Debates of Oct. 7th, 2026

Electoral Integrity and the Alberta Referendum

[The Speaker, Francis Scarpaleggia]

I wish to inform the House that I have received notice of a request for an emergency debate from the hon. member for Edmonton Strathcona. I invite the hon. member to rise and make a brief intervention.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Mr. Speaker, once again, I urge you, I implore you, to consider my request for an emergency debate within the House of Commons.

There are new revelations today that warrant this request. The Alberta referendum is quickly devolving into a crisis on multiple fronts. The integrity of the elections process is in question. Foreign interference in our democracy, allegations of illegal collusion by separatists and a potential national unity crisis are looming on the horizon. This is happening right now.

This morning The Canadian Press revealed that with less than two weeks to go until Alberta's referendum, more than 3,000 mail-in ballots have been returned with errors that make them invalid.

We have been warning for months that Elections Alberta is underfunded and does not have the needed staff to process ballot packages or to count the votes. The new, complicated voting process introduced by Danielle Smith's government has created enormous accessibility barriers to voters.

This is a scandal, and this is on top of the reports this weekend detailing the extent of collaboration between Alberta separatists and Republican operatives in the United States. This is not a provincial matter. It is a very serious threat to Canada's democracy and national unity.

The Alberta Information and Privacy Commissioner, Diane McLeod, called the leak of Alberta's private data “the worst [data] breach in Canadian history” and said her office was flooded with calls and emails from Albertans concerned for their safety.

My constituency office has been inundated with calls from Albertans concerned about the process, including seniors who have learned there are no polling stations inside seniors residences, which means many seniors in Alberta will not be able to vote because they cannot wait hours in line.

Alberta's referendum is failing every single democratic test we have.

Today's news raises serious questions. Can Albertans trust that their votes will be counted? Can they trust that the process and the outcomes have not been influenced by foreign actors? Parliamentarians need the opportunity to ask the federal government what it is doing to ensure the electoral integrity of this.

As a member of an unrecognized party, I do not have the ability to raise these issues in committee. This is my only opportunity to ask questions of the government regarding its responses. The Alberta civilians, the Canadian citizens, I represent deserve those answers.

Mr. Speaker, I am asking you today to let us ask the important questions and demand transparency and security from the federal government as Albertans question whether their votes are safe, whether their data is safe and whether we are headed to a national unity crisis.

Speaker's Ruling

[The Speaker, Francis Scarpaleggia]

I thank the hon. member for Edmonton Strathcona for her intervention, but I am not satisfied that this request meets the requirements of the Standing Orders.

The House resumed from October 6 consideration of the motion that Bill C‑39, An Act respecting certain measures to strengthen the economy, be read the second time and referred to a committee, and of the motion that this question be now put.

Building Canada Strong Act

[Sophie Chatel, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Veterans Affairs and Associate Minister of National Defence]

Mr. Speaker, I rise in the House today to speak to Bill C‑39, the building Canada strong act. It contains important legislative changes that are part of our government's effort to protect Canada's economic future by reducing red tape across the supply chain, including in transportation.

Last year, our government passed the Building Canada Act, which dramatically expedited projects of national interest, removed internal trade barriers and ensured labour mobility. Over the past few months, we have worked diligently to ensure that the review of all projects, not just those previously covered by Bill C‑5, will be approve within a time frame that meets Canadians' expectations. They expect their government to be efficient, and Bill C‑39 gives them a reasonable one-year timeline. A year to get a project approved is plenty.

These days, with our economy facing headwinds, we have to be efficient. We want to streamline government procedures and ensure that guardrails are in place when we accelerate project reviews and lower costs. We know that every delay in the approval process and every duplicate decision comes at a high cost to our businesses, and in the present circumstances, their patience is wearing thin.

Obviously, the global economic environment we face is different than the one we knew following the post-Cold War era. For a long time, our economy had the wind in its sails. Conditions with our southern neighbours were extremely steady. Access to the U.S. market was also freer within the North American trade environment, and the rules were understood and obeyed. Unfortunately, our businesses no longer operate in this environment. It is therefore absolutely essential that we act now through what remains within our control. Obviously, we have no control over what happens south of the border, but we can control what happens here, at home. We have long been told that we must become efficient.

