Mr. Speaker, I am proud to join my colleagues in supporting Bill C-5 at second reading. Before beginning, I would like to say that I will be sharing my time with my colleague, the extraordinary member for La Pointe-de-l'Île.
The bill before us today is important. It is the result of negotiations that have gone on for a long time now, for more than 12 years in fact, between the governments of Canada, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador.
This bill seeks to remedy long-standing issues in existing legislation relating to health and safety standards in offshore areas, with regard to the oil and gas sector.
If passed, Bill C-5 will enshrine safety practices in legislation, and it will establish a framework that clarifies the individual and collective roles of the federal government, the provincial governments, regulatory agencies, operators, employers, suppliers and workers.
There are three key principles that underlie Bill C-5. First, the legislation relating to workplace health and safety must protect workers in offshore areas as well as workers on land. In addition, workers have the right to know, to participate, to refuse, to be protected from reprisal and to receive adequate protection. Finally, it is necessary to support an occupational health and safety culture that emphasizes shared responsibility in the workplace.
The NDP is proud to support Bill C-5, which will make it possible to establish a stronger system for the protection of workers, which the NDP has been demanding for a very long time now. Clearly, in our view, the bill still does not go far enough, but it is a step in the right direction just the same. That is why we are going to support it. We hope we will be able to work with our colleagues from all parties to improve the bill and ensure that in offshore areas the workers in the gas and oil sector will enjoy adequate workplace health and safety protection.
Quite frankly, I find it rather refreshing that the Conservatives are introducing a bill that provides greater protection for workers' rights. This is surprising. We are not used to seeing the government take this kind of approach—quite the opposite.
Indeed, since winning a majority, the Conservatives have introduced a growing number of measures to erode protections for workers and undermine their rights, which is very unfortunate. This represents a small change in direction. However, we should certainly not forget the various measures the government has taken to effectively undermine the protection regimes in place for our workers in various sectors.
I am particularly thinking of Bill C-377, an underhanded and mean-spirited bill designed to cripple Canadian unions by creating a massive bureaucracy they have to comply with, under the phony pretext of increasing the transparency of organizations. However, everyone knows full well that the Conservatives' real objective in introducing such a bill is to undermine the unions' ability to appropriately represent their members and defend their rights.
We know that the members opposite may find this concept difficult to understand, because in fact, none of them are participating in today's debate. We are talking about protecting workers and implementing very important measures to protect the people who work in the oil and gas industry—which the Conservatives care deeply about. However, they do not even bother to rise, to represent their constituents and defend the rights of workers.
However, they have no qualms whatsoever about introducing a growing number of measures to undermine the rights of workers in various industries. To be honest, this makes no sense at all.
I can mention another measure that attacked workers' rights, namely the special legislation passed by the Conservatives during the Canada Post lockout in June 2011. This legislation forced the employees back to work, obviously under worse conditions, while reducing their pensions and their protections, which were in fact acquired rights. The Conservatives gave themselves the power to gut certain measures that had been negotiated between the employer and employees. The Conservatives, however, clearly decided to circumvent all that.
This also brings to mind the recently tabled Bill C-4, which ironically weakens workers' health and safety protections. It also allows the minister to decide, unilaterally in a totally arbitrary way, which public services to designate essential, thus limiting the actions workers will be able to undertake to defend their rights or demand better working conditions.
Finally, who could forget how the Conservatives have gut the employment insurance system? They are leading a direct attack against seasonal workers all across the country. The Conservatives are not only failing Quebec and the eastern provinces: every part of the country will feel the impact of the employment insurance reform.
In my riding, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, not a day goes by without someone phoning or visiting our office because they are adversely affected by the EI reform, a reform the Conservatives pushed through without consulting the provinces, the territories or labour organizations.
All these examples illustrate the Conservatives' general attitude. Luckily, there is a tiny glimmer of hope now, since Bill C-5 would provide some workers with additional protections. Let us seize this ray of hope.
The NDP will support this bill. I must say again, though, how disappointed I am that the Conservatives are not taking part in the debate on Bill C-5. It may be that they have forgotten how debates work, or that they have no idea how to defend workers' rights, since they have never done it before. Why start now? Even though the Conservatives are introducing a bill about workers' rights, they are so close to big corporate bosses that they can no longer rise in the House and defend workers' rights, even when they should be standing up for their constituents.
NDP members will keep up the good work, doing their best to stand up for Canadians, including those the Conservatives should be standing up for. Today's debate is important. It is a shame so few government members are actually taking part in the debate.
Let us get back to Bill C-5. As I said earlier, this bill will improve the lives of offshore workers in some ways. However, it does have some shortcomings, the most significant of which is the fact that the government refused to create an independent, stand-alone safety regulator for the offshore zone. The governments of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador have repeatedly called for this, but the Conservative government refused at every stage of the 12 years of negotiations.
In his June 2010 report, the hon. Robert Wells made several recommendations, including recommendation 29, which he believed to be the most important one in the report. The recommendation called for the creation of a new, independent and stand-alone organization to regulate safety issues in the offshore. This organization would have to be distinct and independent from all other bodies regulating offshore activities and would be solely responsible for regulating safety issues. Similar organizations exist in Norway, the United Kingdom and Australia. The United States is also considering setting up this type of body in the Gulf of Mexico. The Conservatives, however, have refused to even consider the idea. That is not how an NDP government would have handled things. We think it is important to create that kind of body. We will work toward that, which means that we will continue to pressure the government to create that kind of body, and we will continue to support our provincial partners as they work toward that goal, which is very important.
Various accidents and tragedies have occurred on our coasts, some of them fatal. Several of my colleagues have talked about that in the House, including my colleague from St. John's East. Despite everything, despite the Wells report and despite the fact that people from across the country have repeatedly asked the government for this, the government will not budge. Such an organization is not included in the bill and will not be created.
I think that is a shame because there are some measures in Bill C-5, measures that protect worker health and safety, that the NDP can support. We will be happy to do so.