Mr. Speaker, the strike at Canadian National Railway has the potential to be an ugly one. The government needs to take an aggressive, hands-on approach to this major national labour dispute.
The reason for this is quite simple. CN top management is now primarily American and cares not what it does to Canadian workers, communities, values or traditions. Replacement workers, or scabs, are not something that was ever contemplated in the context of past rail strikes.
This time CN is actively training scabs, or as in Toronto already, bringing in American workers from Illinois to help break the strike. This is outrageous. If this Liberal government, which privatized CN in the first place, allows this to happen, then the Prime Minister might as well run up the American flag and admit that our largest railway is owned and operated by interests and values that come from somewhere else.
Asking railroaders to accept minimal increases while profits soar and bonuses for management proliferate is unacceptable. I urge the Minister of Labour to use the Canada Labour Code and the full extent of her powers to prevent this attack on Canadian workers from succeeding.