Mr. Speaker, we were also elected to make life better for middle-class Canadians, including owners of small and medium-sized businesses and workers all across Canada. With this time of year being the busiest retail season, Canadians need to be able to count on Canada Post to deliver the goods Canadians and businesses need.
Let me tell the House about Maureen Lyons, the owner of Mo McQueen and Sons, in Winnipeg. She is a stay-at-home mom with four children and a health disability. Here is what she had to say about the labour disruption:
If by the end of the week, by some miracle, things could resume or at least the shopping public’s faith in the system of delivery could be restored, I think it would help a great deal.
We are as grassroots as it gets. I don't make a ton of money as it is. It is so frustrating. We're the little guys. And I'm not just a seller.... I'm also trying to find things for my own children for Christmas that I can't get.
The Minister of Public Services and Procurement and I have been in touch with the parties directly on numerous occasions to urge them to continue to work towards reaching agreements. Despite all the efforts I listed yesterday, the two parties remain unable to find common ground on a number of outstanding issues related to wages, job security and workload.
With more than 200 communities across the country directly impacted by the strikes, we cannot afford to wait any longer. I will repeat: Our government does not take back-to-work legislation lightly. This is the first time our government is using this tool, and we believe it should only be used as a last resort. That belief has not changed for me personally or for our government. However, having exhausted all other possibilities, we believe it is the only remaining option.
This is about protecting the public interest and avoiding further harm to Canadian businesses and communities, and indeed Canadians who rely on Canada Post. Older Canadians, persons with disabilities, low-income earners and Canadians living in rural, remote and northern areas who rely on physical mail delivery, including indigenous peoples in some of the most remote communities in our country, are disproportionately affected when their access to physical mail delivery is disrupted.
The cost of postal alternatives, such as courier companies, can be prohibitively high, especially in rural and remote communities. In some remote northern areas, there are no alternatives. Canadians in the north are twice as reliant on parcel delivery services as the rest of Canadians.
Stephanie Destree of The Silk Road Spice Merchant, in Calgary, says, “Sometimes we ship to more rural places, so we go with Canada Post. We are finding delays when we use Canada Post, and sometimes up to three weeks of delays.”
A Toronto Star reader sent the following letter to the editor:
While mail disruption is an inconvenience to many of us living in Canada, it is an impossible situation for those in remote fly-in communities in Northern Canada.
Unlike other Canadians who have options of private courier services, those living in these regions must rely on Canada Post for all of their deliveries.
Through a newly formed non-profit organization...I am personally involved in sending much-needed food to shelters and soup kitchens; warm clothing to the homeless, poor and elderly; school supplies and food to daycares and schools in both Nunavut and the Northwest Territories....
For many of these children, these will be the only gifts they receive this year.
The postal strike has played havoc with our efforts to get these gifts to the children in time for Christmas. Besides the time delays and uncertainty of delivery, there is an added expense of about $1,000 to upgrade our service level to Express Post in the hopes these parcels will receive faster service when the strike action rotates.
Weather is always a concern in the winter in getting parcels to the North in a timely manner but the strikes have made it an incredibly difficult and expensive challenge.
That was from Beverley Mitchell in Toronto.
Nearly nine million Canadians, about 30% of our population, live in rural and remote areas, where access to the Internet can be extremely limited. Today is Black Friday, and so many businesses depend on their sales today and through to the end of the holiday season to survive. This has real human impacts. Small business owners are our neighbours, and they are also significant employers in our country. We are looking at job losses and lower hours at a time of year when so many families are already over-extended.
Jim Danahy, CEO of Customer Lab, says:
We have Indigenous population in very small and sometimes isolated communities that you can only reach by water or by air. So, in those cases, the local economies can be hit quite significantly.
