Lee Morrison

[Canada Labour Code, May 8th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, we do not have a quorum.

And the count having been taken:

[Railways, May 8th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, if the transport committee is so important, it is a pity that these people did not bring it up when they appeared before the transport committee a few weeks ago.

If this product is so financially attractive, the six companies involved certainly have the clout to raise the money but they prefer to have taxpayers take two-thirds of the risk.

Two of the consortium members, Bombardier and SNC-Lavalin, are renowned for their taste for Liberal pork. If this is such a good project, why do they have to come to the public trough?

[Railways, May 8th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Transport.

A consortium of private companies wants to build an $11 billion high speed rail system in southern Ontario and Quebec. It is not necessary to read very far into their announcement before discovering that this happy little group expects the people of Canada to pay for the railway on which they want to run their trains.

Will the minister assure the House that this government will not commit to providing public funding for private profit?

[Canada Labour Code, May 8th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise to speak to the Group No. 2 amendments to Bill C-19. First I will address one of the most important amendments which has come forward on this bill. It is proposed in the interests of maintaining democracy and protecting the rights of workers.

The Canada Labour Code states that the board may order a representational vote on union certification to satisfy itself that the workers want a union. Our amendment calls for the board to, without exception, hold a representational vote when 35% of the employees sign cards indicating they want union certification. This amendment would ensure that the wishes of the majority of workers in a workplace are upheld.

Closely related to that amendment is our Motion No. 30 which would do away with the intent of Bill C-19 to allow the CIRB to certify a union even when there is no evidence of majority support if the board believes in its wisdom that there is sufficient support to justify certification. This turns democracy and labour relations upside down.

The determination of under what conditions this certification would be allowed would be entirely in the hands of the CIRB. Bureaucrats rule. We have seen in the sovereign province of Ontario what happens when there is this type of labour legislation. The Wal-Mart case in Windsor is an example of what would happen in federally regulated industries if Bill C-19 were to pass without amendment.

To refresh the memory of hon. members, the Ontario Labour Relations Board ruled that Wal-Mart agreed to certify the union even though the employees at the Windsor store voted 151 to 43 against it. That was in May 1997. The board contended that Wal-Mart had pressured the employees to vote against the union with threats that the store would close if it were unionized. Now the employees are fighting to get rid of their union and a decertification drive is under way. Why should they have to go through that?

That brings up another problem with Bill C-19. There is no provision in the bill for secret ballots. If there were a provision for secret ballots, both in certification and in strike votes, then there would be no problem with questions of pressure being applied to workers because nobody would know how they voted. The people of Canada who send us here have a secret ballot when choosing their representatives.

In the meat and potatoes issue of who is going to represent them at the bargaining table, we do not and will not extend the voting privilege by secret ballot to working people regarding whether or not they want to certify union A , union B or none of the above. Whatever happened to freedom of association in this country? This is an absurdity.

The bill has another related anti-democratic measure which was partially smoothed over in committee, but not to the extent that it is yet acceptable to the Reform Party, and that is the requirement that employers must provide union organizers during a certification drive not only with the names of their employees, which is certainly fair ball, but also with their phone numbers and addresses.

If someone was bucking union certification in their workplace would they want their phone number or their address to be made public?

We went through this sort of thing in this country about 50 years ago when the Liberal government of the day, in its wisdom, brought Hal Banks into Canada to break the seamen's union and to set up a union more to the satisfaction of the Canadian government.

It got the names and addresses of the members. There were seafarers who had their legs broken. There were even captains of vessels, who were not directly involved because they did not have to belong to the union, but because they were suspect of having taken the wrong side they were beaten up. The goons knew where everybody could be found.

I know we have come a long way in the last 40 or 50 years. There is not the extent of union goonism now that there was in those days and it is not protected, aided and abetted by our federal government. Nevertheless, it still happens.

Anyone who has worked in forestry, anyone who has had anything to do particularly with the ports of this country, knows that people still have to watch their step if they do not want to get their nose smashed. That is the way it is.

We in this House should be realistic enough to appreciate that the whole world does not live in the little gilded cage that we inhabit on Parliament Hill. Things get rough out there in the real world.

We should not be setting people up to be in a position where they have to step up and say “Yes, we agree” in order to protect themselves and their families. That is nuts.

It is a privacy issue. Even the privacy commissioner, our late, lamented privacy commissioner who is no longer with us, said that this is a very clear invasion of privacy. It is anti-democratic.

Bill C-19 now has been partially ameliorated. It says that the employer does not absolutely have to provide this information because the employee can take the initiative and go to the employer and say “Please don't give them this information”.

This in itself sets him up because then, in the workplace, that worker can be fingered. They can say “Hey, he did not want us to know where he lives. He did not want us to know his phone number. Why?” It is a bit of a half-step, but it does not nearly go far enough.

