Mr. Speaker, I would like to start my remarks today by thanking all the men and women in the RCMP who serve our country. It has been a real honour to have had an opportunity, through working on Bill C-7, to hear from them and get a sense of the needs and challenges of the RCMP today.
As a new member of Parliament, this has been an opportunity for me to learn a lot about a very important institution in Canada and to hear directly from those who serve us so well.
It is an attempt by the NDP to try to manifest that thanks in arguments and in a position on Bill C-7 that will bring about the best outcome for members of the RCMP and that will give them a greater say in the future of the institution they serve, and through that institution the country.
It is my hope that our arguments and actions in this debate have been worthy of their service. In that spirit, I would like to make some remarks about the bill at third reading.
Bill C-7 was one of the first bills the government brought to the House of Commons. At that time, there was a collegial spirit, and a lot of talk about the importance of the committee process and how empowered committees would be in order to make meaningful changes to legislation. At that time, there was far less evidence that this may not come to pass than there is now.
The NDP was happy to support the bill at second reading, to send it to committee to deal with what we thought were some important concerns. Some of those concerns were addressed, and we were happy to work with other parties in order to get rid of clauses 40 and 42 in the bill, which really had little to do with the Supreme Court decision and were kind of tacking on a decision about the benefits of members without consulting them. Frankly, this was just before, or on the cusp, of them potentially having a bargaining unit that could do that credibly on their behalf.
That did not make sense. We were very glad to work with the other parties on committee to jettison that part of the bill, and leave it for later when RCMP members could be represented in that discussion and help come to a conclusion about the state of their benefits, rather than having the decision made for them.
The next important area of concern from our point of view are the exclusions. That is also the point of view of nearly every RCMP member who has contacted me as the responsible critic in the NDP.
Today we heard hon. members talk about the two important elements of the Supreme Court decision, the explicit ones. Those are independence of the bargaining unit from management and choice, that members be able to choose a bargaining unit.
What gets lost, even though those are the two items explicitly mentioned by the Supreme Court, is that there needs to be an independent bargaining unit freely chosen by the membership in order to bargain with the employer about the things that matter in the workplace.
Even if the bill meets those two aspects of independence and choice, if it leaves nothing to bargain, because that has all been excluded under the legislation, or if it does not leave most things to bargain, then I do not think it is in keeping with the spirit of the Supreme Court decision. I have said before in the House that the bill as it stands is certainly open to challenge.
It is not just open to challenge because it is a bill, a piece of law. Any bill at any time is open to any challenge. It is open to challenge, and is likely to be challenged, because it does not satisfy the people who went to court and fought for years in order to get some meaningful say over the future of their workplace.
It is not because by getting collective bargaining rights all of a sudden employees or the president of the union or just anyone who happens to work for the RCMP can walk into the commissioner's office and say “This is the way it will go from now on”. It is because it would at least give them the opportunity to be involved and consulted in a way that they never have been before.
That is why so many RCMP members were so excited and joyful when the Supreme Court ruled that it was not right and that it was a violation of their charter rights that they be denied the right to bargain collectively in their workplace. The way that the Supreme Court made sense of that was that people need the freedom to meaningfully advocate for their concerns within their workplaces.
It has been our position all along that these exclusions do not do that. It seems to be that some members are of the view that somehow if we take away the exclusions, suddenly a clerk in the RCMP would be dictating to the commissioner what the rules of the workplace are. Of course to anyone who has any real understanding of collective bargaining, that is ridiculous. I do not see why we would not want to empower members to bring forward proposals about the way things ought to operate in the RCMP. We all know and have discussed many times already, not just in this Parliament but in all of the previous Parliaments, that there are problems within the RCMP.
Traditionally, the way to deal with those problems has been that the commissioner and the government, in some way, shape, or form, get together and say that there is zero tolerance for the kinds of problems that exist, or affirm their support for the force and say that they want to work together to ensure that the RCMP members have everything they need. However, we know that has not always worked. I do not see how that could possibly be controversial to say.
