Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take part in this debate. I thank my colleague from Selkirk—Interlake for asking for this emergency debate. I really believe this is an item that is emergent.
To dispel a few myths before I really get into the text of what I have to say tonight, I would like to reply to some accusations by my friend from Trois-Rivières who said this is a veiled threat for the Reform Party to try to get the government to bring in back to work legislation. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Back to work legislation does not do anything. All it does is get the parties back on the job. It still does not do anything to settle the labour dispute. The labour dispute will still be there. That animosity will still be there. That intransigence will still be there.
I do not believe for a minute that any union will strike on a whim. It needs a pretty good reason. I am quite sure those people on strike at the moment are wishing they could be at work.
There is a loss of pay. Everybody knows that when there is a strike for any duration, they will never work long enough to make up for the money they have lost. Those people have made that decision and it has not been taken lightly, rest assured.
My friend from Trois-Rivières' allegations are absolutely false. We do not advocate back to work legislation.
A year or so ago we had part I of the Canada Labour Code opened, the industrial relations part. We made some changes in that code. One of the things the government kept telling us was that it wanted to put in a clause that applies to grain, clause 87.7.
Even some of my friends from the Liberal Party thought this would be an excellent clause because it would ensure the flow of grain from the farm gate to the port. Why is that so important?
It is important certainly for farm families. It is also important to the Canadian economy. Every person in this place, regardless of their party, would like to have close to complete employment in this country. They would like to see the unemployment rate near zero.
This is no way to go about it. This is no way to attain those goals. The very fact that we have the spinoff effect from grain sales, from agriculture, is a huge item.
This is an excellent thing. It is a very good thing that I am not the kind of guy who would say I told you this would not work, I told you so. If I were, right now I would be saying I told you so.
Even my friends including some in the Liberal caucus thought clause 87.7 would move grain right through to port. It will not and the reason it will not is that there are still unions the government refuses to come to agreement with that go on strike out of frustration or out of necessity or for some reason.
Then the other unions will respect their picket lines and not cross them. What happens then? There are granaries full of grain on the farm. There are elevators full of grain in the towns. There are trains loaded, sitting on the sidings at ports and not moving. Instant constipation. Nothing moves. This is certainly not a good picture. This has great detrimental spinoff to the Canadian economy and this simply cannot be tolerated.
I listened with great interest to some of the strong language the President of the Treasury Board used when he spoke about the problem. He talked a lot about the history. What was missing was talk about the solution. I also listened to my friend from Winnipeg—Transcona talk about the strong language used by the President of the Treasury Board. Like the President of the Treasury Board, my friend from Winnipeg—Transcona did not talk about the solution.
We have pretty well covered the problem. We know the farmers have the grain in the bins. We know they cannot move this grain after breakup starts. After the frost starts to come out of the ground, the municipalities put bans or load restrictions on their roads. It is very important that this grain gets to port. The people at the ports and the unions know this. The government knows this.
It is not as though this were the first time this has happened. This happens over and over again, and the government out of desperation and political pressure brought to bear by the farming community and others brings in back to work legislation, which does not serve Canada well at all.
What kind of scale are we talking about here? My colleague said about the movement of grain at the west coast port that there are approximately 20 to 21 ships waiting out there. That represents an awful lot of grain. It represents a lot of jobs and a lot of transfer payments for this country.
It also represents an erosion of our reliable good name when it comes to supplying grain. As everybody in this place knows, a good reputation takes a long time to build but it can be lost in a very short time. That is the danger we run every time we go through what I call these futile exercises.
Unlike some of the previous speeches, I am going to talk about what I think the solutions are. My friend from Selkirk—Interlake spoke about what he thought was the solution. By some strange coincidence I have the same feelings about the possibility of a solution.
Stable labour relations are absolutely vital to the country. If we have stable labour relations and we can be a reliable shipper of goods, then we have a leg up on our competitors. That is very important. Agriculture is still a very important and significant employer of people in this country. This is not from the more or less narrow viewpoint of strictly the farm community. We are talking about a much broader spinoff area.
Final offer selection arbitration is a tool that can be used by labour and by management equally well. I say that because I think the very fact of making final offer selection arbitration available to these parties will make them bargain very earnestly. It is an incentive for them to come to an agreement.
We could even say that used to its ultimate, final offer selection arbitration would not be used at all. In case that is too much of a leap for some people to follow, the reason I say that is that final offer selection arbitration does not meld the final positions.
