Blaine Calkins

[Ethics, February 16th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, recently media reports have surfaced indicating that the Irvings and members of the cabinet met in Moncton, New Brunswick last week. The government House leader is very familiar with Moncton and the Irving family.

Given the recent sanctions brought down on the government House leader, can he explain to the House what role he played in facilitating these meetings between the Irvings and the Liberal government?

[Government Appointments, February 4th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, this is outrageous. This is political interference in the courts. Is there any court in Canada that can escape the reach of the new Liberal government? No one has ever done this before. No one has even had the gall to attempt something like this before.

Every minister in the past who has interfered with these tribunals has resigned. When is he going to get to it?

[Government Appointments, February 4th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada website states:

The reappointment process for IRB members will continue to reflect a performance evaluation consistent with the merit-based competency criteria. The Minister will continue to recommend the reappointment of members...after taking note of the IRB Chairperson's recommendations concerning performance and operational needs.

Could the government House leader tell us this? For the reappointed IRB members he has politically intimidated to resign, what specific problems with their performance were identified?

[Canada Labour Code, February 3rd, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member does not seem to appreciate the fact that I am talking about my private member's Bill C-525. Bill C-377 was a transparency mechanism that was brought in by one of my colleagues. He would be better served asking my colleague about that, but I support the notion of transparency.

Taxpayers subsidize union dues being paid to the tune of $500 million a year. That is exactly the budget of running the entire Parliament and democracy of our country. That is a lot of money and union members have a right to know where that money is being spent.

I do not think there was anything wrong with a $5,000 threshold. It is a mandatory tax if one is a union member. Union members have to pay it. That is the deal and that is fine. I do not disagree with that deal. I think union members ought to know where it goes.

After all our celebrations on democratic rights for women getting the right to vote in Manitoba, and references to Irene Parlby, one of the Famous Five, who is from my riding and came from Alix, Alberta, is the hon. member going to wear as a badge of honour the fact that when he passes this legislation proposed by the Liberals, he is going to take away the right to vote of every woman worker in this country?

That is the badge that he and the Liberal Party are going to wear because every woman, who is part of a union or not part of a union, has just lost the right to vote. I would be ashamed of that record.

[Canada Labour Code, February 3rd, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, remember the part of my speech when I said that if you yell louder, you are somehow going to make your point better? The member who just asked me the question is a pro at this.

It was my bill. I brought it forward. I am a member of Parliament. I do not have the vast resources of government to engage. My job is to represent my constituents and I brought the bill forward on behalf of my constituents who had concerns about how they were being represented by their union.

I cannot interfere with what unions do, but I can at least put an accountability mechanism in on behalf of my constituents that would allow them to make this choice free from the prying eyes of both their employer and their union representatives.

While the member wants to go after and repeal secret ballots, he is doing it through secret meetings. We all know from the articles that appear in the media that the Prime Minister and a number of senior Liberals, I can only imagine, have met behind closed doors with union leaders who say one thing in that meeting and say another thing when they are testifying at committee in front of all Canadians. We know that union donations played a factor in the last election campaign on behalf of the Liberal Party.

No one on this side of the House, at least myself, is surprised that the Liberals can be bought. I am just surprised at how cheaply they let themselves go for.

[Canada Labour Code, February 3rd, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to rise in my place to speak to this today. I will be splitting my time with the member for Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola.

First, I want to thank everyone in the previous Parliament who passed my private member's Bill C-525. I am very disappointed at how this debate has been framed by members in the Liberal Party, the NDP, and others.

My bill is not an anti-union bill. It has been long established that unions have the right to exist and that Canadians have a charter right to associate and affiliate with one another. That is not what is in question here.

My bill is not anti-union. My bill is pro-democracy, and it worked in part with Bill C-377, which is pro-transparency. Those were the issues.

My bill came about as a result of consultations with my constituents. Every time we hear a Liberal MP or an NDP MP talk about consultations, the only people they are talking to are union leaders, or big business.

