Mr. Speaker, I followed the discussion from the parliamentary secretary very closely. He describes what we are debating today as a procedural motion, and then continues to talk about the substance of a very serious labour dispute and the positions of the two sides in that dispute.
Let me just go back, first of all, to the procedural nature of the motion that is in fact in front of us. What we have here today is a motion being tabled by the government that is essentially assigning a time limit to the amount of time that members of this House can debate a bill that we have not even seen yet.
That is contempt of Parliament. It is contempt of the members of this institution. It is contempt of collective bargaining. It is contempt for the locomotive engineers at CN. Frankly, it is contempt of the safety of Canadian rail passengers.
The issues that are before us here today are serious issues. We are talking about collective bargaining, something that is recognized in UN conventions. It is recognized through the ILO. Canada is a signatory to those conventions. In fact, even the charter of rights, through its Supreme Court interpretation, now recognizes that collective bargaining is a fundamental right associated with freedom of association.
If those are guaranteed rights and the government is not above the law, the government has to respect collective bargaining. It does not do that when it signals that it is going to introduce back-to-work legislation. It takes away the incentive for management to bargain in good faith.
My question to the parliamentary secretary this morning is, and I need him to be very specific here, when did his government signal its intentions, its willingness, to bring back-to-work legislation before this House to the management at CNR?