Jim Gouk

[Petitions, January 28th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I have a number of petitions on four different subjects.

First, the petitioners draw to the attention of the House that the addition of sexual orientation as an explicitly protected category against hate propaganda would lead to individuals being unable to exercise religious freedom.

The petitioners call upon Parliament to protect the rights of Canadians to be free to share religious beliefs without fear of prosecution.

[Firearms Registry, November 26th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-68, one of the dumbest and most wasteful bills ever, comes into full force in a month, and what has it accomplished?

We were told it would prevent crime, despite the fact that after decades of registering handguns, they are the weapon of choice for criminals. We were told that the system would cost less than $100 million, and to date it has passed a billion dollars, with still no end in sight.

Canadians are dying in hospital waiting lines and the Liberals squandered a billion dollars on a useless system. Our military are flying 40-year-old helicopters, while the Liberals waste a billion dollars on a useless system. Child poverty goes unresolved, while the Liberals blow a billion dollars on a useless system. Government projections on Bill C-68 were out 1,000% and it is far from finished.

Now we are faced with a new hoax, the Kyoto accord. Not only does Kyoto not address real pollution, but if government estimates are out as much as Bill C-68, the final cost will be more than all the money needed for health care, the military, child poverty and other measures combined.

Bill C-68 was supposed to address crime, but to waste money as the Liberals have done is the biggest crime of all.

[Grain Transportation, November 22nd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, there was no grain dispute at Prince Rupert. There was an ongoing negotiation which never became a dispute.

If the minister wants to take credit for settling a dispute, why does she not try Vancouver where the grain workers have been without a contract for two years, have been locked out for three months and where mediation and conciliation were tried and failed?

[Canada Labour Code, November 20th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I am sure a couple of people are waiting to hear exactly what I am going to say on this. I see the grins starting already.

I will say at the start that I personally have a problem with the concept of replacement workers. I have said this publicly before.

However, rather than look at that, I want to look at the bigger problem. Replacement workers are a problem created inside a bigger problem. What is the bigger problem? The bigger problem is that in collective bargaining we end up in a situation where people are out of work when they are on strike.

If people are on strike, collective bargaining has failed. I have had people say that if I am against strikes I am against collective bargaining. Strikes are not part of collective bargaining. Strikes are the result of the failure of collective bargaining.

The Bloc member who brought the bill forward today said in her speech that Quebec has made great improvements by bringing in legislation to ban replacement workers. However, the average strike time is 27 days; that is 27 days that workers are without their wages.

I know a lot of people working at regular jobs who sometimes find themselves, particularly in the high cost years of starting out with their family, dealing with a mortgage, a car loan, the costs associated with young children and many other costs, being as little as a paycheque away from bankruptcy. If they lose one paycheque they start missing payments. In 27 days they are missing more than a paycheque. Yes, it is a problem for them if the company hires someone to replace them on the job but the bigger problem is that they are losing 27 days of wages which they cannot afford to lose.

In terms of replacement workers, two particular points are important. There are a lot of jobs that theoretically this would be addressed to if we were to put this in where replacement workers cannot be used because of the high technological nature of the job. It is not possible to go out and get people to come in for the short term and take over those jobs. There are situations where it can and is done, but there are a whole lot of jobs where it simply cannot be done.

The other side of that is that we have to look at the trade-off in terms of replacement workers. What is the other side of replacement workers? In terms of replacement workers it is a situation where a company hires someone to replace the striking worker.

I had an interesting situation in my own riding where a union newspaper went on strike for a long time. Replacement workers were not used but employees were on strike for a long time. Basically the employer was not even talking with the strikers.

At some point, because of the problem, as I have said, where people needed an income, these union workers started their own paper. They now have an employee operated paper where the very people who were on strike, and technically are still to this day on strike, and it has been years, now operate what would be a competing paper if in fact the original paper even ran. The original paper shut down and, for all intents and purposes, ceased to exist. Although technically it is still there on the books and they are still legally on strike, the workers have gone to work. That is the other side of replacement workers. They replaced the employer.

If we want to be truly realistic and fair, and I say this totally theoretically, and ban the ability of a company to hire replacement workers, although I do not endorse having replacement workers go in, we must also give those striking workers the ability to replace the company. It seems far-fetched but it is a direct correlation.

We can look at the other things that happen in terms of strikes. I have already mentioned the loss of wages. There is the loss of business income for the company which, in some cases, results in the company ceasing its operation. The workers would no longer on strike, they would simply be unemployed. There is harm to third parties.

In the early days of strikes, in a less complicated world when trade unions first came into the country in the 1800s, it was an economic tug of war between the employer and the employee. It was a question of who could do without the money longest; the employees for wages or the company for its revenues. There was certainly some collateral damage, particularly if it were a company town, but generally speaking it was related directly to those workers in that particular factory or business, or whatever it happened to be.

However, in this global economy, for example, when a relatively small group of people go on strike at the port of Vancouver, prairie grain farmers thousands of miles away could lose their farms if that strike goes on long enough.

When air traffic controllers, who are a relative handful of people in the grand scheme of things, go on strike the transportation of goods and people ceases. Therefore there is incredible third party damage to people who are not even a party to the negotiations.

