Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to rise today in the House to represent the thousands of unionized workers in my riding of Regina—Qu'Appelle, thousands of members of unions who work at EVRAZ steel, making steel for pipelines, members of unions that represent workers who work in electrical, pipefitting, all different types of industries, who rely upon their employment through our energy sector.
I know the bill is about the internal workings of unions and not about the job-killing practices that we have seen over the past few weeks, such as opposition to energy east, opposition to pipelines that would help keep those unionized workers working. The bill is more about the internal mechanisms of how the unions conduct themselves.
I want to touch upon a few things.
I do not know that the questions and comments we have heard from other parties are even relevant. Whether or not it was a government bill or a private member's bill should not matter. This is now a Liberal bill that we are looking at, a Liberal bill to repeal certain provisions of the act. That is what we should be talking about. It does not matter how they got in there. We are now talking about whether or not we should remove them. I hope that if my colleagues do have questions or comments for me, they worry less about the process from the last Parliament and more about the effect of the bill that is actually before the House.
Let us talk about disclosure, first and foremost.
Where do unions get their money? They get their money from forced union dues. They get their money from workers in a company, in a place of business, who have absolutely no choice. Whether or not they want to support that union, that money is taken right off their paycheque. It is taken off their paycheque in much the same way that Revenue Canada works with employers to take money out of the pockets of hard-working Canadians. It is the exact same way. It is held at source.
In a lot of ways, the union has the same kind of taxing authority that the federal government has. The workers have just as much choice as to whether they want to pay their taxes as to whether or not they want to pay their union dues. If they do not pay their union dues, they are out of the union, and they are out of a job.
Where does that money go? We do not know.
Well, we do know kind of know because we hear the ads on the radio and we see the ads on TV during elections. We know the big unions get together and put a lot of money to engage in political partisan electioneering. It has nothing to do with helping the workers they represent. It has nothing to do with getting them a better deal, a better collective bargaining agreement. However, it does have a lot to do with whether or not their favourite political party does better or worse in an election. We heard a lot of those ads and saw a lot of those flyers go out.
I am accountable for everything I put out under my name. If I put a ten percenter or a householder out to my constituents and they do not like it, they can do something about it in the next election. If I put out a campaign flyer that touches a wrong note, that angers some people, I might lose votes over it.
Those unions can put those flyers out. They can make all kinds of outrageous allegations of no truth whatsoever to the types of things that they accuse us of doing and there is no accountability for it. When Canadians go to the ballot box, they do not have a right to effect change in the union representatives who decided to spend that money, but they have a right to elect or not elect members of political parties.
They have all the powers of the federal government with none of the accountability when it comes to that type of taxation power through union dues.
We have heard some of the counter-arguments about why unions should not be held to the same standard on disclosure. If I was to say that other types of charities are not held to that account, I believe my colleague made the point, when he introduced the bill, those charities do not have the power to compel people to donate to them. The unions do.
If I am in a steelworkers' union, that money comes out of my cheque. I have no choice. I have more of a right to know what they are doing with my money than the charities that I can make a choice to give to or not. If a charity publishes its books or has good spending practices, I can say I will support that charity because I think it is spending that money effectively. If it does not, if its spending practices are questionable, if there are allegations that it might be paying executives exorbitant salaries and not actually helping the people it claims to help, I can keep that money in my own pocket and give it to a different charity. However, I cannot with my union. If I do not make my union dues payment, and there is no mechanism not to, but if I found a way not to, I would be out of the union and out of a job.
That is why the threshold for disclosure needs to be just as high as for the federal government.
The other big part of the bill is the secret ballot.
This is when I thought that I know the Liberals have to reward their friends who helped them during the election. It happens a lot in politics; political parties make promises maybe without even expecting to win, then they do, and now they have to follow through on it, but I thought the one thing they might resist the temptation for is the secret ballot. What is wrong with the secret ballot?
This bill will likely get to committee and I hope that our friends across the way, even the New Democrats, will surely agree on this. What is the democratic problem with the secret ballot? Say there is a union resolution to boycott Israel, for example, as several big Canadian unions have done. Maybe some union members would like to vote against that union resolution, but they know that some of the people encouraging them to vote for it may be the ones who are tasked to defend them in a grievance, so they are a little afraid to do so if it is a vote by show of hands. Why not a secret ballot when it comes to certification or decertification? What is wrong with a secret ballot? Every one of us here was elected by secret ballot, as well as town councils, municipalities, and provincial governments. This has been the fundamental practice in our democratic system for such a long time that it has become part of our democratic way of life.
I have not yet heard one compelling argument against the secret ballot. It makes me suspicious. I hate to attribute motive, because I know we are all supposed to take each other at our word, but it makes me suspicious about why the Liberals are doing this. What do the union bosses have a problem with, and why are they telling the Liberals that they have to ride roughshod over a democratic principle of secret ballots, that they have to include it in this bill. I hope we can isolate this at committee and, at the very least, agree that when it comes to votes on these types of things, unions should have secret ballots so that workers have the same protections that they have when they go to the ballot box to elect their government.
I have always found the mentality of big labour in Canada confusing. For full disclosure, my father was heavily involved in his union during his working career, so I heard his perspective of it. I know why unions came about and what the need was for unions at a time in Canada when many workers did not have basic protections that now so many of us enjoy, both workers in unionized fields and non-unionized fields. However, the degree to which unions will sacrifice jobs for its members versus jobs for its union executives is what I cannot understand.
Over the Christmas break, many of us heard the news that Goodwill in Toronto closed its doors. Why did it close its doors? The economy is tough all over, which is part of it, and part of it had to do with a lease issue, but a big part of it was its union not recognizing the financial difficulties that this particular store was in. It was holding out for 100% of the benefits and 100% of the entitlements, but it was willing to lose 100% of the jobs, and that is, in fact, what happened. In order to try to preserve every last bit of what the workers had in their agreement, the whole store closed. Are those workers better off because their union executive went to the wall, went to court, spent probably hundreds of thousands of dollars in this dispute, and now it has closed the doors?
I do not know if my colleagues from Toronto have spoken to any members of the union. Are they happy with the way their union ran the show? Do they have a great victory as they sit at home without jobs, knowing that their union fought the fight, lost the war, but won that battle and are now out of business? We see this all over the place in the Canadian economy, whether it is the auto workers or other types of big unions. They are willing to sacrifice the jobs of all to protect the jobs of the union executive.
Here in Ottawa, quite a few years ago, there was a transit strike over the issue of scheduling. The Goodwill article is the same type of thing. The issue was over scheduling and who would get the most hours. Does anyone know who the number one victim is when it comes to these types of union actions? It is young workers. It is newly hired workers. The entire fight was that the union wanted to lay off the most recent hires and protect the jobs of those who had been around longer. It is new entrants into the workforce. These are the actions of unions. Time and time again across the country, the very people who they claim to help, the young workers, people entering the workforce, people trying to start a living and raise a family, are the ones who lose first when these types of actions come about.
I want to go back to the main point just before I wrap up. I think this bill is wrong because it takes away disclosure, makes unions less accountable, and most important, it takes away one of the most fundamental principles of Canadian democracy, and that is the secret ballot.