the other side cannot remember the harm, the damage and the tremendous number of stoppages of grain movement to the west coast, there is no hope of a negotiated wage settlement being done in a proper manner, on schedule, and in time to prevent the harm and the hurt by farmers.

The Western Grain Elevator Association is representative of Sask Pool, Agricore, a new grain company out west, United Grain Growers and Cargill. These grain company foresaw major problems with their exports of non-wheat board grains and wheat board grains that they were handling on behalf of the board.

On January 27, 1999 they sent a letter to the treasury board minister and to the Prime Minister identifying that a big dark cloud was looming on the horizon, a cloud of disruption, a cloud of trade and losses to farmers, and a cloud of loss of exports of grain in particular. I do not think the government bothered reading that letter too much because it went ahead with its negotiating plan which resulted in the mess we see here today.

Along with my colleagues I had to force the government into an emergency debate to get this movement going. What did we see? We saw trickery on the part of the government up to the very last moment when it brought in a surprise tentative agreement at a late hour.

The treasury board president tonight in committee of the whole identified that he would consider the possibilities of doing an investigation and determining what were the actual costs to farmers as a result of the loss of exports during the strike by grain weighers. We should hold him to that. Can we imagine the billions of dollars in loss over the last 26 years, not thousands or millions, that my grandfather and my father and the grandfathers and fathers of many people in the House suffered due to a lack of action by governments of the day? The disappointment is that the present government cannot learn from the mistakes of the past, some of which were committed by present sitting members, I might point out.

Who will pay for the losses of these farmers? When we look at the Canadian Wheat Board and its loss of sales due to the snow storms of 1996-997, we see that the Canadian Wheat Board went after the railways. It negotiated a settlement with CN. We will never know how much it got. Then later it achieved a $15 million settlement with CPR because farmers were innocent third parties. The railways saw fit to move products and commodities other than grain and gave preference to commodities like coal, sulphur and whatever. As a result there was a liability on behalf of the railroads to the wheat board and therefore to farmers. Tomorrow and on future days I will be calling upon the wheat board and the government to identify the costs to farmers and to compensate them for those losses.

The government brought forth the agriculture income disaster assistance plan. The agriculture minister bears full responsibility for that plan which went out to farmers. We found from the initial reaction of farmers who filled out those forms that the plan would not help them very much when it came to financial compensation.

[Randy White, Reform, Langley—Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I fail to see a quorum in the House. I wonder if you would take a count.

And the count having been taken:

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)]

We have a quorum.

[Howard Hilstrom, Reform, Selkirk—Interlake, MB]

Mr. Speaker, getting back to the commitment to compensate the farmers, it is absolutely vital because of the financial situation they are in which gave rise to this emergency debate.

If there is financial hurt out there, how can the government not consider compensating farmers for financial loss caused by the government and the Public Service Alliance of Canada negotiators? It is only fair. It is only right. Why should farmers suffer due to the actions of other people?

There is nothing in Bill C-76 that will prevent this situation from happening again on the expiry of the tentative agreement, if it is ratified. We will see the same old routine of the last 26 years. In about two years time we will see another strike, another crisis, another back to work piece of legislation, and another loss of a $100 million to farmers. There is no hope from the government as to its future commitments in two years.

Maybe the election will come along before then and I will walk over to the other side to take care of agriculture issues along with my compatriots in the Reform Party. We will see how that works out in the future.

We have the opportunity today, not in two years time, for the government to put final offer selection arbitration into the legislation and into the negotiations it has a tentative agreement on. In all the comments of the President of the Treasury Board in this regard he never said that he had tried to get that back into the legislation for the 70 grain weighers in particular. It was kind of like the official opposition brought it up so maybe now he would think about it.

Farmers and other Canadians need a lot more than he will think about it and try to do something. They need it to be put into legislation. It could have been in Bill C-76. It could have been in the amended Bill C-26, but it will not be part of the legislation.

We have covered the costs and the idea of final offer selection arbitration. Another part that has not be thought of is that maybe the 70 grain weighers should be considered an essential service. They have held up 115,000 farmers who tried to ship their grain to the west coast. It would seem to me they are a monopoly service. They are essential to the well-being of a significant chunk of the population of the country.

Over the next few months before this parliament recesses we will see that there will be a lot of pressure from the opposition side to move in that direction to protect the farmers. We will be looking for support from the government side to bring that about.

The treasury board minister said that the reason we needed this legislation was because between now and the point of ratification there might be another strike. The tentative agreement did not really cover a lot of the things that needed to be covered, including trying to have the no strike provisions put in so it did not have to continue on with hammering the democracy of this parliament with closure.

