Mr. Speaker, to begin with, I would like to say that workers have the right to organize, to choose their union and to negotiate. No contract, no work.
The employer also has rights. It has the right to manage its plants, to manage discipline, to manage labour, to organize the work, to negotiate collective agreements and to lock out workers. As we have seen here in the House, the employer has another right, and that is to call on the government to force workers back to work, despite their collective agreement. That is a new right, according to what we have seen in the House since 2011.
Regardless the colour of their party, every elected member of the Government of Canada has to listen to the men and women they represent. Unfortunately, since May 2011, I get the impression that the opposite is happening here, and I sense the contempt for workers.
I am a union worker. I feel the contempt; I feel it in my bones. That is what I am feeling in this House: contempt for workers. Yet they are the ones who keep the government working. They are the ones who contribute, who pay our salaries so that we can make decisions. They are entitled to keep the rights they have today, the rights our parents fought for.
Once again, we are presented with special back-to-work legislation. What a surprise. Were the Conservatives elected by large corporations or by Canadians? Do they think that Canadians gave them a mandate to scare labour organizations? I doubt it.
After what the Conservatives did to the employees of Canada Post, Aveos and Air Canada, now they are getting ready to stick it to the Canadian Pacific employees. The message they are sending to employers is crystal clear: if you have problems with your union, do not negotiate; we will introduce special legislation to force the employees back to work. The continuation and resumption of rail service operations legislation is unhealthy and irresponsible. Do you have any idea of where that will leave us at the end of the day?
What a great way to ruin democracy and humiliate those who want to stand up for their rights. The Conservatives want to make employees more dependent on their employers and to make secure jobs insecure, but at what cost? Let me remind you that we are talking about people who are free, free to choose, free to have the lives they want and free to say yes or no. It is a right people have here in Canada because they fought to have rights.
There is an imbalance of power because of a party that is systematically threatening the gains that unions have won in the past. The vast majority of Canadian workers, unionized or not, enjoy the rights for which workers have fought. No matter what the government says, it has to protect those legitimate rights that are essential to labour peace.
Sometimes, it seems that the government says one thing to voters and then does the opposite. At least that is what we are seeing from the other side of the House. I do not believe for a second that the government is impartial in its decisions. I do not feel that its actions are for the common good. How can it prove me wrong? The corporate tax giveaways give us a very good idea of how they see the common good.
I do not want to say that the Conservatives are acting in bad faith, but right now, their party is showing an intolerable contempt for Canada's low income earners. Their party is insulting the intelligence of those who understand their little game. In addition, the Conservative Party is denigrating unions, which are the source of almost all social movements in Canada. There is nothing to be proud of.
Do you see what is happening in Quebec at the moment? Ask your Quebec colleagues what has caused this crisis and its consequences. Do you not feel things sliding out of control? Always taking the same side is a huge risk. How much is peace worth in financial terms? I ask the question because telling the truth is important. Knowing the consequences, are my Conservative colleagues really going to keep putting social peace at risk in Canada?
Earlier, I heard some hon. members opposite say that the NDP was made up of people who are against everything. The Conservatives say that we are in the workers' camp and that it is too expensive when the country has to be saved. In my riding, factories have been shut down, jobs have been lost, workers have been locked out and plants have been moved to the United States. The cost to the community is in the millions of dollars. No one on the other side of the House has said a word. So the Conservatives have nothing to teach us about standing up for Canadian workers. This is bullshit, and that is putting it politely.
I must certainly take a moment to congratulate the workers at Canadian Pacific. Despite everything, they have maintained rail service to Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver so that Canadians are not the victims of this labour dispute.
Nobody is surprised when the government tries to stir up panic by saying there is an urgent need to restore services, but nobody believes it either. We must condemn this abusive behaviour. Let us not allow this government to destroy social peace.
Surely we all know the story of the boy who cried wolf. I certainly do not need to remind anyone of that. This will end very badly in 2015.
If the government is in such a rush to intervene in workers' lives, let it start by creating good jobs and good working conditions for workers. The job market is collapsing, new jobs are mediocre more often than not, and Canadians’ standard of living is declining before our eyes. Those should be our priorities.
As I have said before, people have the right to be represented, to organize in unions, and employers have rights too. What I have seen in this House since May 2011, with Air Canada, Aveos and so on, it is that the government intervenes when it suits them. It does not intervene when there are job losses, or when plants relocate, even when it could have had something to say about that. Some of our dams and rivers belong to foreign capital interests. That is unacceptable.
The government's “we know best” attitude is insulting. It is insulting because we come from the union community and we are workers. The government should not spit on the workers. We are here this evening because it is the workers who pay our salaries.