Debates of Feb. 16th, 2016

Canada Labour Code

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lévis—Lotbinière, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am usually pleased to take part in the debates of the House of Commons. However, that is not the case today, because the Liberal values do not represent the values of union members. In fact, they are quite removed from the values of a responsible government that were bequeathed by our Conservative government. In the last Parliament, we gave a voice to union members on fundamental values.

To do away with transparency and the freedom afforded by a secret ballot shows the lack of respect of the Liberal government, which is practising the politics of avoidance. It is sad to see that the Liberals have bowed to pressure from union leaders. That is completely unacceptable. I am being polite in using the word “pressure”. “Returning the favour” would be a more accurate way of putting it.

Unions do have a role to play. Union members have chosen to pay dues so that the unions will stand up for their rights and negotiate working conditions that are acceptable to and benefit both parties. They did not choose to pay dues to be involved in horror stories, such as the ones we have all heard about from friends who were victims or the ones we were personally involved in.

I would like to talk about one of my uncles, Laurendeau, God rest his soul. In the early 1970s, he chose to vote, by show of hands, against a strike, because he thought it was fair and just that he should work to feed his family. Even for the company he worked for, it was more important to get the job done and deliver the boats they were building on time, to ensure that the company would survive.

In the middle of January, when it was -35^o, someone sent him a gift of bricks. The bricks did not come through the chimney or the front door, but through the window. Two windows were broken, in the middle of the winter, at two o'clock in the morning. Imagine the trauma to my uncle, my aunt, and my cousin, who was seven years old at the time.

That is just one example. As everyone knows, such situations have some similarities, such as intimidation, harassment, bigotry, exclusion, and abuse of power, which can lead to occupational and psychological burnout that is sometimes irreversible.

In this day and age, at a time when the values of freedom and transparency are attainable, it makes no sense and it is completely unacceptable to take away rights from unionized workers.

Imagine if Canadians were asked to vote by show of hands in a general election, at a community centre, at a pre-set time, with the pressure of the candidates looking on or staring at them. That is what the Liberal government is going to do to union members, in addition to whipping the vote. The party line for moral issues—how shameful. In addition, this is rather simplistic for us as legislators.

My concerns reflect those of thousands, even millions, of Canadians who are outraged that the Liberal government wants to let union bosses help themselves to the money and have their palms greased. We recognize a Liberal way of doing things that is nothing new. I believe, as do Canadians who are concerned about the politics of avoidance, that centralizing power in the hands of the minority and using fear tactics to serve one's own interests is highly unethical. I hope that my colleagues opposite will understand what I mean by the politics of avoidance without a photo to illustrate.

I am talking about how they are failing to defend democracy, failing to be accountable, failing to commit, failing to protect everyone no matter their status, failing to step up to their responsibilities as a government, and choosing to benefit a minority at the expense of the common good.

I am afraid that this Liberal government's politics of avoidance is just the beginning. To date, it has excelled in just one area: social activities that involve selfies and extras.

Our Prime Minister is a national joke. Transparent for the smart phone cameras he might be, but stand up for transparency in democratic institutions and organizations he cannot. He is an embarrassment.

Not long ago, he was a leader who promised to stand up for the middle class, but he hoodwinked millions of Canadians with his grand promises. As citizens, workers, retirees, parents, individuals, and a country, we all stand to lose so much in the end.

This plan serves merely to enhance the image and serve the interests of an egotistical individual who is running away. Yes, this Prime Minister is running away from making real decisions for a strong, prosperous, and safe society and economy like the ones we bequeathed to him just 100 days ago.

I would like to list just some of the so-called changes introduced by this government: tax hikes, an end to income splitting, cuts for families earning less than $60,000 a year that use tax-free savings accounts to put money aside, a threat to the child care tax credit, an end to the air strikes against ISIS, along with never-ending deficits that will cripple the economic future of our country, our children and our grandchildren.

As though that were not enough for the first 100 days of this regressive agenda, now the Liberals are coddling union leaders instead of standing up for dues-paying members, our noble workers who have a right to vote according to their convictions and in complete secrecy.

