Debates of May 30th, 2016

Public Service Labour Relations Act

[Kennedy Stewart, NDP, Burnaby South, BC]

Madam Speaker, I have been listening to the debate today. Drawing upon my colleague's years of experience, I wonder if he were in the position of a constable today, would he choose to unionize or not?

[Jim Eglinski, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Madam Speaker, that is a tough question.

I would say in the mid-1990s, and I left in 2001, things started deteriorating. The DSR program, as I call it, the division staff relations, was a great program initially, but government kind of destroyed it.

Initially, I would never have voted for a union, but if I were to put myself in the rank and file situation as I see it today, with the low level of pay they are getting, as well as the low level of compensation in isolated posts, and an isolated post in B.C. could have a $20,000 difference to that in Quebec, I would probably vote union.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

It is my duty, pursuant to Standing Order 38, to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, Ethics; the hon. member for Sherbrooke, Ethics.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Madam Speaker, it is a real pleasure for me to join this important debate on Bill C-7.

I appreciate hearing the thoughtful comments from all members in this House, especially the contribution of members like the member for Yellowhead who just spoke, who have significant experience themselves, or, in other cases, experience through their families with the RCMP. We are all very grateful for their service and for the context that members coming from different walks of life bring to this place.

For people elsewhere who may have just started watching this debate, I want to start my remarks by reviewing some of the basic groundwork in terms of what this bill does.

This legislation seeks to implement a Supreme Court decision that opened the door for the RCMP to form a union. We, in the official opposition, respect the decision of the Supreme Court and recognize that RCMP members are entitled to pursue membership in a union.

We think there are many aspects of Bill C-7 that are positive. In general, it is a reasonable response to the court ruling.

However, on this side of the House, we have consistently taken a very clear position on the importance of a secret ballot. I will talk more about why a secret ballot is important in this specific context and in general. However, that is the principle stumbling block on this legislation for those of us in the official opposition.

We think there are a lot of good things about this legislation, but it is not acceptable to us that a mechanism would be created for joining a union, for electing officials, for anything of that nature, that does not involve a proper democratic process.

Also, by way of context, it is important that the public knows that wage disputes will still be resolved through binding arbitration. This does not open the door to police officers being on strike or anything like that. That is an important element of context as we approach this legislation and the discussion around it.

As we are talking about the RCMP, I want to acknowledge the important work that RCMP officers do across this country, especially in my riding of Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan. We do not have municipal police forces in my constituency. We are fully served by the women and men in the RCMP, and the great work that they do.

The RCMP is an icon. It is one of those recognizable Canadian icons around the world. At the local level, I have personally seen the great work that the RCMP does with the community. That is not just front-end policing, but also engaging in a constructive way with members of the community and with community organizations on issues like education, crime prevention, and those kinds of things.

I am very grateful for the contribution of the RCMP in my constituency and across the country, as well as here on Parliament Hill. We are supported in our work and our functions here by the security that members of the RCMP provide.

I talked earlier about the importance of the secret ballot for us. It is surprising that the government does not get it. I have said before that I would have thought that the debate on the secret ballot was concluded in the 19th century. To coin a phrase, it is 2016. It is strange that there still is no recognition by the government and by other parties of the importance of the secret ballot.

I will say that it is not only this bill but the process that brings this bill forward that marks a double attack against democracy. We not only have an attack on the principle of the secret ballot, but we also have the government not respecting the prerogative of members who wish to speak to the bill by moving forward with their overly aggressive approach to time allocation.

I do think there are appropriate uses of time allocation, of course. These are cases where maybe opposition parties are engaging in deleterious tactics. The government does, in certain contexts, have to move legislation forward. However, in a fairly short time, we have seen the government ramping up the scales on the use of time allocation or closure. This bill is no exception, in spite of the goodwill from the opposition and the effort to work constructively on allocation of time around these things.

We have had this on the euthanasia and assisted suicide bill, and on the budget bill. With regard to this legislation, which is under the gun of time allocation, what the government is doing here is perhaps not as egregious as we have seen in some other cases. I have mentioned. Bill C-14 as one of the most difficult and challenging issues that Parliament has dealt with in a very long time. However, there is still a failure to recognize the importance of the secret ballot and the prerogative of members wanting to speak to and have a fulsome debate on legislation like this. It is a concerning pattern that we see of the government not respecting the principles that should be very important to a well-functioning democratic polity.

That puts this in some important context. On the substantive side, as we talk about the issue of the secret ballot, I want to start by talking about responses to some of the different kinds of arguments we have heard today in this debate, and some of the specific issues around the secret ballot in the context of the RCMP. After that, I will talk about some of the underlying foundational and motivating arguments about the secret ballot and why secret ballots are important. Again, I do not think these are arguments that should have to be made, but clearly they need to be made.

