Mr. Speaker, I want to start by apologizing to my constituents in the riding of Laval for missing the various Saint-Jean-Baptiste festivities taking place throughout the community. I am here today to stand up for workers' rights.
On June 3, postal workers began rotating strikes. They are fighting for safer working conditions and decent wages. They offered to stop the rotating strikes if Canada Post would agree to abide by the old contract while negotiations were ongoing. Canada Post refused to do so. The employer instead decided to lock the workers out and to shut down postal service. That is why Canadians and small businesses are no longer receiving their mail.
It is important to keep in mind that this is not a workers' strike but a lockout imposed by the employer, Canada Post. Workers have the right to negotiate with their employer in good faith. But that is not the case here. The government wants to impose a labour contract on employees. What the government is doing does not give both sides an opportunity to reach an agreement. Furthermore, the government is proposing an agreement with even lower wages than Canada Post's offer.
What type of message are they sending? This debate is not only about mail, it is above all about the workers' right to negotiate a collective agreement. Who will be the next group of workers to see their rights trampled underfoot in this way?
Which leads me to ask the Conservative caucus and more precisely the Minister of Labour if the ultimate objective, the government's true objective, is not simply to create a precedent, a very dangerous one in fact, in order to destroy and annihilate the union movement in Canada.
Canada Post workers want a very simple thing: they want to deliver the mail, to work, quite simply. For the moment, they cannot provide the services they were hired to provide. This raises the following question: why can they not go to work? The answer is very simple: there is a lock on their employer's door. There are locks on all the mailboxes throughout the country.
Canada Post has a mandate to fulfill for the entire population, including people in large cities like Laval and Montreal. Laval residents are already dealing with big problems, because it is difficult these days to get around on the island of Montreal where many Laval residents work. Since the government is not investing enough in infrastructure in the greater Montreal area, the residents of both the south and north shores are suffering.
It would be possible to prevent further problems for the people of Laval, Montreal and the south shore. The government could encourage negotiations and work with the opposition to make the bill acceptable to all sides in this labour dispute.
Canada Post has decided that the Canadian population would no longer receive its mail. In addition to Canada Post preventing the letter carriers from working, the Government of Canada has decided to add insult to injury by setting lower salary levels. These workers did not need that. These workers make the economy go round. These workers are the engine of the economy. They are consumers and taxpayers. They contribute to society, as opposed to the big corporations that are always getting bigger and better gifts from the government.
The time has come to show some flexibility and withdraw the unfair provision regarding workers' salaries.
We understand that the government is in no hurry to remove the locks from the doors, because it likes locks. It locked up Parliament several times because it did not like the way things were going.
The solution to this deadlock is simple. We are asking the government to work with us to encourage negotiation in good faith between the parties in this conflict. We are asking the government to withdraw the clause that sets the salaries for postal workers, and to put an immediate end to the lockout so that mail carriers can resume delivering the mail and providing service to the population. That is what they were hired to do. We are also asking the government to allow the negotiations to continue until a new collective agreement has been signed.
Canada Post is not bankrupt. No urgent restructuring is required. Canada Post is a profitable undertaking with a responsibility to negotiate with its workers. The time has come to put an end to the lockout.