Those are the big problems with certification without majority support. I do not know who on earth came up with that stroke of genius.

I have carried a union card. I imagine there are other members of this House who have carried a union card. I swear to God if I had ever been confronted with a situation like that where a group of bureaucrats said “that union is going to represent you and you have no choice in the matter” I would not have been a happy camper. If we do not get rid of any other bad features of this bill, and they are legion, surely by passing Motion No. 30 we can get rid of that one.

The final thing I would like to mention is final selection arbitration. We have been promoting this very strongly in the debates on this bill and I will not go into the details as I am sure the House is now familiar with them.

We have a strike coming up in the very near future with the air traffic controllers. They are ready to hit the bricks at NavCan. They and NavCan management are so far apart there is absolutely no possibility of reaching an agreement without outside interference. As usual, both sides of the debate are sitting there waiting and hoping the federal government will save their bacon by passing back to work legislation when it happens; the old routine. They can snarl and growl and start the strike but the federal government will come to the rescue.

If we had final offer selection arbitration this sort of thing could not happen, would not happen. The parties could freely negotiate and at the end of the day it would be settled by arbitrators and life would go on without a lot of difficulty.

[Transport, May 6th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, last week 95% of the 2,200 air traffic controllers voted not to accept a contract offer from Nav Canada. The two sides are impossibly far apart.

The controllers want wage increases of up to 38%. Nav Canada wants to cut its costs by 17.5% over three years. My question is to the Minister of Transport. What contingency plan does he have in place to prevent a disastrous shutdown of the air traffic system in Canada?

[Mi'Kmaq Education Act, May 1st, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to compliment the member for St. John's East on his presentation. To me the member is representative of the very philosophy which I was trying to espouse in my speech. In other words, here is a man who has succeeded. He was encouraged and helped by his family, but he went out and did what had to be done within general society and has finally arrived here as a member of the Parliament of Canada.

I would ask the hon. member if he attended a segregated school when he was on his way up. If he did attend such an institution, did he think that was a good idea?

[Mi'Kmaq Education Act, May 1st, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I do not wish to address the technical details of this bill. This has been done by other members. My objections to the legislation are more philosophical than technical.

I object because the bill in my eyes is a reflection of the government's agenda to create a system of benevolent apartheid, velvet glove segregation enforced not by truncheons and attack dogs but with chequebooks and devious dealings.

When the Prime Minister of Canada was the minister of Indian affairs some 30 years ago, he knew better than to perpetuate the system we have in this country today. In fact, he issued a white paper which would have brought the native people holus bolus into Canadian society. Had he had his way at the time, the majority of the problems the native communities are now facing in Canada and by extension the rest of us would not exist.

However, he was not a senior member of the government at that time. He was beaten down by Prime Minister Trudeau. He was beaten down by the Indian chiefs. Now apparently he no longer recognizes the wisdom of his thoughts in those days. The Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development is off and running on the same track which this government has followed ever since it was elected, which is to maintain segregation.

Let us be clear that when we talk about not segregating the native people, we in the Reform Party are not saying that there should not be any cultural distinctiveness. Any group in society, if it has a culture to protect and defend, should be able to so. What we object to is administrative distinctiveness.

The southern United States used to refer to facilities, primarily education facilities, being separate but equal. This was the line of the Bull Connors type of person or, if we want to get someone a little more civilized, George Wallace. Surely these are not the models which we in Canada should follow in developing our social policy.

I would like to speak for a moment about what I think may be one of the impetuses behind the establishment of a natives only educational system. I would like to speak about the much maligned residential schools. One should remember that at the time when most natives, particularly in northwestern Canada, lived on the land, these were the only available options for an academic education for native children.

I used to work with a number of young men who graduated from the Fort Providence residential school. They had formally completed what was then referred to as a grade eight education. I would say their general level of sophistication and general knowledge was at least equal to that of the average contempory high school graduate. Had it not been for the residential schools, the construction of the educational foundation on which to build native political power would have been delayed by at least 20 or 30 years. Where do members think the leaders came from who were able to integrate themselves into the system—I use the word integrate advisedly—and effectively they beat the caucasian migrants at their own game?

I know some of these residential schools were tough. The one that my friends went to was apparently tough. When they talked about it, they did not talk about it in tones that would suggest they had been devastated by it. They spoke about it in a rather jocular fashion. In the days they were there all schools were tough. I attended a school where corporal punishment was the norm. I somehow survived. As has been admitted, there were perverts and sadists in the system, as there are everywhere in society. There were some terrible events. But that does not condemn the entire system which by and large was run by dedicated, sensitive people who really had the best interests of their students at heart.

