Motion No. 2
That Bill C-66 be amended by adding after line 15 on page 1 the following new Clause:
"1.1 The Act is amended by adding the following after section 4:
4.1 (1) This Part applies in respect of the Professional Institute of the Public Service, its members and the employers of those members.
(2) The Minister shall, not later than six months after the coming into force of this section, by regulation, amend or repeal those provisions in any Act of Parliament whose amendment or repeal are necessary to the effective application of Part I to the Professional Institute of the Public Service, its members and the employers of those members."
Motion No. 3
That Bill C-66 be amended by adding after line 15 on page 1 the following new Clause:
"1.1 The Act is amended by adding the following after section 4:
4.1 (1) This Part applies in respect of the Public Service Alliance, its members and the employers of those members.
(2) The Minister shall, not later than six months after the coming into force of this section, by regulation, amend or repeal those provisions in any Act of Parliament whose amendment or repeal are necessary to the effective application of Part I to the Public Service Alliance, its members and the employers of those members."
Mr. Speaker, you have before you a man who is surprised, to say the least, to see the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Labour rising in this House to make the barefaced statement that national chaos will result if the federal government adopts this amendment. I think that the parliamentary secretary has both erred a little, and overdone it a little, since he himself ended up with flour on his face when the amendment by the official opposition was under discussion.
This does, however, give us some idea of where we stand. You will agree that, if the government does not even have the little courage required to put flour mills under provincial jurisdiction, we will not be able to reach agreement. It must be agreed that the government will be acting in an authoritarian, even despotic, manner, by adopting such a hard line.
With this second group of amendments, we will attempt to get the parliamentary secretary out from under the flour in which he has buried himself, and to get him to understand another level of rationality.
What we are proposing with these amendments is what was asked of us in committee by the representatives of the Public Service Alliance of Canada and the Professional Institute of the Public Service when they met with us. Both unions asked, in a completely rational manner and as mandated by their rank and file, to come under the Canada Labour Code, Part I, and not the Public Service Staff Relations Act as they do at present.
I trust that the government will broaden its horizons a little, be a little bolder, and have the courage to acquiesce to this demand. Why did the two unions in question ask to be brought under Part I of the Canada Labour Code? Because they felt this would give them greater leeway in their negotiations, and particularly because they felt that a number of their key priorities relating to the quality of everyday life in the workplace could be negotiated immediately.
As we know, under the Public Service Staff Relations Act, the process is somewhat unwieldy, because Treasury Board is involved. Things are not always easy, nor is there much flexibility, yet extremely important elements are at stake.
So if the government went along with this amendment, which was inspired by nothing else than common sense, public service employees represented by those two unions would be able to bargain directly on the following points: job security, which is not an easy matter to negotiate, as I think the hon. member for Terrebonne will agree, and protection against technological change.
As you know, we have been an enlightened and very advanced opposition. We have tabled a series of amendments-and we will get back to them in due course-that would ensure that no major technological changes are introduced in a company or the public service without the employees having their say. This will be the challenge of the years to come, and there will be further debate on this.
Both PIPS and PSAC have asked to be covered by the Canada Labour Code, and this demand goes back several years. They want this first of all because they feel they will be in a far better position and have more leeway when negotiating job security, protection against technological change and also a third element that is crucially important, and I am referring to position classifications and task definitions. A fourth group of concerns includes appointments, promotions and transfers, which could conviently come under the heading career plan.
In committee it was pointed out that there were two major advantages to accepting such a demand. The Canada Labour Code allows unions to negotiate their members' working conditions more directly. There is no limitation in the code on the rights of employees, such as the right to strike or to refer all grievances to a third, impartial, party.
These are very important considerations, and I hope the parliamentary secretary will take a more vigorous and bolder approach, as opposed to the almost die hard conservativism he has shown so far.
In concluding, since I believe my time is running out, I may remind you of another of our concerns about this so-called modernization, since when the minister spoke in committee and in the House about undertaking a review of the Canada Labour Code, Part I, he told us it was to modernize labour relations, and of course we all agree that labour relations are quite different today from what they were in the seventies.
We tried to deal with this and, personally, as the member for Hochelaga-Maisonneuve and labour relations critic, I tabled a motion in the House asking the government to give the Royal Canadian Mounted Police the right to collective bargaining. The connection with the public service as a whole is extremely tenuous, since the RCMP has the status of sole employer as far as Treasury Board is concerned. Imagine my reaction, imagine my consternation when I discovered that the government, totally unreasonably and obsessively to some extent I would say, rejected such a motion.
Is it appropriate that the RCMP should be the only police force in Canada without the right to collective bargaining? I was very pleased by what I read in Hansard . It says there that the third party in the House, the Reform Party, gave its approval, as expressed by one of its members. I think the member for Calgary rose to say he recognized the situation as discriminatory.
We must recall that the RCMP is not claiming the right to strike. They are asking for the right to negotiate their working conditions, as all police forces do across Canada, with outside arbitration. There are those, who are a bit muddled, who say that they already have arbitration. In fact, this is the subject of the entire rather weak speech by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Solicitor General, who rose in this House to say that an internal negotiation system known as divisional representation already existed.
Obviously, for those who are looking in from the outside and for those who know a little about labour relations, it is like a sort of small shop union, which does not provide a solid base for collectively negotiating working conditions.
I hope the parliamentary secretary will rise to explain the reason for the fear. If the Labour Code is useful in providing a balance in labour relations, as the minister says, why not include the employees of the public service who want to be included and who have given their union representatives a mandate. I am thinking of course of the Professional Institute, the Alliance and the spokespersons of the RCMP. We are not talking about speculation or guessing, these are duly authorized union spokespersons, people who have mandates.
They came to see us in committee, and explained that, as regards the five indicators I mentioned concerning job security, protection against technological change, position classification and career advancement, "We think it would be more beneficial for our members, and this is a motivating factor: it is significant for an employer to be covered by part I of the Canada Labour Code".
I hope that, in all lucidity, the minister and the parliamentary secretary will rise in the House, thank the opposition for the acuity of its remarks and support the amendments before the House today.