In the context of this specific bill and the RCMP, I want to talk specifically about secret ballots in the context of government certification. We can look at the workplace in some sense as a sort of negotiation, maybe a competition, between workers and their employers. There are certain tools that workers have, and there are certain tools that employers have. It is worth acknowledging that in that sort of imagined competition, public sector workers have an additional advantage. They can bring public pressure to bear on the government to try to bring about concessions in the process of collective bargaining or other forms of negotiation over wages. This is a strategic advantage in that competition or relationship that does not exist in the private sector.

A group of private sector employees cannot organize to vote out their employer, but that is something that public sector employees can do. Therefore, there are additional tools that are available to the public sector. That needs to be recognized and acknowledged as we talk about these dynamics. That helps us to understand the history of why there are higher levels of unionization in the public sector, and also why every certification vote in the public sector has happened via secret ballot, which has led to these higher rates of unionization. There is this strategic advantage.

To the extent that members may raise concerns about employer intimidation preventing certification, it would have to be acknowledged that it is much less plausible in the context of the public sector, again because of these strategic dynamics. Taking that into consideration, it is difficult to justify not allowing a secret ballot in this specific context. The worries that might exist around this in other sectors could be plausibly applied in the case of the public sector.

One of the other strands we have heard in this debate is members saying that a secret ballot could still happen, that, after all, the legislation does not effectively prohibit the use of a secret ballot but simply leaves that determination to a subsequent discussion and evaluation. That is true. There is nothing in this legislation that prohibits the use of a secret ballot. It is possible that a secret ballot could be used or not, but I do not think it is good enough. If one believes that a secret ballot is important, and I think members would acknowledge in many cases how critical a secret ballot is, I do not think it is sufficient to say that there might be a secret ballot.

If I told my constituents that in the next election some ridings in Canada will have secret ballots if we determine they need them and other ridings will not have secret ballots if we determine they do not need them, I do not think my constituents would be particularly satisfied with that. They would say that if a secret ballot is the most fair, honest, reasonable, and democratic way of conducting an election, then why should that not be available to everyone? Why should it not be a guarantee instead of just a possibility? I do not think the argument that there might be a secret ballot holds much water.

We have had some discussion in this debate about the extent to which the RCMP is like the rest of the public service and the extent to which the RCMP is different. It was interesting. I listened to the speech of my friend from Oakville North—Burlington. In the context of questions and comments, she effectively gave very different answers to that question, first in response to my question, and then in response to a question from the member for Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke. She said on the one hand that we need to have the same process as other public sector individuals, and then she said the RCMP is different. Which is it? This would be our take on that.

Certainly there are important differences between the RCMP and other organizations within the public service. That is why it was important to have some of the variations, some of the exclusions, which were put in this legislation. I think at least our party and the government acknowledged the importance of those exclusions, and our members worked very hard at the committee to refine and deepen those exclusions.

However, the secret ballot is important for everyone. We would advocate a secret ballot in all cases, as we have done on a variety of different measures. The principle of a secret ballot for choosing representatives, for choosing which bargaining unit, or if an individual would like to associate with a particular bargaining unit, is so important that it should not be left to chance. It should not be maybe sometimes and maybe not elsewhere. That is why we have advocated for this consistently across the board.

As well, it is particularly important to have a secret ballot in the case of the RCMP. These are, after all, the women and men on the front lines who are defending us, protecting the physical security of our democracy. We call on the RCMP to ensure the safety and stability of the democratic process and of our lives within this country. For us to then deny the RCMP the same rights that others have in other contexts when they elect people, to deny them the right to the secret ballot in this case, would seem particularly perverse, to me at least. At the same time that they are protecting our fundamental democratic rights, that we would deny those rights to them as members of the RCMP— notwithstanding that we think the secret ballot should be available to all—in that particular situation is quite perverse.

The discussion has also been around the alternative to the secret ballot and how that would look in practice in the RCMP. Some members favour a card-check system. For those who do not know, a card-check system basically involves some members who are seeking a certification asking other members of a potential bargaining unit who want to certify to then sign and check on a card that they would like to sign up. If a certain threshold is achieved in terms of these sign-ups, then there is no subsequent process of deliberation or election; the certification simply then occurs after that card-check system has been evaluated. It occurs automatically.

There are a lot of obvious problems with that. This is a form of public ballot. It does not respect the privacy of the individuals who are being asked to sign. However, a card-check system, as has been pointed out, is particularly inappropriate in the context of the RCMP. We have a very hierarchical structure in which people have to rely on each other all the time.

Members of the RCMP may wish to discuss their political conviction in the context of that environment. They may feel comfortable doing so, and they may feel that their ability to work with their colleagues is not compromised by that. However, that should be their choice. The effect of having a card-check system for certification in this context would be that members might be forced to declare their union convictions through other members. This could have a negative effect, in certain cases, on the collegiality that is so important for the functioning of our national police force.