It is high time that whoever is pulling the strings within the Liberal government did something to ensure that its actions reflect the values of a responsible government that promotes transparency and the right to exercise one's right to vote in a respectful manner. Is anyone running that giant Liberal ship? There is still time to prevent our country from sinking.

It is both completely ironic and worthy of a soap opera to see this Prime Minister everywhere except at work, to see him flippantly reveal a security plan to foreigners, in another country altogether, with no regard for his own citizens, without the consent of the House and without consulting duly elected parliamentarians. This is a Prime Minister who is asking his own party members to ignore their moral values and toe the party line on an issue as delicate and fraught with consequences as the one currently under debate.

In closing, I am very sorry to say that the coziness between the Liberal Party and big union bosses definitely flies in the face of democracy and violates the rights not only of union members, but of all Canadians.

[Adam Vaughan, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister (Intergovernmental Affairs)]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to the comments from across the way and was reminded of a parliamentary secretary who ended up in leg irons. I do not think I ever covered an election campaign as a journalist where there were not allegations of cheating. In fact, court cases proved that. In fact, young people from that party who were sent to the courts as adults did not face justice. Now we are being lectured on what transparency and ethics should be adhered to in this House.

However, what really confused me in the speech we just heard was the member's own rhetoric. On the one hand, it is a Conservative bill that is to be repealed; on the other hand it is a private member's bill. Which is it? Was the bill that is to be repealed introduced by the Conservative Party through the back doors of private members' bills? Or, was it government legislation masquerading as private members' business?

When they introduce a private member's bill, they do so knowing that it will not be subjected to the full scrutiny of this House because that is the process. That is the process that a private member's bill goes through that a government bill does not.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lévis—Lotbinière, QC]

Mr. Speaker, as a result of the bill from my colleague opposite, unionized workers will no longer have access to a secret ballot or financial transparency. This bill had teeth and was truly democratic. The bill introduced by the Liberals is a step backwards for Canadian society.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, prior to being elected I was fortunate to work for 16 years with a major Canadian union, the teamsters union, and I represented workers and went to many union meetings. In fact, I went to monthly meetings for 16 years. I represented workers in many certification drives when they tried to get organized before the Canada Industrial Relations Board. The practice of the board when we had card check was that if a union signed up a majority of people, the union submitted that to the board. The board had the ability to certify without a vote, and the advantage was that it often happened before the employer found out. When an employer found out that a union drive was going on, that is when there were massive unfair labour practices.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

I hear the Conservatives laughing. I spent 16 years at the labour board fighting those very complaints where workers would get fired. They would get intimidated. Families would lose pay cheques because employers tried to intimidate workers against unionizing.

My question is this. The board could always order a vote, in any circumstance. Why is it that the Conservatives want to take away from the board the discretion to certify without a vote, when to do so is simply respecting the right of Canadian workers to organize, as is their right under international convention and treaty?

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lévis—Lotbinière, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.

My speech today had to do with the fundamental rights that unionized Canadians will lose: the right to know where their union dues are going, through transparency of financial statements, and the right to a secret ballot if they so choose. It is always easier to vote one's conscience by secret ballot than voting in front of a bunch of thugs.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank all of my colleagues on this side of the House for the clarity they have brought to this debate.

It is clear that Bill C-4 goes against the principles of transparency and accountability and against the wishes of many union members themselves. I am wondering if my hon. colleague would comment further on this.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lévis—Lotbinière, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her question.

I would like the Liberal party opposite to allow each Liberal member in the House to vote freely, based on their own beliefs, on this bill. We will see whether the bill that was introduced in the last Parliament truly represented Canadian values.

[Andrew Scheer, Conservative, Regina—Qu'Appelle, SK]

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.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, it was interesting to listen to the member's comments. Let us put it into the perspective of these Conservative private members' bills that were introduced a little while ago. Let me remind the House that no one was calling for the legislation. Businesses, management, and unions were not coming to the Conservative government stating that they wanted this legislation. In fact, it was a Conservative-driven bill.