In any event, with modern communication and modern transportation there is now no need for residential schools. If the Mi'kmaq children were to ride school buses to universally accessible community schools there might be some cultural shock but certainly much less than would be experienced by native people in other parts of Canada. Segregated schools are unfortunately a geographic and demographic necessity in some parts of the country but certainly not in Nova Scotia.

Anyone who has been watching the events on television lately the disputes over logging would certainly have been struck by the down home Nova Scotia accents of some of the disputants. These people are for all intents and purposes integrated into general society. This government is proposing what I would call a policy of dis-integration.

Many people would like to forget the band system in Canada, which this new educational policy would help to perpetuate, was the model for South Africa's system of homelands. The designers of that system actually studied our reserves at a time when our domestic apartheid was not benign, as it is today. They thought this was wonderful and went home and did the same.

We still have the apartheid system. We still have the reserves. Thank heavens they are now a little more benign, but at what cost? We have created this gigantic bureaucracy both in Ottawa and in and about the reserves. We have a class of people known outside of the Indian community as the Indian industry which comprises not just bureaucrats but the chiefs, the bands, all the people in power, the people who have their hands on the money and who will retain their power, their influence, their trips, their meaningless meetings and their good life as long a we continue to boost up the band system. It is a classic example of this type of band boosterism when we give people their very own schools apart from the rest of society.

Therefore I cannot in conscience support this type of legislation. It is wrong to divide people. It is wrong to set up a system where we have a money elite with power bestowed by the federal government, both economic and social power, who are in effect the representatives, whether the people being represented like it or not, of the vast majority of rank and file natives who have no choice in the matter.

This is the old colonial system. This is the way it was done in colonial times. They set up a leadership system that would eagerly collaborate with the senior governments. They gave them lots of perks and privileges and through that they were able to maintain permanent control, permanent separation, permanent economic subjugation of the vast mass of the people allegedly being represented.

[Canada Shipping Act, April 30th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I will read into the record a couple of samples from “Your Safety Comes First”. These are some of the requirements for vessels up to six metres in length. This would include canoes: a buoyant heaving line of at least 15 metres or an approved throwable floating device; distress signals; a watertight flashlight and a heliograph or six Canadian approved flares, of which at least three must be of either type A, B or C and at least two of type D; navigation equipment; a sound signalling device and, if the vessel is operated between sunset and sunrise or in periods of restricted visibility, navigation lights that comply with the collision regulations. If the vessel is not power driven, navigation lights could be replaced by a watertight flashlight.

Gee, thanks. And of course all canoes must now be equipped with tow lines. The people who wrote this little guide did have some compassion, though. They said that if a boat does not have a motor it does not require fire extinguishers. It amazes me that they realize that.

I understand this little bureaucratic effort was partially prompted by concerns over the proliferation of jet skis and of overpowered nuisance craft in recreational areas. These are genuine concerns but these problems could be easily addressed by rigorously enforced local ordinances prohibiting their use in certain venues. Do not let them run the Sea Doos through the swimmers. This is why we have local law enforcement. The dead hand of federal authority is hardly necessary.

These are merely cautionary remarks since they deal with something that is possible within existing legislative constraints. We can only be vigilant and ready to respond to the wave of complaints that will inundate us when the decision is made to put licence plates on all canoes, if big nanny does everything she would like to do.

As far as the new registration and regulation regime for commercial vessels is concerned, the Reform Party has no objections and we will support the legislation.

[Canada Shipping Act, April 30th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, as the hon. parliamentary secretary mentioned, Bill C-15 did not receive much attention in committee from stakeholders.

The general consensus among the people in the marine industry seems to be they would like this legislation passed in order to get it out of the way and do away with any regulatory uncertainty. I do not believe there is any debate on this side of the bill.

There are some non-commercial ramifications, however, to the marine act. As the hon. parliamentary secretary mentioned, in committee we did try to address the very well founded concerns of the millions of citizens who own small boats subject to regulation by DFO.

A section was removed from the bill during the clause by clause examination. This would have permitted the governor in council to require the registration of small boats for a fee. I am very grateful this section is no longer included but under our system almost anything is possible under orders in council, and unamended section 108 of the existing marine act could still be used to achieve that same purpose.

Section 108 has been in place since 1936 and it has not been abused, but this government, unlike any other government in my memory, loves to make regulations, loves registering things and loves to collect fees. It is a disease. It likes to collect fees on firearms, pleasure boats and, who knows, perhaps electric toothbrushes. In any event, we can only maintain an attitude of watchful caution.

A recent DFO publication entitled “Your Safety Comes First” is a classic example of what I am referring to about bureaucracy running amok, the busy work of desk sailors with nothing useful to do. I have had many expressions of concern from people who feel the coast guard has lost its compass and is totally at sea with its intrusive, impractical lists of not dos and don'ts.

[Depository Bills And Notes Act, April 27th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. We have one Liberal. I request a quorum.