Mr. Speaker, one of the cornerstone principles of a society that is committed to a free collective bargaining regime is to respect the rights of the workers to freely choose their representative. We cannot have a free collective bargaining system if management, in this case the government, is actually directing or, in any way, truncating the rights of the employees to choose who they want to represent them.
The employees cannot compel management. Management would consider it an absolutely unacceptable intrusion into management rights if employees were to tell management who it could or could not have as its bargaining representative. Therefore, it is absolutely unacceptable that the government would try to do that in this case as well.
Having said that, it is up to the RCMP officers themselves to determine if that is a deal breaker. I look forward to consulting with RCMP officers, like Mr. Mehain, and the Canadian Police Association to determine if they think that is something they can live with. We will, of course, respect the choice of the RCMP officers in this regard.