Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege to rise in the House today to speak to Bill C-7 as well. I concur with my colleagues who have just spoken in regard to the bill.
I had the opportunity, particularly in the Kamloops area at an earlier age, to work with RCMP members who actually came down to play hockey with us when I worked in that fair city a number of decades ago. The Sakaki family gave me my first opportunity to work in that community and the opportunity to play hockey with these RCMP officers as well.
Of course, that is what we are talking about here today: the RCMP officers who give their lives and work every day on behalf of Canadians to keep us safe.
I rise to express my concern regarding Bill C-7. The bill has some worthwhile and necessary provisions, as has been pointed out by some of my colleagues. However, the bill continues the Liberal tradition of bowing down to unions at the expense of democracy and increasing the power of unions at the expense of some of their members.
The Supreme Court's ruling makes it clear that the current regime must be updated to give RCMP members a greater voice in their workplace while continuing to to ensure public safety. However, certain provisions of the bill are thinly veiled attempts to pay unions back for their support of the Liberal Party in the last election. These are the parts of the bill that make it a bit undemocratic.
I stood in the House recently to speak against Bill C-4, the Liberals' first attempt to pay unions back for their election support. That bill was also deeply problematic. The timing of it could not have been more opportunistic in its attempt to make the government's own collective bargaining process easier at the expense of union members.
That bill also scaled back one of the most important rights of union members, the right to participate in a secret ballot on certification and decertification. We have seen that the government side is afraid of the words “secret ballot”. What are they afraid of? I would suggest they are afraid of democracy in this situation.
The combination of Bills C-4 and C-7 leaves RCMP members without a secret ballot vote on future union drives. The result is that a certification could occur through intimidation and undemocratic pressure tactics that are all too common with card check certifications. I believe strongly in giving workers the right to a vote that is free of intimidation prior to being forced to join, pay dues to, or be represented by a bargaining agent.
As I have said before, each hon. member in the chamber is here today because the residents of their constituency chose to give them the most personal thing they possess, their vote. As elected members of the House, our highest duty is to defend the democratic principles that brought us here. The secret ballot is the highest pillar of this process. It is difficult for me to believe that the Liberals have the nerve to argue that the public servants at the front line of Canadian safety do not deserve their democratic rights.
Our brave RCMP officers put our safety above theirs every day when they get up to go to work every morning and on every shift. Without them, we would not have the rule of law. Without them, many resolutions of the House would be worth less than the paper they are printed on. Without them, Canada would not be the free and safe society it is today.
Our RCMP stand up to criminals in some very dangerous situations. They rely on their fellow officers, their team, to have their backs. Bill C-7 would make our RCMP officers less safe by encouraging internal conflict within RCMP ranks. It creates a climate in which a union could pressure its members into signing their support. This really means that certain RCMP members would be pressuring others, creating tension and conflict while destroying trust.
Just as during election campaigns when candidates ask for the support of their friends and neighbours by going door to door, union representatives would be able to go from officer to officer to try to pressure them. As many of my hon. colleagues will know from their own campaign experience, while many people mean the support they promise, many people on the doorstep just want us to get off the porch or do not feel comfortable saying no to our face.
Without a secret ballot to guarantee the rights of public service workers, the potential for intimidation is disturbing. We all know that the potential for workers to be intimidated by their unions is very real. While this is serious for all workplaces, it is even more serious for a workplace where having a cohesive team can mean the difference between injury and safety, between life and death, as in the RCMP.
The Liberals have absolutely no good reason to get rid of this vital check. With the beginning of an important process for the RCMP, the Liberals are creating a problem that is easily avoided. The card check system allows for a workplace to be unionized without letting all employees have their say, and it could proceed with a significant portion of the workers having no idea that it was even going on.
The bill narrows the democratic legitimacy of an RCMP union and scales back the rights of our hard-working officers to select their representatives and determine their own fate. While the current regime must change to give our officers a greater voice in the workplace, it has to be done correctly.
As the bill currently stands, it sends a terrible signal to the men and women who keep us safe, a signal that the Government of Canada does not care about them. During the Conservatives' time in government, we consistently supported the RCMP, CSIS, and public safety agencies by modernizing legislation and increasing their budgets to ensure that these forces had the right tools to keep Canadians safe.
Right now, the RCMP is contracted to provide police services to eight provinces and over 150 communities. As the representative of the constituents of Brandon—Souris, I represent several such communities. I know first-hand the quality and professionalism that many RCMP officers of my riding bring to the job every day. We depend on them to keep us safe and are grateful to them for their service.
Not only would the officers in my riding have fewer democratic rights as a result of an unamended Bill C-7, but the communities that pay for their services would experience great hardship if labour costs dramatically increased. If our small communities cannot afford policing, nobody wins.
I echo my colleagues in supporting an amendment to this legislation that would explicitly allow RCMP members the right to vote on whether to unionize through a secret ballot.