House of Commons Hansard #18 of the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was unions.

Topics

Canada Labour CodeGovernment Orders

11:25 a.m.

Conservative

Marilyn Gladu Conservative Sarnia—Lambton, ON

Madam Speaker, I would like to congratulate the member opposite for his election and for a wonderful speech.

Taxpayers, though, are supporting half a billion dollars per year of credits related to union dues. Professional organizations and charities which are given those kind of tax breaks are providing financial transparency due to the requirements that they already have in place. Does the member not think that taxpayers have a right to know where the half a billion dollars a year in tax breaks for union dues goes? If he does think they have a right to know, why is he taking that right away?

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11:30 a.m.

Liberal

Kyle Peterson Liberal Newmarket—Aurora, ON

Madam Speaker, I want to thank the member for the question, and I also want to thank her for welcoming me to the House and congratulating me on my speech.

Of course, that is an important issue, and people have a right to know where taxpayer money goes. The point is that the legitimacy, the transparency, and the openness are already there. The old bills create no new mechanisms. Reporting requirements were already there. All they do is make it harder for unions to operate and less likely that they will be able to thrive in this economy. That is the purpose of repealing these bills. I am happy to support Bill C-4. At the same time, we are supporting openness and transparency.

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11:30 a.m.

NDP

Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON

Madam Speaker, I have been hearing this strange talk from the Conservatives about accountability and transparency. This is from a government that was the most secretive in Canadian history.

When we saw Bill C-377 go through, it was denounced by the Privacy Commissioner as an attack on the right to privacy. Conservatives are into the right to privacy when it comes to their friends, but we have a bill that was challenged for breaching the Constitution, breaching provincial laws, interfering with the right to organize, and was also attacked by the Privacy Commissioner.

I would like to ask my hon. colleague why he thinks the Conservatives, in their vendetta against their political enemies, would have thrown the important issue of the constitutional right to privacy out the window just so they could get at their political enemies. Do they still think they can stand up in the House and somehow credibly say they were on the side of accountability and trust?

Canada Labour CodeGovernment Orders

11:30 a.m.

Liberal

Kyle Peterson Liberal Newmarket—Aurora, ON

Madam Speaker, I share the member's sense of irony in hearing the new Conservative position about openness and transparency. This breach of privacy actually comes as a bit of a surprise from the Conservative benches. It is the same government, as we will recall, that rid Canada of its long-form census because it breached privacy in its opinion. Therefore, I do not understand why the Conservatives protect privacy rights on one hand and not on the other.

I also do not know why they did not have lawyers advising them. This would clearly be a constitutional breach on the privacy front as well as the right to freedom of association. In fact, part of me thinks the Conservatives probably knew that this would be challenged but they were doing it for a political gimmick for partisan gain. I am sure the member for Louis-Saint-Laurent would agree that this was an attack on unions. I know he appreciated that attack and that is perhaps why—

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11:30 a.m.

Some hon. members

Oh, oh!

Canada Labour CodeGovernment Orders

11:30 a.m.

Liberal

Kyle Peterson Liberal Newmarket—Aurora, ON

Through you, Madam Speaker, perhaps the member for Louis-Saint-Laurent failed to recognize that was an attack on the unions. In any event, it was an attack on the unions. That was what it was. The constitutionality of it was not considered properly.

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11:30 a.m.

Conservative

Bev Shipley Conservative Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON

Madam Speaker, I would also like to welcome the member for Newmarket—Aurora.

It is interesting. I was hoping that they would be having a free vote on this. The Liberals talked about transparency and accountability, and yet they do not have free votes anymore.

I do not think they can afford it. They are collecting $5.4 billion a year in fees, getting close to $500 million in taxable benefit, and they do not want to have a vote, as we have to have, to get elected here or to be Speaker. I am wondering what part of the accountability you are missing when it is all about accountability and showing the taxpayers where their dollars are actually being spent.

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11:30 a.m.

NDP

The Assistant Deputy Speaker NDP Carol Hughes

Before the answer, I want to remind the member that I am not missing any accountability and that he needs to address the Chair and not the member.

A very brief answer from the member for Newmarket—Aurora, please.