Therefore, why not simply ensure that members have the privacy they deserve? Why not ensure we have a guarantee of a secret ballot?

My friend from Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke said something interesting. He said that the proposal for a secret ballot does not need to apply in this case because we are not talking about a public vote. He said that in a sense individuals could choose whether or not they want to join the organization and therefore there is no need for a secret ballot, if I understood what he was saying correctly.

Of course, it just needs to be said that we are talking about what would be a closed shop union. If the RCMP chose to certify, all members of the RCMP, even if they were individually not interested in being part of the union, would have to at least pay dues to the union. This is the process that exists. This is not analogous to simply whether or not an individual chooses to sign up with the local Rotary Club, or Elks, or something like that. This is a question of a whole professional group being brought into a union, potentially against the preferences of some of those members. This is more analogous to a general election in which we would respect and widely recognize the importance of a secret ballot.

Another comment that some members have made during this debate is that secret ballots reduce the rate of unionization. Frankly, that tips their hand a bit because the goal should not be to ensure the maximum level of unionization. The goal should be to ensure a fair process whereby workers can decide if they want to be part of a union. Of course, one could design a system, maybe a card check or something else, that would maximize the rates of certification, but if that happens at the expense of a fair and democratic process in which workers can actually express themselves, then that is not the best direction to go. The goal should be a fair process, and then we would let those who are involved in a fair process decide. A fair process in a democracy will produce the best outcome according to democratic principles, but if we do not have a fair process just because we want a particular outcome, that being higher rates of unionization, that is obviously hardly fair.

That deals with some of the strands in the debate today. I want to just mention what I see as the foundational motivating arguments for a secret ballot. Why do we generally accept that secret ballots are important? First, I think we all understand that people have a right to privacy with respect to their political opinions. Of course, people have the right to express their opinions on issues like certification and other issues, but they also have a right to not express their opinions, to not wish for their co-workers, their employees, even members of their family to know how they vote or how they feel about difficult political questions. This right to privacy really emanates from the idea of autonomy, the idea of self-ownership, that our political opinions are our own and therefore we have the right to decide if we wish to dispose of them in one particular way or another. This sense of the separation of the private space from the public space is foundational to our concept of liberal democracy. It is why we have a secret ballot.

Of course, the secret ballot ensures protection from reprisals. I talked before in the House on a previous bill about the history of secret ballots and how one time when we had public ballots people could be intimidated. They could face reprisals, or could lose employment as a result of how they voted in the then-public ballot. Thus we moved to a secret ballot.

Another reason we have secret ballots is protection against corruption. If we see how someone votes there is a greater risk of someone being offered an inducement. That cannot happen if there is a secret ballot.

Finally is the importance of a vote being preceded by deliberation. This is not possible in the context of a card check system, where someone might sign the card and then read an article or develop new information and think something different later on. One does not have the option of changing one's mind in a card check system but in a secret ballot process there is deliberation, debate, good discussion, and then individuals can come to their conclusions at the appropriate time.

For these reasons, despite some good aspects, I will have to oppose the bill unless the government accepts an amendment to respect the right of members of the RCMP to vote by a secret ballot.

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Madam Speaker, I have a fairly simple question.

I would like my colleague from Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan to tell me whether he believes that unions are a good thing in general.

Does he think that unions have improved the situation of workers in the west and throughout the world? Does he think unions are useful or would he rather they be done away with?

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Madam Speaker, I am happy to answer a fairly easy question. Yes, unions have had and continue to have an important function. I know many individuals who have received valuable training support as well as advocacy through unions. Many of the basic things that we rely on today in terms of workplace safety and protection from harassment were advocated for and protected by unions long before they were protected in legislation.

It is not a reasonable or appropriate tactic to try and cast every discussion about the certification process in terms of whether or not one is pro or anti-union. I cannot speak for others necessarily, but personally I very much appreciate the value of unions but I also appreciate the importance of a fair process for determining certification. It strengthens unions when there is a credible and fair process that allows those who choose to join to do so or not using a secret ballot.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Madam Speaker, I always find my colleague's contributions important even though I almost always disagree with him.

In this case I simply do not see where the issue is coming from in terms of whether or not the RCMP wishes to form a union. When surveyed, over half of the uniformed members replied they did wish to have collective bargaining rights. All the other police forces all across the country voluntarily selected to have unions to collectively bargain for them.

It seems to me we are creating some phantom problem here that the Conservatives are trying to solve in their opposition to the bill when no such problem actually exists. In most police forces the rank and file members are quite happy to elect their own representatives in collective bargaining.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the member's kind words. He and I worked together on the Canada-Tibet Interparliamentary Friendship Group. I appreciate his work there and the opportunity to work on that other important issue.

