Debates of June 23rd, 2011

Restoring Mail Delivery for Canadians Act

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I have been in the House all day, engaged in this debate, and obviously this could go on for many hours. How much new light is being shed? I think there is very little light being shed.

The NDP leader said in his comments that he would be proceeding with amendments.

My question to my colleague is that we want to put people back to work, so why do we not go right to the amendments?

[Matthew Kellway, NDP, Beaches—East York, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am in the embarrassing position of having been shown to not understand House procedures very well. However, I do understand from previous discussions that now is not the appropriate time to have amendments to this legislation. That time is forthcoming, and we will look forward to hearing the amendments when that time arises.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have been listening to the NDP's speeches tonight, and a couple of times I heard the term “right to strike” being used. In Canada there is no right to strike.

In fact the Supreme Court ruled, in 2007, in a decision that was partly written by Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin, that the fundamental charter right of freedom of association does not guarantee a right to strike but rather it guarantees a limited right to collective bargaining. That is a right of process rather than a substantive right to an actual outcome in terms of benefits and pay and the like.

I am wondering if the member would be able to clarify his party's record on that issue.

[Matthew Kellway, NDP, Beaches—East York, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am not sure I completely understand the question and what record the member is referring to. He has made an observation on legal comments by a chief justice, and I am not in a position to take issue with his arguments.

We most certainly do respect the fact that freedom of association is constitutionally enshrined in this country, and we do believe that the freedom of collective bargaining flows from that enshrined right.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I was a labour lawyer for 16 years and I also read a lot of cases from the Supreme Court of Canada. I would beg to differ with that last comment, that freedom of association does include the right to free collective bargaining.

As a matter of fact, one should read the Supreme Court of Canada case in the HEU decision, where the Government of British Columbia, a Liberal government made up of Conservatives, actually interfered in the collective bargaining process, interfered in a contract and ripped up negotiated settlements. It interfered, much like this government is interfering in the collective bargaining process, by trying to write a collective agreement for the parties and directly interfering in the free collective bargaining process. I would dare say that violates the Supreme Court of Canada dicta that I have read.

I wonder if my friend could comment on that.

[Matthew Kellway, NDP, Beaches—East York, ON]

Mr. Speaker, with respect, the question that the member opposite had asked previously is really more a question of relevance.

In my speech, read from notes as it may have been, I did remind the members opposite that we are in fact here dealing with a lockout and not a strike, raising the relevance in fact of the question.

In response to my colleague who is requesting a comment on this from me, I most certainly do believe that from freedom of association and the Constitution enshrinement of that freedom flows the right to free collective bargaining. Part and parcel of free collective bargaining is the right for workers to withhold their labour, which is in fact the right to strike.

[Steven Fletcher, Conservative, Minister of State (Transport)]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to welcome the member for Beaches—East York to the House of Commons. I think he did a pretty good job.

The issue this evening is Bill C-6. The fact is that after eight months of negotiation the two parties were not able to come to an agreement. There was a strike that went into a lockout. Canada Post is not providing the services that Canadians want, demand or need. The economic recovery is fragile.

Will the opposition party pass Bill C-6 in a timely manner so that Canadians can get the mail they expect when they expect it?

[Matthew Kellway, NDP, Beaches—East York, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I heard the member opposite refer to the issue of eight months of efforts to resolve the collective agreement. If the member had listened to my speech, he would have heard that it is no surprise to me that the parties were unable to resolve that dispute in light of what has happened here. The very point of my speech was to suggest that under the labour relations regime, free collective bargaining depends on predictability and the predictability of the parties having to solve this dispute among themselves through the labour relations regime.

The intervention of the government into this collective bargaining dispute and previous interventions of governments into labour disputes have removed the predictability of collective bargaining and made it very easy for employers to sit back and wait for governments to act in the fashion that they have done with Bill C-6 before us tonight.

[Robert Chisholm, NDP, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to engage in debate on this bill and the motion to take some time to consider more fully the implications of this bill. I think six months could be time well spent.

I think, had the government thought a little more about the implications of this action, it would not have gone down the road in such a headstrong fashion to trample on the rights of these workers.

