Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege for me to rise again and speak wholeheartedly against this new Liberal government's Bill C-4, a bill that by its number tells us exactly what the priorities of the current Liberal government are. The ink was not even dry on the minister's signing papers before this piece of legislation was before Parliament. There was clearly no opportunity, as the Liberals across the way say, to consult with industry, with unions, with governments, or with frankly anybody. This was simply an opportunity to pay back those who were loyal to the Liberal Party during the last election. I will get to that during the course of my notes as I go through.
I want to talk a bit about the process. Much has been said here. Members will notice that the arguments coming from the New Democrats and the Liberals have nothing to do with the actual veracity or contents of Bills C-377 or C-525. There is nothing from the other side about the principles that underlie those legislative changes. Everything is masked as being that it was the approach.
I have been here for a long time, and I have no qualms about letting every member of Parliament in the House table the piece of legislation that he or she deems fit. It is what we are elected to do. We are legislators, first and foremost, and if our ability to bring forward legislation for debate, legislation for amendments, new legislation, or repealing legislation is ever hindered, then we have lost our way as members of Parliament.
I am very saddened to hear members, particularly from the governing party, talk so negatively toward the private members' legislation process. That process is exactly the same as a piece of government legislation through all the steps, save but the amount of time allocated for debate in the House. Everything else is exactly the same. It has to pass at least three votes here in the House of Commons: once at second reading, once at report stage from committee, and once at third reading. It has to go through the full scrutiny at a committee meeting, including clause by clause, line by line on any amendments or changes made to that legislation. As well, it has to go through the exact same process in the Senate, the place down the hall, the other place. To say that Bills C-525 and C-377 are illegitimate actually is an insult to this institution.
Now I would like to talk a bit about public support. My friend from Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan was very eloquent today. Folks watching back home would be surprised to know this, and this is where the misinformation campaign comes from. I have all kinds of people trolling me on Twitter and on Facebook, making all kinds of accusations about what the bill that I put forward in the last Parliament actually did. When I educate them on what the bill does, they find that they have been misled by their union leaders or others who were giving them a misinformation campaign, paid for probably by their own union dues, about what was actually at stake.
We have heard long testimony here and before committee about what the bill was about. It was about democracy. It was about the right to vote. When we asked people through NRG Research Group on behalf of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, 71% of respondents actually agreed. If we look at the Leger poll from 2013, we see that 77% of people polled in a unionized workplace completely agreed with the notion of a mandatory secret ballot. This is not something new. We have been voting in this country since Confederation. This is not a new concept. As a matter of fact, the old legislation before Bill C-525 was passed allowed for the labour relations board, whoever it happened to be, to optionally pursue a vote if the members wanted to. What is wrong with having a mandatory vote? Let us find out what the true sense of the bargaining unit actually is. No one has been able to explain this to me, and I have asked the question.
The argument on the other side is that when people are given a choice to vote, there will be fewer unions. Does that not mean that the process we are currently using does not reflect the actual will of the members of the bargaining unit? Nothing else could possibly explain that departure. How does that happen? Does it happen through intimidation by those conducting the union drive? Does it happen through intimidation by the employer? Would it not be nice, in privacy and confidentiality, to determine one's own fate at one's own workplace on one's own? That is what Bill C-525 does.
Let me go back to other polling information. I can go back to 2012. Leger marketing said that 83% of Albertans agreed that a secret ballot vote was necessary when certifying or decertifying a union. In 2009, Leger found that 71% of Quebeckers supported the provincial government amending its laws to make secret ballot voting mandatory when forming a union. That was in Quebec. Is that not where the Prime Minister is from? In 2008, Sigma Analytics found that 75% of those polled in Saskatchewan supported secret ballot voting. I could go on and on.
Every member of Parliament in the House who votes in favour of Bill C-4 is on the wrong side of the issue. The issue is not whether unions are good or bad. The issue is whether one wants accountability in our country and here in this place. It is the secret ballot vote that keeps me and every other member of Parliament in the House honest and accountable. It is through the debate and discourse we have here in front of all Canadians, with their tax dollars being spent in full and open transparency, that allows them to determine their fate and who should be governing on their behalf.
This is absolutely no different. People should, in this day and age, have the right to determine for themselves, through a secret ballot, whether they want to be members of a bargaining unit. What my bill did was actually create a level playing field. The same bar, 40% of people signing cards, creates a mandatory election. It is a simple majority of votes cast in that particular case.
That means that to create a union in Canada right now, with 100 people in a bargaining unit, only 40 need to sign cards. Hypothetically, of those same 40 who come out for a secret ballot vote, only 21 are required. That means that 21 people, under the current legislation, could actually create a union. This is too onerous? This is too onerous a process for the members of the NDP and the Liberal Party to have a little democracy and let people have a say? That is hogwash. I do not believe that for one second.
I want to go back to what I talked about earlier. It is all about accountability. We see it time and time again here in the House. If we look at where this legislation is coming from, it was not six days after the last general election was over that the Prime Minister sat down in a private closed-door meeting with the biggest union bosses in this country, the Canadian Labour Congress. Lo and behold, just after the ink was dry on the swearing in of the cabinet minister, there was a bill before the House of Commons that would do exactly what the union leaders wanted, union leaders who, by the way, when they testified at committee stage on Bill C-525, actually all said that they would support the notion of a secret ballot vote.
There is a disconnect all right. I will agree with the parliamentary secretary. He is very much disconnected from the reality on the ground.
If people were actually paying attention to what the government is proposing through Bill C-4, they would see what rights would be taken away and what transparency they were not going to have any more on the dues they are paying. As union-dues-paying members, they would be very frustrated.
They have been sold a bill of goods that simply does not add up. Whether it is first nations' financial transparency, which we know is not being enforced by the current administration, whether it Treasury Board rules pertaining to office moves, which is a decision at the discretion of the minister or the Prime Minister, or whether we see it here, Liberal friends are going to do very well over the next three years.
However, ordinary hard-working Canadian taxpayers cannot depend on a Liberal government for transparency and accountability. They are going to have to rely on Conservative MPs for that.