If we want to have good labour relations in the country, we should be promoting harmony, consensus-building, and so forth. If we want to come up with a way not to develop legislation, we should look at the way in which the Conservative government brought in this unfair labour legislation over a year ago.

My question to the member is this. Would he at least acknowledge that, by the Conservative government bringing in this legislation in the manner it did, a lot of the normal procedures that minsters are obligated to follow were foregone, not the procedures with respect to the House? Also, does he recognize that this bill rectifies a wrong that the government brought against labour prior to the last election?

[Andrew Scheer, Conservative, Regina—Qu'Appelle, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I would first like to congratulate my hon. colleague, as I know that having an opportunity to speak in the House was not something he was often able to do. However, I was always happy to be graced with one of his interventions.

I will say that the member is again getting trapped in this process argument. He is living in the past. He must live in the now. We are looking at a bill that would have an effect on our legislation right now. It would have an effect on unions right now. How we got here is irrelevant to me, whether through private member's bills or a government bill, but what is relevant is what this bill would do right now.

The member talked about who was asking for it. I know lots of members of unions. My mother was a member of the nurses union. She would get all kinds of garbage in the quarterly newsletter about what the union was up to. Some unions spend time and union dues on anti-Israel boycotts and all kinds of political posturing, or they make political statements on things that have nothing to do with labour relations. My mom and many of the steelworkers in Regina, who do not want to see their union dues go to those types of things, supported our legislation in the previous Parliament.

[Tracey Ramsey, NDP, Essex, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I think it is interesting that my colleague mentioned the trades of members of his riding. I would like to draw attention to something that Canada's Building Trades Unions put forward around this piece of legislation. It stated:

Canada's Building Trades Unions are very pleased with the introduction of repeal legislation for Bill C-377 and Bill C-525. [They] are pleased this is one of the first pieces of Government legislation introduced in the 42nd Parliament.

Therefore, I would ask the member this. Will he stand with unionized workers in his riding in the building trades, repeal this regressive legislation, and help grow the Canadian economy?

[Andrew Scheer, Conservative, Regina—Qu'Appelle, SK]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague is confused that, because a union executive or entity has made a statement, it in any way reflects the views of its members. That is what we are talking about today—the disconnect between the executive and the workers. What the individual workers want is jobs. They want the ability to ply their trade. They want to weld two pieces of pipe together and make electrical circuits work. They want to put steel together into the form of pipelines.

In my riding, I had unionized members who were telling me when I got to the door that they were thinking about voting NDP, that their union executive invited the NDP candidate to the local and kind of talked about the labour laws and stuff like that. I said, “There is only one party in the House of Commons that supports new pipelines. If you work for a company that makes pipelines and you vote NDP you will have great labour legislation; there will be very powerful union executives and your union bosses may be able to do a whole lot of things that they were not able to do before, but you will be out of a job. Your union executives will still have a job.”

That is the irony here, that the last people to lose their job at a facility or a plant are usually the union bosses who negotiated themselves right there in the first place.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today to speak to Bill C-4. As a member who was elected to the House right off the job site and a proud member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, I am very pleased to be speaking to this legislation.

We have heard a lot in the debate. The hon. member was just talking about the executive and the membership. I come from a union where the rank and file were quite upset with Bill C-377 and Bill C-525. They wanted to see them go. They go to their monthly meetings and discuss what kind of spending is going to happen at the executive level, right down to approving the credit card bill, on a monthly basis, of the people who work in the office. I do not think there is any doubt in the minds of most members of my union that they have the opportunity, not just to get the information about how their local union is spending money, but also to have a say in open meetings.

There is a fabricated argument for transparency. For those who need the transparency because it is their dues money being spent, they have access to that information and have had access to that information. In that sense, the bill was a solution looking for a problem.

