Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak on Bill C-66.
There has been a fair bit of discussion today about grain farmers and the problems they face as a result of transportation to the coast and getting their grain loaded on to ships. I thought I would introduce a slightly different perspective to the bill by dealing with a letter I received yesterday from a man in my riding whose name
is Brian Coles. He has been a longshoreman for 32 years. He has a fair amount of experience on the waterfront in Vancouver.
My riding of North Vancouver is on the harbour. There is a major grain terminal in the riding so any stoppages that occur affect the people who live and work in my riding.
Mr. Coles has been a resident of North Vancouver for 21 years. He wrote to me expressing some of his concerns from the union perspective. I thought it only fair that I read his concerns into the record.
In his letter he stated that since the sixties there has not been an opportunity to negotiate in good faith with the BCMEA and that locking out and refusing to let them work the grain has always been the problem even though they have been willing to work the grain. He said they had even sent officials to Parliament at various times to guarantee the grain would be worked and there would be no need to bring in repressive legislation. However he feels it has always been in vain and has always gone the company's way, thereby forcing the government to force them back to work. That has concerned him.
Keeping in mind that this is the union perspective, he feels that the BCMEA has the best of everything. It is the most productive workforce in Canada. It can pick up the telephone 24 hours a day and get any type of tradesman, driver, switchman, machine drivers, labourers, carpenters, anything it wants and also has government as its ally.
He also feels that his counterparts in Montreal, the longshoremen who went on strike for three weeks, have ended up away ahead of them in manning, wages and benefits. He feels he lives in a free and democratic country but it is being run by big business and a Liberal dictatorship. He finished his letter by asking me to clarify my position on the subject and Reform's approach to the whole thing.
It is important to note from this that sometimes a fair amount of tension builds between companies and unions, each believing it is being unfairly treated by the government of the day. That was one of the reasons why the member for Wetaskiwin proposed 16 amendments to the bill. It was felt they would clarify and improve the legislation, not just for the companies and unions but for a lot of the other people who are affected by the bill.
A key factor was giving labour and management the mechanisms to solve their differences. It appears that the government is more interested in courting the favour of the Bloc Quebecois than bringing in balanced labour laws.
We probably all agree that there is a unique nature within the federal system of labour controls because there are not usually alternative sources available for transportation, for example, of grain to the coast or longshoremen to load the ships. If the situation is unique then unique solutions must be found to any problems that develop.
As the member for Wetaskiwin said earlier, Canada has a world class transportation system and a communications infrastructure that can handle the materials when it is working properly. But if trouble develops, then right away major problems appear, whether it is moving materials for General Motors or grain to the coast. It has a dramatic impact on workers right across the country. It does not take long until people are laid off, for businesses to be catastrophically affected. The impact is felt by the entire economy, including the tax and spend government side of the House which loses some income as a result and has to borrow more on the backs of our children and grandchildren.
I read out the letter from Mr. Coles earlier. I mentioned that it was from a union perspective. The companies clearly have their perspective on this as well. It creates a unique problem when tensions build between the company and the union and they cannot solve their problems. They are heading for a strike and the entire country will be affected.
Frankly, legislation that attempts to force solutions really is not satisfactory. If a solution is imposed on one side or the other, all we end up with is a level of dissatisfaction on one side or the other. Good labour relations cannot be legislated. However, government can provide an environment which encourages settlement. It gives a strong incentive to actually go ahead and settle. That was the basis for Reform's proposal that we should have final offer selection arbitration in these cases.
The aim is not to tie the hands of labour or management, but to give them a major incentive to talk together to reach a solution, without this terrible thing hanging over their heads that some mediator is going to come in and do things that are really not for the good of either side.
By giving them the tools to resolve their differences and saying: "Listen, you have the opportunity to sit down and negotiate. You had better come up with your best offer, because if we are going to put you to the final offer arbitration, one side or the other is going to be chosen".
It is in the interests of labour, management, producers and processors that these disputes be resolved without parliamentary intervention if possible. It has to reach crisis proportions for that to happen. It happened in 1994 when the House ended up sitting on a Saturday and Sunday in order to put through the legislation because it was so important to the business of the country.
It is in the interests of all Canadians to have reliable access to essential services. We want to keep employment within our borders and not lose it to the United States. The port of Seattle is very close to us in Vancouver. Every time there is a problem at the Vancouver dockside, and it really does not matter who causes the problem, if the port is shut down Seattle is there trying to get the business. The salesmen are very aggressive at taking business away from us. It is
essential that we keep these jobs in Canada. Everyone agrees on that. That is why it is important that the government provides incentives rather than big sticks to get these situations resolved. As I keep mentioning, the incentive should be there and not a big stick. Final arbitration does not favour one side or the other. It provides the tools needed to come to a very close position, close enough that probably either side could live with the decision in the final offer arbitration.
If and only if the union and the employer cannot come to an agreement by the conclusion of the contract, the union and the employer would provide the minister with the name of the person they jointly recommend as an arbitrator. Then the union and the employer would be required to submit to the arbitrator a list of matters that were agreed on, all the stuff that is finalized. They would have no problems.
Then they would submit a list of the matters that are still under dispute. For the disputed issues, each party would be required to submit a final offer for settlement.