I have heard a few themes throughout the day from members opposite. One of them is about big bad unions. They have talked about unions as if they are the devil incarnate. They have talked about them as if they were just plain bad.

I cannot comprehend this because I am sure there are a lot of women and men in their communities, in their constituencies, who through a democratic vote have decided to participate in a union, who have entered into a workplace where a union has been in place. Those constituents have realized a decent working wage, health benefits and perhaps a pension plan, if they are fortunate to be part of the 30% of Canadian workers who are lucky enough to participate in pensions. In other words, they are people who are benefiting from the rights and opportunities of bargaining collectively, of working together, of coming together to have some control within their workplace over wages, benefits and working conditions.

I do not see why any member of this House would want to argue against that. It is as though because people are in a group somehow that is negative as opposed to its being positive to be individuals. How could that be? That simply does not make any sense.

If members took the time to actually look into what kind of an organization a trade union is, they would actually recognize what I know having been a union member, that a union is one of the more democratic organizations in our society. The leadership is elected, not unlike political parties. Decisions and proper process of how that organization runs are set out in bylaws for all people to see. It inevitably has a constitution, which controls how that organization runs. The finances of the organization are completely public. The decision making within the organization is completely public. It has regular general meetings so that all members of the union can participate in the day-to-day activities of that organization.

Because I have been involved in unions for many years, I know for sure that if one member is not happy with how that organization is being run, he or she comes to a meeting, the second Wednesday of every month or whatever it is that the particular union membership decides is going to be its regular meeting time, and the member has an opportunity to stand on the floor to raise those concerns. That is the way unions operate. When it comes to how the unions spend the dues, how they decide to prepare for bargaining, that is all decided by union members.

It is not unlike some other organizations, like political parties, where not everyone who is a member wants to participate in the day-to-day activities, and sometimes members are not happy with how things happen and they grumble and gripe about the decisions that are made but they are not prepared to take a couple of hours on the Wednesday night to go out and participate in those decisions. That happens. However, the important point is that decisions are made by a majority, just as they are in our elections, and the rest of the members of the group or of the constituency live with those results.

I will not speak for any other party in this chamber but, just like our party, the union does not represent just the people who vote for it or the people who participate in it. The union represents all members because its mandate is to be responsible for and to act responsibly on behalf of all the members of the union, to bargain better wages, better working conditions, and to act constructively on behalf of all members whether they participate or not.

I can understand to some extent, given the way the government has acted, that it may not understand that. What I tend to hear is that the government seems to think that if a particular jurisdiction does not have a Conservative member, then that jurisdiction is not going to get the goodies. If people do not have a government member elected in their particular province, then they are not going to see the kind of spoils of the electoral competition that others would. I would say that is completely wrong and our leader, the Leader of the Opposition, has said on many occasions that our responsibility here is to look after the interests of all Canadians, and that is exactly what the NDP caucus has been doing.

That is exactly the role that is played by unions in our society in Canada. It has been for 150 years. Unions have played an important role throughout this country in ensuring we have good social policy. That includes things like our pension, the Canada pension plan; employment insurance; the labour laws that ensure there is a standard work week and that people are not having to work seven days a week, that we do not have child labour, that we have some basic human rights in the workplace, that we have general health and safety, that people are protected and that they have the right to refuse. All of those basic protections that exist in all workplaces have largely resulted from the work by unions, and they have been doing that for 150 years in this country.

Again, I say to members opposite that I urge them not to think so negatively about unions and to recognize that, in fact, they consist of men and women and families who are out there working hard, trying to make their workplace better, trying to ensure they can provide for their families and working every day, tirelessly, to build their communities and make the lives of all Canadians better.

I must say further how concerned I am with a couple of other things that have been repeated by the government. There is this idea that the negotiations have gone on for eight months and that suddenly that is too long. I have been involved in public sector negotiations that have gone on for a couple of years, undoubtedly as a result of problems with both the employer and the union; that have gone on because of circumstances within a given jurisdiction. However, the parties keep negotiating. They keep working away. The parties continue to work to solve problems. Just because it has gone on for a certain period of time and the parties are beginning to apply some pressure to each other does not mean it is time to shut it all down, that we decide time is up and we are going to end this by stepping in. It is also setting a standard that is inappropriate. It is not up to the government to be setting that standard. It is for the parties to decide.

