Mr. Speaker, what I heard in my riding and from the labour movement was that this was a way of union busting. It was basically to get back at the unions for something they believed strongly in: protecting the rights of workers.
A lot of people have come out with suggestions that the Harper government did this on purpose to make it very costly for unions to report their income to their union members, something they do already. It is not only to the members. Each union has what it calls trustees who actually look at the books on a quarterly basis and report back to their unions, to the membership, about what money is being spent.
There is nothing here to hide. We do not know why the government did this. It certainly looked like it was to get back at the unions.