Dale Johnston

[Division No. 359, March 23rd, 1999]

Mr. Chairman, if this back to work legislation pertains to the grain weighers, what does the minister intend to use as a method to settle the contract once he gets the workers back on the job?

[Division No. 358, March 23rd, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I know that not everyone in the House is listening to my words of wisdom, but I know Mr. Speaker is hanging on every word.

All of us here are interested in seeing Canada work as a cohesive unit. We are very much concerned about the fact that once our reputation as a reliable shipper of goods is damaged, it is extremely difficult for us to get it back. We are continually in a catch-up situation. We are continually trying to regain where we might have been or where we would have been. We cannot say we want to get back to where we once were shipping grain because we never really reached a zenith. We always seem to be slipping back.

We all would like to see these labour disruptions absolutely minimized. There are absolutely no winners in this situation. I know the people in the unions do not strike simply because it is 2 o'clock on Tuesday so they are going to have a strike. That is not the way it is decided. It is a very gut wrenching decision for them to withdraw their services, to go without pay, to walk the picket line and to suffer the scorn of some of the people who pass by. It is a very big decision for them.

I submit that when they have gone without a contract for two years at a time, it is small wonder that they take some kind of job action. We have to ask ourselves what kind of an employer would ask their employees to go without any kind of an agreement for two years at a time.

Looking back in the records I have found that since April 1997 some of the bargaining units have been totally without a contract. That is indefensible. There is no way under the sun that the minister can defend that kind of a record. If he had and if he had agreed to final offer selection arbitration being included in this bill, then perhaps all would not be lost.

[Division No. 358, March 23rd, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, as I was saying, we approached this on the basis that it was an emergency situation. Indeed we felt that it was. There was a grain stoppage at the port of Vancouver. We were assured by the labour minister of the day that would never happen again because of provisions in Bill C-19, the amendments to part I of the labour code.

Lo and behold exactly what we had predicted came true. One of the unions at the port went on strike. A picket line was set up and other unions refused to cross it. Therefore, Canadian grain was not reaching port and we were losing customers that we could ill afford to lose.

We were also under the impression that the tax centres were not operating and Canadians were desperately in need of their tax returns. As a matter of fact everyone knows they can file tax returns as early as January 1. We were given to believe people had filed for their rebates but they were not getting them because of slowdowns and rotating strikes that were taking place by PSAC at those centres.

Now we find we have a completely different set of circumstances. It begs the question, what is the emergency now if we have a tentative agreement? It also begs the question, if we have a tentative agreement, how does the union respond to that? Do the negotiators for the union go back to the union members and say “You guys had better sign this because if you do not, they are just minutes away from bringing in back to work legislation anyway”? What kind of position does this put the PSAC workers in?

I do not think this is any way to negotiate with employees, whether you are a staunch union person or not. This is no way to cement labour relations. I do not think this is any way to utilize the opposition parties of this House either. It is a very disrespectful way.

We agreed with the Government of Canada that this was an emergency and it was going to be treated as such. Otherwise why would we be in this chamber at 1 o'clock in the morning debating something that we have agreement to? It is absolutely insane to be doing this in this fashion.

If the government was so close to signing an agreement with these people, the minister could have come in virtually at the eleventh hour and said lo and behold he has a ministerial statement to make that all is well but let us proceed with this back to work legislation. The President of the Treasury Board could have taken five minutes of time from the member from Vancouver prior to the vote and made that announcement. If necessary, we could have adjourned the House for 15 minutes while the caucuses determined what their positions were going to be.

We did not arrive at this position by drawing numbers out of a hat. We had a caucus meeting, as did everyone, and we arrived at a position on this. We said we are going to arrive at a position that is based on something we feel is an emergency situation in Canada and we are going to do it by consensus in our caucus. I am sure everybody arrived at it this way.

Excellent points have been made that not only were we labouring under lack of information that the government had but the government's very own backbenchers were also. This is an absolute sham and a tremendously disrespectful way to use parliament's time and resources.