In this instance, we know, if we have been paying any attention at all to the debate and to the interventions by the NDP caucus, the official opposition, that what transpired here is that the parties were having trouble coming to agreement on a number of issues and that the union instigated one of the tools in its toolbox, and it has a number of them. One of the union's tools, the ultimate weapon, is the right to strike. It did not use that, for whatever reason. I think it was largely because the union itself recognized that it was the ultimate weapon and it did not want to shut down postal services in this country completely because it understood that they were at the early stages in negotiations and the parties were still far apart. Therefore, there needed to be some efforts to bring the parties closer together, so the union began to employ tactics that were more subtle and it engaged in slowly rotating strikes.

We have heard from a number of our constituents. We have heard it here. It is in the record. Members opposite have been reading from their toys about communications they have had from their constituents where the constituents said they did not have a problem with the rotating strikes, the strike action that was happening. They did not have a problem with that, but they did have a problem when the crown corporation decided it was going to padlock the doors.

That is when postal services completely ended. That is when the bills and the cheques stopped moving for the small businesses that everybody on the government side seems to talk about. That is when they were shut down, not when the union was employing its tactics. Postal services were shut down when management stepped in and put big padlocks on every single Canada Post workplace in this country. That is when things shut down. We have heard that again and again, so we understand that is what happened.

One would think that the appropriate response to that shutdown would have been to take the padlocks off, open the doors and let the workers go back in and deliver the mail. Would that not have been the solution? Would that not have been the best way to do that?

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

Order, please. I would remind all hon. members that when people have the floor they have the floor. Some commentary takes place in this place, but it would appear we are going to be here for a long time so I would ask the co-operation of all members to respect their colleagues.

The hon. member for Dartmouth—Cole Harbour.

[Robert Chisholm, NDP, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that. I did not hear anything coming from the gentleman. I do not mind a little noise. I appreciate that because it is important.

Canadians have told us that the decorum of the House important. I know members of the official opposition are paying close attention to what Canadians said in order to conduct ourselves in that manner.

Let me get back to what I was saying. If Canada Post is causing the problem by having locked all the doors, then we would think someone in the government, the Prime Minister or the minister responsible, would pick up the phone and would tell to the head of the crown corporation, who earns about $650,000 a year, to take the locks off the doors, that we want to get the mail running, that our businesses, our communities, our charities and other organizations are dependent on the mail service.

However, that is not what the government does. I just do not understand. I am from Nova Scotia. We do things in a much more simple way there. We just get it done.

Maybe I am not paying attention. Maybe the government has other motives. I do not know. It is not like me to impugn the motives of the government, but one has to wonder. If the easy solution is to take the locks off, which is pretty simple, then why has the government come in with this big honking sledgehammer, bringing it down on the backs of working people?

Why is the government doing that? Why would we not think that this is just the first group, the first salvo? The government has come forward with legislation which imposes a collective agreement and a wage rate, which is less than the wage negotiated by the parties. It has set conditions for the arbitrator, for the final offer selection, which will have real implications on the solutions that will be found to deal with the issues of the pension.

I read the bill, and I am quite concerned about the parameters that it puts on the kind of solution that could be found for the pension.

Again, the government is setting the parameters and conditions. It is telling the arbitrator, whoever that person might be, how he or she will go about finding the settlement.

Why is the government doing that? I do not know. Whose rights are next? Which organization or which group of people, which group of Canadians is the government going to point its finger at next, deciding it is its turn? That is my concern. That is the concern of working people across the country. It is not only working people, but representatives of other groups that the government does not necessarily support.

Some members opposite and in the corner have asked why the NDP members are talking so much. They want to go home. They have things they want to do this weekend. They want to play some golf. The members of this caucus are going to speak up on behalf of working people. That is why we are doing it.

Two days ago the member for London—Fanshawe brought in the resolution about raising seniors out of poverty. Who stood up in the House and argued for that? It was the NDP.

In the campaign, who talked about affordability issues? Who talked about strengthening and expanding the health care system in our country? Who is trying to reduce the costs of drugs for seniors? It is this opposition party.

