Debates of June 23rd, 2011

Restoring Mail Delivery for Canadians Act

[Jamie Nicholls, NDP, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, I do not think the hon. member had time to respond to the comment.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

We will try this again.

If the hon. member for Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles wishes, she may answer her colleague.

The hon. member for Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles.

[Anne-Marie Day, NDP, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The government must really do something and stop this lockout. That is all the parties are waiting for, to resume negotiations, and the unions are waiting to resume mail delivery. As the member at the far end of the House said, people are waiting for their diapers, their mail and their prescription drugs to be delivered. So it is time everyone started negotiating.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

The hon. member for Kelowna—Lake Country, with a short question, please.

[Ron Cannan, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her talk this afternoon, this evening, or today, whatever time it is wherever people are.

The fact is that this is a serious issue for all Canadians. I have had the opportunity to be in management and work with a unionized company and I have also been in a union. I had the unfortunate opportunity to participate in a strike for several weeks, walking around the printing plant for a newspaper, from midnight to 4 a.m. It was not a good experience for anybody involved.

The workers lose on both sides of the perspective. The only winners in this are the union management and the company management. I think the fact is that people are being blamed for locking out or striking when everyone knows it is a work stoppage and we need to resolve this issue. The way to get the locks lifted is to pass this legislation.

Does my hon. colleague not believe that the best way to resolve this issue, to get the workers back to work, is to pass this legislation opening the locks so we can resume the delivery of the mail to small businesses--

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

Order, please. I must give the hon. member time to respond.

L'honorable députée de Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles a la parole.

[Anne-Marie Day, NDP, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Madam Speaker, to respond to the hon. member, as he said, it is often the management party that emerges from negotiations or strikes in a winning position. There is a power grab here by the management side, Canada Post.

Second, like the hon. member, I have also managed businesses and conducted negotiations. It was done in another manner, not by lockout. We discussed and re-discussed the issues and we ultimately found a solution.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Madam Speaker, I would like to begin my remarks by doing something that perhaps we should have done a great deal earlier, and that is to recognize and to pay tribute to one of the most well-respected, well-known, brave and dignified labour leaders that this country has ever seen, and I make reference to Jean-Claude Parrot, the former leader of CUPW, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers.

He led a couple of strikes in the mid-1970s against a draconian situation in probably the most hostile industrial relations environment in recent history. He wound up going to prison for his convictions and his beliefs. I met with JC just a few years ago in Geneva, where he was representing Canada at the ILO.

I raise this because our conversation led to growing trends in his home country, my current country. The name of Thomas d'Aquino came up because we were talking about the driving influences, the dynamics, facing the labour movement and the economy generally today, and that seemed to be the wish list of Thomas d'Aquino, the declaration of Thomas d'Aquino on what Canada needs to do.

He was the unofficial prime minister of Canada. He was guiding things during the 1990s. He had 10 or 12 things that he said Canada must do in order to prosper in the 21st century, et cetera. One by one, he was ticking them off, and right up in the top three was that corporations had to get out from under their legacy costs.

“Legacy costs” is code for pensions. Legacy costs are blamed all the time, even when the auto industry got into trouble recently. They never let a good crisis go to waste. The first thing the industry said was that it was not industry mismanagement and not the fact that the industry builds cars that nobody wants to buy, but the legacy costs. If only the industry could get out from under their legacy costs, said the auto industry, it would be as good as Honda and Toyota.

Jean-Claude Parrot, in his wisdom, flagged this for me as we sat having dinner in Geneva. I have been watching his prescient observations come true, because we have seen an unprecedented assault on the very notion that workers should have an expectation of a reasonable pension plan when they retire. It has been systematically undermined and chipped away at.

Here is the modus operandi. First, we get Thomas d'Aquino, or John Manley now, to say something. He will say that we need to get rid of pensions. Suddenly, a couple of right-wing think tanks come along and validate that. Sure enough, a couple of studies by the Fraser Institute say that we have to get rid of pensions. Then, sure enough, the lobbyists are unleashed; let loose the hounds. The lobbyists descend on Parliament Hill. Suddenly, Tim Powers and Geoff Norquay are on Parliament Hill saying that we have to get rid of pensions.

