Mr. Speaker, you were not in the Chair earlier when people thanked the Speakers in this place for the duty you are performing for this House. I want to thank you for the many hours you are putting in.
I am rising once again to address the Conservative government's back-to-work legislation. From what I have been hearing from Canadians from coast to coast, they are waking up to what they consider the absolute abuse of power to be found in Bill C-6. The good people of Hamilton East—Stoney Creek know me well, and they will tell members that I have a fundamental and profound belief in the rights of all Canadians, rights that are guaranteed by our charter.
Because of my career in the labour movement, in which every post I held for 28 years with the labour movement was unpaid, the rights of workers to be represented by a union of their choice and for free collective bargaining is especially important to me. That is the one and only way Canadian workers can improve their collective well-being.
Before I go further, we have heard all the talk about big labour bosses and whatever. We have never heard Thomas d'Aquino called a big labour employer representative. Why the language thrown at people all the time?
Another fair question to ask would be, just what has Canadians' membership in a union done for them?
Canadian workers have seen advances in health and safety protection. They have seen improvement to their hours of work. They have had their deferred wages invested in workplace pensions, and of course increases to their pay. We had one member talking a moment ago about how there are few pensions in Canada, as if it is a good thing. It is a terrible thing.
One of Canadians' charter rights is to collectively bargain with their employer. In this House, during this debate, the members of the Conservative Party love to throw around what they consider slights: “big labour”, or “big labour bosses”, or “friends of big labour”. They do so with a disdain that can only come from lack of knowledge. I will give you one example. I am sure most of today's non-progressive Conservatives have not only forgotten this but perhaps even their new members may not even know it. It will probably be a surprise to the younger members that one of their own groups of base supporters were the very same people who started the modern-day labour movement.
It happened in 1946 in cities like Hamilton and Windsor. It took the returning veterans from the Second World War who took to the streets of those communities, demanding fair wages and better and safer working conditions. In Hamilton, workers and veterans fought side by side in the streets, even on the waters of Hamilton harbour, for collective bargaining rights and the right to form a union. These were the very same veterans who had fought the Axis powers to a standstill. Then they had to come home and fight corporate Canada, with the same view of protecting their rights and improving the lives of all Canadians, as they had just done overseas. These brave souls were the same people who lived by such creeds as “an injury to one is an injury to all”. These veterans now turned trade unionists lived by the philosophy as well that what they asked for themselves they wished for all.
That philosophical view of how to better their lives and the lives of working Canadians 50 years ago led to a grassroots prairie political party, made up of farmers, clerks, church ministers, and workers of all stripes in the CCF, to come together with those veterans turned trade unionists and other labour activists to form the NDP, a party I have been a proud member of for 35 years. So this government should have little doubt as to why our party, the NDP, will always come down on the side of the working people of Canada.
I mentioned in my opening speech in the hoist motion my history in the Hamilton labour movement and the position my local membership of Bell Canada workers at the CWC chose to vote me into, that took me into the broader Canadian labour movement via the Hamilton and District Labour Council. It was at the Hamilton and District Labour Council in the late 1970s and early 1980s, along with the member for Hamilton Centre, that I learned of the struggle of the 1946 strikers in Hamilton and Windsor.
I heard directly from those old timers of their sense of shame and humiliation upon returning to Canada from defending their country. They could not get decent-paying jobs, nor the respect of employers, until they finally stood up to them in 1946.
My own father worked as a section man on the Canadian National Railway. He was a low-paid labourer, and in New Brunswick in the late 1940s or 1950s, it was a secure position that he valued. I remember well the buttons he used to wear on his cap that showed he had paid up his union dues. He was a member of the Canadian Brotherhood of Railway Transport and General Workers, CBRTGW. It was that union that struck CN in the 1950s to get their workers, and ultimately all Canadians, the 40-hour work week.
One of the phrases that came out of the late 1970s that epitomizes much of the way I look at the world is “Question authority”. In fact, I first noticed that on a bumper sticker on a car of a delegate at the labour council.
Questioning authority has never been more important than it was in the 1970s in northern Ontario. Miners went on strike because of the extremely poor working conditions in their mine. That strike led to the Ontario Occupational Health and Safety Act, Bill 70. That gave workers the right to do what should be obvious: the right to refuse unsafe work.
Questioning authority is exactly what the NDP has been doing in these long hours of debate. We are questioning the authority of this labour minister and this Prime Minister, because, to be clear, in our view they have overstepped their authority with Bill C-6.
I seriously doubt this will come as much of a surprise to most Canadians, who have seen this “my way or the highway” approach regularly from this government. Particularly, the 60% of Canadians who did not vote for the Conservatives already know this government has taken positions on foreign affairs and in other areas that not only surprises them but greatly concerns them. They know the shifts of policy that have taken place have led to a loss of respect for Canada in Europe and much of the rest of the world. Now, in our own country, once heralded around the world as protector of human rights and people's rights, we have the spectacle of the Canadian government prepared to shut down the collective bargaining rights of the workers at Canada Post.
I would suggest that this would lead Canadians to ponder the obvious question: who is next?
For the record, I would like to make an observation. On a recent vote on the NDP hoist motion, our good friends in the Liberal Party of Canada switched sides on that vote and cast their lot with the Conservatives. I am sure there will be a cheer that comes from the other side of the House. The workers of Canada in the last election finally came to understand the fairweather friend the Liberal Party of Canada truly is, and the result was that Canadians significantly reduced the Liberal Party caucus. Older Canadians had known for a long time that the Liberals could not be counted on to go the distance in protecting their rights, because sooner or later they would have to choose between Canadian workers and their Bay Street friends. The history of that choice is very clear.
The NDP, on behalf of Canadian workers from coast to coast, calls on the Conservative government to simply pause to reflect on the fact that they have overstepped in this case. The posties are not your enemy. Canadian workers are not your enemies, so do not treat them as such. Use your position as the Government of Canada to further improve the lives of Canadian workers. Do not trample on their rights. Assume the responsibility of your role as protectors of the Constitution of Canada. Work with the NDP. Amend this bill. Restore the balance to labour relations for Canadian workers and end the lockout. Let us put the workers back to work.
