Mr. Speaker, the reality is that RCMP management needs to consider thoughtfully a number of issues that ensure the safety of Canadians. What the government is proposing is absolutely consistent with what it believes about collective bargaining. With collective bargaining, it is very important to ensure that everything is on the table that needs to be there, so the number of exclusions in the initial draft of the bill has been reduced to zero.
I am very pleased that the government is accepting the proposal from the other place that would ensure RCMP members have every opportunity to express themselves and negotiate issues of harassment, of appraisal, of relocation. These are the kinds of things they were asking for, and that is consistent with evidence we heard at committee.
The committee also heard that for effective functioning, for the proper appropriation of the authority given to the commissioner of RCMP, management needs to reserve rights to ensure they can target and appropriately use their authority under the legislation given to them by Parliament to ensure that Canadians are safe and that the operations of the RCMP are not limited.
RCMP officers face different challenges in different parts of the country. As a long-time resident of Yukon, which is M Division, I worked closely with the RCMP there. The reality is that some things are different in Yukon from what they are in other parts of Canada. Other places where a force is contracted to a province are different from the places where the RCMP is a national police force. The RCMP commissioner and the new commissioner who will be appointed sometime in the near future need to have that authority so that Canadians can rest assured that the operations of the RCMP are effective and safe.