The executive in my union know well that the power they have when it comes to working with industry, finding jobs for members and making sure that members get fair pay and good benefits for the work they do, does not come from any particular piece of legislation. Obviously, like any other good institution, we need enabling legislation, not persecuting legislation, as I would say Bill C-377 and C-525 are. The power of the executive of my union comes from the membership. It comes from the good work that we do every day. It comes from the quality product that we produce on site. It comes from the extra training that our union provides to our members so that we are out there being the best in the industry. That is why our contractors, like the electrical contractors of Manitoba, have worked quite collaboratively with my local. They know that our union is providing added value to the projects they do, and frankly that we are making them more money. That is what we hear in the dialogue with our contractors.

I am in a tight spot, because of course I do not want to be unparliamentary. I do not want to attribute ulterior motives to any particular party. However, the level of ignorance that one would have to attribute to people making some of the arguments I have heard in the Chamber today, such as ignorance about the way that unions work, about the relationship in the building trades between the unions and contractors, verges on unparliamentary. Therefore, I am feeling in a bit of a tight spot.

I do not want to do any of that, so perhaps I will talk instead about the degree and extent to which the legislation has to be seen not just on its own. If we consider it on its own, then some of the red herrings we have heard today may be effective. However, we need to consider it in the context of a government program that brought in Bill C-377, Bill C-525 and Bill C-59. When railroad workers were going into negotiations with their employer and Canada Post workers were going into negotiations with their employer, they were threatened. Sometimes before they even had the strike vote, they were threatened that they would be legislated back to work.

We need to consider it in the context of a government, some of whose members were making comments such as we heard again today from members from the Conservative Party, criticizing the Rand formula and mandatory union dues. We need to consider it in the context of a government that limited access to EI so that workers were more afraid of challenging their employer, because in the case of a layoff they would not be able to pay their mortgage and feed their families. We need to consider it in the context of a government that refused to talk to the provinces when they asked to increase the Canada pension plan, so that employees who were ready to retire could not leave the workforce, putting downward pressure on wages and blocking opportunities for young people to be promoted within their companies. When we consider it in that context, it is impossible to say that those bills were not meant as an anti-union program. It had very little to do with anything that was coming from the rank and file of labour unions, and everything to do with a government that was working hand in hand with employers to put downward pressure on the working conditions and wages of Canadian workers.

That is part of why these bills were so shameful. It is not just for the content of the bill; we have heard a lot about what was wrong with the content of the bills. They were part of a deliberate and sustained program to make life harder for Canadian workers so that corporations that were already, over that timeframe, making record profits could add a little more to their margins. In a time when corporations were seeing their tax rate go from 28% to 15%, they could squeeze a little bit more out of their workers.

When the economy is working well, we have labour peace. We have labour peace, not when employees are being held under the thumb of their employers, but when they are free to negotiate collectively with their employers and work for fair wages and fair benefits. We know that the union movement, over time and today, contributed to that and contributes to that. We know by the behaviour of many employers, and I dare say even some governments, that if we did not continue to have a strong labour movement in Canada, we would soon lose those gains that were hard fought and hard won over the last 100 or 150 years. That is why we on these benches are concerned to see a legislative environment that allows the union movement to thrive.

We hear sometimes that times were tough and we may have needed some unions to help with workplace conditions, but by and large really, prosperity just spontaneously came out of the industrial revolution. Forgotten in that account is that the organization of workers went hand in hand with that, and it was not until workers were organized that those gains actually came.

I think we need to be careful that we not give credit for the accomplishments of the labour movement to employers that would still be, and we know that they would still be, treating their workers in the way that they treated them in the 19th century. In parts of the world, the very same employers, operating in Canada in some cases, are treating their workers in other parts of the world as if it was the 19th century.

We would have to be very naive indeed to believe that, if there was not the legislative framework and if there was not the strong labour movement that we have had in Canada here, those same employers would not get the idea that maybe they could treat their Canadian workers that way too. I think we need to be very careful that we not attribute the good conditions and the good wages that some Canadian workers continue to enjoy to the benevolence of their employer, but acknowledge that those were gained hard fought and hard won.

