Madam Speaker, I am going to take this brief opportunity to respond to the speech made by the Minister of Labour, who praised the values of the railways in Canada and told us just how important they are, how wonderful they are, how great they are, and how much they are loved.
In the NDP, the official opposition, we also love the railways, but we would like the workers who make them run and keep the freight trains rolling to be treated with a little more respect.
The first thing that comes to my mind is “Oops, I did it again”. The Conservative government is incapable of restraining itself from interfering in things that are none of its business: labour relations and collective bargaining, which have to be conducted freely. This is the third time. There were Canada Post and Air Canada and its pilots and mechanics, and now the people at Canadian Pacific are paying the price of the Conservatives’ ideology. The question I want to ask the minister is quite simple.
Does this government recognize the right of working people in this country to associate and bargain freely? With its laws forcing workers back to work and imposing terms on them, is this Conservative government in the process of subtly, under the table, changing the rules that govern collective bargaining in Canada?
Essentially, is what you want to do to change the Canada Labour Code to take the right to strike away from working people?