All of a sudden, a neo-conservative government dutifully falls into line and says that we have to get rid of pensions, although perhaps in a nicer, kinder tone, because villainy wears many masks, as we know, but none so treacherous as the mask of virtue, and the government is good at putting on the mask of virtue when necessary.

We will even see the government use that trick tonight as it tries to misrepresent what is really going on in the lockout at Canada Post. Because this is not really about 0.5 of 1% of a wage increase for one of the three years; that in and of itself would probably not be enough to cause an impasse in a national institution. What this is really about is the systematic erosion of a public service pension plan and the benefits and the expectations of that group of workers. They chose to take on Canada Post because, frankly, it has been an irritant for years. It has been a very militant union, and as I said, it is one of the most volatile industrial relations environments in the western world. It has been a sick, sick environment, and I am the first to recognize this.

There was a fragile balance. After the extremely hostile days of the seventies, a relative labour peace, a compact, as it were, was managed, and that survived until about the time the Liberals started demanding that Canada Post pay the government dividends. All of a sudden, the mandate of Canada Post was expanded to not just delivering mail on time and providing good service and reasonable postal rates, but to paying millions of dollars per year into the general revenue.

That is when the government started milking it like a cash cow. That is when the pension started to get starved, et cetera. This has been a problem throughout, but Canada Post did manage to get relative labour peace for a number of years, until Moya Greene was parachuted in. Moya Greene tried to change the corporate culture at Canada Post, but then most recently the government went head hunting.

This is one of the problems with not having a public appointments commission. They went head hunting for a corporate hitman who would come in and do the really dirty work, who would really throw a spanner into the gears of industrial relations, who would stir things up to the point where we would have this impasse and the difficulty we see today.

It is the same as in the movie Wag the Dog. One manufactures a crisis and then points to the crisis and says that the only thing to do is to use the extreme measure of privatization. It is not paranoid to assume that is the ultimate goal here. I have watched the reaction every time we raise it. All those people on the Conservative benches nod their heads saying, “Well, what is wrong with that? It's a given, isn't it? We are going to privatize it sooner or later. We might as well start now”.

Frankly, most of the country does not agree with privatizing Canada Post.

They parachuted in this hitman, Deepak Chopra, not the guru with the incense and all that stuff, but the other one, the corporate hitman. They parachuted him in at $650,000 a year plus a 33% bonus for everything he can squeeze out of the workers in this round of bargaining. That is pretty good change for the CEO of this company.

We had an expression in the labour movement when I was negotiating agreements that we do not want tourists at the bargaining table. We do not want tourists, but we surely do not want an agent provocateur. We surely do not want a saboteur at the bargaining table who is going to deliberately undermine things, deliberately provoke a conflict and then have the government of the day run to the rescue to put the fire out. They threw a bucket of kerosene on the smouldering embers of an old historic labour dispute and then came rushing in with the fire brigade saying, “Put out the fire with back-to-work legislation. It is a lockout, more hose, more pressure. We need more steam”. It is crazy.

I represent the riding of Winnipeg Centre. In 1921 the Government of Canada wanted to lock up J. S. Woodsworth as a leader of the 1919 Winnipeg general strike, but the good people of my riding sent him to Ottawa instead to be their member of Parliament. He stayed there for 21 years and became the founder and first leader of our old party, the CCF, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation. I am very proud of that history and that tradition, and we are not going to stop that tradition today no matter what we call our party, because we smell a rat in the woodpile.

This is not a normal labour dispute. There is something sinister going on here, and it is not paranoid to assume that. I keep seeing nodding heads on that side every time we imply that what the Conservatives are really trying to do is find justification to privatize this crown corporation either by starving it to death or using it as a cash cow.

It is really hard to understand why there would be an impasse for a cost of living wage increase when the company showed $281 million in profits last year and similar amounts in previous years. This is a stable work environment. The company has shed a lot of labour costs by technological change so its operating costs are actually going down even though its capital costs went up to put in new mail sorting services et cetera.

It does a good job. It is a Canadian institution that we value and treasure. We are not going to let those institutions by which we define ourselves as Canadians be dismantled one by one.

