Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her words and her experience when it comes to properly settling disputes between management and labour.
Our country has had a long and turbulent history over this, but I think many Canadians would have expected that we would have evolved to a certain point, that we would have been able to use the law available to us that had been fought for year in and year out. A good friend of mine, Jim Sinclair, the head of the B.C. Federation of Labour, said that working folks in this country have never received anything they did not fight for.
Fighting for fair laws governing the unionized workforce has been a long and steady fight for many years. Over the last number of years we seem to have lost ground through these deaths by a thousand cuts under the Liberals and now the Conservatives. We are now at a point where a legal strike is happening and workers have fair concerns about safety at their workplace, and that is what has been presented. That right seems to have been put into question almost immediately.
My question to my colleague is very specific. When a technique like this is used, and I give Bill C-46 too much credit by calling it a technique. It is a bludgeoning action on a fair and legal labour dispute to say workers simply do not have rights if they happen to work in this particular work environment. Based upon her experience and the experience of others in labour disputes, what is the affect on the short and medium term conditions within that workplace? By using something like this bill, by using something like this practice, as odious as it is, what is the affect on the short and medium term conditions within that workplace?
We have now seen that the Conservatives, the Liberals and the Bloc will all team up on these workers who are exercising their legal right. What is the result on the workplace? What is workplace productivity like? What are safety conditions like? In the eventual creation of a culture in that workplace, how does using something that the government is imposing on these negotiations affect the average worker going to work and that experience once they get there on a daily basis?