Mr. Speaker, if my dear colleague had listen, I told him why.
The leader of the union cannot dictate, like the Conservative government is trying to do today in this House. The union leader cannot dictate a collective agreement to the employees because the union belongs to the to the membership not to the officer. The only power the officer has is to make a recommendation on the collective agreement, which was done.
At the end of the day, I hope my Conservative colleague across the way believes that the members in any association are the ones who make the last decision, not the leadership. That is what the government has argued all along. It keeps referring to the union representative as the union boss. The only boss I know of in a union is the membership. The union belongs to the membership. The union organizes, it fights, it goes to the streets. Our grandfathers and great-grandfathers lost blood in the fight. They went down fighting to have a union, to have health and safety and a pension plan.
Today the Conservative government wants to take it away, the same way it wants workers to work until the age of 67. This is totally wrong and we will fight back. We will fight back for all Canadians, all labour organizations, all men and women who get up in the morning and put in a hard day's work. We will not go backwards in 2012. The workers are not the ones who should pay the price, not at all.