Mr. Speaker, I also want to rise today to debate a particular section of Bill C-59, section 20, which deals with the sick leave and disability programs that the government wishes to impose upon the federal public service. This is nothing new.
Here is a passage from the October 2013 throne speech, in which the federal government announced, and I quote:
It will reform disability and sick-day entitlements and work with employees to get them back to work as soon as possible.
That almost implies that employees are absent not because they are sick, but because they can take sick leave. Before talking about Bill C-59, I would like to talk about a bill that was passed not long after the 2013 Speech from the Throne, and that is Bill C-4.
Bill C-4, which I had called at the time a rather explosive bill, indeed, exploded the relationship between our federal public service and the Government of Canada, in a number of ways. It changed legislation that governed the federal public service and, also, the workers who fell under the jurisdiction of the Government of Canada, through the Canada Labour Code, in a number of ways. I will mention three.
The government gave itself the ability to define “essential services” in a way that had not existed before. It was, before the adoption of Bill C-4, a mechanism where both parties, the employer and the employees, could present their arguments and the body that rendered the decision was a rather respected one. However, this law now, essentially, gives the authority entirely to the government.
The other thing is that the unions will no longer have the right to arbitration, which was a very important tool that has been used repeatedly over the past decades. However, now, arbitration would be an option only if 80% of the members do a job that is considered essential. The government has given itself the right to very easily control the union's ability to use arbitration by taking away the essential right to the renegotiation tool that works well when the parties cannot come to an agreement.
If the unions manage to win the right to an arbitration, the government had also changed the conditions that arbitrators can use. They can only refer to the government's financial situation or recruitment and retention issues in the public service, nothing else. That was not the case before.
Finally, the arbitration boards will no longer be independent. Basically, they report to the government.
In addition, there is another matter that I should mention. The definition of “danger” is changing, which would affect not only the 200,000-plus core public servants, but also the 800,000 other employees in Canada who fall under the Canada Labour Code, and the minister, or one of his delegates, is now responsible for defining “danger”. That sets us back at least 50 years. Given the tremendous progress we have made, regarding the rights of unionized workers in our country, I believe, now, that the public service and the workers governed by the Canada Labour Code are less well-served.
Back, now, to Bill C-59.
I wrote a blog on October 15, 2014, and I will quote it now.
[The President of the Treasury Board] has now proposed replacing the current system of banked sick leave with a new short-term disability plan and has warned that annual sick leave may be limited to five days a year [he has now offered six], which is a draconian cut from the 15 days currently allowed through negotiated collective agreements. Paid sick leave is not a perk that can be given or taken away at the discretion of the employer, but a contractual benefit of employment negotiated over time and representing, along with salary and other forms of leave, the mutually agreed worth of the work provided by employees.
A Treasury Board report has warned of a heavy fiscal liability that the government’s obligation to provide sick leave apparently represents, but the report is mistaken or misleading in several respects. To start with, a theoretical liability is meaningless when a great number of public servants do not use all their sick leave entitlements. Furthermore, the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) has noted that the so-called liability includes work-related injuries and unpaid sick leave which are not relevant to the current discussion and negotiation. The PBO has also argued that the incremental costs of paid sick leave are minimal when departments do not backfill sick employees, which is the case with most departments and agencies. Finally, numbers are skewed when individual sick leave days are placed in the same basket as the forced draining of an employee’s banked sick leave immediately prior to long term disability.
The current system serves an important purpose: workers should not be going to work sick as this would impede their own recovery and may put co-workers—or the public—at risk of illness as well. We should be promoting healthy workplaces.
Let us hope that this situation will be resolved by good faith negotiation and not by another piece of legislation embedded in yet another omnibus bill.
That is the end of my blog entry from October 2014. Unfortunately, that is exactly where we are now. Bill C-59 basically contains a measure giving the President of the Treasury Board the power to do whatever he wants, regardless of existing laws.
This morning we saw a headline in the Ottawa Citizen that made mention of the fact that the President of the Treasury Board is pressuring unions for a sick leave deal by the fall. In Bill C-4, the government established and tilted in its favour the capacity to negotiate, or dictate really, to the public servants of our country. Now, in Bill C-59, we are seeing a provision that would give the President of the Treasury Board the ability to dictate, when he wants, measures that have not been negotiated and that I do not believe would result in agreement. In the budget that was adopted in this House, the government and one of the ministers said that it is cast in stone, is expecting to recover $900 million worth of benefits this year from the sick leave program that our public servants benefit from. Therefore, as far as I am concerned, we have a situation here that is not appropriate.
We should also note some numbers. Of the core public service staff, 25% have fewer than 10 days of banked sick leave, and 60% do not have enough banked days to bridge the gap to disability. Federal public servants currently have 15 days per year and can carry unused days over, which the government wants to stop, however the banked days are forfeited upon retirement. If there is abuse or if conditions need to be changed, five of the largest unions have been negotiating with Treasury Board since last June, apparently there are now 18, and have indicated a willingness to correct measures that may not be as solid as they should be. However, for the government to dictate that we will go from 15 to 6 days, non-accumulative, is not appropriate. That would create a situation in our public service that would not favour the service to the public.
In the past we have had a very solid relationship with our federal public service. Starting in the 60s when the prime minister at the time, Mr. Pearson, recognized the right to strike, and until 1984, 41% of our employees in Canada were unionized. That has now dropped back. In that period of time we had a great compression of the inequalities among the salaries of people. Since then it has been increasing. That is a serious difficulty that not just I but the World Economic Forum has identified as the world's single largest problem. The way we are dealing with our federal public service will not help solve that at all. It is a sad way for us to go, and I would hope that we would consider going in another direction rather than in this one.