Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise to follow up on some matters I raised in question period last fall. At that time there was a rotating strike by CUPW members at Canada Post. In the context of that rotating strike, and this was prior to back-to-work legislation being introduced and passed, Canada Post made a mean-spirited decision.
Workers were out on the rotating strike, which meant they were missing a few days in month they were on strike. They were being paid for the days they worked, but members who were not working, those who were on short-term disability, were deprived of their benefits. It was a mean-spirited decision taken by Canada Post. It was a tactic, and an ugly tactic at that, to try to put pressure on the union.
I am wondering how many postal workers showed up to work on the Liberals' campaigns. I know a lot of postal workers worked on the campaigns of Liberal MPs. They believed what the Liberals were telling them, that they had their backs. They were very disappointed when this all came to a head. They were not impressed with the back-to-work legislation. However, it was the Liberal government's prerogative to tell Canada Post to cease and desist on that decision, which it could have chosen not to take.
Canada Post could have chosen to continue on with the short-term disability benefit payments as well, not just on a case-by-case basis and not on a compassionate basis. When someone is sick or injured, he or she is already dealing with a substantial amount of stress and financial hardship. These workers had been on a reduced salary and now they did not collect a salary while applying for those compassionate grounds.
Canada Post did not have to do it that way. It could have said that as a matter of policy, it would continue to pay those short-term disability benefits. The fact that it chose not to do meant that those people who were already sick and injured had to suffer having no salary, while their colleagues who were able to work, and because it was not a full strike, were still largely getting paid.
I never did get a satisfactory answer from the government on why it did not choose the high road and decide to continue to make those short-term disability payments as a matter of course instead of on an exceptional basis for only some of the people who needed those benefits. I wonder what government members say to those postal workers in their ridings, those who came out and campaigned for them in 2015, when they express disappointment and anger at the fact that their sick and injured co-workers had to go without that money.
The other thing the Liberals could have done was to make those workers whole after they legislated them back to work and they did not do that either. We still want to know why.