I would say that in their more enlightened moments, some employers, like some of the employers that I am glad we have in the electrical industry in Manitoba, know that it has been overall good for them. It has created a customer base. Employees who have disposable incomes can afford their homes and are not worried about their families. They have child care. We can get into all the issues, but largely workers, well paid, well fed, and well housed are more productive, and that is good for Canadian employers.

Again, I think it speaks to the shame of the previous government that it would have sought unsolicited, except maybe by some employers, but certainly not by a groundswell of Canadian workers, to disrupt that partnership that had developed. This is not always easy. We had arrived at a place in Canada where at least some workers, and usually unionized workers, were getting a fair return on the work they did and that employers were benefiting from having those productive workers.

I do not think it is the place of a government to go and intentionally disrupt that. We can talk about what is in the particular context of those bills. I do not think it is very good, but certainly when we look at the larger context, that seems to be the case. It is one of the reasons I ran. I did not think we could tolerate having a government that bent on disrupting that relationship between the labour movement and employers and making sure that workers got their fair share. It is why I can hardly wait to stand in favour of the bill.

[Adam Vaughan, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister (Intergovernmental Affairs)]

Mr. Speaker, I have been listening to debate this afternoon and I keep hearing the reference to the secret ballot. The speaker just before spoke about the need for a secret ballot so we could curtail certain activities of the union: political activities, advertising activities, even the setting of dues.

I went to the union that was referenced and I read their bylaws, available on Google. Every single person making a decision in that union is elected by secret ballot. I was wondering if the member opposite could provide further detail as to the use of the secret ballot as prescribed in both international and national organizations. How extensive is the use of the secret ballot in establishing union policies, union dues, union membership, as well as union executives who make the decisions on behalf of the delegated authority ascribed to them through a secret ballot, which will not be affected by this legislation in one way or another?

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I can assure the member that in my union and in any one I have ever heard of, the leadership of the union is elected by secret ballot.

We hear about this alleged disconnect between the executive and the members, and certainly in any democratic institution there can be disconnect between those elected and the people who elect them. That might well have happened in some governments. I am not going to deny that it can happen from time to time. That can happen between shareholders and the board of a corporation. It can happen in all sorts of democratic contexts.

It is important not to lose sight of the fact that in that context, just as in the general context, members have recourse. If they do not like what they see in their newsletter, they can get involved with their union. They can elect a different union executive. That is the recourse that we have.

At any time when members want to ask about how that money is being spent, they can ask that question and have access to that information.

When people belong to a democratic organization there is no substitute to being involved. This is not getting rid of secret ballots in unions. In fact it is not even necessarily getting rid of votes, but is just creating an option not to have one to avoid what we know are sometimes abuses by employers of employees.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

Mr. Speaker, some of this across-the-aisle discussion between the Liberals and the NDP makes it seems like there is one party on this.

I found the comments by the member for Spadina—Fort York somewhat interesting. He said there were secret ballots sometimes. It reminds me of a play on a Mackenzie King quote, a secret ballot if necessary, but not necessarily a secret ballot.

Why would a secret ballot be okay for some votes for the executive and not for the certification vote itself? It is kind of fundamental to a democratic vote and the social democratic norms that the union movement tends to promote.

My question for the hon. member after his speech is as follows. I have listened to this debate intently and have spoken to many union members and labour leaders in my riding. I have still not heard one cogent argument to suggest why, in this modern age when transparency and disclosure is the norm, that for expenditures above the reasonable threshold of $5,000, the bright light of transparency would not be appropriate for this movement which people are required by law to pay dues into, as previous speakers have said?

What is feared about the bright light of transparency? I have not heard. The previous bills of the last government did not attack any of the fundamental rights of belonging to a union, and did not say that unions have not made some progress.

Why is this one organization exempt from basic, fundamental transparency? I am still waiting to hear an answer from that hon. member.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I find it interesting that the member would say that this one organization would be exempt.

In fact, by the Conservative argument, it is in part because there is a tax write-off on the dues, that unions are being publicly funded essentially and that is why they need to disclose this information. We provide tax write-offs to all sorts of businesses, and they are not required to disclose any purchases over $5,000. To to say that somehow unions are getting special treatment by not having to disclose expenses over $5,000 strikes me as kind of rich, frankly.