The Conservative Party actually talks to everyday ordinary Canadians. We know we are on the right side on this issue. We know we are right because polling information clearly indicates where Canadians are and where workers are, in particular where union workers are on this issue.

I already have had a number of calls from constituents and card carrying union members who are disappointed that it is a priority of the Liberal government to undo what we were able to do in the last Parliament, which was bestow a mandatory secret ballot in the process of certifying or decertifying a union.

How can it be called democracy if we take away the right to a secret ballot? It has been established long ago that the hallmark of any modern democracy is a secret ballot vote. Would members of Parliament feel that they were here legitimately if they were able to go door knocking and stand on people's doorsteps, make their pitch and say that they happened to have a ballot in their hands, and a couple of their friends with them, and encourage people to sign those ballots and vote for them. That is exactly what the card check process is.

I have been a member of a union, and my union served me well in times when I needed it. However, I was also in the hall where I heard my union representatives use these kinds of tactics, tactics that we hear of all the time, threats and intimidation, boisterousness, the louder they spoke, the more forceful their point was. It does not matter how right they were, it just mattered how loud they were. It was not necessary. I did not need to be convinced. I was going to support whatever we decided to do as a group. I did not need to be intimidated or beat into line on these issues.

I have also sat across the table as a municipal councillor negotiating on behalf of taxpayers for a public union. I saw through those secret negotiations, much like the ones the NDP always claimed, when we were doing trade negotiations. Every negotiation was done this way. I never heard an NDP member of Parliament say that union negotiations should be done in front of the entire world for everybody to see. Those members think TPP should be done that way, but they do not think a union negotiation should be done that way.

Notwithstanding that hypocrisy, I have been there. I have seen who was looking after who in these negotiations. I saw union leaders ensure that whatever the contract was, if it started to go bad for the union people, the people at the very top, the people with the seniority, not the new people, not the new workers, not the most vulnerable workers in the union, the ones who had the least seniority, but the ones who had the most seniority, the people with the most seniority looked after themselves. They were the ones who rose up to the top of the union leadership. The ones with the least seniority were vulnerable. Whatever negotiations happened, the people at the top made sure they took care of themselves first.

Where would that union member's right be to hold his or her union leaders to account if they were not actually representing even a junior member of the union to the best of their ability? There was no way because there was no mandatory secret ballot vote to determine who would represent those people at the collective bargaining table. This is absolutely fundamental.

We hear the other side complaining about a number of these issues, that Bill C-525 is anti-union, that it is creating disparity. Bill C-525 actually created the same process for creating a union as decertifying a union. Yet, the minister right now claims that they are going back to a more balanced approach. In her opinion, a more balanced approach would make it far easier for a union to be created and far harder for a union to be decertified. If it is the same way going in as it is going out, I do not understand how that tips the scales. That makes the scales level.

As a union leader, would a person not want to have his or her presence as a collective bargaining agent on behalf of the employees ratified by a secret ballot vote? Would he or she not like to carry that forward in confidence, knowing full well that he or she has 50% plus one of the membership of the union supporting him or her to negotiate a deal that is in their best interests?

The way it worked before my bill was passed was with a card check system. That is fine. A card check system is still used. It is just used to determine the threshold for when a vote should be called. That is fine. We must have some way of gauging interest.

However, we can do a card check under any guise. We can take a card to someone who is neither fluent in English nor French and tell them that they needed to sign this card to receive their pay and benefits. So, they sign a card. They do not know what they are signing. All of a sudden, there is 50% plus one of the members of the union. It was automatic. It is 50% plus one. It was automatic.

Is this not problematic? Does anyone not see an issue with this? It was open to abuse. It was open to intimidation.

What is wrong with a secret ballot?

I do not know whom the members in the Liberal Party consulted. They had closed-door meetings shortly after the election, but every union leader who came before the human resources committee during the deliberations on Bill C-525 had nothing but good things to say about the secret ballot.

The Christian Labour Association of Canada said that “CLAC supports efforts to...strengthen the democratic rights of workers” and stated that it looked forward to further speaking to the legislation when the Senate dealt with it. The CLAC representative repeated, “Yes, we are in favour of secret ballots.” That is a union leader who said that.

