Mr. Speaker, one of the things that concerns me about the bill is that the government is purporting to respond to the court ruling about the rights of RCMP officers who have been denied the ability to undertake collective bargaining. However, we have a bill that sets out to allow collective bargaining, but then strips away key provisions that should be in place in normal collective bargaining.
For example, there is the issue of being able to talk about staffing in terms of whether or not a police officer has backup. These are fundamental health and safety issues that would normally be under collective bargaining. There is also the issue of harassment. We have seen so many cases of officers subjected to harassment who did not have a proper dispute mechanism. The Liberals are telling us there are many other existing processes that they could take their harassment claims to, but they have failed.
Today, on a day when an RCMP officer with 27 years of duty has been terminated, who is suffering PTSD from what she referred to as systemic harassment on the force, would it not be wise to allow collective bargaining? Would it not be wise for that to be one of the places where RCMP members could put these issues on the table to start finding solutions, so that we do not end up with RCMP officers, who may be suffering in unhealthy work environments, before the courts?