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11:30 a.m.

Liberal

Kyle Peterson Liberal Newmarket—Aurora, ON

Madam Speaker, accountability is already there. Again, this is not a real argument. The accountability mechanisms in Bill C-377 go above and beyond anything that is reasonably necessary. I wonder why he thinks union members should have more accountability than members of Parliament when it comes to reporting their expenses.

As for a free vote, whether this is a free vote or not, I am happy to vote for Bill C-4. I welcome all the members opposite to have a free vote and join me in supporting Bill C-4 and helping unions prosper in our great economy.

Canada Labour CodeGovernment Orders

11:35 a.m.

Conservative

Larry Maguire Conservative Brandon—Souris, MB

Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak against Bill C-4, which would roll back the rights of hard-working union members and repeal transparency legislation that finally allowed some sunshine to be let into the financial ledgers of opaque unions.

I respect the Minister of Employment. I have had the pleasure of getting to know her over the past 16 years and enjoyed the time we spent together in the Manitoba legislature. I remember that my hon. friend and her NDP colleagues at the time introduced a similar bill in 2000 and rammed it through the Manitoba legislature, a bill that massively favoured the interests of union elites and took away the ability of union members to stop their union dues paying for their union bosses' political agendas.

I also noted her comments in the House about how Bill C-4 would improve Canada's economy. I only pray that her now Liberal government does not increase Canada's debt by over 500% as her former NDP colleagues have done in Manitoba since her days in government. It is also interesting to note that at that time, former Liberal MP Jon Gerrard and leader of the Manitoba Liberal Party not only spoke against this legislation but he voted against it as well.

Today I want to talk about three things: first, the flawed motivation the Liberals have for introducing this legislation at this time; second, the importance of a secret ballot as a pillar of our democratic institutions; and third, the principle of fairness for certification and decertification.

The timing of this legislation leads me to believe that the new Liberal government is on manoeuvres. The fact that even the Liberal minister who introduced this legislation admitted that the bill was quickly tabled leads me to believe that ulterior motives are behind it.

It is too easy to just assume that this legislation is a reward for all the unions that backed the Liberals in the last election. Not even the Liberal government would change the law to remove mandatory secret ballots for union workers as a quick “thank you” to the unions that actively and publicly supported them but also spent thousands upon thousands if not millions of workers' dollars attacking the Conservative Party.

The big issue here is not Bill C-4 itself. It is not even Bill C-5, the bill the Liberals introduced next to settle their union debts. We have to look at the big picture here. It is not just that the Liberals owe some of their election victory to the thousands of workers' dollars the union spent against us, it is that the Liberals are using the rights of workers across the country as a bargaining chip, literally.

The lightening speed of the bill's introduction can only be explained by the looming spectre of collective bargaining the Liberals have coming with their own public service unions. Quite simply, they are trading the rights of hard-working Canadians in the hope of a smoother ride at their own negotiating table. It leads me to ask: did the Liberals care about union rank and file or only about making their own lives easier? It is clear that the Liberals are introducing this legislation for their own ends and not to solve a problem that actually exists.

This leads me to my second point: the importance of the secret ballot as a democratic principle. Each hon. member in the chamber is here today because residents in their ridings chose to give them the most personal thing they possess, their vote. We have no higher duty in our role as members than to safeguard the democratic principles that hold our country together. The secret ballot is the highest pillar of this process. It seems absurd to me that a member of the House could get up and argue that we need less voter protection, that we need less transparency, that we need less democracy. It seems absurd to me that a member of the House could get up and argue that we need more secrecy, that we need more union intimidation, and that we need more power for big union bosses.

The Liberals are creating a problem that does not exist. Nobody is banging down my door, nobody is calling my office, and nobody is emailing me saying they want workers to be stripped of the right to a secret ballot. Even the national president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada Robyn Benson said so much herself when she testified in committee in 2014, “Contrary to what you may have heard, PSAC has no issue with voting by secret ballot. We do it regularly to elect our officers, ratify collective agreements, and vote for strike action, as examples.”

The old card check system allowed for a workplace to be unionized without letting all employees have their say. In fact, unionization could proceed with a significant portion of the workers having no idea unionization is even going on.