Under most labour negotiations that occur in the private sector outside of federal control, there will be employers or unions who will say that it has made its final offer. We all know that these are often posturing positions, that it is not a final offer. It is sort of a threat. When a strike vote is taken, or a lockout vote is taken, then an endorsement by the employment association or by the union is asked for to have a strike. It helps build the pressure on the other side.
Because this is final offer arbitration, this had better be a final offer. It brings it home to each side that they have to get really focused on what they want to come out of this negotiation.
The arbitrator, of course, would then select either the final offer submitted by the trade union or the final offer submitted by the employer. It is all of one position or all of the other. The arbitrator's decision is binding on both parties.
The point that I made earlier was that because of this, it is a strong incentive to get close together. Probably both parties would make sure that they were giving as much as they could and that they were trying to retain as much as they could, knowing they had to get pretty close together before they submit matters to the arbitrator.
From Reform's perspective, we believe that a permanent and fair resolution process has to be put in place like this to take it away from control by the government. The two parties in this dispute would be selecting their own arbitrator. Then they have complete control of the final position they give to the arbitrator that they have selected. There is no government with a big stick to force one side or the other to take some sort of unpredictable settlement.
The risk to Canadians' jobs would be minimized. The risk of loss of business across the border to Seattle or to some other port in other parts of the United States would be minimized.
We cannot allow the situation to deteriorate as it has in the past. Business does move to the U.S. ports it sees as more reliable and we lose the cargo and jobs in the British Columbia ports.
This government and the one before it have shown that they are in the habit of reacting to emergencies rather than putting in place a workable process that can be used whenever we run up close to an emergency situation. They tend to wait until the crisis is there before they act.
One major advantage of final offer arbitration is that it is already there. It is already in place. It is a known end to the process. It does not require Parliament to be called on an emergency basis when everything is in crisis to pass things in the middle of the night or on a weekend. It certainly does not interrupt the business of the House for other matters and keeps the level of upset in the business community to a minimum.
It is important to stress that we are not talking about ending the collective bargaining process. We are talking about making it work better so that the incentive is there to come close together before both sides get to an arbitration point.
Now the minister unfortunately says that he does not support the final offer arbitration situation. I guess that is par for the course. Maybe he is just opposing it because the idea came from the Reform.
It is quite amazing how often good ideas are promoted by people in the business sector or by the average Canadian. We bring the issues to the House only to find that they are opposed by ministers even though many members on the government side support the positions that we take. It raises the question of how democratic this place is when those sorts of good ideas can be suppressed by one or two people running the whole show.
My riding has some major grain elevators, and a lot of pigeons as a result. Maybe Census Canada, instead of wandering around trying to fine people for not filling out their census forms, should take a count of the pigeons in my riding. I think they would get a surprise. I guess one benefit of a strike is that the number of pigeons decrease because they run out of food for a little while.
Grain shipments are very important to my riding but other shipments go through the port as well. Potash, sulphur and wood chips are major shipments that occur in the area. There is a large sulphur depot on the north shore and in Port Moody from where I
believe potash goes as well. Therefore, disruptions in the transportation system do affect other sectors.
I am aware that many of the members on the Reform side of the House are from rural areas where they are involved with farming interests so there has been quite a lot of talk about those farming interests in the discussion on the bill. However, it affects many other industries when the port is locked up for some reason.
Clause 87.7 of the bill ensures that grain, once it reaches the port, will be shipped out. However there is no provision to ensure that the grain gets to the port. What is the point of having a provision in the bill which states that the grain will be shipped out once it gets there when there is no provision for it to actually get there in the first place? That is a major flaw in bill and makes one wonder how such a half measure could get in there. Maybe someone was not thinking straight when the legislation was drawn up.
As part of the national interest, perhaps final offer arbitration would have been a more effective tool to ensure the movement of grain to the markets and to ensure the movement of other commodities as well.
We know that technology is advancing all the time. There is going to be a new generation of container vessels soon surfacing at Vancouver's new terminal. It will require 15 double stacked trains for complete discharge or loading. These are huge volumes of rail cars and huge volumes of products that have to be moving to service these ships. With the improved technology, the grain can be loaded quickly and the port will be empty and idle before a 72-hour strike-lockout notice would appear if we were to remain under the old situation.
Grain represents about 30 per cent of the port of Vancouver's business so it is very important that we consider grain along with the other commodities.
Groups such as the BCMEA-I guess I should really expand that out so that people know the meaning of the acronym-the British Columbia Maritime Employer's Association represents about 77 wharf and terminal operators and stevedoring firms at Vancouver and Prince Rupert. They fear that the grain provision would worsen an already rocky history of labour disputes at the port and this bill has not addressed the problems. They feel that if some longshoremen can keep earning wages for loading grain they might have less incentive to end a strike quickly.
Grain customers are using United States ports like Seattle where they know that the commodity will be delivered as promised. We cannot ignore the threats from ports that are so close to Vancouver. With Vancouver now being the largest port in terms of volume for Canada, we really have to make sure we have stability and can deliver on our promises. Therefore, as we gradually eliminate government subsidies, farmers are not really captive to Canadian ports and transportation systems any more. All parties to this, the port employers and the unions, have to recognize the fact that there is decreasing incentive for farmers to keep using these routes if they are unreliable. We have to make sure that we put in place something reliable. Final offer arbitration would be one of those things.
I could move on to other topics in more detail, but at this point I should wind up and give members a bit of an opportunity to question me on some of the provisions in the bill.
