If the member will shut his big mouth for 10 seconds, I will repeat what I said last night. I said that the government's move to take in 14,000 workers who were in no way affected or in no way involved in the strike which is tying up the ports was a Machiavellian move, and I will stick by that. I did not say that I did not support back to work legislation. I hope the hon. member has that straight in his head now.
This is an emergency. It is an emergency on the prairies in particular. The livelihoods of thousands of people on the prairies, including farmers, truckers, elevator operators and railroaders, are on the line. PSAC made a strategic decision to target the grain terminals because it knew that was the tender spot. That was the most vulnerable target it could hit and it decided to go for broke. Now we are going to see the results of that.
Contrary to what my friends in the NDP might say, there is truly an emergency. This is not a joke. This is very serious. We have to do something about it. A grain train has not left the prairies for over a week. People are in a very bad state. The trains are not moving and we are getting into the season when road bans are beginning to go on. People will not be able to move their grain to the trains. Something has to be done. Because of the government's ineptitude, the only thing that can be done at this point is back to work legislation.
We have been having these problems for 30 years. There is nothing new under the sun. The grain movement in this country has been constantly victimized by labour disputes. It never seems to end.
Not too many years ago this government said that it was going to solve the problem and it brought in its wonderful Bill C-19. The only problem with Bill C-19 is that whoever drafted it was asleep. We tried to point out when the bill was being presented to the House that there were holes in it, that we cannot protect an entire system by forcing certain segments of the industry to perform. There will always be somebody left on the outside who can tie it up.
In this case it was the grain weighers in PSAC. Treasury Board has mismanaged negotiations with these people. Because the government has removed the right of arbitration for PSAC, we now have this situation in western Canada where we are being held hostage by a tiny little group of 70 workers. To deal with a 70 worker nuisance, the government has decided to burn the house down. It has brought in this legislation that will affect 14,000 people. This is indefensible. It is Machiavellian.
When a house is burning, and it is burning right now, the first thing that has to be done is to put the fire out. Then there has to be somebody watching to see that it does not flare up again. After the fire has been fully and properly quenched, then the necessary steps are taken to see that it is not going to happen again, that it is not going to restart.
In this case a very obvious solution would be to provide final offer selection arbitration. This is a solution we have been advocating in this House for three or four years. It is a solution that has been widely used. It works. The government is certainly not unfamiliar with the mechanism. It has used it. It is my understanding that in this particular instance PSAC would agree to it. It would accept final offer binding arbitration. The only people who do not care about arbitration and fairness are the members over there because it is not in their interests.
The government has boxed itself in and 14,000 workers are affected. Not all of them are even on strike. It is suspected they might go on strike. Since these folks are too lazy to be here over the Easter break, they have decided to legislate them back to work before they even hit the bricks to save time and energy.
The government also seems to think that some prison guards might walk out during the Easter break. It does not know that, but if I may use the word strike in a different connotation the government has decided to have a pre-emptive strike.
The government claims that Revenue Canada has a backlog of more than a million tax returns but PSAC flatly denies it. It says it is actually a little ahead of the average production compared with previous years. Somebody, whether it is the President of the Treasury Board or the leader of PSAC, is not telling the truth. I am not about to try to guess which one it is, but somebody is giving us the gears. That is a rather important consideration.
It is not surprising to me that the government introduced legislation that will affect 14,000 people in order to get 70 people back to work, which could have been done with a very simple targeted act. This is the same government that passed pre-emptive legislation against three or four million Canadian gun owners not too long ago in order to deal with a couple of hundred criminals who might have used guns. This is typical Liberal attitude: get them in the throat before they have a chance.
Many members want to address this question tonight. I will be addressing it again when we get to committee of the whole. With that I will let it go for now. I have made my position abundantly clear.