With respect to his comments here today though, he said that members seem to want to form a union according to surveys. If that is true, then what is the issue of having a secret ballot? It goes both ways. If it is going to happen anyway, then what is the harm of using a proper secret ballot process, a proper democratic process? There really is no harm in that.

I will just remind the member that the question in any certification discussion is not just whether or not to join a union, it is also whether or not to join that particular union and not to perhaps respond to a different, possible certification application. Even if members agree that they are interested in having a union, the question remains of what kind of union, which union might well be more contentious. That is why it is important to have the fair process of a secret ballot.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, could the member be clear and decisive in terms of why he believes that the RCMP should have the secret ballot? His vote later on today will clearly indicate that his party is against the bill.

In principle, this legislation would establish a union for the RCMP. Other law agencies across Canada have already been unionized. Many unions in every region of the country do not have the secret ballot. It seems to me that the Conservatives are using the secret ballot as a cop-out in order to justify voting against giving the RCMP the right to organize. The RCMP has been recognized around the world as a great institution.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Madam Speaker, I am sure the member listened to my speech and is well aware of my position with respect to this bill generally and with respect to unions more generally. Unions have an important role to play and it is certainly important that this Parliament respond to and indeed implement the Supreme Court decision with respect to RCMP entitlement to collectively bargain. There is no dispute around that, and of course Conservatives have been constructive throughout this process of Bill C-7.

However, good intentions are not enough. Good intentions in terms of implementing this process are not enough when there is this huge problem, what I would call for me a poison pill in this legislation, which is the refusal of the government to respect the right of those who play a critical function defending our democracy, standing up for our political and democratic rights; and that they would not be given the right, through a proper democratic secret ballot process, to be involved in determining whether to form a union and exactly which union they would form. These are important issues, and I just cannot vote in favour of legislation, however good some parts of it may be, that has that kind of lack of respect, I would argue, for this important Canadian institution.

If the government is keen on getting consensus, I hope the Liberals would consider even at this late stage working on a possible change for this legislation that would make it more supportable. However, at this stage of course the government has the votes to pass this legislation if members come for that vote. I cannot support legislation that contains such a significant problem for our democracy.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Madam Speaker, I enjoy my hon. colleague's interventions as well.

I would like to ask this of my hon. colleague from Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan. Does he feel that the government continues to throw out the language that the Conservative Party and official opposition are against unionization, that we are against the front-line workers of the RCMP? Is this just another smokescreen, another deflection for the Liberals' mishandling of this piece of legislation?

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question and for the excellent work he is doing on this bill.

I do find it unfortunate when members make arguments that are about things unrelated to the legislation, when they try to dress this up in something that really is not about the substance of the bill. We have been clear on this side of the House about what our specific concerns are. Some members of the government are willing to engage on that point, but others would perhaps like to divert and make this discussion about something else. I and members on our side of the House have been very clear about the importance of implementing the Supreme Court decision and the important role that unions play.

I am grateful for the contribution of unions and union members in my community and I was grateful to have the active involvement of some union members as part of my campaign. Union members are not monolithic, and in general many are involved with the Conservative Party. Part of that is because our emphasis is on respecting process and on respecting them and the important role that unions play, but also on ensuring that certification happens through a proper, open, democratic process that ensures that people can express their views without having it be in a very public way.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to start in a way that almost all members have when they began speaking to Bill C-7 and express my thanks to the RCMP for the work its members do every day in our communities and at the federal level in policing to keep us safe. We have one of the most dedicated and skilled police forces anywhere in the world, but it can be improved. It can be better.

I know it is going to get better because, like others who have already spoken, I know one of the new people out front this week. He is one of the people I met as a young leader when he was in high school in Esquimalt; he eventually became our house- and dog-sitter, and now he is out front as a new RCMP officer, defending this House instead of our house at home.

I have also seen the RCMP at work in my own constituency. The West Shore RCMP polices over half of my riding, by geography, with 65 sworn members, and it was fortunate enough to get four added in 2015, which did a little bit to catch up with the population growth. I have a riding that is growing very rapidly in population, and it is most rapid in the areas policed by the RCMP. They always have a challenge in keeping up with that.

I personally have also seen the RCMP at work as part of UN peacekeeping missions. I served in East Timor, where the RCMP played a very important role in training the new police force that was being established in that country, and it did a really excellent job, which was well respected by others who were also involved in police training. I also saw the RCMP at work in Afghanistan when I was part of an international human rights mission there, and I saw the very difficult task that Canadian RCMP members had taken on in trying to help train the Afghan police in a real absence of a tradition of independent and rights-based policing like the one we have in Canada.