I heard the hon. House leader from this side speak earlier about the fact that this government has used closure 50 times between the 35th parliament and this one today. This closure that we are speaking on today is the 50th. If that is democracy, it is democracy being abused.

Closure is the kind of legislation that should be available, but it should be used more along the lines of the notwithstanding clause as opposed to being used more in the way of the government dictatorially trying to get its way in this parliament. We have seen that abuse tonight and that is why we are sitting here at this early hour of the day speaking about Bill C-76.

We went through hours of amendments, some of which were very good. My friends in the Bloc, in fact, brought up the final offer selection arbitration. I thought that maybe that amendment would be one that would really improve this bill. What did we get? We saw the government members yell that great amendment down. As a result, we now continue on with this bill without that key part in it.

We have in this bill a requirement about the grain that is mostly from western Canada. However, I would like to point out that we are also going to be talking very shortly about grain from central Canada. I speak particularly of Ontario, because I am a little more familiar with it. The seaway is going to be opening up. The terminals at Thunder Bay are going to be opening up and there are going to be boatloads of grain going down the seaway and out to our customers on the other side of the Atlantic to South America.

We know there are a few Liberal members of parliament who represent the seaway area in Ontario. Maybe we will see a lot more action to make sure that the seaway stays open and that those jobs and those farmers in Ontario are well taken care of.

Why could that not also have happened for the western farmers? This government is supposed to be taking care of all Canadians, but it seems that it likes to take care of itself.

Earlier today and yesterday we heard serious allegations about the Prime Minister in regard to golf courses and hotels in his own riding. These allegations border on a conflict of interest problem.

We have the second reason that the Treasury Board says we have to have this legislation here. It is because the grain has to keep moving. I certainly agree that the grain has to keep moving. This legislation is the only way that is going to happen. As a result, I am going to vote for this legislation because it is that important.

Western farmers cannot be held to pay for ruinous type legislation and ruinous type negotiations in labour-management talks that this government seems to be bringing forth all the time.

The third reason had to do with the CXs. The CXs are the corrections workers, and I have corrections workers at Stony Mountain penitentiary in my riding. I have spoken to some of the union workers there and they are not a very happy bunch. They have been mistreated in previous negotiations with the government and they obviously have not experienced good faith negotiations in this round of talks.

In the Stony Mountain penitentiary we have an educational and training centre, not only for the guards and the union operators, but also for the prisoners who are housed there.

We had a situation over the past few years where all of a sudden the contracts for that training happened to end up with a group of educators based primarily in Ontario. At one time our local school boards managed to get those contracts.

Once again we see government interference. It is a strange method. I have not exactly had time to look into this, but I am giving the government notice tonight that I intend to look into it and determine just what it was that managed to have our local school boards not be able to win any of these contracts.

All of these things add up to why these corrections workers were in the past, and still are, unhappy with the negotiations. That is why we once again have this legislation being brought in to force them back to work.

I do not know why they have to be forced back to work. The Treasury Board minister has informed us that there are about 500 of these people who are not covered as essential workers, possibly as many as 600. Union negotiators have told me that there are 720. That is part of the problem in dealing with the government and I appreciate that maybe the negotiators for the unions had the same problem in getting hard facts and commitments.

As another example of a lack of commitment, I have been arguing since early December when the Estey report came out to get a commitment from the transportation minister and the Canadian Wheat Board minister that the report actually was important, that it had to be dealt with and that it should be moved along.

I tried to get this commitment through letters to the ministers and inquiries during question period to try to get them to move along.

I was part of an industry group that was trying to move these ministers along and get a commitment from them. As of this day we still have no commitment as to where they stand on it, whether we will move ahead, move backwards or move sideways.

That is the same lack of commitment that we see in trying to negotiate these wage agreements with the various unions around the country. In particular, I am speaking out on behalf of the corrections workers, some of whom are my neighbours and friends, and in fact I would like to say that they should not have been included in this back to work legislation. The jobs of the 500 to 600 workers they are talking about could quite easily have been done by the other thousands of employees at the corrections offices.

If they had set up pickets, it well may have turned out that other union workers would not have crossed their picket lines. Once again, we would have the same situation that we have with the grain weighers on the west coast. When they put up a picket line the other unions would not cross it.

Now we see that the government understands that this is a problem. In regard to the corrections workers, it has built into Bill C-76 the fact that while this agreement is on the go, and once it is ratified, there will not be any strike action and the work will have to continue on.

