Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to stand here in my place to speak to Bill C-4. Before I do that, I just want to say that I will be splitting my time with the member for Davenport.
I want to start off by talking a little about my background, because I think it is important for the members to know that I am one of those union bosses the members opposite are talking about. I am one of those people who was high up in the union movement in the 1980s, and the 1970s for that matter, before I became a member of Parliament. I must be the one they are targeting who was not accountable and not transparent and had something to hide and that they were trying to fix in the pieces of legislation we are speaking to.
I wanted to come clean right off the bat that I have a particular bias. I am a labour unionist and am very proud of it. This country has a long history with the organized labour movement. It has done well in making those kinds of changes.
Let us talk a little about the history of the labour movement. It is pretty clear that the labour movement has had huge impacts on blue collar workers and workers in Canada. Part of that is obviously better wages, better working hours, and better health and safety, which is one of the main reasons unions started in the first place. Workers were under very severe pressure to work in unsafe conditions in the early part of our history. The labour movement was started because of the lack of protection for the everyday man and woman working in Canada.
I want to share with members the race to the bottom the Conservative Party, and the Reform Party before it, have been bringing to the House for the last 20 years I have been involved. It scares me. I will use the example of the Canada pension plan and pensions in general.
The labour movement had a huge role to play in bringing pensions, good pensions, to men and women all across the country to supplement their retirement incomes, because obviously, we know that the Government of Canada cannot look after all our seniors after retirement. The pension plans, the funding put in by employers and employees, are very important in our economy today.
We not only need to talk about the collective bargaining structure but about the social aspects of what collective bargaining and organized labour can do.
I just want to talk a little about a 2012 study, by the Boston Consulting Group, I have been reading about. Here is what I found out. On average, 14 cents of every dollar of income in Ontario communities comes from pensions. That means that in Ontario, 7% of all income in our towns and cities, or $27 billion, is derived from defined benefit pensions.
Instead of trying to diminish labour, we should in fact be trying to strengthen our relationship with employers and employees so that there are more pensions in the workplace so that pensioners, the people we represent in the House, have a good retirement.
I am proud to represent retired railroaders, mill workers, and miners, all these people in the Kenora—Rainy River district, and now the Kenora riding, that I have been a member of Parliament for for the past 16 years. These people have good pensions. Those workers were represented by organized labour. They had huge benefits because of good collective bargaining.
That does not mean that the employers did not make money. I was a railroader. I represented the railway unions. Those railways made money in the days when I was there negotiating collective bargaining agreements with them.
The fact that the previous government felt that it was in its best interest to try to diminish organized labour makes me wonder what the motive really was. In fact, it does more harm to Canada than it does good. We should be strengthening the opportunity for organized labour to work with the government and with employers, instead of the reverse.
The previous government set a very dangerous precedent. The balance between labour and employers has always been hard to arrive at. We have spent, I would bet, 100 years trying to get the balance right provincially, federally, and even municipally. Then we had a private member's bill foisted on us, without any discussion among the key players—labour, government, and employers—through the tripartite process that has been ongoing at the department of labour federally for as long as I can remember. That is a very dangerous precedent by any government.
Even Brian Mulroney's government would not have done something like that. I was involved in those days in opposition when Brian Mulroney's government wanted to bring some changes to the Canada Labour Code. It used the tripartite process.
The Conservative Party, and I think there are too many Reformers in there still, really needs to start thinking about what exactly its intent was in getting involved in provincial jurisdiction, which has nothing to do with the federal government, and using the Income Tax Act to do so.
That is exactly why the current government is repealing those pieces of legislation. First, this is not our jurisdiction. Second, they are unconstitutional. We all know that, and we know that if we do not do anything, the courts will throw them out, like it did many pieces of legislation the Conservative government brought it.
We are doing the right thing. We are putting in place the balance. The balance is always difficult to achieve. Yes, sometimes workers go on strike. They have to have the ability to do that. They have to have the ability to certify. They have to be able to do it without everyone in the world knowing their strategy and their plan. It is pretty hard to negotiate with both hands tied behind one's back. What the Conservative government proposed to do under that legislation was to have the union tell the employer, on the other side, all its financial resources, who it was speaking to, and what it was proposing to do.
If a union is putting money into social issues or into campaigns, that is its prerogative. I can say this because I was there at the top end of the union: union members know where their money is spent. It is ridiculous for any party to be suggesting to the average Canadian that somehow workers do not know where their dues go. We all know that this is just a fabrication to make it sound like it has to be done.
These two pieces of legislation destabilized that very careful balance that we in Canada, as legislators, tried for many years to make sure stayed in tact. The legislation we are proposing to repeal will be repealed because we want to make sure that the relationship between labour and the government and employers is respected and that collective bargaining will be done in the way it has always been done, between the employer and the unions. They will work it out. That is what the legislation is intended to do for Canadian workers and their employers.
I want to speak a little about the importance of our new government's relationship not just with labour but with the Canadian people. Over the next couple of months in this place, we are going to see the government probably remove a number of pieces of legislation the other side brought in that we think are counterproductive to building a good society. I hope that we on this side of the House never feel that we have to find an excuse for not be doing that. We ran on a platform of not allowing those kinds of things to happen anymore. We are going to have respect for the labour movement. We are going to have respect for Canadians. That is what we are going to do.