There is an aspect that this government seems to completely overlook, and that is what happens the day after workers have been forced to go back to work.
What about the managers' attitude? What kind of attitude can we expect from these people? Where is the incentive for public service managers and, more importantly, for the public servants who are being treated with such arrogance and contempt today?
If the government can show such contempt for the House of Commons as it did this evening, imagine what these people are capable of on a daily basis, with employees who must be respectful and loyal, particularly since job security is very tenuous within the federal public service.
Underneath all this lies a real human resources management issue. There is an issue of actual productivity to be expected from employees who are well treated, well understood and well respected by their employer. We do not have that. Even the tiniest of small businesses, whose owner is all worked up because of the market situation, is not worse. This government manages like an incompetent boss with a piecemeal approach to dealing with human resources.
Let us hope that there will be a huge political price to pay. I am thinking about the members from Quebec, starting with the President of the Treasury Board and the Minister of Human Resources Development. They will have to pay a huge political price for their lack of credibility.
When they come to us with their talk of social union, we will remember, because this is the same disdain that we sense in the House today for workers as for in the provinces, Quebec in particular, where there is no recognition of Quebeckers as a people, no longer even any recognition of Quebec as a province like the others. Slowly but surely, the provincial governments are becoming regional governments in this new Canada they are concealing from us, this unitary and centralized Canadian.