Mr. Speaker, I am really glad to finally get a chance to weigh in again on the Bill C-7 debate. It has been a very long wait, so it is good to see that the process is back in action.
As I mentioned in some of my questions previously on this bill, it is a bit of a mystery to me, given the content of the government's opinion with respect to the amendments coming from the other place, why it essentially took 11 months to get back to this place, particularly when previously, in the debate last spring, the government was very anxious to move the bill through the House.
At that time, the government made arguments essentially to the effect that the sky would fall if we did not get these amendments in place. Of course, we know now that the sky did not fall. What did happen was that it created a significant period, still ongoing, of legal uncertainty for prospective bargaining agents. That has made it very difficult for them to be able to organize properly.
We are now in a situation, as of the beginning of April, where there are two applicant now, one to represent RCMP members across the country, which would be consistent with what is in Bill C-7, but because Bill C-7 is not law, and again I repeat that is due to delays on the government's part, having had amendments from the other place as early as June 21 of last year, there is also an application from an association to represent members from Quebec alone. If Bill C-7 passes in its current form, that would not be allowed.
Because of dithering on the Liberal side with respect to getting this done, and the companion legislation Bill C-4 as well, which gets rid of some bills from the previous Parliament affecting certification and decertification of unions, we are now in a real mess.
I think the government risks the perception, at least, of interfering in an ongoing certification process, because it is now trying to advance legislation which, had it passed earlier, there would be no question about it and there would be no problem. Now, because there is an application for regional representation within the RCMP, the government may be perceived by some as taking sides as to which organization should represent members in Quebec or any other region of the province that has an organization apply to represent either members of a certain province or certain region in the meantime.
That is why it was really important, as the government itself argued last spring, to get this legislation through. That is why we in the NDP were happy to help move that legislation through and work with the government to meet its timeline, while nevertheless improving the legislation, for instance, by taking out the needless and prejudicial exclusions on bargaining that were included in the original part of the legislation, and which the other place saw fit to remove.
Now the government is indicating that maybe it thinks it is not a bad idea to get rid of those, although it is replacing them with some other language. As the member for Brandon—Souris indicated, we only saw notice of that motion yesterday late in the evening. It is early to try to provide detailed comment on that.
Mr. Speaker, I will resume my comments on Tuesday, when hopefully I will have been able to take the time to examine the response in more detail.