Robyn Benson of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, the largest public service union in Canada, said:

Contrary to what you may have heard, PSAC has no issue with voting by secret ballot. We do it regularly to elect our officers, ratify collective agreements, and vote for strike actions, as examples.

Really? Robyn Benson said that in front of the committee. What is the problem? What is the issue? They want to be legitimized. They want to have that process legitimized.

FETCO also agreed with it. Mr. Farrell from FETCO said:

I believe the major disadvantage is that there's no clear evidence that all of the potential union members have had an opportunity to seriously consider the question of a unionization and to express their opinion behind the screen of a ballot box in a secret ballot vote.

What Mr. Farrell was actually saying and responding to there was a question that is very fundamental. If they do a card check system they actually would not even have to check with all the members of the bargaining unit. They could just go until they got 50% plus one, wipe their hands, call it a day. They did not even check with everyone. People can show up the next day at work never knowing that a union drive had even taken place and be an automatic member of the union.

How is that fair? How is that a democratic process? People do not even have an opportunity to discuss it.

I have a lot more examples. There are numerous polls by Leger and Nanos and ask the question, “Should Canadians have the right to a secret ballot before they decide to join a union or not? What is their best interest?” In every case, as confirmed by the testimony of union leaders themselves, Canadians overwhelmingly, over 70%, and sometimes over 80%, say, “Yes, this is true”. And when they asked an actual union member of someone who was in a union, that number even got higher, sometimes up into the high 80s percentages.

It makes absolutely no sense. There is not a problem here that needs to be undone, contrary to what these folks over there want Canadians to believe.

We on this side of the House, the Conservative Party, and only the Conservative Party, stand up for transparency and for accountability for workers.

If anyone in Canada has any doubts who is on the side of the everyday working man and woman in this country, it is Conservative members of Parliament.

[Canada Labour Code, February 3rd, 2016]

Madam Speaker, I would like to congratulate my colleague on an excellent speech. I appreciate his passion for this.

I was very pleased to have Bill C-525 passed. It is not very often we see a private member's bill passed. It is something I thought was going to be a hallmark of change in this country when it came to establishing democracy and democratic rights.

I, too, have been a member of a union. I have also been part of collective bargaining on the other side, sitting across the table. I know exactly who the union leaders are looking out for in these negotiations. In not all cases is it in the best interests of the workers they claim to represent.

My questions for my hon. friend who gave this speech are based on the information we have on the polling information that was conducted. Is there any clear indication as to whether or not actual union workers support the notion of having a mandatory secret ballot?

Second, could the member edify the House on why he thinks, after nine years of Conservative government, a private member's bill was passed?

Third, why, all of a sudden, is one of the first things the Liberal government does is make a move to remove democracy and accountability in this House with one of its first bills?

[Government Appointments, February 3rd, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, it is clear that the government House leader is getting to know the Ethics Commissioner far too well. We still remember his ethical challenges, dating back to 2003. Then this December, he was held responsible for illegal fundraising. Now he is trying to deliberately intimidate arm's-length bodies.

Why will the minister not admit that it was wrong to abuse his position by threatening judges and by trying to intimidate them? How much further is he prepared to go?

[Government Appointments, February 3rd, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday the Liberal House leader got it wrong. He tried to justify his interference with citizenship judges on the Immigration and Refugee Board just because he did not like who was appointed.

These people were already appointed. He has no right to use his position to intimidate them. Judicial independence is paramount. These judges and tribunal members make rulings on matters between the government and Canadians. Will they now feel pressured to side with the new Liberal government in order to keep their jobs?

[Government Appointments, February 2nd, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, we will see if double standard and Liberal government are still synonymous.

The reason I asked the previous question is that the government House leader wrote on behalf of the Prime Minister to a citizenship judge. He has been busy.

The government House leader also wrote to five members of the Immigration and Refugee Board, the same board that former Liberal minister David Collenette wrote to and had to resign over.

How is the Prime Minister going to hold his House leader responsible for this clear violation of ethical guidelines?