I accept the sincerity of the member who brought the bill forward and her genuine concern about the people who are impacted by strikes but I think we need look at a bigger picture.

Strikes and lockouts have been the dispute settlement mechanism that has been used since trade unionism and collective bargaining started in this country, as I say, back in the 1800s.

A lot of things have changed. In those days if people wanted to go on strike or be in charge of a strike they had to be strong. They had to defend themselves against goons hired by the company who came out with clubs and beat people into submission. Those things have changed. The education of the union leaders has changed.

Everything about how it is done has changed; the adding in of mediators, conciliators and these types of things. However we have never changed the most fundamental aspect of disputes and that is the dispute settlement mechanism.

We need to look at alternatives. Like everything else, we do not wait until we have a perfect solution to try to make a change.

I and my party very much favour the concept of going to a mechanism, for example, like final offer arbitration. I talked to the labour critic for the NDP who said that yes, it is good in certain circumstances but that it does not work in all circumstances. Nothing does.

The member from the Bloc said that we need to have civilized bargaining, that we need to get people talking and working together. I absolutely agree. The fundamental concept behind final offer arbitration is that we ultimately have each side take a final position. We can set out all kinds of parameters that must be followed in terms of the arbitrator who makes the final decision. We can lay it out in fine detail in terms of looking at corporate share profit, the economy and comparative jobs in other industries. All kinds of things can be put into the mechanism before it is even set up.

However, ultimately each side knows if they are being unrealistic. Let us say on wages that a $2 raise is what would be reasonable if all the factors were weighed. The union says that it wants $3 and the company says that because times are tough it wants a $1 cut. That is unreasonable if the realistic benchmark is $2.The workers will get $1 more and the company knows that.

Consequently, the company can determine just as easily as the union can what the reasonable benchmark is. It may try to cut it but it will try to come close enough to it that the union cannot come in above it, win and have its demands prevail. What often happens in these cases is that the two end up so close together they often settle.

This is something I feel very strong about. I could go on for a long time but I see my time is up. I appreciate the intent the hon. member had in bringing the bill forward. I sympathize with the situation but I think that if we start putting band-aids on labour problems we will divert ourselves from focusing on the real problem that we need to come up with a way where workers do not lose any money, never mind 27 days on average.

[Agriculture, November 18th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, grain handling in Vancouver has been stopped for three months due to a lockout of the workers and the minister has taken no real steps to resolve it. Talking is not working.

Our solution of final offer arbitration does not impose a contract. It simply stops the work disruption.

The government has always been quick to act when there have been work disruptions when workers go on strike. Why is it waiting so long to take similar action when those workers are locked out? Why the double standard?

[Petitions, November 7th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the petitioners from my riding draw to the attention of the House that the creation and use of child pornography is condemned by a clear majority of Canadians, but the courts have not applied the current child pornography laws in a way to make it clear that such exploitation of children will always be met with swift punishment.

Therefore, the petitioners call upon Parliament to protect our children by taking all necessary steps to ensure that all material which promotes or glorifies pedophilia or sado-masochistic activities involving children be outlawed.

[Grain Transportation, November 4th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, striking longshoremen at Vancouver were legislated back to work after 11 days, CN and CP Rail unions after 18 days, and postal workers after 14 days. Air traffic controllers were legislated before they went out.

Grain workers at the port of Vancouver have been without a contract since December 2000 and have been locked out by the employer for over two months. Talks have broken down and there is no end in sight.

Why does the government move so quickly when unions go on strike and yet takes no action when employers lock workers out? Why the double standard?

[Committees of the House, October 31st, 2002]

Madam Speaker, I would like to end this session of the debate with a touch of honesty, which has been surprisingly missing. We are not talking about the election of chairs and how we elect them. We are talking about whether we elect chairs, which therefore is done by secret ballot, or whether the chair will be appointed by the PMO. That is what we are debating.

[Canada Health Act, October 25th, 2002]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-256, an act to amend the Canada Health Act (conditions for contributions)

Mr. Speaker, this is also a reintroduction of a bill that I had previously introduced in the House. It addresses a serious problem for health and emergency response workers in the country who often risk being exposed to infectious diseases while in the course of their duties.

There are absolutely no provisions to provide them with notice if it is later discovered that the victims they had attended had infectious diseases.The bill is designed to provide a simple protocol that would allow those people to be notified while still protecting the confidentiality of the people who were infected themselves and with whom they had come into contact.

I hope the government will see fit to pass this quickly for the benefit of all those who put their lives on the line to protect all Canadians.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[VIA Rail Commercialization Act, October 25th, 2002]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-255, an act respecting the commercialization of VIA Rail Canada Inc.

Mr. Speaker, this is a reintroduction of a previously introduced bill dealing with the privatization of VIA Rail.

VIA, as a crown corporation, is subsidized in the amount of about half a million dollars a day, and recently had an injection of over $400 million. The transport minister has admitted that the private sector has indicated a will to run this without subsidy. The bill addresses the fundamental problem that it is wrong for the government to subsidize a business which competes against other private sector transportation sectors.

I hope the government will see the light of day, recognize the error of its ways and support this bill.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)