Mr. Speaker, the NDP will support the spirit and principle of Bill C-65, a bill that every party had a hand in. It was an onerous task that required a lot of extra hours in committee. We could have spent those hours in our ridings, but we spent them here in Ottawa working on Bill C-65.
There is something that I would like to address. I am not sure whether it is a misunderstanding or a matter of stubbornness, but in the bill the Liberals completely excluded the joint workplace health and safety committees from the complaint and investigative processes. Several witnesses, including representatives from unions and law firms, told us that it was important to maintain the joint workplace safety committees. They even offered a logical solution. They argued that confidentiality would be breached upon the filing of a complaint of abuse, harassment, or sexual harassment or during an investigation. They also floated the idea of creating a code of ethics in order to truly ensure victims' confidentiality.
I would like to know why the government insisted on completely eliminating from the Canada Labour Code the interaction with the joint workplace health and safety committees, thereby shutting them out of the complaint and investigative processes.