As many of my hon. colleagues will know from their experience in electoral campaigns, candidates often spend their time going door to door, asking for support of their friends and neighbours. Most say yes. Sometimes they mean it, and sometimes they just want them to get off the porch or do not feel comfortable saying no to their face. It is a good thing that candidates cannot force people to vote at the door when they are canvassing; otherwise, the potential for voter intimidation would be disturbing, indeed. It is a good thing we have a secret ballot vote later to decide who the MP will be.

The former card check system, without a mandatory secret ballot, was ripe for intimidation, intentional or not. In this system, workers could be pressured by unions or their colleagues in the signing of a union card. I ask colleagues to imagine what it feels like in a workplace full of tension, where a worker is on the fence about joining a union but is bombarded by peer pressure from all sides.

The only true way to safeguard the rights of these workers is to let them express their true wishes through a vote, and the only way to do this properly is through a secret ballot. This notion enjoys widespread support across Canada and 5 of 10 Canadian provinces have mandatory secret ballot vote legislation. The Liberals have absolutely no good reason to get rid of this vital check.

Finally, let me now turn to one specific detail in the bill, that which deals with the number of votes it takes to certify or decertify a union. Before Bill C-525, it took the signatures of 35% of the bargaining unit to trigger the process to certify a union, while it took 50% to decertify it.

Bill C-525 is grounded in the core principle of creating an equal and fair playing field for supporters and opponents of unionization. We believe that it should be up to the workers to decide, not the employers, and not the union bosses. This was achieved by setting the bar for both certification and decertification processes at 40%; a wholly reasonable number to trigger a vote that necessarily involves wide-ranging consultation.

Now, the Liberals are trying to narrow the circle of people that unions and employees need to involve to make decisions; ultimately, making the process less democratic.

The bill is all about narrowing the democratic legitimacy of unions and scaling back the rights of workers to select their representatives and to determine their own fate. It is truly an affront to democracy for elected members of this chamber to demand that other institutions in their country be made less democratic, that they be made more exclusive.

As the representative of the residents of Brandon—Souris, I cannot support the legislation. It is clearly designed to settle Liberal debts to unions from their last election campaign, to strip workers of their right to a secret ballot, and to create an uneven playing field for workers to determine their own fate.

I encourage all members of this House to vote against the bill.

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11:40 a.m.

Bloc

Monique Pauzé Bloc Repentigny, QC

Madam Speaker, earlier the Liberals brought up the fact that the argument that Bill C-377 was about transparency was false. The unions already have a legal obligation to provide detailed financial statements. Bill C-377 does not require anything or demand transparency from other professional associations, such as the Conseil du patronat du Québec, or chambers of commerce. This is a two-tiered approach.

As far as Bill C-525 is concerned, similar legislation was passed in the United States and the unionization rate dropped from 35% to 11%. Organized labour is the middle class and in Quebec that means teachers, nurses, bus drivers, and public servants.

Why are the Conservatives against the middle class?

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11:45 a.m.

Conservative

Larry Maguire Conservative Brandon—Souris, MB

Madam Speaker, my colleague makes the very point that these workers are middle-class Canadian citizens and they work hard every day. Why should they not have the democratic right to a secret ballot to be in a union? I do not know what they are afraid of when 40% is all we were asking for in that bill to have a union.

However, for the mechanisms that the member is in favour of, to walk in and have a card-signing process, they may end up with over 50% of the individuals who sign up and could end up in a union while not even knowing that the unionization process was going on. That is what we see as unfair in this whole process.

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11:45 a.m.

Conservative

Randy Hoback Conservative Prince Albert, SK

Madam Speaker, I really enjoyed the comments from my colleague from Brandon—Souris, and I acknowledge the great work he is doing on this file.

I was in my riding this weekend and I was talking to my neighbour. He was talking about what the union did to intimidate him during one of the provincial elections in Saskatchewan. The union bosses came in and intimidated him. They said basically he needed to vote for a certain party and that his obligation as a union member was to vote for that party.