I think there are some 84 RCMP members who are serving on UN peacekeeping missions around the world at this time. So like everyone in the House, we do appreciate the service of the RCMP and its dedication.

I am also familiar with the issues of policing because I taught criminal justice for 20 years in a program at Camosun College in Victoria, which is largely a police and prison guard training program. Many of my former students have gone on to be RCMP members. At very large demonstrations or walks in my riding I have been talking to some of the police, and once someone came over and asked if I was in some kind of trouble and offered to help. I said that, no, they were my ex-students and I actually knew the police and there was no problem.

I am probably also one of a very small number of members in the House who sat across from a police union as the employer in bargaining, so I started my public career as a member of a municipal police board. As a member of the police board, I drew the short straw, as we all thought it was, and I was assigned finance and collective bargaining. I actually did sit across from the police union of a very small municipal police force and hashed through the kind of issues that are of concern in the RCMP today. Therefore, I know something about that from personal experience, and I will come back to that.

As the NDP public safety critic for the last five years, I have worked very closely with the Canadian Police Association and also with the Mounted Police Professional Association. They have been very concerned to make progress after the Supreme Court decision almost a year and a half ago now toward getting organization in place to represent the rank and file RCMP. I want to credit the work of both Tom Stamatakis as president of the Canadian Police Association and Rae Banwarie as president of the Mounted Police Professional Association for working with all members of the House in trying to make sure we get the right kind of legislation in place.

There is a long history of controversy about police unions in this country. It stretches all the way back to when the first unions were certified, and that was in 1918, I believe, although I have not been teaching this now for a number of years. Toronto and Vancouver both certified unions for their police in 1918. We went through a series of strikes including the general strike in Winnipeg, a police strike in the U.K., and a police strike in Toronto. It ushered in a period of regulation of police unions and attempts to restrict rights to bargain and rights to strike. Up to World War II, we had periods of greater and lesser freedom of police to unionize, in all areas but never the RCMP.

At the end of World War II, in 1945, I think largely as a result of the idea that we had fought a great war for democracy and freedom, very large collective bargaining rights in the public sector began to be granted, including the Toronto police union, which was again certified as a bargaining agent for the Toronto police in 1945. That movement really grew over the next 20 years, until virtually all the police forces had unionized, except the RCMP.

In the 1960s, when public servants were granted the right to have unions, even to strike under some circumstances, the RCMP was specifically excluded. Therefore, what we are really dealing with today is that exclusion that was written down finally in law in the 1960s.

By the 1970s, there was already discussion about whether it would not be better to allow RCMP members to decide for themselves if they wished to have a union, rather than to keep them under a legislated prohibition. A predecessor here, the former MP for Burnaby—Douglas, Svend Robinson—I think it was in 1979—introduced one of the first bills calling for the removal of the restriction on the right of the RCMP to unionize.

[Kennedy Stewart, NDP, Burnaby South, BC]

Il est ici aujourd'hui.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

I did see him in the precinct today, Madam Speaker. He now works for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, so he is still doing very good work.

The Supreme Court of Canada decision is what brought us to where we are today. It is interesting that the Supreme Court has very rarely overruled itself. It has very rarely overruled its previous decisions. In 1999, it had upheld the prohibition on an RCMP union, so I would say it was very unexpected in the legal community that there was such a clear decision in January 2015 in favour of the right of the RCMP members to unionize. It was a six-to-one decision at that time.

Let me read a couple of quotes from the Supreme Court majority in that decision. It states:

We conclude that the s. 2(d) guarantee of freedom of association protects a meaningful process of collective bargaining that provides employees with a degree of choice and independence sufficient to enable them to determine and pursue their collective interests.

It is saying that the regime that was in place, the staff representatives, did not provide what other Canadians were entitled to under the charter, which was to have a choice about who represents them and have those representatives be independent of the RCMP management in this case.

The decision went on to state:

While the RCMP’s mandate differs from that of other police forces, there is no evidence that providing the RCMP a labour relations scheme similar to that enjoyed by other police forces would prevent it from fulfilling its mandate.

What it is really saying is what we know to be true, that in order to have restrictions on rights in Canada, our Constitution requires that they be reasonable, demonstrably justified, and proportionate to some public interest. What the court found in this case is that there was no public interest that justified these kinds of restrictions on collective bargaining for the RCMP.

Quite often in the House, we have talked about “deadlines” set by the Supreme Court: in the case of assisted suicide and in the case of this bill on RCMP unionization. I have always argued, and will still argue, that these are not deadlines. What the court said in both of these cases is that it finds the existing laws unconstitutional, but it will give Parliament a chance to legislate if it wishes to do something different. If Parliament does not legislate by this date, then the law that was in existence will be unconstitutional and the normal legal framework will apply. If we did not pass this by the deadline, which we clearly have not, the RCMP would fall under the Public Service Labour Relations Act.