That is why we are doing this. We are doing this to speak up on behalf of people who are under attack by the Conservative government.

[Julian Fantino, Conservative, Associate Minister of National Defence]

Mr. Speaker, I am not a lawyer, which is probably a good thing, but the hon. member opposite indicated that there was a right to strike. Just for the record, I do not believe that is correct. I believe there is a right to bargain and bargain in good faith.

Why are all members of the House here? There seems to be a simple answer. Recent polls indicate that 70% of Canadians support back to work legislation to end this costly, disruptive, crippling work stoppage that is presently going on.

Could the hon. member opposite explain to all members and to all Canadians why his party is not on the same wavelength and in agreement with the Canadians who want Canada Post to get back to work and who want this work stoppage to end? Why do we have all this rhetoric about all the wonderful things the NDP has done? Let us get the right thing done and get people back to work.

[Robert Chisholm, NDP, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Mr. Speaker, when I was elected to this place, and as I carry out my responsibilities in the House, before I stand to speak about an issue, I do not check to see what the latest pole indicates. I do not check the wind to find out what is going on.

I look into my heart and I ask myself if there are people under attack, or people who do not have a voice or people who are vulnerable. Those are the ones for whom I will speak up.

[Raymond Côté, NDP, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened closely to my colleague's statement and I especially appreciated his comments about the democratic principles on which unions are founded. I think this is an extremely important point worth making.

We do not talk enough about the fact that abuse is heaped on unions for truly debatable reasons.The inner workings of a union are completely disregarded.

I would like my colleague to tell us how a union lives up to its democratic principles and how it operates in the same way that companies do when they hold shareholder meetings. They talk about defending a company's right to conduct business, whereas we are defending union rights.

[Robert Chisholm, NDP, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I spent many years as a part of unions, working for them and studying them. It amazes me the process that those organizations go through, oftentimes to the peril of the leadership, but they do these things because they are democratic. People have the opportunity to participate in decisions all the way along.

I appreciate having this opportunity, but the Canadian unions such as the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, which represents the workers at Canada Post, are involved in solidarity efforts with its sisters and brothers in the southern hemisphere for workers' rights and human rights for those who live nowhere near Ottawa or Canada. They and their members believe in the principle of solidarity of human rights and protecting working people around the globe.

[Peter MacKay, Conservative, Minister of National Defence]

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate my colleague opposite, a fellow Nova Scotian. I grew up in a community not unlike his. There were a lot of coal miners and unions and they did a lot of good work.

NDP members have wrapped their arms around working people. I have heard numerous references throughout the debate this evening to working people. I have a very simple question for my colleague from Nova Scotia, who has a fine bit of that maritime lilt and lots of great rhetoric and fiery emotion and passion tonight.

I assure him that there is no ownership in working people in any party in the country. A lot of working people are being affected by this strike, which he will be the first to admit. Small businesses, seniors, individuals count on the mail every day for their very livelihoods and those of their families, to receive EI cheques, something very fundamental to a lot of people in Atlantic Canada.

I very sincerely ask the member opposite this. What does he say to those working people and how long should this dispute have gone on? As a former union member, he has probably been involved in similar situations where these long, protracted disputes cause tremendous hardship on all sides. Eight months is a very long time. We are hearing that a lot of union members themselves are anxious to get back on the job.

How long and what about the working people suffering as a result of the strike?

[Robert Chisholm, NDP, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Mr. Speaker, the minister lives in an important part of the province of Nova Scotia that has a long and proud history, not only of work but of labour relations, trade and so on.

We are not claiming to be the only ones who represent working people. All we are saying is that members should open their ears, talk to their constituents, working people who vote for them such as union members. I know the people who vote for the member opposite. They are union members as well. They have some rights and interests and they are being harmed.

The minister knows I come from a proud small business background in the valley, the Conservative valley, I might add. Therefore, I am very sensitive to the desires and concerns of the small business community. That is why I saying the government should take the padlocks off those doors and let the postal service resume. Get those guys back to work. That is all it has to do. The government locked the doors. Get them back to work.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Speaker, what are the workers in Nova Scotia saying about the Conservative government and the Minister of National Defence, who also said he represents the workers? In the bill the government wants to give less of an increase in wages in the collective agreement than what the crown corporation was ready to give. The government says that it does not get involved in crown corporations, but in the bill it presented to the House it government would give less than what the crown corporation offered.