We look at the intimidation that was going on in a provincial election; now let us put it into ballot vote. Let us put it into the situation where they are going to certify or decertify a union. Can members imagine the intimidation that would be in that room in an open ballot? Can members imagine the intimidation that they would put on their members if the election were an open ballot?

I ask this of my colleague. In the scenario of a closed or secret ballot, what is the issue? That is how most democracies operate today. Why can the unions not operate in that same fashion?

Canada Labour CodeGovernment Orders

11:45 a.m.

Conservative

Larry Maguire Conservative Brandon—Souris, MB

Madam Speaker, that is the hub of what we are talking about here in this debate on Bill C-4, brought forward by the member for Kildonan—St. Paul.

It is very true that the intimidation that I spoke about in my own remarks here is exactly why they need to have a secret ballot. Under the old mechanisms, a 35% sign-up gave them a union, but they had to have 50% to decertify a union. My colleague brought in Bill C-525, one of the first bills that I had the opportunity to speak to in this House. We levelled it at 40% either way, and that does still not even require half. It is a very fair piece of legislation that was on the books, and that is why I make the comment and the point that the Liberals are trying to fix something that is not broken.

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11:45 a.m.

NDP

Brigitte Sansoucy NDP Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC

Madam Speaker, we support the government's proposed changes in response to the Conservatives' anti-union bills.

I represent a riding that has seen its share of companies close their doors. Workers now have increasingly precarious, part-time jobs through no fault of their own.

Does my colleague realize that to introduce a bill against unions is to be against workers?

Canada Labour CodeGovernment Orders

11:45 a.m.

Conservative

Larry Maguire Conservative Brandon—Souris, MB

Madam Speaker, again that question makes the point that when they have a 35% sign-up to have a union and 50% to decertify, what was wrong with sawing that off at 40% to have a union or to decertify it?

I am not surprised that my colleague who just asked the question from the New Democratic Party agrees with this bill brought forward by the former NDP minister in Manitoba who is now the Liberal Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Labour in Canada. It looks to me like the Liberal government is trying to outflank the NDP on the left with this kind of legislation. It is certainly not fair to workers seeking union certification.

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11:45 a.m.

Liberal

Scott Simms Liberal Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL

Madam Speaker, I thank all of my colleagues who have spoken on the bill thus far.

This exercise is not so much about outlining the vision of the legislation that we have before us, but about untangling what has been tangled before. Therefore, we now find ourselves in this position where we are taking back two particular bills.

I will not specifically address the issue of private members' bills and how they are being used, whether for nefarious reasons or not. Personally, I respect private members' bills, no matter what they are. They are from a member and there is a reason they exist. However, I would like to attack these particular bills based on their policies and how they are unfair in this context.

Bill C-377 and Bill C-525 were bills that I did not support from the beginning. Therefore, we need to undo what has been done in order to proceed any further, and Bill C-4 would do just that.

Both Bill C-377 and Bill C-525 passed without the extensive consultation process traditionally used for labour relations law reform. This is what we call the tripartite way of doing things. We have the government, the union and organized labour and, of course, we have the employers, all of which need to be consulted on something as important as this, because it affects so many Canadians across the country. Changes to labour relations legislation has always been preceded by this.

I have two examples of how this was done. I would like to bring these examples to the House because they illustrate the way things should be done using the tripartite process.

In 1995, the Sims task force did extensive public consultations on part 1 of the Canada Labour Code, and included labour, employers, and government stakeholders. The name of the report is “Seeking a Balance”, which formed the basis of major changes that came into effect in 1999. Going further back to 1978, the second example I would like to use, was the Woods task force, which was another tripartite consultative process. It was used to bring about change to the federal industrial relations system.

However, with Bill C-377 and Bill C-525, there was not much consultation. I am not sure of all the work that the members did in response to these two bills, but I would assume that the opposition during the committee process both here in the House and in the Senate illustrates that a lot of consultation did not take place in this tripartite manner.

I will go to the part where the bill talks about some of the other non-labour practices of the former government. Of course, in many situations the Conservatives went against many of the unions and organized labour, and a result caused a very poisoned atmosphere over the past while. Whenever we heard the government talk about big union bosses and the like, it created a stir among organized labour and many governments, both provincial and here in Ottawa.

