Mr. Speaker, it will be my pleasure to split my time with my good friend from Saskatoon West this evening.
It is a remarkable debate for me to attend and listen to the arguments being put forward by the Liberals and hearing my Conservative colleagues talk about the past experience over the same issue. It is Groundhog Day again. Mr. Speaker, I believe you were with us here in the chamber as well the last time this happened, when Canada Post workers were forced back to work by the Parliament of Canada. It is a pretty heavy force. If one is a worker or a union, it is the Parliament of Canada that can intervene, with all these powerful people and the Prime Minister invoking a contract or invoking a path forward.
In the last government, let us face it, the Conservatives and Mr. Harper were not elected primarily on their strong defence of union rights in Canada or the notion of collective bargaining. They did not campaign on it, they did not promise it and they did not really do much about supporting collective rights in Canada for working people. After the 2015 election, we could understand why working people and the labour movement were quite encouraged, because they had so much encouragement from the then candidate, now Prime Minister, the member for Papineau, that if the Liberals got in things would be dramatically different. On the surface, Harper versus the Liberal leader sure looked and sounded different. However, what is important to understand is how it affects people's lives.
Let us go back to what happened to Canada Post workers before. They were in the midst of negotiations and the government of the day, the Harper government, let it be known to management that it was prepared to move back-to-work legislation forward through the House of Commons to essentially impose a contract. As has been said a few times in this chamber, the then government allowed Parliament to talk about it without invoking closure on the debate itself, which unfortunately the Liberals have done. Moving forward, Canada Post workers and workers in general would have thought that the Liberals were not going to do the same thing. However, they did exactly the same thing just a few weeks ago. The Prime Minister and the Minister of Labour got up publicly and said they were prepared to do whatever it takes, including all options on the table, including what we see here tonight, which is to force a position on the working people, removing all incentive from the employer to bargain.
Let us look at that for a moment. When that incentive is removed, when the employer knows that the government is going to invoke back-to-work legislation, the possibility of what we call free and fair collective bargaining is gone. There is no incentive anymore for the employer to work out the things that it needs to work out with its employees.
When we go back to what happened in 2011, a contract was imposed. It turned out that the contract, and the process that was used, was unconstitutional and thrown out of court. That took four years. Therefore, Canada Post workers were very much looking forward to this round of negotiations, because the last round went so sideways, to work out some of the significant problems they had with their contract, the one that had been imposed on them.
One of the significant pieces we have been hearing from postal workers in our riding, and I hope the Liberal members have been listening to this, is around health and safety. Canada Post workers, carriers in particular, are experiencing five times the injury rate of other federally regulated workers. Everybody wants a good postal service for our small businesses, for families sending letters back and forth and with Christmas coming. One of the ways to have a good postal service is to make sure your workers are not being injured at a rate five times higher than the equivalent. Would that not be a good thing to negotiate at the table, to fix after it has not been fixed for the last seven years?
The Liberals indicated to the management at Canada Post, “Don't worry, guys, we've got your back. You don't have to figure out how to make working conditions better. You don't have to figure out how to make sure that people aren't forced into mandatory overtime and late-night deliveries in the middle of winter that they simply can't say no to without being suspended or potentially fired.” We should collectively as a Parliament care about all those things. What is amazing is this. It must have been in the Liberals' notes, because each one rose to give their speech and said, “I regret this”, “I feel regret.” It was repeated over and over again. Maybe they all spontaneously had the exact same motion. I am going to suspect they were told that they had to say these two things, that they have great regret and that they support collective bargaining. It is a strange thing to say, “I support collective bargaining”, in the middle of a debate in which collective bargaining is being removed.
It is a bit ironic, maybe contradictory. The process we are under right now is the nuclear option for Parliament, that once the bill itself comes forward, there is no room for debate anymore.
The clock starts and the clock is over. This evening, this House will introduce a law, and two and a half, three hours later will have passed the law at first, second and third reading, and will have passed it out of this place.
It is incredibly rare that that ever happens, and the only time I have ever seen it happen properly is when the entire House agrees. In this case, that is clearly not true. What the Liberals are doing is imposing the nuclear option of shutting down every stage of debate, ordering the House to go through the stages without any discussion. That prohibits us from doing our central job, which is to hear from each other, debate the issues and maybe, shockingly, have our minds changed by what we hear.
However, the process that the Liberals have laid out makes Parliament's job impossible. It is impossible for us to do what we are supposed to do on behalf of the people who sent us here, which is to, consciously and with the best available intelligence we have, understand the issues facing the country, debate them, listen to the other side and come to some form of resolution.
This is the opposite of what is happening here tonight. The Liberals have said, “We will impose the will of a majority government. We will impose our will upon this place, and thereby impose our will upon the 40,000 or 50,000 workers at Canada Post.”
Unions have been taking a beating, in terms of reputation over the last several years, maybe even further back. It is important to recognize what has been accomplished, that some of the fights that unions and working people have engaged in have not benefited just unions but have benefited all working Canadians.
The idea of a proper length of working week, the idea of maternity leave, the idea of employment insurance and the idea of some sort of social safety net for when people fall on hard times, much of that was fought for with blood, sweat and tears by the labour movement. It is not just opportunities that only people associated with the labour community enjoy, but all working Canadians can now enjoy.
Rights are not one of these things that we get to win once; we have keep winning them over and over again. One of the rights that was fought for and constitutionally protected is the right to negotiate, the right to engage with employers over working conditions, salary, overtime, the safety that happens at work, the ability to not be fired because of a complaint or the raising of a concern, to not be fired because a boss sexually harasses someone and they resisted. All of those rights are fought for and won at the table where there is negotiation, where a little is given and a little is taken.
The union attempted to do that here, and it was undermined. I use that word very specifically. If we listen to the Liberals, they talk about this sudden crisis that is just crushing the Canadian economy and about how this rotating strike was threatening Canada's reputation as a trading nation, about how it is all crumbling down with a five-week partially rotating strike on communities, where the backlog that has been reported will take two days to clear up.
My goodness, what an economic crisis that the government must be seized with. It must shut down debate in Parliament and force the union back into a position where it has virtually no power. That is the crisis.
I heard the Minister of Labour say yesterday that people's welfare cheques and employment insurance cheques were being held up because of this crisis. Then we find out that the union had actually gone to management and said, “Let us make sure that these important cheques get to people who need them.” Management said, “No. Oh no, no, let us hold those back.” It did this because it needed to manufacture that sense of crisis that working and poor Canadians would not get critical money they needed to stay alive.
That was manufactured, and the Liberals bought into it. They cannot have their eyes closed to this. They are not stupid. They know this is going on right now.
What is frustrating for me is that in the state of politics in the world today, cynicism grows quickly. One of the things that working people felt they had with the government was an ally. The government did some things on some legislation that revoked what the Harper administration had done. Let us give credit where credit is due.
However, when push came to shove, rather than saying to the management at Canada Post, “Sit down. Negotiate a fair wage and safe working conditions, so we have the best postal service for all Canadians to enjoy”, rather than do that, the Liberals gave them the wink and the nod and said, “Do not worry. You do not have to negotiate, you do not have to move forward. Just like in the past, we have a bill ready that will simply invoke a process upon the union, and management will not have to negotiate.”
This is a constitutionally protected right. This legislation that the Liberals are moving through will be challenged, and I believed successfully challenged, in court. It is a shame that it has come to this under the government.