Collective bargaining, which the court has said RCMP members have a charter right to, would not be the only tool. I do not think anyone is maintaining that once collective bargaining comes to the RCMP there will be no further problems or incidents in the workplace. What we are saying is that by introducing meaningful collective bargaining, and by that I mean bargaining without the list of exclusions currently in Bill C-7, we would be introducing a genuinely new tool into the workplace, not just for workers but also for management and the government to deal with some of those issues, and to deal with them closer to where they are happening, so that they do not have to come to Parliament to be dealt with, mostly by people who do not have experience or background in the RCMP. They could be dealt with in the workplace instead.
If it turns out that some of those proposals are completely unreasonable, then they would go to binding arbitration. That arbitrator is required by this very law to take into account the unique role of the RCMP as a national police force and the stated budgetary policies of the government. Therefore, allowing RCMP members to come forward with proposals is not any kind of real threat to the operational structure of the RCMP. Any of those proposals would first be reviewed by management at the bargaining table. If they are really unreasonable they would not be agreed to. Beyond that, they would be assessed by an independent third party that has to take into account all of those very factors, which members have so well articulated, that make the RCMP different.
Certainly, if we talk to RCMP members themselves, those who are advocating for a more open model of collective bargaining without the exclusions, they will tell us that they do not want the RCMP to be treated just like any other federal department. However, if we take the exclusions out, the RCMP is still not treated just as any other federal department.
Therefore, it is our submission that Bill C-7 satisfies the legitimate concerns made in those arguments and that those arguments are mistakenly applied in favour of having an itemized list of exclusions, when those concerns are already answered by the many other elements of protection either for management or due to the unique nature of the RCMP. Sometimes those are harder to tell apart than others, but we are satisfied that those protections exist and that unreasonable proposals that do not adequately care for the spirit of the RCMP and its unique operational nature will be dispensed with through binding arbitration and those interpretive constraints.
What the exclusions really amount to is just prejudging the reasonableness of the proposals employees may bring, and saying to them in advance, “Whatever it is you want to bring here you can't, and we don't want to hear it.” That is the tone that is set.
There may be other avenues that they can bring those proposals through. There have been other avenues over the last four or five decades and more. However, the point is that those other avenues have not been satisfactory. That is why so many members of the RCMP took the RCMP to court to say they wanted collective bargaining because their legitimate desires and goals within the workplace, even though it would be nice if they were, were not being heard adequately through those other avenues.
They want another avenue called collective bargaining, not because it is a panacea, not because they are going to get everything they want but because they clearly need another tool in the tool box. They need another way of working on these issues in their workplace in order to have success at resolving long-standing issues within their institution that have eluded them through all those other avenues. It is their way of asking the government not to create more avenues that formally are the same as the avenues before, but to do something genuinely new and let them in on the ground level to propose and be part of solutions in their workplace to deal with as much as they can as close to the work as they can. Those other issues that cannot be resolved can then bubble up and can be dealt with along with those other avenues.
I just do not see why that does not sound like a good idea to the government, and why the government insists on maintaining these exclusions. I just do not see the same threat to the institution.
Looking at the bill and considering the history of the RCMP and listening to what RCMP members would have to say is something that unfortunately more Canadians are not in a position to be able to do directly. Part of the honour and privilege of being the critic for the bill for the NDP is that I have had the opportunity to do that. When we lay those things beside each other, it is hard not to feel that this list of exclusions really is just ridiculous. It either comes from a desire to satisfy RCMP management as opposed to the front-line workers in a way that I do not think makes sense or is appropriate for government, or it comes just from a basic failure to understand collective bargaining. That is not where I started out in terms of my thinking on this, but I just do not see how they can engender this kind of resistance to these exclusions, given everything else that is within the bill, the binding arbitration system and the interpretive constraints put on the arbitrator, and think that somehow the RCMP is going to fall apart if members put their issues on the table.