Here are some of the rules the Conservatives brought in: a requirement to provide information on the time spent by officers on political lobbying, which would then be made publicly available on the Canada Revenue Agency's website; and an obligation on unions to provide their financial statements to their own members for free and when they are asked for it.

This was almost a situation where the Conservatives wanted to create a solution to a problem that did not exist. They did so without the right amount of consultation and, as a result, neglected to see some of the steps that had been taken over the past 20 to 25 years by organized labour, employers and the associations they are represented by.

Bill C-377 was directed solely at labour organizations, and that was quite evident during the evidence that was given here in the House and in both House and Senate committees. It was directed at labour trusts and not at any other professional associations, which, by the way, benefited from similar treatment under the Income Tax Act, but they were not specifically told to be more transparent as well.

As hon. colleagues will recall, the Minister of National Revenue has waived the reporting requirements for 2016 in Bill C-377 knowing that we intend to work to repeal the bill.

I will go back to the debate that took place, before we get into Bill C-4. When Bill C-377 went to the Senate, a colleague of ours by the name of Hugh Segal, a Conservative senator at the time, was vociferously against the bill, to the point where he had brought amendments that were accepted at the time. I will read an editorial he did after retiring from the Senate about how he was against Bill C-377 and its fundamental principles. I will quote from his editorial:

The Canadian Bar Association questioned its constitutionality, as it sought to circumvent normal provincial jurisdiction over labour relations and trade unions by imposing Canada Revenue Agency reporting requirements via federal statute.

There he talked about the constitutional crisis that had been raised by this particular situation. We can question the constitutionality of the bill as defined by the powers directed by the provincial governments and the federal government, which are laid out quite clearly.

Former Conservative Senator Hugh Segal went on to say:

There was also the issue raised by many witnesses before the committee that reporting relationships for small expenditures being imposed on unions and union locals were not being imposed on other corporate or charitable/not-for-profit groups.

We saw this in the House of Commons testimony as well, when witnesses talked about how the same onus was not put on other associations to divulge or make transparent the activities they do and the contributions they receive, including from whom, which really would have created a balance.

The imbalance during labour negotiations was also talked about and mentioned in Hugh Segal's article and the point was made that information would be divulged by local labour organizations to the point where it would put them at a distinct disadvantage in certain negotiations.

I want to thank him for doing that, because I thought that in earnest he had put together some very viable amendments. Let us face it, like every bill of this size, there are good points and there are bad points, but Conservative Senator Hugh Segal attempted to make amendments. I should not say “attempted”, because he actually did make them. His amendments were accepted by members of the Senate, and then the bill was sent back here to the House for it to address it once more with those fixes in place. The House was prorogued.

Here, I know that everyone is just waiting to hear how this works, right? It is that type of day.

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11:50 a.m.

An hon. member

With bated breath.

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11:50 a.m.

Liberal

Scott Simms Liberal Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL

With bated breath, yes indeed, Madam Speaker.

When prorogation takes place, the bill resets and goes back to its original form. The bill in its original form then went back to the Senate, but Hugh Segal was not there, unfortunately. Therefore, it was passed in its original form, which is the reason why we are here today talking about Bill C-4 in this manner.

I want to talk about one of the situations my NDP colleague brought up earlier when it comes to transparency. I remember when a gentleman, an independent member of Parliament, Brent Rathgeber, had a private member's bill on transparency and the disclosure of salaries, and so on and so forth. He specifically went after a couple of elements within the public discussion. He went after the CBC, wanting the disclosure of CBC salaries, and so on and so forth. There were some problems with the bill when it came to the CBC being quasi-competitive in the private sector, but he also talked about divulging or making transparent the salaries of people in government, including the salaries of the people who worked in the PMO, the Prime Minister's Office of the day, the Conservative Prime Minister.

The Conservatives amended the bill. Mr. Rathgeber's bill said that anyone making around $150,000 should have their salary divulged. It was based on the sunshine list that exists in Ontario, which concerns anyone making more than $150,000. The Conservatives amended it so that only someone making more than $400,000 a year would have their salary disclosed. Anyone making less than that would not have their salary disclosed. As we say back home, “You are too cute by half, sir”. The Conservatives were trying to protect their own.

