Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin, once again, by thanking the employees of the House of Commons. I thank them for the work that they do for Parliament, the seat of democracy, and the place in which democratic debates take place. I would also like to thank our security guards, who worked very hard. I thank our employees, from every political party, who have spent many hours and days here, in Parliament. I thank our pages, who have worked here day and night in the service of members of Parliament. Thank you all so much.
I just thanked our employees. The bill that was debated and adopted a moment ago has to do with the postal workers who deliver our mail day in and day out.
It is not pleasant for anyone when things grind to a halt at Canada Post. The Canada Post Corporation is a crown corporation that is required to provide services to all Canadians. It is unfortunate that a debate had to be held on the future of workers, their pension funds, their salaries, and their working conditions. The government tried to suggest that we were somehow against small and medium-sized businesses, but that is not true.
There are, of course, small and medium-sized businesses in my riding. If these small and medium-sized businesses were not there—I am referring to the shops, restaurants and small factories that provide a multitude of services—in what kind of world would we be living? It would be crazy to think that anyone could be against our small and medium-sized businesses. I can assure the hon. members that whatever the Conservatives would have Canadians believe is simply not true. Small and medium-sized businesses apparently account for 75% of jobs in Canada. This includes our own family members. Some of us have brothers and sisters who own small businesses. How could anyone object to that?
I myself worked for several years for a big company called Noranda Inc. The Conservatives would have hon. members believe that I had no respect for Noranda Inc. My only comment was that if the company made a profit, it should share it with the workers that made it possible. That is all we asked.
The mail carriers participated in the bargaining process, however the minister remarked in her speech that negotiations had dragged on for eight months without an agreement being reached. If negotiations went on for eight months with no agreement, then clearly the employer, Canada Post, was partly to blame. Under Canadian law, workers have the right to unionize.
I will mention the case of certain women in my riding, Red Cross auxiliaries who worked for that organization under a contract from the government of New Brunswick. The government’s money had been disbursed to the Red Cross to permit it to do what the government did not want to do. The employees, the Red Cross auxiliaries who went to people's homes every morning to help seniors, were paid $4.25 an hour. After 2,080 hours of work, they received an increase that brought their wage to $5.35 an hour.
You can check the records. If these women working for the Red Cross were sick for more than 10 days, the Red Cross lowered their wage to $4.85 an hour. It’s shameful.
These women who went to work were not even entitled to statutory holidays. Did they not have the right to form a union to bargain and increase their wage to $7 an hour in an initial collective agreement which would grant them their rightful statutory holidays?
This is what the Conservatives are saying. They are giving the unions a bad image. It’s unfair. As for the women working in the fish processing plants at minimum wage, they are now up to $12 an hour. That was not thanks to the employer.
No one can stop me from standing up for the workers, the men and women, our fathers and mothers who have worked. No one can stop me from speaking up in House of Commons on their behalf. No one.
What the government is doing is no mistake. It has done this because it wanted to, rather than having faith in bargaining and the collective agreement. Why table a bill that offers less than the employer was prepared to give the employees after they tried to exert pressure by organizing rotating strikes?