There are good reasons why, for instance, a union may not want to divulge the contents of a strike fund. If they want to be the hard-nosed economic people the Conservatives often claim they are, when there is a labour dispute and if employers knew they only had to wait three months for that strike fund to run out versus having to wait six months to a year, they could plan and prepare to ride that out. That would not be fair to the workers who are withholding their labour in order to get a fair deal for the work they do.

It makes all kinds of sense, just in the way I am sure the hon. member would be up, red-faced, on his feet, if we suggested that private companies ought to disclose any purchase over $5,000.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House today to speak on Bill C-4.

We heard a lot from the other two parties about the importance of unions and the union environment, and I agree. Unions play an important role in our society and our economy, but they also have to keep up to pace with the modern society and modern economy that we now have in the 21st century.

I am proud to have been a long-time union member. I was a member of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, PSAC. I was a member of the Canadian Association of Professional Employees. I was also a member of CUPE. I know firsthand about being a member of a union and the benefits that union membership does bring to a number of people in the workforce. However, at the same time, it is also essential that unions are subject to a fair and effective regulatory process to ensure that unions serve their members and not just their union bosses. Bill C-4, however, would remove such regulations and protections, and that is why I will not be supporting it.

The current Liberal government brought Bill C-4 to repeal two private members' bills passed by the 41st Parliament: Bill C-377 and Bill C-525. While the other parties make some obscure claims that these bills are attacks on unions, when one actually reads the bills, it is very clear that it is simply not the case.

Bill C-377 amended the Income Tax Act, requiring union management to file a standard set of financials each year to be posted on the CRA website. These requirements are not unreasonable. In fact, if a union boss were proud of the work he or she was doing, he or she should be more than willing to show his or her strong financial management within his or her union environment.

Bill C-377 was carefully examined by Parliament through the private members' bill process. It went to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance, where many groups expressed their support for the bill, including the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, the Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses, and Merit Canada.

The transparency requirements introduced in Bill C-377 do not weaken unions. In fact, they empower union members. Union members and all Canadians are able to receive quicker and easier access to information on how their mandatory union fees are being used. This is essential. Union fees are not optional; they are mandatory. What else is mandatory? Canadian taxes.

We as parliamentarians all spend Canadian tax dollars with our expense claims, and we as parliamentarians post our expenses online for our constituents to see. Union dues are the same. They are forced mandatory fees, and Canadians and those who pay fees should have access to that information, especially when these fees are being used to undertake political activities.

Mandatory union fees should be used to support and protect the wages, rights, and benefits of their members. However, for purposes beyond that, members should be entitled to know where their money is going and how it is being spent. It is imperative that those who are forced to pay union fees have easy access to that information so they can hold their representatives and their directors accountable. It allows members to ensure that their union leaders are spending their hard-earned money in a way that is responsible and not for the personal or political gain of union leadership.

As I said at the outset, I am a former union member. In 2012, I was a member of PSAC, local 610. In that year, we saw a provincial election in Quebec, and PSAC came out and openly endorsed the Parti Québécois in the Quebec provincial election. Here we had PSAC, a federal government union, supporting tens of thousands of federal public servants, openly endorsing a separatist party in Quebec. As a union member, I was disgusted by that. I was disgusted by the fact that my union would go out and openly support a party that had no other raison d'être than ruining and breaking up this country. It was unconscionable that it happened, but it did.

During the 2014 provincial election in Ontario, because my wife is a nurse and a member of a local union, our home voice mail was constantly flooded with union messages telling us whom we should not be voting for. They did not go so far as to tell us who we should be voting for, but they simply told us that one particular party would cause all kinds of job losses. Of course, now we are seeing those same job losses under Kathleen Wynne in Ontario, but the union seems to be quiet on that particular subject.

Here is the thought: these unions need to be accountable to their members on how they spend in a clear and transparent manner, especially when we are talking about political activities undertaken by union membership with forced and mandatory union dues.