The labour compact in the postwar years led to relative labour peace and an end to wildcat strikes. The deal was when productivity was up and profits were up, workers' wages would go up. That was the deal, and that deal has been eroded and compromised.

[Joy Smith, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Madam Speaker, I must say I always look forward to the member opposite's grasp of theatre. It is very interesting to listen to some of his comments, and his use of hyperbole is absolutely astounding. However, the factual content is somewhat worrisome.

The facts are that on May 2, this country elected a strong, stable Conservative majority government. Canadians elected a strong, stable majority Conservative government because they had confidence that our government could handle the economic downturn that we are coming out of in such a fragile economy.

Is the member aware that Canada Post is losing $25 million a day from this strike, this lockout? Is he aware that the economic downturn is not helped by what is happening right now? Is he willing to pass Bill C-6 and encourage his caucus comrades to do that?

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Madam Speaker, when we form the first strong, stable majority progressive social democratic government, we would probably pick up the phone and tell Deepak Chopra to cut the bolts on Canada Post's doors. My colleague comes from Winnipeg, and we know that every kid on the street there has a bolt cutter so he can steal bikes. We could borrow one of those bolt cutters and cut the padlocks off Canada Post to get its workers back to work.

Actually, what Canada Post is saving in wages probably offsets anything it is losing in terms of mail volume. However, the fact remains that the solution to this problem is not back to work legislation. The solution to the problem is to accept the offer of the union to go back to work without any rotating strikes, which it has offered to do, which could happen tomorrow morning if the Conservative government told its flunky, Deepak Chopra, to unlock the padlocks.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Madam Speaker, I too enjoyed the member's remarks and I agree with his last question. It is funny how in this legislation there is really nothing to cut back the massive bonuses that management gets. It is all taken out on the workers.

My question really relates to an area that I know the member is very concerned about. Earlier, the member for Peterborough got up in the House and went after the NDP strenuously in trying to argue that the workers were not allowed the right to vote on the contract. Is that not a major contradiction with what his own party is trying to do when it comes to the Canadian Wheat Board? The government is denying farmers the right to vote on whether the wheat board remains or not. Is that not a major contradiction?

I ask the member if he could maybe explain that to the House and to the member for Peterborough?

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

It does seem to be a glaring contradiction, Madam Speaker, and I appreciate my colleague for raising the question. Let me just answer on a serious note.

The strike mandate given to the bargaining committee at Canada Post was the biggest in its history. Some 97.5% of all the employees gave a strike mandate to the bargaining committee, because they were told there were rollbacks on the table from the company and the mandate was there. It is customary, actually, to negotiate the best deal possible and then take it to the employees.

The lack of democracy here, or the undermining of the industrial relations process, comes from the heavy hand of the state imposing its will on a democratic process and a constitutionally protected process of free collective bargaining.

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

Before resuming debate, I would like to advise hon. members that if they want to be recognized, they ought to wait until they are recognized to make their comments. Otherwise, they will wait for a long time to speak.

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Sudbury.

[Glenn Thibeault, NDP, Sudbury, ON]

Madam Speaker, I do not know how I always draw the short straw, but I always seem to speak after my hon. colleague from Winnipeg Centre, so I will try to have as much theatrics in my speech as my hon. colleague did.

Before I begin, I would like to wish all Quebeckers and francophones right across the country, but specifically those celebrating in my riding of Sudbury, and especially my wife, Yolanda, and my two daughters, Trinity and Thea, a happy Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day. Bonne fête nationale.

I speak today with much worry, worry for working families in this country. I worry for people like Todd and Chris and Conway and Steve, as I have spoken to them about their concerns. They worry that their invitations to an important event tomorrow are stuck in the postal outlet.

While today we are fighting for the workers at Canada Post, tomorrow I worry that it could be another union, another working group, or other public sectors workers. Who is next?

Today's debate is to fight for all Canadian working families.

The attacks on Canada's postal workers may not be as bold as what is happening to public service workers in the United States, but they have started. They are as deeply rooted in an ideology as what we have seen south of the border. A troubling aspect of these attacks, whether they are happening in the U.S., in Canada, or anywhere else around the world, is the skewed portrayal of workers.

As Paul Moist outlines,

The large majority of public-sector workers are in health care, schools, social services, and local government. They are mostly women and are far from highly paid.Of the over 600,000 members of CUPE, the average annual pay is less than $40,000.

