Mr. Speaker, yes, this was in evidence before the committee, and was well explained by a lawyer with a lot of experience in labour relations. I once practised in labour relations, but is has been a couple of decades. However, Paul Champ has worked in the area of labour relations and has actually taken on some of these cases.
Mr. Champ was asked directly by the hon. member for Burlington what the implications would be, from a legal point of view, of taking out the words, “including harassment”, from the bill. His response was that we would have an association negotiating some clause in the collective agreement that would say “fair treatment in the workplace”, or “no harassment in the workplace”, but it would not open the floodgates. Members would not be able to bring in a case to adjudication on their own. It would have to be approved by their bargaining association.
What is more, which was very clear from his response, is it would only create the opportunity for a collective agreement on this point. It still is a matter of free and fair bargaining between the RCMP management and the RCMP workers as to whether they want to have a provision that deals with harassment in their collective agreement. However, what we do by removing the words “harassment” from Bill C-7 is give them the possibility of free and fair collective bargaining on an issue that is of paramount importance to fairness, decent treatment, and human dignity in the workplace.