I want to talk briefly now about Bill C-525, which amended the Canada Labour Code to require certification and decertification votes to be held by secret ballot. This protects individuals from undue pressure and intimidation, and it allows secret ballot for workers to decide how they want to be represented, and not to be pressured by their co-workers or union bosses.

I have been listening very closely to the arguments on the other side against the secret ballot, and I have yet to hear one single coherent answer on what is wrong with the secret ballot for certification and decertification votes. We have heard our other members suggest how secret ballots are used in other types of union activities and why there is such an inherent challenge with using secret ballots for a certification vote. We just simply have not had an answer on that. The secret ballot is a fundamental element of a fair and democratic process. It is something that I, as a parliamentarian, am proud to stand for and proud to endorse. Bill C-525 and Bill C-377 were not attacks on unions. However, Bill C-4 is an attack on accountability and transparency.

In his letter to Canadians on November 4, 2015, the Prime Minister said, “That is why we committed to set a higher bar for openness and transparency...”. The government across the way claims to be all for openness and transparency, but if it were really for that, it would not be going ahead with the repeal of these two bills. It is very clear that openness and transparency is a mushy subject for the Liberals across the way, and how they selectively choose to define it is really up to them, it seems.

Finally, I want to talk about that canard that we have been hearing time and again from the Liberals across the way, that private members' bills are somehow a way of getting legislation in through the back door. I am proud to be a member of this House. I worked hard to get to this place. We knocked on more than 30,000 doors in Perth—Wellington, and I am proud to come in through that front door and to represent my constituents in Perth—Wellington here. I am proud to have the ability, as a private member, to introduce legislation that I feel supports the people of Perth—Wellington and supports the people of Canada as a whole. It is disgusting that the Liberals would refer to this as going through the back door of legislation. We have rights as parliamentarians, and I am proud to stand on behalf of those rights. I am proud to be a member of a party that saw, under the Conservative government, more private members' bills pass in the 41st Parliament than at any time before then.

I am proud that our party allows free votes on private members' business, and on votes of conscience for that matter, unlike the members across the way. I am proud to be standing in this House, representing the people of Perth—Wellington, and I am proud to be voting against Bill C-4, which would be a step backward for openness and transparency.

[Adam Vaughan, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister (Intergovernmental Affairs)]

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?

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to be here in this House and no longer in the union, because I am proud to stand here on behalf of all Canadians and to work on behalf of Canadians to further their rights of openness and transparency for all union members.

The member talks about the secret ballot and PSAC, which leads to this question. If the secret ballot is throughout the constitution of PSAC and many other unions, why not for certification and decertification votes? It goes back to private members' business. I want to go back to that subject. Methinks the hon. member doth protest too much. Perhaps that is the way the Liberals' government is going to run their private members' business, just using it for matters that are not of great concern and for shuffling anything off to the side that they do not feel like discussing, through private members' business. However, I am proud to be part of a party that encourages all sorts of private members' business, and not just the ones that the hon. member opposite might think are appropriate to discuss as a private member's bill.

[Joël Lightbound, Liberal, Louis-Hébert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member opposite has mentioned a few times how proud he is to be part of a party that has democracy and transparency as a tradition, and I commend him for that. I am a democrat as well.

How does he feel about omnibus bills and the practice of the previous government in that regard?

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, speaking to bills is part of parliamentary procedure and I am pleased to do it. Any number of bills can come forward, including omnibus bills.

The fact of the matter is that we often hear people discussing the 460-page budget bill. We should be more than willing to read through 460 pages of legislation if we are here to do our job as parliamentarians. I am more than happy to read through any number of documents that come before the House, and I try to read every bill that we vote on, including Bill C-4, which I have read from cover to cover. It is a bad bill and it is not reflective of the hard-working union members in my riding and the hard-working union members I spoke to throughout the campaign and after the campaign.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Mr. Speaker, earlier I heard the member say that, in 2012, he learned that his union was spending his dues on endorsing a separatist party in Quebec, which was against his wishes.

Did his union personally consult him before it decided what to do with his money?