It takes a certain amount of gall to portray these workers as privileged.

Attacking the workers and attempting to put all responsibility on workers is at best a mistake and is at worst an all-out assault on the middle and working classes.

However, as the current government, try as it might, attacks these workers, people across the country cannot seem to figure out exactly why pensions and good wages are so bad for Canada and why this government is against letting families have a decent living. Why would they legislate lower wages? It is unfair, let alone unjust, and I would encourage the government to withdraw this from the bill.

First, contrary to what various Canada Post management officials are claiming, postal workers are not a cost of production that is some kind of burden on taxpayers. Postal workers, through their labour, create tremendous new value in the economy, just as miners do and just as other transportation and communication workers do. Indeed, as a crown corporation, Canada Post has consistently made a profit over the last few years, despite the fact that electronic mail usage has grown significantly. The contribution of postal workers to the creation of this new value should be praised and not belittled.

That is why I want to praise the CUPW Sudbury Local 612. On Monday, this local volunteered to deliver government cheques to seniors and others in my community, and 5,600 government cheques were delivered, despite the workers having been locked out.

While my colleagues on the other side have called the union members thugs, I would like to mention that the union members in my community and the union members right across the country work hard for their local charities. I can attest that they work for the United Way, for the food bank, and for cancer care. Our union members care about their communities and care about their country, and we reject the idea that they are thugs.

We are seeing the effects of slashing workers' wages, pensions, and benefits in quite dramatic form, but for the CEOs, the story is quite different.

The compensation for the CEO of Canada Post is approved by the President of the Treasury Board. For the last four years, the salary of Canada Post's CEO was as follows:

In 2007, the base salary was $455,000, plus a 25% bonus, equalling $568,750. In 2008, it was $482,000, plus a 33% bonus, or an 8 percentage point increase in bonuses from one year to the next. In 2009, it was $489,700, plus a 33% bonus. In 2010, it $497,100 in base pay, plus a 33% bonus, totalling $661,143.

What does this government offer? It offers 1.75% in the first year, 1.5% in the second year, and 2% in each of the next two years. Obviously, the CEO has the support of this government, not the workers of Canada.

As Dan Charbonneau, the president of OECTA's Sudbury Secondary Unit, wrote to me, he could not believe the legislation being brought in by the Conservatives dictating that they had to return to work. Mr. Charbonneau added:

This government has gone one step further by tilting the arbitration in management's favour by imposing wage increases that are less than those already negotiated at the table.

As was mentioned before, it is unfair and unjust to legislate lower wages. Why would this government not withdraw this from the bill? That is a question we are still trying to understand.

In summary, this is not a strike but a lockout imposed by management and the Conservative government. The government is now imposing a contract on the workers. This is not fair collective bargaining. Along with all New Democrats, I will work hard to ensure that the government recognizes the importance of fair and negotiated contracts.

If the Conservatives are so concerned about mail service for Canadians, especially in rural areas, including ones that fall in my riding around Sudbury, in Nickel Belt and throughout the north, then end this lockout now.

[Patrick Brown, Conservative, Barrie, ON]

Madam Speaker, I have had tonnes of communication from residents in the City of Barrie who are concerned about the strike and how it is affecting small businesses and the economy. I am surprised how one-sided it has been. People have been adamant that we need to see postal workers get back to work to make sure that we do not damage small business and that the seniors we have spoken about get their cheques across Canada, not just in Sudbury.

One letter I thought was very telling. It spoke to me of the many different ways Canadians are affected by the NDP's inability to support this very important legislation and how this filibuster is hurting Canadians. I want to find out what the hon. member thinks about this and if there are similar circumstances in his riding of people being affected.

This is the letter I received today, whose author asked if I would read it. Debbie from Barrie, who is restricted in a wheelchair, asked me to pass it on. She said: “I read your information about Canada Post. I really hope this gets resolved soon with the back to work legislation. My older brother passed away June 6 and he was cremated in Ottawa and his ashes are stuck in the mail. I am sick about this. We had a service Monday without his ashes. Thank you for trying to pass the back to work legislation”.

