Mr. Speaker, the only thing about this bill that I am somewhat satisfied with is the title. For once, the title actually reflects the content of the bill. Indeed, this bill seeks to amend the Canada Labour Code, the Parliamentary Employment and Staff Relations Act and the Public Service Labour Relations Act.
However, although I derive a small amount of satisfaction from the bill's title, the rest of the bill is unacceptable, particularly since it is completely hypocritical for the government to try to pass this legislation in the form of a private member's bill. This is comparable to what we saw in 2010, when some little-known Conservative member from western Canada sought to exclude long guns from the firearms registry by introducing a bogus private member's bill. Once the government got its majority, it used a government bill to make this sort of amendment.
At the time, to me that was a great cause for indignation. I had even written an op-ed piece in the media as an NDP candidate in the previous two elections. I was upset that analysts, who are supposed to know a thing or two about politics, were pushing the late Jack Layton to take a stand and have someone force people to vote along party lines on a private member's bill, in complete disregard for the traditions of this House and the parliamentary system we have inherited.
Fortunately, my former leader, Jack, showed leadership and allowed a free vote. He also managed to convince a number of my colleagues to change the way they had voted at previous stages in order to defeat that bill. I have such a great memory of that and, in fact, I would like to pay tribute to my late leader in that regard.
I would like to talk about something else that this bill affects. The changes to the rules that apply to the Labour Code, union membership and how unions operate are going to skew the rules and even give an undue advantage to certain players in our economic environment.
I had the honour of serving on the Standing Committee on International Trade and the Standing Committee on Finance. I can attest to the fact that the market always works. It is important to understand the conditions under which it works and how the usual market trends shift when there are no rules and we allow the players to act as they see fit. This usual trend was easy to see in the past. The multi-billionaire, John D. Rockefeller, is a prime example. He almost had a monopoly, the ultimate accomplishment for any economic player who wants to achieve real security.
Unions, governed by fair rules, act as a counterbalance to this concentration of power and the undue influence of a handful of individuals who, even alone, can shift the rules of the game in their favour. In the next five minutes I have, I will talk about my personal experience as a former unionized worker, and a non-unionized worker, in both the public and private sectors.