I am not arguing that we do not need a bill. I actually think there are some justifications for having a bill and for separating the RCMP out from other labour relations associations. The surprise, or not surprise, I guess I would say, is that the Canadian Police Association and the Mounted Police Professional Association also agree with that. There is no demand for all of them to become teamsters or steelworkers. That is not what they are looking for.

Bill C-7 says that there should be one national union representing police only, and that is not really a controversial point, so having a bill that would establish that framework is not a bad idea. However, that is probably about as far as I can go with Bill C-7, because the other main provisions of the bill take away all the aspects that really make meaningful collective bargaining.

I would submit that, just like the bill that was presented on assisted suicide, Bill C-14, Bill C-7 is probably unconstitutional. It is certain to launch another whole round of litigation and will force the spending of both RCMP members' money and public money, as well as the court's time on something we really do not need to do.

The court decision was quite clear at six to one. If we respected that decision in the proposed law, we would be done with this. The new regime of labour relations could then get on with the job of improving the RCMP and the working conditions, including the health and safety of RCMP members. Again, we must remember that our constitutional regime says that the limits are acceptable on rights only if they are reasonable and demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society, and if these limits are proportional to a specific public objective.

What is the public objective in saying that this new labour relations organization could not talk about staffing, deployment, harassment, or discipline? Again, in the quote I read earlier from the decision, it is very clear that the court said that there is no public objective that justifies limiting collective bargaining for the RCMP. Therefore, I would argue that, in parallel, there is also no public objective being achieved by these specific exclusions from collective bargaining.

I do not think we have heard from the government why it selected these things. I have not heard the justification for these exclusions, and the Liberals have not given me a legal argument of how they think this would stand up in court, if we get there again. As I said, I think Bill C-7 is bound for litigation, and that is an unfortunate thing.

Our courts are clogged with all kinds of important issues, and to have their time taken up with something that has been there in 1999 and 2015, to have it back sometime later this year or in 2017 is a waste of everyone's time and resources.

I, of course, as a member of the NDP, supported our position that these exclusions should have been taken out at committee stage. Unfortunately, the government failed to do that, and I believe the Conservatives also supported leaving these exclusions in. However, I will give credit to the government here that it did agree to remove clauses 40 and 42, which would have placed occupational health and safety under workers' compensation boards province by province.

Clearly, there are some exceptional things about the RCMP as a workforce, and it would not have been acceptable to establish a regime where RCMP members, depending on where they were stationed, would be eligible for different kinds of compensation, benefits, or rehabilitation. Therefore, I do applaud the government in agreeing with both the Conservatives and the NDP to take out clauses 40 and 42 and keep occupational health and safety a uniform regime across the country, so that it would not really matter where an RCMP member served, because RCMP members would be entitled to the same package of benefits and protections.

When we talk about staffing, deployment, harassment, and discipline being excluded, what does that actually mean? This is where I go back to all four things I dealt with almost 20 years ago when I first took on being the labour relations representative of my police board.

Staffing is the question of how much work one has to do, whether the vacant positions are filled, and how long is acceptable to leave positions vacant. I know from the RCMP in my own riding on the west shore, where the population was growing and the demands were very great, that there was concern from rank and file members over those four positions that they should have had, that were authorized, but I believe took six years to fill, and it could have been longer. My memory does not serve me so well, because it was so long in actually getting the people they needed.

What impact does that have on the operation of the RCMP? Well, one could say that it causes it to spend more money or it takes away management prerogatives. However, I can tell members that, from the point of view of rank and file people, staffing is about how much overtime they have to work that they do not want to work, that they would rather spend with their family, or rather spend, as most RCMP officers do, volunteering in community events. They wonder if they would be forced to work overtime because those vacancies have not been filled.

This is not to say that the new union of the members would fill the vacancies or decide when they are filled, but they might be able to argue in bargaining what a reasonable time frame would be when a position is not filled. They could say in their collective agreement that, when a position is vacant, it must be filled within six months or within a year. Why is that not something they could bargain about? It is something certainly that I bargained about with our police union: what is an acceptable time frame for filling vacancies?

I simply do not understand why that would not be subject to collective bargaining for the RCMP.

The second one would be deployment. The question of deployment was that of relief and backup, in particular, in municipal forces, How many officers per car? Was it safe to have one officer per car, or did it require two? Through negotiations, after I left the board, it was finally resolved that there were different hours of the day that required different deployment and staffing.

However, what we got through collective bargaining was the input of those rank-and-file members who said that in the daytime it was probably okay to have one officer per car because there were a lot of people on duty, and a lot of resources and backup to call on. However, at nighttime, one person in the car, at three a.m., was probably not a good idea. That was what we were discussing at that time. Again, I do not see how that does not do anything but contribute to better policing for the community and better working conditions for the RCMP, to be able to discuss deployment.