That was a message sent today. I couldn't believe it. I bet there are hundreds and hundreds of examples of Canadians who are being tremendously affected by the NDP's inability to support this legislation.

[Glenn Thibeault, NDP, Sudbury, ON]

Madam Speaker, of course there are many people being affected right across the country. However, it is in the hands of this government.

The hon. member knows that he could easily talk to his colleagues and that they could make the phone call to ensure that locks are cut at the doors of Canada Post, so that the employees could go back to work and distribute the mail. This is a very easy solution. They just have to make the right choice, and they continue to make the wrong choice.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Madam Speaker, what has been unfortunate in this debate—it is not a filibuster, it has been a debate—is that the Conservatives have been trying to tell Canadians that the mail has been stopped because of the New Democratic Party. We know what has actually happened is that they locked out the workers and they shut down Canada Post. They introduced legislation last night, and even if it had passed the mail still would not have started today

We have at no time stopped this. Mail is not going to start again until Monday, so that gives us 48 hours to discuss this. It seems to me that the only people who would be discomfited by having to work the weekend to find a solution would maybe be some of the Conservatives. We have been saying all along that we are more than willing to find a solution.

We have 48 hours within this House. Of course it will go past that if they do not want to negotiate.

However, given the fact that the Conservatives have promised again and again that their primary concern is getting the mail running, I would ask my hon. colleague whether he does not think that in this 48 hours before Monday morning they could take a few reasonable steps: for one, sending a message to open Canada Post, and two, ensuring that it pulls the wage clause out of the back to work legislation. They could then go home to the barbecues and the mail would run.

In 48 hours, do members not think we could solve this?

[Glenn Thibeault, NDP, Sudbury, ON]

Madam Speaker, I have been in this House for three years, and it has been an honour to do so. I have seen this House come together and work as one team to pass legislation quickly.

We have the opportunity, if the government so chooses, to withdraw that unjust and unfair wage reduction legislation and to cut the locks off the doors so the workers of Canada Post can go back there to start getting the mail out.

If the Conservatives want to do this, I am sure we can get this done. They can get back to their barbecues and the mail can get out by Monday.

[Mathieu Ravignat, NDP, Pontiac, QC]

Mr. Speaker, first I would like to wish everyone in my constituency of Pontiac and in Quebec a happy national holiday.

I have listened closely to the debate over the past 18 or 20 hours and have come to the conclusion that it is a debate about the role of government in civil society. On that issue, I believe this government must be reminded of the history it seems so easily to disregard. That is odd for a conservative party.

The 19th century proved that unbridled capitalism was unrealistic. We have learned that we cannot rely on the good faith of big business and management when it comes to workers' conditions. There are good reasons why we have unions. I would remind the government that the higher the degree of capitalism, the more abuses there are. Sometimes the “big bosses” decided all issues for workers, sometimes even life and death matters.

The work week in the 19th century varied from 60 to 70 hours. It was 60 hours in the secondary sector and 70 hours in the tertiary sector. Fifteen-hour days were not unusual. Workers generally did not even have enough time to eat. Children made up 8% of the labour force in Quebec in 1891 and were such cheap labour that demand exceeded supply. They worked to the point of exhaustion in unsanitary conditions, exposed to all risks and without supervision. It was in those extremely difficult conditions that workers established unions to protect themselves from the vagaries of the new, impersonal labour market.

Although the first unions were small, local organizations, they immediately triggered hostile reactions from governments and employers. Governments in fact declared the unions illegal. Union movement sympathizers were blacklisted and constantly subjected to intimidation. That is why legislation was introduced to protect workers. Despite the strength of this opposition, the poor wages and the dangerous working conditions, strikes and protests increased, and the unions became established. It is a heroic story, I think.

The government often played a negative role in this story, and we have learned a great deal about the nature of government thanks to the union movement. The dark hours in the history of the union movement show that the role of the state should be to protect its citizens and to remain neutral in labour-management disputes, but, instead of remaining neutral, this government shows contempt for workers and their hard-won rights.

The truth is that the workers of this country and of the world, the ancestors of the vast majority of us, have bled for the right to organize and protect themselves.

