Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to rise in this House to once again defend Bill C-386, An Act to amend the Canada Labour Code (replacement workers). I hope that it will be passed. I would like to read the summary:
The purpose of this enactment is to prohibit employers under the Canada Labour Code from hiring replacement workers to perform the duties of employees who are on strike or locked out. It extends the obligation to maintain essential services. The enactment also provides for the imposition of a fine for an offence.
There are two opposing philosophies here in the House. There is the philosophy of the young parties, like the Bloc Québécois, which turned 20 this year, and the NDP, which is older than the Bloc Québécois, but younger than the older parties—the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party. Today's speeches by the Conservatives and the Liberals reflect the old, preconceived ideas about labour relations that they inherited from the past.
It is important for the Conservatives to listen to me. They mentioned recent disputes at Air Canada and Canadian National. I was the transport critic during the Air Canada crisis, and I was directly affected by it. The Conservatives spoke of the mediation process, but it was short-lived. The minister had already prepared back-to-work legislation. For the first time, I received phone calls from union representatives and from Air Canada representatives, who told me that this legislation should not be introduced because it would be terrible for labour relations. Both the employees and the employers were asking me to do whatever I could to ensure that the minister did not introduce the back-to-work legislation, because, once again, the mediation had not been enough. All that because the government is living in the past when it comes to labour relations.
Things have changed. There is a shortage of airplane pilots. We can do whatever we want, but there will not be enough replacement workers, because we need more airplane pilots.
Let us figure out how these disputes can be resolved to the satisfaction of all parties. One way of doing so would be to pass a bill like this one, which would be a step forward. Federally regulated employees work in sectors such as transport, banking and communications, as well as in the public service, where it is easy to find replacement workers.
This is clear in the labour dispute that has been going on for over 20 months at the Journal de Montréal. Last weekend's edition of the Journal de Montréal explained how the employer wants to solve the dispute. It wants to get rid of over half of the staff, but more importantly, it wants the new publication created by the locked-out employees, ruefrontenac.com, to be shut down. The dispute has gone on so long that the employees have created their own information network, ruefrontenac.com. This is affecting the Journal de Montréal so much that, in its negotiations, it is asking the employees to shut down ruefrontenac.com.
Things are evolving. Once again, the Conservatives do not understand, and the Liberals, even less. In 2007, when Bill C-257 was introduced in the House, the Liberals voted in favour of it at second reading, but decided to vote against it at third reading because it did not cover essential services.
I prepared Bill C-386 very carefully along with the hon. member for Rivière-des-Mille-Îles and the hon. member for Gatineau, who both have close ties to union organizations, as I once did, and we included the issue of essential services. Now the Liberals are saying that they do not like the definition of essential services.
The problem is that the Liberal Party opposes this bill, and so does the Conservative Party. Whether the two old parties like it or not, this affects labour relations across Canada.