Madam Speaker, I want to assure the member that while those members are prepared to sit here until the Duke and Duchess arrive, we are prepared to sit here until they are gone to ensure that Canadians get mail delivery returned to them.
For anybody watching this debate, there must be a confusion about the events that occurred. The fact is, and I am sure members will agree, the old contract expired last October. The union leaders were negotiating with Canada Post and failed to arrive at an agreement.
The old contract had expired. It is quite legitimate that once something has expired, one cannot operate under it any longer unless there is an agreement between the company and the workers. We had the situation where, because the union did not want to continue negotiations unless it could operate under the old contract, it started rotating strikes. Then there was the lockout, and now we have back to work legislation.
The bottom line is we want to get the postal workers back delivering mail across Canada to everyone who needs that mail delivery. We are asking the parties to work with us. Let us try and get the workers back to work and then we will negotiate from there. Hopefully, we will have a good settlement all the way around.
Let us get the mail going again.