Madam Speaker, I thank the member for the question because it cuts to the essence of what I am trying to get at. Collective bargaining can be an important tool to address persistent issues within an organization or workplace. When the government says it is looking at those issues and will get around to them, that they are separate, I think there is already a mistake in conceiving how we might deal with these issues. There would be virtue in submitting some of those issues in collective bargaining and seeing what the employees and employers within the workplace can figure out.
Part of the persistent problem, perhaps historically within the RCMP, which we certainly hear about from some members, has been that members of the RCMP cannot get their voices heard, that management is always in charge, that the system is not working, that management develops another system and there may be meaningful consultation or there may not. There will be differences of opinion about that. However, what certainly has been true is that management has had the ability to come up with new systems for decades within the RCMP, and certain problems persist.
What would be genuinely new, a novel approach, is to allow employees in at the ground level to address some of the issues at the bargaining table, with the knowledge and expertise they have because they are living it. They could see if they, working with the employer, could come up with solutions that management has not been able to come up with on its own.
I am glad that the government is concerned about those issues, and I am glad it is going to pay some attention to them. What I am upset about is that it is foreclosing on what would be a genuinely new way of dealing with the issues when the old ways clearly have not worked.
With my last few seconds, and for the information of members who may want to know, I want to recognize that my wife is visiting the nation's capital today.