Those members care deeply about the institution, and that is something that has been very clear to me in the correspondence that I have received from them. Let them bring the proposals, let them work with management, and let them have their agreements and disagreements. For what does not get solved there, we can look at those other avenues. No one is saying those other avenues need to be closed. It is just to say that there is an opportunity here to do it differently and to do it better, and that we can do that while respecting the unique nature and therefore unique needs of the RCMP. In fact, a lot of that is already in the bill.
Just to address some of the other arguments that have been made, we have heard that it is a different kind of organization because the members start out as cadets and anyone who ultimately ends up wearing the commissioner's uniform wore the other uniforms on the way up, so there is a level of trust with the senior leadership of the RCMP. That is a nice picture, and I am sure that it is true in many cases. However, it is clearly not enough, just in the way that collective bargaining on its own is not enough. Just because they have a collective agreement, it does not mean that they will never again have a workplace incident. However, they set up rules in order to be able to deal with an incident when it happens.
The trust and camaraderie within the RCMP is a good thing and I am sure that in certain cases that has meant a great deal to those members and has helped resolve situations, but it clearly has not resolved them all. It verges on being naive to expect that simply because people were together in their initial training, somehow 20 years later there are never going to be problems between management and workers. Sometimes despite its best intentions, management is going to be on the wrong side of that argument. What is important then when that trust breaks down, as it has demonstrably within the RCMP at times, is that there is a good process in place. That is the idea behind a collective agreement.
There can be workplace processes in place without a collective agreement. Many workplaces have them, but the idea is to give RCMP members a say in what those procedures will be. It is not to say they would get a veto on every workplace procedure. It still has to be negotiated and go to binding arbitration. Fundamentally I do not agree with the idea that somehow there is something that will fall apart if members are allowed to bring those proposals.
When one hears from as many members as I have, they are distressed and upset at the fact that those proposals will not be able to go forward. They were also not consulted in any serious or meaningful way prior to this. There was a survey that the Conservatives ran last summer. I have heard from certain members that they did not really know what they were being consulted on or understood what their answers would ultimately mean. Therefore, there has not been great consultation and I have been hearing that members do not agree with the exclusions.
I do not see why the government is willing to dissatisfy so many RCMP members, many of whom were part of the suit in court, who felt that they were gaining not a panacea but an important tool in the workplace that was not there before, a workplace where some things were not going right. In my view, there is not much at stake with removing these exclusions.
That is something I have been wrestling with. I wrestled with it at committee and again at report stage where there was an amendment about the exclusions. It was not as comprehensive as the NDP amendment at committee, but it at least dealt with one of those exclusions. We heard the same arguments and we are hearing those same arguments again today at third reading. It has been a bit of a disappointment in terms of process, because other than the RCMP commissioner himself and some top brass and other members of this chamber on the government side and in the Conservative Party, I have not heard anyone say that they agree with the exclusions or that they do not think some of those exclusions should be lifted.
It is rare to get a unanimous conclusion and I have heard from some who think some exclusions are warranted and maybe others are not, but the resounding cry I have heard from those who would be affected by the legislation is that they would like to have a significant number of exclusions removed, and in most cases all of them, so that they can bring proposals forward. I have yet to hear a compelling argument, when I look at the whole bill and the other aspects of the bill, that says we should not be doing this.
Saying RCMP members all went to their first training together so we should just trust them to do a good job is not sufficient. I do not think it is enough to say that they are getting independence and choice of the bargaining unit, when there is not left much to bargain. That is a really important thrust of the Supreme Court decision. That is clear and that is the subject of the decision. One might forgive the court for not feeling it had to be on the list of things the legislation had to satisfy. How do members select a bargaining unit if the legislation that grants the right and the process to collective bargaining takes away everything that can be bargained at the same time, leaving only pay and benefits? It is clear that the spirit of the decision is not being respected and we can expect to see it challenged again by the very same people who fought it for a very long time.
We started out by supporting this to send it to committee in part because we wanted to see those exclusions dealt with, but that simply never happened. In all of that I never heard a really compelling argument for why they would not be removed. It is unfortunate, but it is not something that we can support at third reading at the end of this process.