What is the emergency now? I am sure a few government members will stand up on debate. I would like to have them explain to me where the emergency is. As a matter of fact, we now hear that perhaps there is not a backlog of tax returns after all. Perhaps they are a bit ahead of the schedule where they were a year or two ago.

This is about the shabbiest handling of a bill. It defies logic. This is kind of a Keystone Cops situation that could only be bested in the funny papers. This is a sham and a ridiculous use of this institution.

No one in the House wants to see the grain shipments flow unimpeded from the farm gates on to the high seas more than myself and my colleague from Selkirk—Interlake. I was pleased when through you, Mr. Speaker, and largely your efforts and your concurrence that he was able to get an emergency debate on this very issue. I thought hurrah, perhaps we are going to make some headway here.

This is absolute silliness. The next time this government comes to us asking for back to work legislation, we are going to look at it with very jaundiced eyes. We are going to be extremely suspicious of its motives.

I know Mr. Speaker will say that we must never impugn motives in this House, but when we see time after time this sort of prank, for lack of a better word, pulled in the House, then it is small wonder we should be suspicious and sometimes impugn motives.

While we are talking about shifty operations, let us talk about last Friday. Last Friday we were asked out of the blue with about three seconds notice to give unanimous consent to the government. The first thing we asked was what would the unanimous consent be for. It was for closure so that we could put these militant people back to work. They are striking. They are tying up the whole country. We have to put them back to work. It is an emergency. It was not even explained to us that well. The government said, “Trust us. We are from the government and we are here to help you. Trust us. Give us your vote. Give us your unanimous consent”. I have heard that one before, the cheque is in the mail.

We were asked to give the government unanimous consent and we said no, that we would give our consent perhaps when we had had an opportunity to assess what it was the government was asking our consent on. First that and now this.

[Division No. 358, March 23rd, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, when this situation was first debated in the House last week it was brought in as an emergent motion by my colleague from Selkirk—Interlake. We approached this issue on the basis that this was an emergency. Part of the emergency was that there was grain shipment stoppage at the west coast ports yet again, one that we were assured would never happen again because of the provisions in part one of the Canada Labour Code. The industrial relations—

[Division No. 358, March 23rd, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that. I am sorry for the misunderstanding.

It was the understanding of this House that we were dealing with—

[Division No. 358, March 23rd, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the way I recall this, when you rose and asked if I was finished or if I would prefer to continue after the debate, I nodded that I would prefer to continue after the debate.

[Division No. 358, March 23rd, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, we have given permission to the government to proceed in an emergent fashion in what we consider to be an emergent situation. Because of information known only to the minister and to a few select ministers in his cabinet which was withheld from me, if I had had that information I may have voted differently. I ask for the unanimous consent of the House to change my vote.

[Division No. 358, March 23rd, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, just for old time's sake, I would like to make my favourite point, the need for a permanent dispute settlement mechanism rather than going through the agony of legislating people back to work. Let us face it. If we go through with this exercise and legislate these parties back to work, parties who may or not be in a strike situation any longer, we still have done nothing whatsoever about their contract. We still have to have some sort of mechanism to deal with their contract. Therefore, we need to have final offer selection arbitration.

Having gotten in that commercial message, I would ask one more time, maybe third time lucky, if we could have a 10 minute question and comment period with the President of the Treasury Board.

[Division No. 358, March 23rd, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I cannot believe what I am hearing.

I know when we get into committee of the whole we will get an opportunity to speak on our amendments and to question the minister. The time spent between now and when we do go into committee of the whole may be a total waste of effort. If we were to get some clarification from the minister at this point, if he were to be forthright with us, we may be able to save ourselves a whole lot of effort and time, if we were just able to ask the minister some questions.

[Division No. 358, March 23rd, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I do not mind a little help. I am getting tremendous encouragement from my colleagues and even some good words of advice.

We are going to have to completely rethink our position on this. Things have completely changed from this morning when we started debating this. If I were the House leader, I would be saying that all bets are off at this moment. Things have changed completely.

No wonder they say that Treasury Board does not bargain in good faith. It does not deal with us in good faith.

I would like one more time to ask if there would be unanimous consent for questions and comments of the minister.