What do you think is wrong with the government and why does it hate the workers so much?

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

Before I go to the hon. member, I would remind all hon. members to direct their comments, questions and answers to the Chair.

The hon. member for Dartmouth—Cole Harbour.

[Robert Chisholm, NDP, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I cannot answer why the member feels the government hates workers, although its actions seem to suggest that.

I received a couple of texts from workers in my community. One said that he appreciated the rights of the workers, but asked about the small businesses. I told him what happened and that the NDP was asking the government to take the locks off. He replied and said, “Good for you and good for the NDP caucus for standing up on behalf of working people and small businesses”.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate following the member for Dartmouth—Cole Harbour. He is a very eloquent speaker.

My voice may be a bit hoarse at 1:00 a.m., and although our voices may be a bit hoarse and our throats a bit irritated, our voices will not be still in the House of Commons in standing up for the working people of this country.

I have a different background than that of the member for Dartmouth—Cole Harbour. He spoke very proudly about his labour and union involvement. I have never been a member of a labour union although I was active as a manual worker. I worked in factories, but always non-union. I went back to school and became an administrator. I have negotiated collective agreements, but I have always done that from the side of management. I have been an operator of businesses and have won two Business Excellence Awards in 2003 and 2004. I understand from the business point of view the essential nature of having free collective bargaining and allowing unions, the workers and management to work together to resolve those issues.

However, this is not a case of free and fair collective bargaining. In fact, this is the opposite case. This is why members of the NDP caucus are standing up in the House of Commons at 1:00 in the morning saying that this is wrong. The government should be taking the locks off where the workers have been locked out, get the mail system working and let the union and management negotiate that collective agreement that so many Canadians want to see.

I would like to pay tribute to the diversity of the new official opposition NDP caucus. We have people in the House with various backgrounds: small business, management, nurses, doctors, lawyers and trades. We have a diversity in this caucus that has never been seen before in the House of Commons. That allows us to bring a depth and breadth of experience to bear in this debate in the House of Commons.

I must say that the lack of experience on the government side on the issue of collective bargaining shows through in the debate we have had thus far this evening. At my count, and I certainly have not been here for every moment of the debate, but at least two dozen Conservative members of Parliament, including members of cabinet, referred to the situation at Canada Post as a strike when it is a lockout. It is obvious from their lack of experience that they do not comprehend the difference between a lockout and a strike.

A strike is when workers refuse to do the work. A lockout is when management locks the doors. What has happened here is that management has locked the doors. The leader of the NDP and members of the NDP caucus are asking that the locks be taken off and get the mail moving. That is why we are here tonight.

I do not mean that in an unkind way, but this shows the lack of experience and diversity in the Conservative caucus. It has one or two members with any sort of labour background. However, and this is very important, we are talking about one-third of households in Canada where there is a breadwinner from organized labour, workers who have come together collectively to organize in the workplace.

That is an essential component of any democracy. If we do not have the ability to collectively bargain and join a labour union, then we are not in a democracy. That is a fundamental democratic principle that so many Canadians hold dear. One of the essential elements in collective bargaining is the balance, the equilibrium between management and labour. To come to that common agreement we need honest and sincere negotiations.

That has not happened in this case. Despite the government's speaking notes and unlike the diversity of opinions we have heard from the NDP caucus this evening, members of Parliament coming to this place to debate this issue from a variety of backgrounds and experiences, we have heard the same comments from Conservative members of Parliament, comments that are factually wrong in calling a strike a lockout when there is a fundamental difference between the two, but also saying that this has been some kind of eight month protracted negotiation.

We know that is false. We know that the workers at Canada Post have sincerely tried to come to an agreement, have tried to negotiate and what we have seen is bad faith from Canada Post. There is no other way to put it.