The Canadian Union of Postal Workers began a series of rotating strikes last week. They have a right to do that. The union nevertheless offered to end the strike if the company allowed the old contract remain in effect during the negotiations, but Canada Post refused to do so.

At midnight on June 15, Canada Post decided to lock out its employees and to shut down mail service. That is no longer a strike; it is a lockout, an unjustifiable lockout because Canada post is profitable and provides high-quality service.

Let us compare the cost of sending a letter in Canada with the alternatives in the private sector. We pay 59¢ to mail a standard letter. In Germany, it costs 77¢, in Austria it is 88¢, and in the Netherlands it is 64¢. Therefore, why put workers into a corner and force them to accept concessions regarding their salaries and benefits, when the corporation is making $381 million in profits and its CEO is paid over $600,000? It does not make any sense.

It is difficult not to conclude that Canada Post is taking a hard line, to the point of putting services in peril, particularly in rural and remote areas such as mine. Again, the role of the state is to remain neutral and to facilitate an agreement. It is not to side with the employer.

I, like many others in the House, have heard concerns from constituents in my riding about receiving cheques and payments. These concerns are well-founded, but the reality is that they are not caused by striking workers.

The rotating strikes by CUPW were designed to ensure that the essential mail was delivered, but Canada Post has chained the doors. The workers cannot get in to do their essential work. They did not ask for this. Canadians did not ask for this.

I invite Canadians and the people of my riding to see the situation for what it is: a tactic on behalf of Canada Post and the government to exert pressure. Instead of acting to bring both parties back to the table and restore good faith, the government has chosen this labour dispute to stomp on the rights of all workers.

It is Canada Post and the government which have attacked the most vulnerable. It is this lockout and this bill. They are the ones depriving single mothers of their monthly child tax benefit cheques. They are the ones depriving seniors of receiving their GIS or OAS payments. They are the ones depriving Canadians who depend on CPP disability benefit payments and low-income Canadians waiting on tax return cheques or, in the case of some of my constituents, their disability cheques and business payments, both of which Canada Post refuses to give them. Those are tactics.

We should also realize that this legislation is not an accident. The fact that the first great labour battle with the government is with CUPW is not an accident. I, for one, salute the great work postal workers have done in the past to ensure social progress in our country. They have been at the forefront of many progressive struggles.

CUPW was the first Canadian union to pass a boycott resolution against South African apartheid. It has also taken stances against the Iraq war, as well as against NAFTA and FTAA. CUPW is also a major reason why we have maternity leave benefits in our country.

If the government is neutral, as it repeats ad nauseam, as if repeating it will make it true, why impose a lower wage than offered by the management of Canada Post in the bill. This goes against the entire principle of collective bargaining. We call for this section of the bill to be removed immediately.

Finally, I will add my voice to that of my colleagues. Take the locks off and give Canada Post workers a decent wage, decent pensions and dignity.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister and to the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs]

Madam Speaker, there has certainly been an awful lot of mischaracterizations about what is going on and how we have arrived at this point. The member in the official opposition continued along that route. He indicated that he thought this was a provocative action in many ways and that it never should have happened.

However, there was no talk of how Canada Post significantly had suffered economically through the rotating strikes, especially when it culminated in Toronto and Montreal. It indicated that some $100 million had been lost by Canada Post. That money belongs not just to the workers of Canada Post, but to all Canadians. That $100 million is real and it really did not have a choice.

This is the position that Canada Post and its workers are in, but it made an offer just last week. The members across the way have constantly talked about the wages in that offer and it seems they are prepared to accept it on behalf of the Canada Post workers. Is that what everyone else is hearing? That is what I am hearing.

I certainly never called CUPW members thugs. I said the union bosses are thugs, the ones that go to Fiji and Maui on—

[An hon. member]

Union dues.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Yes, on union dues. Why will they not allow their members to vote on that contract?

[Mathieu Ravignat, NDP, Pontiac, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I do not know where the hon. member is getting his statistics, but Canada Post has made $381 million. One would think that it could pay a decent wage to the workers and ensure pensions. The CEO is making close to $600,000 a year. There are 55,000 postal workers in this country who should have a decent wage and a decent pension, and Canada Post can afford it.

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

On a point of order, the hon. member for Timmins—James Bay.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

If we are going to have--