We have talked a lot about our supply chains. Unfortunately, our neighbours to the south are using our supply chains as tools of coercion and turning our economic dependencies into a strategic vulnerability. In this rapidly changing world, our new Government of Canada is focusing, as I said earlier, on what we can control, including diversifying our markets to build a much stronger Canada. Transportation is a vital link between all of our other priorities. We cannot diversify our markets and trade to build the strongest economy in the G7 without strengthening our transportation network. By strengthening it, we will, of course, strengthen our competitiveness across all sectors.

We are going to build Canada strong through Canada's trade corridors that connect our Canadian businesses to markets and supply chains across the country and around the world. Indigenous peoples, transportation industry representatives and Canadians often tell us that to build stronger, more efficient and more resilient supply chains, we need to cut red tape, strengthen supply chains, accelerate infrastructure development and attract the investments needed to grow our economy.

At the end of the day, when our businesses are doing well and are no longer facing unnecessary barriers, job creation matters in Canada. Affordability always starts with a good, well-paying job.

Red tape and an insufficiently competitive tax system hinder our businesses' innovation and productivity. With this bill, we want to modernize our business environment and make Canada one of the best countries in the world in which to invest. This needs to be addressed urgently. Yes, we have challenges, but we also have opportunities. If we want to seize those opportunities, we obviously need a regulatory framework that allows us to do so. That is why we are modernizing the rules for getting projects built and making real investments in the infrastructure Canada needs to compete in this new environment.

That does not mean that we do not want to put protections in place. Canadians are asking us to build fast, create jobs, support our economy and build Canada strong, but we must also protect them. They are not asking us for one or the other; they are asking us for both. This bill is in line with the regulatory framework we are already operating under.

I just mentioned red tape. Federal departments and agencies have identified more than 500 recent initiatives and proposed measures to reduce the administrative burden.

This bill therefore allows our federal agencies to begin implementing some of those initiatives. This will demonstrate how Canada intends to fulfill its commitments to remove the barriers that slow private investment, limit trade and labour mobility, and of course, restrict business productivity.

We have made strategic, and indeed historic, investments to build Canada strong. We have introduced a number of strategies and made historic investments, as I just said. If we do not address persistent constraints, such as the administrative burden and the transportation system, we cannot maximize Canadians' investment in their economy. We need to maximize the return on every dollar Canadians invest in their economy. That is what we are doing with this bill, which is essential to making every dollar more productive.

Since I am running out of time, I want to get right to the issue of farmers. I am member from the Outaouais, which is a very prosperous region. We have corn, soybean and canola farmers, for example, who are among the most competitive in the world, but they have to be able to get their grain, soybeans or canola to international markets. This bill will ensure that our roads are efficient, our rail system is reliable and our ports are able to quickly process essential goods.

Every link in the chain is important, and when one of them is slowing things down, costs increase and our farmers' competitiveness decreases. Investing in transportation infrastructure is a direct investment in the competitiveness of our farmers.

In addition to agriculture, Pontiac—Kitigan Zibi also has a large number of food processors, people in the agri-food sector as well as in the technology and manufacturing sectors. That is important. We want to diversify our markets and provide opportunities for the people in these sectors, but again we need solid and effective infrastructure.

In closing, I would just like to add that the digitalization of all of the documents that must be submitted to the various government departments to send goods to the international market is crucial. The digitalization of documents is an important part of this bill.

[Alexis Deschênes, Bloc, Gaspésie—Les Îles-de-la-Madeleine—Listuguj, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her contribution to this important debate.

Yesterday, there was a lot of discussion about creating regions of national interest. One of the government's responses is that there are a dozen laws and seven regulations, that authorizations are deemed to have been granted in those regions, and that a regional assessment will take place. If we dig a little deeper, we see that this regional assessment process already exists, but it is really not the same kind of thing as an impact assessment.

Can my colleague tell me, before the regions of national interest are defined, what the regional assessment will cover? Will an analysis be done for each of the laws that will then be set aside?

[Sophie Chatel, Liberal, Pontiac—Kitigan Zibi, QC]

Mr. Speaker, choosing a region does not necessarily mean changing all the laws that apply to it. The important thing in choosing a region is to truly recognize that there is a critical activity in the sector and that all departments must work together. The purpose of this bill is really to have one submission, one project and one decision in one year. We do not want to duplicate the various decisions. We really want things to be as efficient as possible in a given geographic area.

Furthermore, it will not necessarily work on a project-by-project basis. When an area is identified, it really means that a number of projects are related and that they must be considered together.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, about 18 months ago, the government introduced the One Canadian Economy Act, Bill C-5. Since then, a whole slew of bureaucratic offices and agencies have been opened up by the government. Today we are debating Bill C-39, promising more and more of the same.