The workers have a 94% mandate and, despite the occasional email we have heard Conservative MPs read tonight, it is quite obvious with a 94% mandate that Canada Post workers are very solid on this issue of negotiating with management. Despite all of that, management simply refused to negotiate in good faith with the workers and then it systematically shut down the mail system. First, it shut down operations for two days a week, denying mail service to Canadians. The response from the people who work at Canada Post, the letter carriers who deliver our mail, the person who walks up the 30 steps to my house on the top of the hill on Glover Avenue and then walks down, the response of the letter carriers and the mail sorters was that essential services would be continued and that seniors' cheques would continue to be delivered. Management then played its hand by shutting down the entire system.

There should have been a mature informed response, but given the fact that there is no diversity on the Conservative side and the government does not understand that there is that balance in Canadian democracy, what we saw instead, as my colleague from Dartmouth—Cole Harbour said, is basically a sledgehammer, a piece of enforced legislation that rips up any sort of collective bargaining process and imposes on the workers at Canada Post the government's direction in this regard.

What does the government do? The first thing the government did was to impose a wage reduction. Any increase has to be evaluated against the current inflation rate. This is something that makes me and other colleagues in the NDP caucus apoplectic. There is an ignorance on the Conservative side of the House about the difference between the inflation rate and a real increase. If there is a 2% increase and the inflation rate is 3%, any member on the NDP side of the House would say that is a net reduction of 1%. The Conservatives are saying that is some kind of wage increase when indeed it is actually a wage reduction in real terms.

This is imposed by the government on the 50,000 letter carriers and mail sorters across the country, people who are hard-pressed to make ends meets. The government is going to make mandatory an imposed reduction in salary, year after year, after year. That is the first difficulty that I have with this government imposed interference in collective bargaining. This is highly inappropriate and if the Conservative caucus had the diversity of the NDP caucus, the government would have thought twice before wading into this matter in such an irresponsible way.

Second, there is the issue of pensions. As we know, the enforced differential that the Conservative government is bringing in also has profound impacts on pensions. On this side of the House, the NDP fought for pensions. Our predecessors, perhaps in another corner of the House when we had a smaller CCF caucus, originated the idea that was radical at the time and denounced by Conservatives and Liberals, that working people should actually have the right to a pension and that they should actually at the end of their working lives be able to somehow profit from those lives of working and have pensions paid to them.

It was the NDP that fought for that. We were denounced. We were vilified by Conservatives and Liberals but we persevered, working with working people from across this country and pensions are accepted now as something to the benefit of Canadian citizens.

We fought for public medicare. We fought for employment insurance. Each one of those fights had the same rhetoric from the other side and we won each one of those fights because there is nothing more dedicated than a New Democratic Party member of Parliament. We will not stop. Our voices will not be silenced until we succeed in building the kind of society that all Canadians want to see.

The pension element of this Conservative sledgehammer on the letter carriers and on the mail sorters at Canada Post means that for many of the younger people joining Canada Post, they cannot hope to retire at 65. They may be retiring much, much later and they will be retiring at a much smaller pension.

At a time when hundreds of thousands of seniors in this country are living below the poverty line, for the government to impose a forced poverty on those young people joining Canada Post is highly irresponsible. There is no other way to put it.

The third element is what the Conservative government wants to do to younger people. We know that Tory times are tough times, particularly for younger Canadians. Perhaps one reason why there are now two dozen members of our caucus who are younger Canadians is because younger Canadians are finding their voice, that the kinds of policies that are driving down wages, that are driving down opportunities, that are eliminating pensions later on, that are creating the highest level of student debt in our history, particularly in my province of British Columbia, that all of those policies work against young people.

This proposal being enforced, this sledgehammer, by the government makes sure that those younger Canadians or new Canadians who join the postal service will permanently work at lower wages and can never hope to have the kind of retirement security that all of us want to see.

Those are three reasons why we oppose this legislation. It is inappropriate, irresponsible and had the government been well informed, had the government the diversity of our caucus, the government would not have done that.

There may be another reason behind it. My colleague from Dartmouth—Cole Harbour asked the question that perhaps this is ideologically driven.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

I'm shocked.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

The member for Windsor—Tecumseh says he is shocked.

We all remember the events leading up to May 2. We all remember the orange surge in many parts of this country. Perhaps it was just a reaction by the Conservative Prime Minister, but at the time he said we should not worry, that he would be moderate in his actions if elected prime minister. This is a very immoderate action. This is an action that profoundly hurts 50,000 families across the country, working people, people who have worked for the postal service, have served their country and are being treated, in my opinion, in a most disrespectful way.