The RCMP also has a lot of very small detachments. One of the big problems that comes up in those detachments is relief. If the RCMP officer is the only officer or one of two officers in a community, how does he or she get any relief from the 24-hour a day demands? What would be wrong with negotiating that if he or she has been the only one, or the only two officers, for a certain period of time, then someone has to come in and relieve the officer of those duties? That would be discussed at collective bargaining. Again, it is about better community policing and better working conditions for RCMP members.

The question of harassment is the one that is the most shocking to me. We dealt with harassment in the police force. When I was appointed to the board, I was the first openly gay police board member in British Columbia. We sat down with the union. First, I had met with the chief, and I said “Just so you know, my mother already knows.” The chief said, “We already know. We are not called the police for nothing.” We got off to a very good start by having harassment training.

The union met with the board, and we agreed to do harassment training. No one forced anyone to do training. The Board members said that they would go through the training first, and would then ask the union to agree to go through it.

The union president at that time said that it was a complete waste of time. At the end of it, he came back and said that he was wrong, that there were practices taking place in our force that he did not even recognize as harassment.

The last one is discipline. When there is bargaining about discipline, it is not saying the rank-and-file members get to decide if someone is disciplined. They need a voice on what is a fair process for discipline and a voice on what is fair representation.

Those are the kinds of issues with which I had to deal. What are the right time frames? What evidence should be available? Are police officers held to the legal standards of the court in their own disciplinary proceedings? Is that fair or should there be some other disciplinary process agreed to?

Again, all four of these things that are excluded are crucial to having a good working environment for RCMP rank-and-file members, and they also contribute to better policing of our communities.

I know my time is drawing short, but I want to talk about one more staffing issue which has been on my radar since I first got involved in policing. It is the question of recruitment and retirement. It will probably come to a shock to most members in the House that one out of ten police officers in the entire country is currently eligible to retire tomorrow. Officers are staying on and working because of their dedication, but they are already eligible to retire.

How will we deal with that crisis of person power in the RCMP? One of the best ways to do that is to work with the members of the RCMP who are serving now and ask them what are reasonable ways to conquer what is really a crisis.

The other one is recruitment. At the beginning there was some resistance, even in our police force, to using diversity as a criteria in recruiting. We worked with the union at the time. Again, the same union president came back to me and said that when I said that we were not a very diverse police force—we were are all white men—that this was obvious. What was not obvious were the benefits that would come to policing from having a more diverse police force.

They hired two people from the first nations community and two gay and lesbian police officers. He told me that they now had contacts in communities that they never had before, and it helped them do a better job of policing.

Again, negotiating with the rank-and-file unions about issues of staffing, like recruitment, retention, and retirement, will lead to better policing for all of us.

I am sorry I cannot vote for the bill that would establish a framework for a union for the RCMP, but my reason for doing that is the unacceptable exclusions from collective bargaining.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I am somewhat surprised and definitely disappointed that the New Democratic Party has not recognized the principle of the legislation. The Government of Canada has said that it is committed to supporting our persons in both the regular force and the reserves of the RCMP by allowing them to organize collectively and to have that employee agency. This has come from the Supreme Court.

I appreciate the history lesson from the member. I thought he articulated that quite well.

What really surprises me is this. If we look at the principle, by voting against the legislation, which is what the member is doing, he is in essence saying no to the unionization of the RCMP. Would he not agree that it is better to at least allow for that organization to take place, recognizing that he or his party, the NDP, might have some concerns with respect to it, and that it does at least meet the Supreme Court decision and allows our RCMP officers to unite?

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the parliamentary secretary for his question because it allows me to once again say that he is dead wrong on this. If this bill does not pass, the RCMP has the right to unionize. That is what the Supreme Court has said. Therefore, the principle is already there in the Supreme Court decision, that if we do not have this legislation, it can unionize.

I have said that this regime, which demands or requires one national union and one exclusive to policing, is a good idea. However, that is not just my opinion, that is the opinion of most of the police officers, and certainly of their associations.

When it comes to saying that by voting against this, I am voting against collective bargaining, I would say the opposite. Voting for a bill that leaves essentially only pay and benefits to be bargained is not collective bargaining. All of those other issues that are excluded are at the heart of what most people want to do as part of their union, not just to get more money or benefits, but to have a workplace that contributes to doing the job well.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank our hon. colleague from Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, but I want to put a different spin on it.

We have talked a lot about unionization, secret ballot, and what is included in Bill C-7 for negotiations and what has been left out. However, the hon. colleague mentioned his experience in negotiating contracts at the municipal level.

