Mr. Speaker, once again I googled the constitution that the member referenced, in terms of PSAC, and once again it found provisions for secret ballots all the way through the constitution. If a member of a union disagrees with a position taken by the executive, through secret ballot he or she can change that, unless of course the majority of the union disagrees with that individual.
The reason we refer to this as a back-door process is not that it is a private member's bill; it is because the changes that were being brought to independent democratic organizations were being done, not through a full parliamentary process, not through the full parliamentary debate to which government bills are subjected, but through a truncated one that the private members' bills go through. It is a different process, and to pretend otherwise is to pretend that this place does not treat private members' bills differently from government business.
My question for the member opposite is very simple. Secret balloting is available to him to change the platform and the policies of his union. Why did he choose to come to Parliament to affect the union business rather than stay in the union and affect it through the process guaranteed in the constitution to which he has signed on? Why did the member not stay in the union and change that with his membership, unless of course the members disagreed with him and disagreed with the bill that his party brought forward?