One could say that this is another example of what increasingly seems to be a very radical agenda by the government, to wade into the collective bargaining process, as it tried to do with Air Canada, to bring in elements that are highly inappropriate, to penalize working people for the actions of what can only be described as poor management practices at Canada Post. We believe there could be a very strong, ideological component to what the government is trying to do tonight and it is highly inappropriate.

I would like to address the broader issue that my colleague from Dartmouth—Cole Harbour also addressed, which is, who is next? The precedent this sets is simply one that we cannot accept. The idea that younger Canadians must be paid a much lower wage rate, that pensions must become even lower for those who are entering the workforce in the coming years, the idea that somehow, year after year, public servants--that is the best way to describe them--who work for Canada Post, who deliver our mail every day, who sort our mail every day, should be subject to what is a net 1% reduction in salary each and every year of this imposed sledgehammer agreement, those are things that we fundamentally disagree with, because what we are seeing is an impact on the middle class right across the country. These kinds of policies are attacking the Canadian middle class. We have seen an erosion of our middle class throughout this Conservative mandate. Canadians in the middle class are earning less. Canadians in the middle class have seen their debt loads almost double over the last few years. Canadians in the middle class are working longer and longer hours and are being paid less and less.

It is the equalizer of free collective bargaining, the ability to join a union, that has often made the difference in the growth of our middle class in the past. There is only one way to describe it. The spectacular speech of the Leader of the Official Opposition, the member for Toronto—Danforth, earlier tonight paid tribute to the historic role the labour movement has played in building our country and in building our middle class.

We want to make sure that the middle class in Canada is prosperous. We want to make sure that the system of checks and balances that comes from a labour movement interacting with management is preserved, that the fundamentals we heard earlier from the member for Beaches—East York in what was a fascinating examination of collective bargaining and the importance of that fundamental balance, which is somewhat lost on some members of the Conservative Party--those kinds of elements are vitally important.

We have seen the erosion and the erosion has to stop. The idea that mean-spirited policies that benefit very few at the price of many is something that we are fundamentally opposed to.

There is no doubt that what this legislation does is reward bad management practices. It rewards management that has not actively engaged in sincere labour negotiations. What it does is give them a blank cheque. It fundamentally erodes collective bargaining rights. It hurts 50,000 working families, and, more importantly, each and every year of this imposed sledgehammer will hurt further thousands of Canadians.

This is a fundamental principle. In our party the reason we have grown from 13 members to 19 members, to 29 members, to 36 members, to 103 members of Parliament is because working families across the country trust us when we say what we need to do is build the kind of Canada where everybody matters, where nobody is left behind, and where that balance is maintained and our middle class can grow and poor Canadians can be lifted out of poverty. Those are the principles that we bring to the House of Commons. That is why this caucus is fighting so terrifically this evening for the rights of working Canadians.

We will continue to do so because it is right for our country. That is why we are here, and we will not stop. Our voices will not be silent until the government hears reason.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I want to take issue not necessarily with the comments made recently by the member for Burnaby—New Westminster, but with many of the comments that I have heard from others in the NDP this evening during debate, particularly the comments about members on the government side being anti-union. Nothing could be farther from the truth. It is well documented.

The Minister of Labour's father was a very active member of the CAW. In my own case, my father was a high-ranking official with the United Steel Workers of America. In fact, Ken Neumann, the current head of the Canadian chapter of the United Steel Workers of America, freely admits that he learned his trade at the feet of my father. My father was his mentor. I see Ken Neumann quite frequently and we talk on very friendly terms. I can assure members opposite, even the member for Acadie—Bathurst who wants to heckle because he does not want to hear the truth, that this government is not anti-union.

What we are saying, however, is that the NDP are propagating a myth tonight when they say they are representing working people. They are not. They are representing the views of union people.

There are millions of working people in Canada who want to see back-to-work legislation. It is fine for NDP members to represent unions and union workers, but would they admit the fact that they are representing a narrow perspective of views from union workers across Canada and not the wider range of Canadians? That is our role. That is what we will continue to do.