Madam Speaker, I know my friend, the parliamentary secretary for labour, is particularly looking forward to my remarks today. It is great to be back in the House.
Bill C-420 deals with a number of different issues. It is, in a certain sense, an omnibus bill dealing with various aspects of labour relations, and I thank the member for bringing it forward.
I am going to be highlighting a number of the issues in the bill and speaking to them. I will not speak about all of the issues, but I will speak to a few of them, and specifically the issues of preventive withdrawal and the ban on replacement workers.
It might not surprise members to find that the proposed ban on replacement workers is a deal breaker for us. However, there are some interesting ideas in the bill that I will speak to in the area of preventive withdrawal.
Banning replacement workers would have a significant negative impact on the economy, and particularly on remote communities, which rely on the access that small trucking companies, for example, might provide. They would be negatively impacted if there were no recourse that an employer could use in bringing supplies to those communities.
I will speak first to the issue of preventive withdrawal in the bill. This addresses the case of a pregnant woman in the workplace who, concerned about the impact on her health and safety and on the health and safety of her unborn child, wishes to withdraw from her workplace in order to avoid exposures or situations that would cause a health issue for either of them. This issue being explored in Bill C-420 is similar to a discussion that the House had, I believe on an NDP private member's bill, Bill C-345, which only dealt at that time with the issue of preventive withdrawal.
The fundamental issue at play here is that in the province of Quebec, there is the opportunity for women in this situation to access paid leave, but in the rest of the country and in the federal jurisdiction, only unpaid leave is available.
The first step is that a woman in this situation would seek reassignment. If no reassignment were available, then she would leave the workplace. In the provincially regulated area in Quebec, there is an opportunity to access paid leave that does not exist within the federally regulated workplace in Quebec or elsewhere in other jurisdictions in the country. Bill C-345 would have created an opportunity to align the federally regulated rules in the province where the work is taking place with the provincial rules that exist.
At the time of the debate on Bill C-345, Conservatives supported the bill. We share in principle the objective of making sure that women and unborn children have the maximum opportunity to be safe. We recognize the challenging situation that may emerge when people feel there is a risk to their health and safety but have concerns about whether economically they are able to withdraw from the workplace in that situation.
Bill C-345 did not pass because it was opposed by the government. When I spoke to the bill at that time, I mentioned that the bill raised a number of different issues that maybe could have been further discussed and worked out in committee.
There was a question of alignment in general between different jurisdictions. We have a federally regulated and provincially regulated labour force, depending on the sector. This can lead to a situation in which people in the same community are operating under different rules. Some are working in a federally regulated sector and some are working in a provincially regulated sector. That is a reality of the way that the system works, and maybe this causes consternation in cases in which people do not have access to the same opportunities within their communities that others do.
I pointed out at the time, of course, that there are going to be alignment issues either way. If a bill like Bill C-345 had passed, we would have had an alignment issue in which in one province the federally regulated workforce would have been treated differently from the way the federally regulated workforce would have been treated elsewhere.
I argued at the time, and I think it is still the case, that there are other possible ways we need to talk about supporting women in this situation. We would not want people to be in a workplace where their health and safety were threatened, certainly at a time of relative greater physical vulnerability and the vulnerability of a developing child in the womb.
These are issues that require our attention. That is why we supported Bill C-345 at the time. Those provisions are incorporated into Bill C-420. However, we are not supportive of this bill, not because of those provisions but because the issue of the proposed ban on replacement workers really is a deal breaker for us.
There are situations where employers and workers are negotiating and the negotiations break down, and that leads to a strike. Strikes involve costs for everyone involved. They involve costs for workers, who are without the opportunity to work and earn an income for the period of time of the strike. There is a cost for the employer. There is a cost for the public, which is not able, for that period of time, potentially, to access that service or to access it in the same way.
The right to strike certainly is very important. It is fundamental. It is a tool that incentivizes and pushes both sides to dialogue. The way we calibrate the rules around the use of that tool are important to ensure the greatest level of balance and the greatest incentive to dialogue. However, the proposal to completely ban the possibility of using replacement workers in any situation is, from our perspective, too extreme.
Hiring replacement workers, for most employers in most situations, is not an easy thing to do. It is not as if the possibility to do that leads employers, in the vast majority of cases, to be totally casual about the need to come to terms with their workers through good dialogue. However, one can imagine, in the federally regulated sector, a small trucking company, for example, that has contracts and deadlines to meet and is vulnerable to going out of business if there is no alternative in the event of a work stoppage.
With respect to the impact on people who rely on those services, we can imagine a situation where remote communities rely on the work of small trucking companies and small airline companies, the people who are shipping resources in. The lack of any possibility of having replacement workers in any of those situations creates a real vulnerability for those communities in terms of getting essential resources in.
Generally speaking, when we have seen changes to the Canada Labour Code, we have sought to move forward with them in a way that reflects discussion and consensus among the different stakeholders, including the representatives of labour and the representatives of business. This recognizes the reality that there is a need for balance. We cannot, by tipping the pendulum too far the other way, create a significant disincentive around investment. If such a disincentive were created, I am concerned that it would lead to less investment in Canada and less investment in new business. The results of that would be worse for employers as well. When we have strong, growing, thriving businesses, that creates more demand for labour and puts labour in a stronger position.
In my home province of Alberta, we see a situation where the province is really booming. Labour has great opportunity to choose between different employers. Wages go up dramatically, because there is a shortage of labour. Business is demanding labour, which is driven by the strength of that economy. Because of that provision, the Conservatives have to oppose this.
Briefly, on another matter, I want to note that a number of MPs recently spoke to a young man who is on a hunger strike in Toronto to highlight violations of human rights in Turkey, violations in particular that target the Kurdish community. He described the experience of growing up in Turkey, where his ability to live freely and identify as a Kurd was denied to him, and the many problems associated with that. I want to acknowledge that important issue. It is my hope that this hunger strike will now come to an end. We encourage those who have concerns for human rights to fortify their physical strength so they can continue to be a voice for justice on this issue and I hope members will continue to highlight these human rights violations targeting Kurds and others in Turkey.