Mr. Speaker, we just heard a member of the House of Commons say that the right to vote is an attack on democracy. She said that giving workers the right to vote will allow them to be intimidated.
What she should learn about the right to vote is that if executed properly, it happens through a secret ballot, which means neither the employer nor the would-be union would know how the worker voted. Therefore, it would be impossible for the worker to be intimidated. In fact, that is how elections work. That is how all of us were elected. No member of this House can intimidate a voter, because none of us actually knows for sure how an individual voted. A person walking into a voting booth does so in privacy. The previous government enshrined this principle in the Canada Labour Code to allow workers the same democratic protections.
If the member is so worried about employers intimidating workers, why does she not allow those workers to make their decisions in private, out of view, without the employer looking over the shoulder of the worker, the same way every other democratic country in the world operates? Could it be that her party and the party across the way want to give interest groups the ability to look over the shoulders of workers when they are deciding whether or not they want to vote?
The member said, as the government has, that there was no tripartite consultation when we gave workers the right to vote, tripartite being government, business, and unions. Those are the last three powers that should be consulted, because this is about workers' rights, not the rights of big government, big business, and big unions. It is the right of everyday workers to chart their own course, mark their own destiny, and make their own decisions without intimidation from any of those three powers.