I wonder if the member opposite can point to where the shovel has hit the ground for just one project in Canada since the government took over 18 months ago.

[Sophie Chatel, Liberal, Pontiac—Kitigan Zibi, QC]

Mr. Speaker, there are a number of projects in the energy sector. Of course, we have the Churchill Falls project in Quebec. That is a really critical project for Quebec in terms of energy production. We absolutely must double our energy production. We need to focus on our government's ability to deliver what Quebeckers and Canadians need when it comes to energy. If we fail to do so, we will be missing out on a very important industrial opportunity. Carrying out a number of projects like the one in Churchill Falls is therefore very important.

Although I do not have a list of the shovel-ready projects, there are many. In my riding, for example, we are already starting work on a number of projects to build affordable housing units. I could give him the list. There are several projects, including one in Gracefield, where 39 affordable housing units are being built.

[Steeve Lavoie, Liberal, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her fine speech. I know that she spent a lot of time this summer visiting businesses. I know that she heard from many people about the lack of predictability and the current uncertainty. They need more predictability from the government.

Can she share with us what these businesses had to say after she met with their executives this summer, and particularly any comments regarding the predictability that Bill C‑39 will be able to provide?

[Sophie Chatel, Liberal, Pontiac—Kitigan Zibi, QC]

Mr. Speaker, every delay in a decision comes at a cost for businesses. Uncertainty also has a cost for our entrepreneurs. All the businesses I met with in Quebec told me this. They want decisions to be made quickly. When it takes three or four years to make a decision and there is no definitive answer, that has a very clear impact on the predictable growth of our businesses.

The aerospace industry, for example, has a great potential for growth in Quebec. However, delays in certain decisions, whether in terms of procurement or starting new projects, have a real cost for businesses in terms of business opportunities.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, John Nater]

It is my duty, pursuant to Standing Order 38, to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Saanich—Gulf Islands, Climate Change; the hon. member for Courtenay—Alberni, Veterans Affairs; and the hon. member for York—Durham, Canada Revenue Agency.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I spent many years in the private sector running my own business. I can tell members that being out there in the real economy, meeting payroll, selling and delivering goods and services, one learns a very fundamental and simple lesson very quickly: Absolutely nobody pays people for announcements, nobody writes them a cheque for a press release, and customers certainly do not reward them for empty photo ops. They are judged strictly, fairly and ruthlessly by what they deliver.

The Prime Minister came into office making grand promises. He promised Canadians that he would build at speeds not seen in years, if not generations, yet here we are 18 months later, and still not one single shovel is in the ground. I will take some time today to look deeper into why this paralysis persists and why more broken legislation from a worn-out government will never fix legislation that it broke in the first place.

Just a year and a half ago, the Prime Minister marched into the chamber championing Bill C-5. He told Canadians that he would finally unleash construction speeds not seen in generations. The headlines were glowing, the announcement ceremonies were lavish and grand, and the promises were astronomical, but as Canadians have come to learn all too well, they were just empty words.

After all the endless talk, all the international summits, the luxury travel abroad, the expensive catering and the state photo ops, how many actual projects has this new government office built? Zero. How many permits has it successfully issued? Zero. How many hard-working Canadians are on a job site earning a living because of it? There are zero, zip, nada, rien, tipota.

What the government managed to build is an even more bloated bureaucracy and an unprecedented centralization of power in the minister's and Prime Minister's offices. In the last 18 months, the Prime Minister has somehow managed to create 14 brand new government agencies, which brings us squarely to where we find ourselves today: endless manufacturing urgency yet absolutely nothing accomplished.

People are judged by what they deliver. Look at the Pacific link pipeline. The Prime Minister grandly designated it a project of national interest. Let me share a news flash with my Liberal friends across the aisle: Another vital pipeline heading to our Pacific coast has always been a matter of critical national interest, and construction should have broken many years ago. Due to layer upon layer of punishing Liberal regulations, red tape and suffocating bureaucracy, no private proponent would step forward. No pipeline was ever built. Fast-forward to today, and the private sector still has zero confidence in the government's ability to provide regulatory certainty. That leaves taxpayers on the hook to own and build their own pipeline.

