Mr. Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to take part in this debate on the amendments to the Canada Labour Code, Bill C-19.
This bill deals with a number of important areas I want to talk about. There is the fact that unions can be certified without a majority of workers being consulted or voting. They can also release the list of employees working off site without their consent. This bill also deals with section 87.7 which ensures that grain currently at port at the facility will be loaded over a 72 hour period in spite of the fact that there may be a labour-management problem there.
More important, what I want to deal with today is what this bill does not include. I will come back to the other areas in a moment. I want to focus my remarks essentially on the missed opportunity by this government in that it is revising the Canada Labour Code but it is not including a number of areas that are essential to ensure the delivery of product to market.
In my critic area which is international trade, I know how important it is to have credibility in having prompt product delivery at market so that it can be picked up and delivered to countries that require our goods and services. Unfortunately that is not happening very well now. I would submit that the current labour-management process which has been in place for some time is not working very well at all.
All too many times when there are labour-management problems which result in the withdrawal of services or lockouts third parties are affected very dramatically. I am thinking of grain farmers in particular. That is one area I know very well. There have been a number of withdrawal of services over the last 10 years and it has hurt the grain industry to a very big extent. My colleague from Prince George—Peace River talked about it but I want to outline this again.
In 1987 there was a work stoppage between the railways and their union. Five days were lost. Late that same year there was a 42 day work stoppage between the Prince Rupert grain terminal and the grain workers. There were heavy financial losses. In 1991 there was a 16 day dispute between the Department of Transport and the public service union. There was also a work stoppage of 20 days in 1995 between the railways and their union.
These are not just figures on paper. These are very real concerns for people who have product that they want to deliver to market. It is also a very real concern for countries such as Japan that are looking to take delivery of a product that it has bought and sent vessels over to ports like Prince Rupert and Vancouver but cannot pick up the purchased product because of the labour-management problems. These labour-management problems result in more days lost in productivity time second only to Italy in terms of all of the industrial countries in the world. This simply is not good enough. In fact we never make up for that.
The demurrage charges last year at the Vancouver and Prince Rupert terminals as a result of strikes cost grain farmers in western Canada something in the neighbourhood of $50 million. These grain and oilseed farmers are struggling to begin with. They are struggling because market prices are not that high. They certainly cannot afford to have work stoppages which affect them and which they have nothing to do with. They have nothing to do with them, yet their product is being held back from market which results in massive costs. Opportunity is lost, but there are massive costs in terms of demurrage charges alone of over $50 million.
That means the farmers have to pay ships to wait in the Vancouver harbour while we sort out an archaic system of labour-management in this country. From a trade perspective it is hurting our credibility.
When I was involved in the canola industry, Japanese representatives purchasing Canadian canola made the case on many occasions that they are going to look elsewhere. I know they have done that because Canada is becoming known as not being a reliable supplier of product. They liked the canola. They liked the quality of it and the good cooking oil it made, but they could not stand the disruption in service. It has cost us very heavily.
I also want to speak about a couple of aspects of the bill which I mentioned earlier.
The Liberal government has been telling the grain sector that it has done it a tremendous service by putting a provision in the Canada Labour Code which will allow grain companies to continue loading a vessel at port in spite of a strike or lockout. That is a good provision but it is a half-baked measure.
If we cannot get the goods to the terminal, and there have not been any changes made to the Canada Labour Code which would allow that to happen, it is a half-baked measure. It simply does not go far enough. The major disruptions which have taken place in the past 10 years have meant that grain and oilseed products could not get to the terminals at all, let alone worry about those products being loaded onto vessels.
It is a red herring. I admit that it is a small concession, but it is a lost opportunity to do something about a major problem which we have in this country.
I want to deal with an aspect of the bill which is quite troubling and it has to do with the whole business of democracy. There is a major change which the Liberals are proposing. There will be a process by which unions can be certified without the support of a majority of the employees. That is fundamentally wrong. It tramples on the democratic rights of Canadian citizens and workers and violates principles which are fundamental to our society.
There will no longer be secret ballots, a fundamental right which is enjoyed by every Canadian. We have the right to cast a secret ballot in favour or against a piece of legislation. Whether it be a plebiscite or a vote in the House of Commons, provincial legislatures or municipal councils, the secret ballot is a fundamental right. We are moving away from the secret ballot with the amendments which are being made to the Canada Labour Code. It is a fundamental flaw in the bill and a reason not to support it.
There is another issue which is along the same lines and is equally troubling. Workers' names can now be released to those conducting certification drives without the workers' knowledge or consent. That does not sound right to me. It seems to me that if people are being asked to join a union they should know that their names are being released. It is a fundamental principle of democracy.
I am concerned by what is not included in the bill. The bill does not deal with labour-management problems in terms of getting goods to the market. It does not deal with final offer arbitration. There is still a process in the grain sector and which we have seen in Canada Post on many occasions, where the ultimate result is that Parliament orders workers back to work.
We believe there should be a negotiating process under labour-management that takes place until the impending withdrawal of services either through a strike or a lockout. However at that point there must be a more enlightened process. There needs to be a process which says “We have not been able to arrive at this agreement over an 18 month negotiating period so maybe it is time to put in our final offer and let us see who is right”. In the end that is what is happening anyway. The government is ordering workers back to work and implementing final offer arbitration in any case.
Let us do it before we lose valuable time in too many days of lost productivity as a result of work stoppage. The final offer arbitration solution put forward by the hon. member for Wetaskiwin, our labour critic, is a very good move to try to have a more enlightened labour-management process in Canada.