It was vital to get the grain moving. We had to ensure that the western farmers were covered, as well as the west coast workers. However, in fairness, there should have been a negotiated settlement and we should have continued on with the negotiated settlement with these corrections workers. Instead they will be arbitrarily forced back to work if they go out on strike, which I assume they will if this is not passed.

We are going to see the same thing with the corrections workers that we saw with the postal workers. We are going to see them 16, 17 or 24 months down the road with no contract. With the grain weighers, in two years, which is the average before another stoppage comes along, we will be in the House again with back to work legislation and a big crisis. That could happen before the next election if this bill is not improved.

I will have to check how the House works with regard to the technicalities, but I would like to think we could move some amendments tomorrow at third reading stage that would bring in final offer selection arbitration that we so desperately need in this legislation.

It is time that I pass along to the next speaker, who will no doubt be saying a lot of the same things I am saying. I have pointed out clearly where this government has fallen down. The people of Canada will know it. The western farmers will know it. The unions will know it. One last attempt to put in final offer selection arbitration will be made.

I am going to support this bill to get these workers back to work and to keep them on the job just because of the drastic consequences there are to the western Canadian economy and the whole Canadian economy due to the lack of productivity, and for the individual farmer trying to make a go of it this spring with all the vagaries of agricultural life, such as drought, too much rain, floods and all of those things.

This government has really turned the House off tonight by the way it has handled the closure motion and by bringing in the tentative agreement at the last minute.

I would now ask that the member for Wetaskiwin be permitted to speak in the time remaining.

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Thibeault)]

Is there unanimous agreement?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Dale Johnston, Reform, Wetaskiwin, AB]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the House for its co-operative spirit in allowing me time to have the last seven minutes of debate on third reading.

We have just gone through a very arduous and painful exercise in the House and I do not think any of us are looking forward to repeating this any time soon, but the truth of the matter is that we are destined to repeat it. As my colleague from Selkirk—Interlake pointed out, it might not be all that long until we do have to repeat this. With the record we have seen since we came here in 1993, this is a recurring dream. It is like the summer reruns. They happen over and over again.

Time and time again we have to face the unpalatable and drastic task of legislating some group back to work. I am totally at a loss as to know who is the winner in a situation like this. It is certainly not the members of this House. It is certainly not the government as the employer and certainly it is not the employees. There are no winners.

Why do we continue to put ourselves through this sort of task when it is not necessary? Some third party always suffers in these instances. A party that has absolutely nothing to do with the conflict that is taking place, the labour strife, suffers just the same.

My colleague from Selkirk talked about agriculture. This is about more than the farmers. The economy of Canada is quite dependent upon agriculture. Agriculture is still one of the largest employers in the Canadian economy. The spin-off effect from agriculture is huge.

We have all talked about the importance of our good name and reputation as a dependable supplier of goods in the world market. Yet we find miraculously on the last day at the eleventh hour the minister comes into the House and says that wonder of wonders, they have reached a tentative deal.

It makes us wonder just how far apart the parties were in the first place. It makes us wonder whether or not we were misled. It makes us wonder whether there was a deal in the offing as we were gathering to consider this legislation. It makes us wonder whether both parties were utilizing the grain. We cannot say that labour knows that grain is a flash point, that it is a hot button. The government is certainly aware of that as well. It knows that we cannot hold up the grain shipments. We know that it is going to create action, action that none of us are going to enjoy.

The reason I say there is no reason to go through this is that we have a method available to us, if only the government would choose to implement it. I am speaking specifically to the President of the Treasury Board and to the Minister of Labour. We need to implement final offer selection arbitration so that these matters can be settled amicably. We have all talked about how a negotiated settlement is far better than an imposed settlement. I think we all agree with that.

In the spirit of final offer selection arbitration, I would like to move the following motion. I move:

That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word “That” and substituting the following therefor:

“Bill C-76, an act to provide for the resumption and continuation of government services, be not now read a third time but be referred back to committee of the whole for the purpose of reconsidering all of the clauses with the view to provide final offer arbitration as an alternative to legislating agreements or workers back to work.

[Yves Rocheleau, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to know whether I must speak to the amendment immediately, or whether I speak as planned in my turn on—

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Thibeault)]

The debate is on the amendment.

[Yves Rocheleau, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

In that context, then, I advise you immediately that I shall be sharing my time with my colleague for Hochelaga—Maisonneuve.

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Thibeault)]

Does the hon. member for Trois-Rivières have the unanimous consent of the House to share his time?