How does the Prime Minister propose to provide such much-needed certainty to private investors now? It is by proposing another bill, a legislative text that is supposed to fix what the last bill, passed 18 months ago, was supposed to fix. This new piece of legislation clocks in at a staggering 250 pages, and we are expected to believe that it would magically cure all the systematic problems the Liberals themselves engineered over the last 11 years.

Let us be clear about what is missing from the bill. It would not repeal Bill C-69, Justin Trudeau's notorious antidevelopment law. It would not repeal Bill C-48, the Liberal job-killing ban on shipping oil off our west coast. It would not eliminate the punishing industrial carbon tax. All the structural obstacles that have systematically chased investment capital and talent out of this country for a decade would remain entirely untouched.

The bill would still force project proponents to address “any other matter relevant to the impact assessment that the [agency] requires to be taken into account.” How can the Liberals stand up and lecture us about regulatory certainty, when their checklist of arbitrary demands has no end? Is it just the Prime Minister who gets to decide who wins and who loses?

The government's big selling point for this legislation is the magical one-year timeline: one project, one decision and one year. It sounds wonderful in a sound bite, but let us look closely at the fine print. I cannot tell the Speaker to pause the clock on my speaking time and allow me to speak for 20 minutes today. Under this new bill, the government would be able to do precisely that. The official clock could be stopped. The bureaucracy could hit the pause button for a multitude of reasons, and the suspended time would simply vanish from the calculation. A company could spend years wrapped up in red tape and the Liberals would still claim that it all happened within one year.

If that loophole is not wide enough, the minister could unilaterally tack on 90-day extensions. If that is not enough, the government could run behind closed doors to cabinet and extend the timeline yet again, with absolutely no hard limit whatsoever.

Let us put ourselves in the shoes of a serious investor for a moment. Would we allocate billions of dollars of capital knowing full well that a Liberal cabinet that has spent the last 10 years actively blocking major projects retains the absolute legal power to delay our money and our project's decision indefinitely?

Here is the critical part the Liberals deliberately avoid talking about. The famous one-year clock would not even start ticking until the proponent has completed all preplanning, finished every single consultation and submitted exhaustive engineering and scientific data for a full assessment on every secondary permit along the way. Let us be completely honest with Canadians about what this legislation actually is. There is no real enforceable one-year timeline in the bill. It is pure smoke and mirrors. There are shiny headlines without deadlines.

There are devastating real-world consequences when the government chooses endless talk over actual building. The Prime Minister grandly promised Canadians the fastest-growing economy in the G7. Instead, the OECD places Canada well deep in the pack, with our economic growth forecast slashed all the way down to a miserable 0.9 per cent. Canadian households are now among the most heavily indebted in the entire industrialized world. Let us think of that for a moment.

Families across our country watch their mortgage renewal approach with sheer dread and look at their grocery bill with absolute disbelief from week to week. International investors are noticing this dysfunction. Representatives from the U.A.E. came to this country looking to invest a staggering $90 billion. Just six months later, they returned and stated publicly that they could not find a single approved shovel-ready project to put that capital into.

What is the alternative? We as Conservatives have a clear, pragmatic plan that is beautifully simple: one project, one review and one approval within one year. We know it can be done, because it has been done. During the 2008-2009 global financial crisis, under the leadership of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, our minister John Baird told his department officials that he wanted the application form for infrastructure projects brought down to a single page. After significant back and forth, they delivered a clean, functional, one-page application form. What was the remarkable result? Roughly 23,500 projects went swiftly from concept to completion in under two years.

Other people warned at the time that it would be an unmitigated disaster for safety and environmental standards. However, when the environmental commissioners subsequently audited those exact projects, what did they find? Not a single one came back with a safety and environmental problem. That tells us something critically important: All the mountains of paperwork, all the endless procedural hoops and all the deliberate delays have everything to do with feeding a bloated, self-serving bureaucracy that thrives entirely by getting in the way of progress.

Here is what Conservatives will do: repeal Bill C-69, repeal Bill C-48, scrap the punishing industrial carbon tax once and for all, approve hundreds of projects currently languishing and put a real, hard, binding cap on approval times, not a fake timeline that can be paused, extended and stretched into infinity.

Canada should be the fastest place to secure a building permit, but we will certainly not take the government's word for anything it is saying, because Canadians have heard these exact hollow promises far too many times before. The blunt truth is that the Prime Minister does not need to do more announcements. He needs to stop blocking, stop taxing, stop obstructing, and stop signing meaningless memoranda of understanding that yield zero results. He needs to get out of the way and let our builders build, let our workers work, let our investors invest, and get projects built for the prosperity of all Canadians.