At the same time, our reputation as a reliable market for commerce and trade is at risk, because international partners are not able to ship mail and parcel shipments on to Canada Post. I spoke yesterday about small e-sellers whose razor-thin margins leave many of them unable to afford the higher cost of shipping through courier companies. In the event of a lengthy postal strike, many companies, particularly smaller e-commerce companies, may not make it through the season. Forty percent of online sales take place in the fourth quarter, which the strike is currently impacting.
Canadians expect us to act. We have done everything we could, and this is a last resort. That is why we are introducing this legislation, which I will take a few minutes to explain.
The legislation we are introducing today would order an immediate end to the worker stoppages and the resumption and continuation of postal services at noon EST on the day after the day on which it receives royal assent. The most recent collective agreements will be extended until new collective agreements are established.
To help the parties find common ground on outstanding issues, an impartial mediator-arbitrator will be appointed. The parties will have an opportunity to choose the mediator-arbitrator, and within 48 hours of coming into force of the bill, the parties will need to provide me with names of three persons to serve as the mediator-arbitrator. If the parties fail to propose the same person, one will be appointed from this list, taking into consideration advice from the chairperson of the Canada Industrial Relations Board. This is to ensure the impartiality of the individual who will be chosen.
The legislation would provide for the mediator-arbitrator to resolve all outstanding issues through mediation, or if mediation fails on particular issues, arbitrate them through an arbitration model of his or her choice based on guiding principles. The mediator-arbitrator will have seven days to mediate all outstanding issues between the parties, which can be extended to a maximum of 14 days if the parties consent. If the parties fail to reach agreements within the mediation period, the mediator-arbitrator must arbitrate all outstanding issues within 90 days of his or her appointment.
I will now talk about the principles that will guide the mediator-arbitrator's decisions. These have been crafted carefully to provide a balance to the mediator-arbitrator and take into consideration the concerns that we have heard throughout the negotiating process. They are: to ensure the health and safety of all employees; to ensure the fair treatment of temporary, part-time and other employees in non-standard employment as compared to full-time, permanent employees; to ensure the long-term financial sustainability of Canada Post; to create a culture of collaborative labour-management relations; and for high-quality service to be provided by Canada Post at a reasonable price to Canadians. The union and Canada Post can reach a voluntary agreement at any time before the mediator-arbitrator submits his or her final report to me, which would end the mediation-arbitration process.
I believe that we have taken the steps to ensure that everything possible has been done and is done through this proposed legislation to encourage the parties to reach agreement fairly and swiftly while in the meantime ensure services at Canada Post resume, preventing further harm. That is why I urge all of my hon. colleagues to vote in support of this legislation.
I reiterate that our government does not take this legislation lightly. We have worked hard to restore fairness and balance to the labour landscape in Canada since coming into office. Through Bill C-4, our government's first piece of legislation and our first official act in Parliament, we repealed two private members' bills that undermined unions; one that imposed excessive reporting requirements on unions, and a second that made it harder for workers to unionize. Since then, we have introduced legislation and programs that improve the lives of Canadian workers and strengthen the labour movement.
As I mentioned before, we did not intervene early, because we believe in the collective bargaining process. We believe that the collective bargaining process results in the best outcomes: strong agreements and a positive workplace culture. However, we also have a responsibility to Canadians and to the businesses that drive our economy, and when the consequences of a work stoppage become so great that they begin to result in serious and, if left unchecked, lasting harm, we have to act.
We will continue to support the parties through every means possible, as we have done from the very beginning. We strongly encourage them to reach agreements as soon as possible, and we will continue to provide the parties with the tools they need to do so.
As I said earlier, the best agreements are always the ones that parties arrive at themselves. This proposed legislation allows the parties to reach a voluntary agreement at any time before the mediator-arbitrator submits his or her final report to the minister, which would end the mediator-arbitrator process.
We are in no way legislating an agreement. This legislation is about ensuring the process exists to find one. The well-being of Canadians and the viability of many Canadian businesses depend on a speedy resolution. I urge everyone in this House to support this legislation so we can make that happen as quickly as possible. Canadians are counting on us.