Labour presents its position and management presents its position. The arbitrator takes all of one position or all of the other position. It is not a negotiated in between settlement at all. It is all of one or all of the other. Both parties know that when they go in, and therefore both parties come to their absolute bottom line.
Oftentimes when bottom lines are compared, there is no decision for the arbitrator to make because they have come to a conclusion. Oftentimes it never comes to presenting a final position to the arbitrator because lo and beyond the sides sat down, hammered things out and negotiated.
I would like to say this again lest there still be somebody in this House who would like to accuse us of supporting back to work legislation and removing the right to strike. Absolutely false on both counts. We support the right to strike and the right to organize. We also think the very best solution is a negotiated solution.
We saw it in this House in the not too distant past when we had a postal disruption. The government saw fit to legislate them back to work. Lo and behold that was 16 months ago and still there is no agreement in the post office. What is the point? Why legislate them back to work if we are not going to come to an agreement?
We should use final offer selection arbitration, get an agreement, get everybody back to work on an amicable footing and we will not have to face these situations again and again. Until we do that, we are going to be back here in an emergency debate again and again because of a situation where the national economy is suffering or there is some kind of crisis.
The fact that we are here is that all parties have agreed that this is an emergency. It is testament to the fact that this is an emergency situation.
Some people will say that we Reform guys want to have final offer selection for everything. That too is rubbish. Anybody that would care to read the things I have said about final offer selection need only go back to the debates on Bill C-19. We explained it time and time again. As a matter of fact, I reached the point where I thought I might be boring some people in the House with my explanations of final offer selection. I know Mr. Speaker would not be one of them because he listens intently to virtually every word I say.
We think final offer selection is one of the tools that should be used in cases where there is a monopoly situation, where there is no alternative to the services provided or withdrawn and in a situation where the national economy is going to suffer directly and significantly.
I certainly do hope that clarifies the situation. I really hope my friend from Trois-Rivières is listening. I am sure he is.
We want a fair and permanent resolution process. We think it must be in place and it must be removed from the whims of government. Back to work legislation is becoming so predictable that the unions and management have come to rely on it. I do not know why they would do that. It is a painful exercise for everybody.
Some kind of permanent legislation that would provide for final offer selection would provide both sides with something predictable that has rules and a timetable for which to negotiate. It would give a lot of incentive to negotiate and to do so in earnest.
I do not think we should minimize the importance of the effect on Canadian jobs and keeping Canadians employed.
Our reputation as a reliable supplier of products is worth defending and maintaining. As I said, it takes a long time to develop a good reputation and a very short time to lose it.
Another aspect we have to be very aware of is that there are ports in the United States that are not all that far from Vancouver. They are probably just as good, ice free and accessible to western Canada. Western Canada cannot afford to lose any business to U.S. west coast ports. The jobs in British Columbia as a result of that port and the vessel traffic coming in from the sea are definitely worth defending.
This is also about individual farmers, about their towns and their families. At this time of year their bins are full of grain and they have to move it. They are already suffering from low commodity prices. My friend from Selkirk—Interlake touched on the fact that they have no control over their input costs. Their costs for fuel, fertilizer, machinery, land rent, land taxes and purchase price of land are escalating. It is getting more and more difficult to get into the farming business. Indeed it is getting more and more difficult to stay in the farming business.
In case I had not mentioned it before, I have some knowledge whereof I speak because I have spent the last 31 years in the farming business. I still live in a farming community. I have many neighbours who although they are primarily in the livestock business, they still do ship canola, wheat, malting barley and feed barley.
In the area where I live the vast majority of the grain is fed to livestock. Having stated that, I am in no way trying to minimize the importance of the grain shipment because we certainly do have farmers in our area who grow grain and oilseeds for export. It is absolutely vital to them in order to keep their operations going that they have a reliable and affordable transportation system that will get their product to the port and out on to the high seas.
Whenever there is a work stoppage that has occurred in as far as the national transportation of grain is concerned the government of the day, and it does not seem to matter which government it is, begins to wring its hands and worry. The first thing it seems to think is the solution is to bring in back to work legislation. That is no solution at all.
We have to look at innovative ways to come up with a solution that will bring us a negotiated resolution to this problem. We have to make sure that our grain travels to the port, on to the seas and to our customers in a timely fashion.