[Steeve Lavoie, Liberal, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to set the record straight on two counts before I ask my question. My colleague said that there have been some grand announcements, but nothing concrete. I was actually in Lévis on March 29 for the steel cutting ceremony for the Polar Max icebreaker, so that is one project that is happening.

Our government announced an $11‑billion contract to build six icebreakers that will provide jobs for 5,000 people in our region. It also provides predictability for more than 600 suppliers in the region who will be able to invest so they can supply the Davie shipyard. That is what our businesses want.

With that, does my colleague still think that we need to stop making announcements that support our businesses?

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member should be reminded that we are talking about Bill C-39, the build Canada act for major projects across the country of major significance. The current government has done none of that. It has not put a shovel in the ground. It is all talk and no action.

The Prime Minister is flying all over the world, making agreements and signing things. He brings nothing into the House to be discussed and there is no debate whatsoever in committee, yet, here we are now talking about Bill C-39, a rehash of Bill C-5 of 18 months ago. I commend the member for his question and I hope that he actually does see some action in his riding.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Algonquin—Renfrew—Pembroke, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the speech my colleague gave on the headlines but no deadlines bill. He mentioned that the bill was called “building Canada”. We had that bill ourselves, as I recall, under Harper. Would he make the distinction between this new bill that they call “building Canada strong”, but is actually the headlines without deadlines bill, and the bill that we put in after 2008 that actually got things built very quickly?

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the colleague for recalling a time when the government actually took these projects seriously and when a minister took action.

Minister Baird, at the time in charge of infrastructure, sat down with his colleagues in the ministry. He gave them a directive to fast-track the approval process down to a one-page application and that resulted in 23,500 projects being built. The current government and this Prime Minister have built 14 new offices. Can members believe it? They built 14 new centres for people to make decisions, just bloating and bloating the democracy with zero results for Canadians and not a single shovel in the ground.

[Alexis Deschênes, Bloc, Gaspésie—Les Îles-de-la-Madeleine—Listuguj, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his contribution. I hold him in high regard. I would like to hear his perspective on the idea that the minister could conduct regional assessments and then designate a region as being of national interest. Once that happens, authorizations would be deemed to have been granted.

Under Bill C‑39, all the minister would have to do to designate a region as being of national interest is conduct a regional assessment. The minister will set the terms of reference, select the members and constitute the regional assessment committee himself. Does my colleague consider this to be a rigorous approach?

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the hon. member's very intelligent and informed question.

What this bill would do, as we have seen in previous bills that the tired Liberal government has brought forth, is centralize more and more power in the hands of the minister and the Prime Minister. What we have seen from the current government is a lack of respect for the people's voice, a lack of respect for Parliament. Arbitrarily, the Liberals can make decisions, and we know where we will find out about it: in news stories and news headlines.

It is totally wrong. As parliamentarians, we have no confidence that the government should be given the full authority to make these decisions and then simply inform us through the media. This is the place to bring the legislation in and debate it properly in committee and in the House of Commons.

[Patty Hajdu, Liberal, Minister of Jobs and Families and Minister responsible for the Federal Economic Development Agency for Northern Ontario]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise in the House to highlight the labour components of Bill C-39. Today, I will outline the labour components of the bill and how they would strengthen labour relations in federally regulated sectors.

We know that a strong economy depends on a strong workforce and strong relationships between workers and their employers.

Workplaces with healthy labour relations have the stability and the confidence to invest and grow. The labour components of the bill are designed to strengthen good-faith bargaining and worker protections in Canada's federally regulated workplaces. The Canada Labour Code is a framework that supports workers and employers in federally regulated sectors, such as interprovincial transportation, banking and telecommunications. The framework and the tools within it help 95% of federally regulated workplaces renew their collective agreements without labour disruption. For the other 5%, getting to a renewed agreement is much more difficult and some present cycles of an inability to conclude agreements without labour disruption.

This cycle is often self-reinforcing, as relationships between workers and the employer often remain strained. The inability to resolve their disputes together further places the next collective bargaining process at risk. This is unfortunate, because all parties agree that the best deals are the ones that they arrive at together.

We asked employers, workers and Canadians how to improve the tools of the federal government that are offered to parties and that can help them get to agreements in a better way. We heard that, for the most part, Canada's labour relations system works well. We also heard that existing tools do not always help resolve the most complex and contentious disputes. That is why Bill C-39 focuses first and foremost on strengthening the tools, supports and processes to help workers and employers find solutions together.