It is funny that we have massive disclosure demanded from labour organizations, but when it came to the Conservative Prime Minister's Office, it was not the same standard. That is why we are here today.

I support Bill C-4 for the reason that it untangles the effects of the two private members' bills, despite the strong efforts by the two members who brought forward these private members' bills, a process that we still uphold here as honourable for each and every individual member. However, I disagree with them and therefore I would strongly urge all of us to vote in favour of Bill C-4.

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Noon

Conservative

Garnett Genuis Conservative Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB

Madam Speaker, it was interesting to hear the hon. member go on a bit of a tangent about sunshine lists and the disclosure of PMO salaries. There are interesting arguments to be made on both sides of that. I just want to clarify if he is in favour of the current Prime Minister's Office disclosing a sunshine list in the format he has talked about. Will the Liberal government bring forward the sunshine list legislation he is praising in his remarks?

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Noon

Liberal

Scott Simms Liberal Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL

Madam Speaker, I am always in favour of transparency. I would never turn it down. Anyone who works around here should have full disclosure on this. That is my view personally. I do believe in that.

As a matter of fact, I was referring to Mr. Rathgeber's bill. I point towards his chair because that is where he used to sit. He was an hon. member, a very smart man, and he worked very hard. What he tried to do was put more disclosure on certain aspects of governance. He pointed out the hypocrisy that tends to occur in this place, small or large, and that was happening at the time. Demanding transparency of one group includes transparency for all.

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Noon

NDP

Brigitte Sansoucy NDP Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC

Madam Speaker, I support what my colleague has to say in favour of workers' rights and improving their working conditions.

Before becoming a member of Parliament, I was a proud provincial public servant. I have a great deal of respect for all public servants, who work daily for the common good. I think the best way to send a clear message is to lead by example.

Accordingly, in the current negotiations with public servants, will my colleague ask the government to restore public service sick leave and adopt the provisions with regard to health and better working conditions?

Canada Labour CodeGovernment Orders

Noon

Liberal

Scott Simms Liberal Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL

Madam Speaker, obviously, with regard to what she is talking about right now, we will let the discussions unfold. I have always had a deep respect for public sector workers. I have always had respect for them, their remuneration, and anything dealing with the benefits they receive. Yes, I do. It is a negotiation between the government and the union. I realize that. I will leave that at what it is right now and speak about it later when the time comes to vote on that particular legislation.

What I am focused on right now is untangling the mess in Bill C-4, and I thank the member for her comments about it. She supports Bill C-4, and I appreciate that support for all the reasons we do: the injustices in the particular provisions contained within Bill C-377 and Bill C-525.

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Noon

Liberal

Anthony Housefather Liberal Mount Royal, QC

Madam Speaker, I thank the member for his very astute comments. I appreciate hearing the history of this place. For those us who are new, sometimes it is very elucidating.

One of the things I most appreciated about his remarks was his comment about the balance between labour, corporations, and government. Neither side is all right or all wrong, and I do not like it when people say they are doing something because they are pro labour or against labour. We all have to find a proper balance.

If he could, I would like the hon. member to expand on where he sees a proper balance being.

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Noon

Liberal

Scott Simms Liberal Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for his astute comments as well, as we trade all kinds of compliments between each other.

In the spirit of this massive love-in that we embarked on, yes, we are talking about the love-in as well when it comes to these particular tripartite negotiations. That is what he talked about: the businesses, the employers, organized labour and, of course, government. He also pointed out that we want to avoid what happened last time with sweeping generalizations about who we are as groups.

Many times I have heard people say that they do not really like unions or they are all for unions. We must have a conversation that looks at and accentuates the wonderful things they do, and if we have disagreements, bring them here to the House.

My other hon. colleague pointed out the situation with sick leave. It is a valid point. We know there will be disagreements. We have to look at the books as they are and the fiscal balance that we hope to achieve, and that is why we cannot use sweeping generalizations any more with terms like “big union bosses” or “corporate bosses”, and the like. If we go that way, we will all sound like Donald Trump, and wouldn't that be a bad thing?