Mr. Speaker, I am upset. I cannot believe that this government has issued formal notice this past Sunday on its intention to force through expedited legislation to force the workers at the Port of Montreal back to work before they even begin to strike.
The motion before us is an act to provide for the resumption and continuation of operations at the Port of Montreal. This back-to-work legislation would force workers back to work who had just commenced their general strike on Monday. As if it is not enough that this government is using back-to-work legislation, it is attempting to ram it through. The motion states that if the bill is adopted here at second reading, it shall be deemed as passed at all stages in the House.
As background on this, CUPE 375 represents 1,100 employees, and those employees are working for several different employers in the Port of Montreal who are represented by the Maritime Employers Association. Negotiations have been ongoing now for about three years to obtain a new collective agreement. From the employees' perspective, the objective of these negotiations is an improvement of working conditions, what I would call work-life balance, particularly in terms of working hours, the right to disconnect and job security for new workers. The previous collective agreement for these workers expired in 2018.
Fast-forward to April of this year. After good-faith negotiations on behalf of the workers, the employer undermined the negotiation process by suspending the job security regime provided for in the collective agreement. Despite the fact that negotiations were continuing, and both sides were seemingly happy with the mediation process, the employer decided to give a 72-hour notice of its intention to not honour job security provisions in the collective agreement. In response, the union launched a partial strike, particularly because the Maritime Employers Association abolished the job security regime, which was acquired in 1970 and constitutes a pillar of their collective agreement.
The union made it clear that the workers would not strike if the employer reverted back to the working conditions applicable before April 10, 2021. The union gave the employer the opportunity to bring down the temperature, stop the pressure tactics and come back to the table to continue negotiating in good faith.
However, instead of respecting the workers' right to free collective bargaining, the Liberal government is introducing a bill that would force employees on strike back to work. From then on, the employer no longer has any incentive to negotiate in good faith, because the government has just sent the signal that negotiations are coming to an end.
The NDP has always defended the interest of unions and workers, and the Liberal government's back-to-work act is a serious denial of the right to strike. On January 30, 2015, the Supreme Court of Canada released a landmark labour law decision in Saskatchewan Federation of Labour v. Saskatchewan. The Supreme Court ruled and concluded that the right to strike is a constitutional right.
The minister, on Sunday, said on Twitter that “...a work stoppage is causing significant economic harm to Canadians.” It is very important to note that the general strike had not yet commenced. It was not until 7 a.m. the next day that the workers walked off the job. Now, I suppose the minister could have been referring to the action taken by the union to refuse overtime and weekend work, which was in response to the notice of suspending the job security provisions.
The first thing I would like to say about the impact of the refusal to work overtime and weekends in this general strike is that there will undoubtedly be disruptions. This is the very nature of how strikes work. For a government that proclaimed itself as being friends of labour, I would expect it to understand this. If governments applied back-to-work legislation every time a workplace went on strike, there would be no strikes. This kind of attempt at justification leads to a clear and sweeping disregard for the right that all workers are supposed to be afforded under the charter.
Second, if the Minister of Labour feels that she is in some sort of unprecedented situation where the impacts of a disruption would be so severe that she has to remove a charter right for strikes, then I would expect that she would have the data to back it up. For a government that says it believes in science and repeatedly talks about an evidence-based decision-making approach, I would surely hope that the minister had data and objective impact assessments before her when she deliberated on whether she would pre-emptively give notice for back-to-work legislation before these workers started their general strike.
I think, given the importance of this debate, all members should be afforded the data and information the minister had before she brought forward this motion and bill. I would ask that the minister table here in the House all the data and information she received before taking the significant step of fast-tracking back-to-work legislation, as part of an attempt to provide what I have heard the minister of fearmongering refer to as medicine and personal protective equipment that will not be able to get through. Again, if she has specific information to corroborate this, she can please share it with the House.
The minister, just one day after the general strike commenced, said, “The work stoppage we are seeing right now is causing harm.” She did not go on to cite any data whatsoever to support that claim. How could the government have collected data on the impacts the day after the strike started? This is one of many illustrations of the government trying to rationalize with speculations in order to explain away a decision to introduce this back-to-work legislation long after the decision has been made.
I also want to talk about what the Conservatives are saying in the chamber. The following is a quote from the member for Louis-Saint-Laurent:
It is not a victory for workers, for the employer, or for the business people and companies dealing with the problems resulting from the dispute, and it is certainly not a victory for parliamentarians.
It is important for Canadians to know the Conservatives appear to be planning to become complicit in this whole affair. They have made it very clear that they will be supporting this legislation.
I am happy to see the Bloc will not be supporting this legislation now, and it is in line with what I am saying: that the minister is fearmongering. My Bloc colleague from Thérèse-De Blainville called out the minister with the following:
The minister was saying that drugs will not get delivered. That is not true and it ignores the facts, because essential services are still being provided. All medical equipment...[is] being handled.
I have some understanding that if the minister believes otherwise, she should provide any related data or facts to the House.
I want to go on. I could go on forever about this, but I want to make an amendment.
I move:
That the motion be amended by replacing paragraph (d) with the following:
(d) if the bill is adopted at the second reading stage, it shall be deemed referred to a committee of the whole, deemed considered in committee of the whole, deemed reported with the following amendment:
That Bill C-29, in Clause 11, be amended
(a) by replacing line 39 on page 4 to line 10 on page 5 with the following: “such matter, hear the parties on the matter, arbitrate the matter and render a decision in respect of the matter; and”;
(b) by deleting lines 15 to 17 on page 5; and
(c) by replacing lines 25 to 36 on page 5 with the following: “(4) every decision of the mediator-arbitrator under paragraph (1)(b) must be worded in appropriate contractual language so as to allow its incorporation into a new collective agreement.”
that this be deemed concurred in at report stage as amended, and be deemed read a third time and passed.