The bill focuses on three priorities.

First, we would be modernizing collective bargaining with strengthened tools and additional supports. This means earlier engagement, helping to rebuild labour management relationships following disputes, adding supports for first collective agreements, providing more time for parties to reach an agreement and laying the groundwork for expedited grievance arbitration and an administrative monetary penalty regime for bad-faith bargaining.

Second, the bill would strengthen workers' protections. We would increase our government's capacity to protect workers from wage theft, misclassification and workplace accidents, and we would make it easier for the conclusion of a first collective agreement. We would also protect airport workers by preserving their union representation and collective agreements when contracts change hands.

Finally, we would be clarifying section 107 of the Labour Code and defining clear requirements for the use of this last resort tool. It bears repeating that 95% of federal collective agreements are renewed without labour disruption. The new tools in Bill C-39 are designed to help parties in high conflict focus on transparent solution-focused bargaining. The bill would also place clear guardrails around the use of section 107, which permits a minister to refer a dispute to the Canada Industrial Relations Board.

The use of section 107 would move to a tool of last resort, only usable once parties had gone through an intensive, transparent process to resolve their differences and only usable after a strike begins. First, a special mediator would be appointed to work intensively with the parties and help them reach an agreement. The parties would then have five days after the receipt of the report from the mediator to get to an agreement. If the parties were still not able to resolve their differences, the special mediator report would be made public. Second, an assessment of national interest would be made that considers economic impact and social impact, and balances the constitutional right to strike. Third, importantly, a strike would actually need to have commenced. This new guardrail would prevent the pre-emptive use of section 107, strengthening workers' rights to strike.

The overwhelming majority of collective bargaining negotiations will proceed as usual.

Canada's workers are the foundation of a stronger Canada.

Every major project, every infrastructure and every opportunity to grow our economy depends on Canadian workers. A stronger workforce means a stronger economy. A stronger economy means a stronger Canada.

These labour measures would help build Canada strong.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Algonquin—Renfrew—Pembroke, ON]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday morning, I woke up and I thought there was an air raid going off. I heard sirens. I did not feel any bombs drop. I looked out the window and did not see any buildings on fire nearby. These sirens kept on going. This morning, I walked down Sparks Street on the way to West Block, and I heard these sirens again. It was members of the public service striking, and they had this siren that sounded like an air horn or an air raid.

If the workers, for whom this legislation is supposed to be so beneficial, are opposing it so vociferously, how is it going to be good for them? Why are they so opposed to it?

[Patty Hajdu, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we worked extensively with employers and labour unions, and of course Canadians, who all told us that it is very important to uphold a collective right to strike. It is in our Constitution. That is exactly what this legislation would do. It would address the challenges that workers are having in their workplaces, in particular around those first collective agreements, which can also be very difficult to arrive at. Importantly, it would strengthen workers' rights to be able to pursue a strike without the pre-emptive interference of the government.

Finally, it would put the onus on the parties themselves to get to an agreement by using new tools, especially in high-conflict relationships. That is a very important new process that I believe will help parties get a deal at the table where it ought to be made.

[Alexis Deschênes, Bloc, Gaspésie—Les Îles-de-la-Madeleine—Listuguj, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for her contribution to the debate, and I want to draw her attention to an issue that goes beyond Bill C-39: the centralization of power.

In several sections of the bill, authority that previously rested with cabinet, for instance, will be delegated to a minister. This will result in fewer and fewer people being involved in decision-making. When it comes to the regional assessments that will lead to the creation of regions of national interest, this is exactly what will happen. As a result, it will be the minister who sets the terms of reference to determine which types of development projects will be pre-approved in a region.

Is my colleague not concerned, as I am, that all this centralization of power could open the door to abuses?

[Patty Hajdu, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Labour does have the responsibility and the right to use the Canada Labour Code to foster industrial peace. Section 107 is not the only tool that ministers have used in the past to end labour disruption because of national economic interest. As the member would know, this House has been used to pass back-to-work legislation, which is obviously a worst-case scenario for everyone, including the employers, the employees and certainly the government.

The legislation that we are proposing today in Bill C-39 would actually bring the responsibility back to the table, between the employers and the workers, where that decision ought to be made, to form collective agreements to help workers and companies into the next—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, John Nater]

Questions and comments, the hon. parliamentary secretary to the government House leader.