In my riding of Cariboo—Prince George, our communities are struggling for the capacity to pay for increased policing costs. Ultimately, whatever costs are negotiated in collective bargaining are downloaded onto our provinces and our communities. In budget 2016, the Liberal government has failed to increase policing or any increased monies for police forces. Is this a further cause for concern and evidence that the bill and the government's point of view is flawed with respect to pushing this through?

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Cariboo—Prince George is one of the new members whose comments and contributions I have learned to respect in the House. He raises a very good point.

Having a union is not necessarily something that always increases costs. Given the context the government has given with respect to the RCMP, which is essentially a budget cut, it is not enough money to keep up with the increasing costs. We know that it is not enough money to backfill all of those empty positions that have been sitting there, unfortunately under the previous Conservative government.

However, the process of collective bargaining can also lead to more effective and efficient policing, which is less costly for those communities. When rank and file RCMP officers on the west shore were calling to have those positions filled, the municipalities were passing resolutions saying that they knew they would have to pay more but they needed to fill those positions to keep their communities safe.

Therefore, I recognize the challenge of increasing policing costs for municipalities as I sat on a municipal council after the police board. However, having a union can also promote efficiency and effectiveness as well.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague and commend him for his speech on an important subject that we, as progressive people and New Democrats, care a lot about, and that is the ability to unionize to improve working conditions.

However, the Liberal government seems to be following a certain pattern. It was forced by the Supreme Court to draft certain laws, but it did a sloppy job. The government is doing things that are not consistent with the Supreme Court's request.

The NDP does not understand why the government is proposing all of these exclusions and why it wants to limit RCMP officers' ability to negotiate, when that right has been recognized by a number of courts, including the Supreme Court, under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This bill will likely be challenged and that will result in more legal fees.

I would like to hear what my colleague has to say about that.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie for his work on a day-to-day basis in the House as an effective voice for working people.

His question gives me an opportunity to say again what I think has happened in Bill C-14 and again in Bill C-7. I do not know where the Liberals get these restrictions they have introduced in both bills. I think Bills C-14 and C-7 alike are headed to litigation.

Rather than solving the problem and getting on with the business of the country, we will be sending people back into the courts on both of these bills. I do not understand why the recommendations in Bill C-14 were not those of the special committee. In Bill C-7, I do not know who made these recommendations. There is no evidence about why things like staffing and harassment were excluded from collective bargaining. I do not know where this idea came from, but I certainly doubt that it is constitutional.

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Mr. Speaker, does my colleague know why the Conservatives always oppose unions and say that we should diminish their powers?

What does he have to say about that?

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Mr. Speaker, earlier in a response to one of the hon. member's speeches, I trucked out what I called blue herrings, raising issues about unions and policing that really nobody shared. I have never met a rank and file police officer who is worried about being intimidated over the question of a union, and all of the police forces have unions.

It is one thing to deny the existence of unions or their value, but it is another thing to gut collective bargaining, as the government is doing in Bill C-7. To me, those are equally difficult to accept.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the member seems to be somewhat confused with regard to the issue of urgency. We need to recognize that when the Supreme Court of Canada makes a decision, all members have a responsibility to respect that decision. The two bills the member had made reference to are in fact directives coming from the Supreme Court of Canada. Both issues have been granted extensions.

Could the member provide some comment on whether he believe that parliamentarians do not have to respect what the Supreme Court of Canada has said? Is that the New Democratic approach for dealing with decisions that have been made by the Supreme Court of Canada?

The Supreme Court of Canada has been very clear on this issue, and this legislation is before us today because of that. Just because the Conservatives did not do their homework on this bill or Bill C-14, as legislators, we have a responsibility to, at the very least, listen to what the Supreme Court says, and from the government's perspective, to take action to make corrective measures.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Mr. Speaker, that is probably one of the more absurd comments I have heard on the decisions.

The Supreme Court did not require the House of Commons to legislate. It said that existing law, both for Bill C-14 and Bill C-7, was unconstitutional, and if the House of Commons would like to legislate something else, this was the deadline by which it must do it. The Supreme Court suspended its judgment to a date to allow the House of Commons, if it so chose, to pass legislation, very much the same as what happened with the abortion legislation in Canada. When the Supreme Court ruled that abortion violated the security of the person, it gave a period of time for Parliament to act. Parliament tried twice to act and failed to pass any legislation. The world did not end, but the Supreme Court decision was implemented.

That is exactly what would happen on Bill C-14 and Bill C-7. The Supreme Court does not instruct Parliament to do anything. It gave us the opportunity to say that if we felt there were regimes or restrictions that would meet the constitution that we would like to put it place, we had this much time to do it.

I do agree with the member that the Conservatives wasted a lot of that time. However, the present government has wasted a lot of time calling all different kinds of bills instead of dealing expeditiously with those on which it feels it has a deadline.