Mr. Speaker, today social peace is in jeopardy.
Before making judgements on the situation, we might want to know what are the origins of the problem we are faced with today. We have Western farmers who want to move their produce, we have correctional officers who are negotiating improvements to their working conditions.
The government with surpluses in its coffers says it too wants to negotiate as stated by the spokesperson for the Treasury Board, who said on November 12 “We want to settle with the Public Service Alliance of Canada and ensure collective bargaining remains a key element of labour relations between the government and its employees”.
The government stated last November that it wanted to have good human relations, good labour relations with its employees. This must be translated into concrete actions.
The government implemented a reform of the labour code in 1967. It granted powers to its employees. It allowed them to be unionized, it gave them the right to negotiate work agreements. It granted them the right to refuse to work if they believed they were not getting the pay they deserved. This is called the right to strike.
When we give a right to workers, and at the same time the means to exercise this right, which is the least we can do, we have to expect that they will use every means at their disposal to get what they want.
If a union does not have the right to strike, how can it be heard? It is similar to the situation of Quebec, which has been putting demands before the federal government for 30 years but is still lacking the ultimate weapon it needs to be heard.
As soon as Quebeckers have expressed clearly their desire to achieve sovereignty, the federal government will have no choice but to sit at the table and negotiate.
We can see that the federal government, which has not yet yielded to this custom, refuses to negotiate, as it refuses to recognize the situation with Quebec.
There are 49% of Quebeckers who said “We have a human relations problem. We have an economic relations problem as well as a political relations problem with Canada. We should sit down to try and resolve these problems”. But the federal government says “There is no problem since 51% of Quebeckers say they want to stay with us. There is no problem. We do not need to listen to the mere 49% who say they want to separate”.
The federal government has the same attitude in the labour dispute we are facing today. There are only seven bargaining tables. Only two of those are causing problems at this time. It is not worth dealing with them. The government says it is dealing with them. It wants to crush the workers as quickly as possible to shut them up so life can go on and it is no longer bothered by these things. It will behave as if there never was a problem.
It will say “The problem has been resolved. You see, we just crushed them. We stomped on them. We stomped on them and now we can start afresh”.
But those people who have not had a negotiated agreement in seven or eight years, how do they feel today? There were given the right to strike, they were given the right to negotiate, but they cannot exercise that right. How does the government intend to deprive them of that right? Through special legislation.
A special bill on labour relations is like a notwithstanding clause in the Constitution. If Quebec—to name but one province—which has a notwithstanding clause, had used it for anything and everything, what would the federal government have said? It would have said “the notwithstanding clause is an exceptional tool which, ideally, should practically never be used. We should always manage to reach an agreement through discussion, through negotiation, before using this ultimate tool.
It is the same thing with labour relations. What happens when rights, and the means to exercise them, are given to a group, only to be removed later through special legislation?
The government has done that four times since 1971. Was it a life and death situation each time? Was it, on each of these occasions, the only means left? One only needs to look at the current situation to know. The other situations were no more serious.
It is true there are problems with the current situation. It is true that the two sides do not agree, but have all other means been tried? I say no because, at least at one of the bargaining tables, the union had accepted the majority conciliation report.
This being a minority report, drafted by an independent arbitrator, one of the solutions would have been to have the government say “We bow to the majority conciliation report, we accept the conditions, we sign”.
In the case of another table, the union, having been told by the government that its demands were exaggerated, and unreasonable, responded “We are prepared to take these demands before an impartial arbitrator. We are prepared to bow to the arbitrator's judgment as to whether our demands were really exaggerated and unreasonable”.
The government said no, because it feared the arbitrator could suddenly find it was in the wrong, and it could then no longer impose its philosophy, its way of thinking; it could no longer impose working conditions.
The government is acting as it does in all other areas. It assumes an arrogant stance, disdainful of the workers, of the smallest members of society, under the pretext that it is protecting the safety of Canadians.
Was the government concerned about the safety of Canadians when it picked their pockets to create an employment insurance surplus? Well in excess of 87% of PSAC members were among those affected. Hundreds of thousands, even millions, of ordinary workers had their pockets picked. I use that term advisedly, because they had no choice in the matter. There they were, and the government just helped itself.
Of course, this was probably for their own good. So much for their own good, that the government ended up with their worldly goods. It did not have anything to do with safety. At that time the government had no scruples.