Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague will know that we disagree pretty seriously about the way the government chose to handle that particular strike, but my question today is very specific. It has to do with the workers on short-term disability who had their benefits cut off for five weeks without any reprieve, break or anything else.
The fact of the matter is that the government did have the power to intervene to tell Canada Post the truth, which was that this was an underhanded bargaining technique. The government is ultimately responsible for that. That is on the government for not having done anything about it.
We still have not heard a justification for it. We have heard excuses. We have heard diversions, such as, “Well, they could have applied for EI” or “Well, you know, there was a compassionate program where we cut them off their benefits and then let them reapply later and we said yes to some and no to others.” None of those answers cut it.
This is another opportunity for somebody from the government to get up and explain why it was that it stood by for five weeks while vulnerable workers did not receive their short-term disability payments. Why was that?