Jason Kenney

[Income Tax Amendments Act, 1997, March 23rd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to Motion No. 2 at report stage of Bill C-28.

The motion addresses the perceived conflict of interest the hon. Minister of Finance finds himself in with respect to certain provisions of the bill, principally article 241 which would change the tax treatment of shipping companies.

It is well known to members of this place and the public that the Minister of Finance holds through a blind trust principal ownership of Canada Steamship Lines, a major international shipping company. Members of the opposition have raised the question as to whether or not he may be in a conflict of interest by having acted as the sponsor of this bill.

Let me say at the outset that I believe the hon. Minister of Finance is a honest and diligent member of this place and is deserving of respect. Even though I often disagree with him, I personally do not believe that the Minister of Finance acted as the sponsor of this bill in order to derive any kind of personal financial benefit. I rather suspect, given the nature of his responsibilities, that he likely never read the bill. I suspect very few members of the House have actually read a technical tax bill such as this one. What we read are summaries provided to us by either the department or by our research staffs. Oftentimes those summaries do not stipulate a particular provision such as article 241. It is entirely plausible that the Minister of Finance was not aware that article 241 posed a potential conflict of interest for him.

Nevertheless, it is incumbent upon ministers, when they bring bills forward to parliament, that they be well and thoroughly advised about the contents of such legislation. They should know whether or not they may find themselves in a potential conflict position vis-à-vis their own personal business interests and whether or not those interests are managed through a blind trust. In this case it would appear to me that the Minister of Finance was let down by his advisers, by his bureaucrats who recommended that he act as the principal sponsor of the bill but who did not flag, did not highlight, did not emphasize the potential conflict between his private business interests and article 241 which deals with the tax treatment of shipping companies.

Rather than simply dismissing the criticism which opposition members have levelled at the finance minister out of hand as he has done, rather than suggesting that this is some kind of mean-spirited smear campaign, I suggest the government members, and the Minister of Finance in particular, should take to heart in a constructive way the criticism that has been levelled with respect to this perceived conflict.

The minister should go to his officials, if he has not already done so, and say “You have put me in a very embarrassing position by giving me bad advice. I should not have acted as the principal sponsor of this bill”.

Another minister, say the Secretary of State for International Financial Institutions could easily have brought the bill forward. The Minister of National Revenue could have brought this bill forward. The Minister of Finance should have gone to his officials and said, “You gave me bad advice. There was clearly at least a perceived conflict here between myself and this legislation. My name ought not therefore to have been that of the sponsor of the bill”, and somebody should be held to account.

That is really the issue I want to address. It is one of ministerial accountability. It is a principle which is absolutely central to the traditions of Parliament.

We have inherited from our mother Parliament in Great Britain a remarkable institution. It is an institution where the executive branch of the government represents the authority of the crown and has the enormous power of the state vested in it. Police powers, taxing powers and military powers are vested in the executive branch. In this case they are manifested in the cabinet, the governor in council. Members of the cabinet have a fiduciary responsibility to this legislative body to ensure that they are never even in a perceived conflict between their ministerial responsibilities, their responsibilities on behalf of the crown, and their business affairs as private citizens. They also have a profound responsibility to this legislature and to the people that we as MPs represent to take responsibility for what happens in their departments.

I am greatly disturbed by the increasing pattern of ministerial unaccountability, where we find instances like this which come to the surface where ministers refuse to take responsibility for what admittedly may be bad advice given to them by their bureaucrats, but advice which they accept and for which they ought to be held accountable.

If the ministers are not held accountable, who is? The ministers represent their bureaucracies, their departments, which are creatures of this legislature. If they slough off responsibility and they say, “It was just an error. It was just a mistake. It was a small oversight. I cannot be answerable for it. My bureaucrats cannot be answerable for it”, then what is the point of having this Parliament? Why not just have an executive branch of government that is answerable to no one?

That is the ultimate logical conclusion of this kind of incremental diminishment of the principle of ministerial responsibility and accountability which ought to have been much more clearly respected by the Minister of Finance in responding to the criticism levelled at him with respect to Bill C-28.

It is not just Bill C-28 where we see a recent example of conflict of interest. In this House in recent days the official opposition has raised the very troubling example of the recent appointment to the Senate of a certain Ross Fitzpatrick by the Right Hon. Prime Minister. I do not know Mr. Fitzpatrick. I have no reason to believe that he is anything but an honourable, diligent and loyal Canadian citizen. I have no reason to believe he will not be a hard working and responsible senator, fulfilling his constitutional responsibilities.

However, it is a fact that Mr. Fitzpatrick was chairman of the board of a corporation on which the current Prime Minister sat as a director. It is furthermore a fact that the Right Hon. Prime Minister, when he was a private citizen in 1987, exercised a stock option which was given to him by Senator Fitzpatrick which generated a personal profit of $45,000 in the space of one week. It is furthermore a fact that when initially questioned about this stock deal, initially questioned about his corporate position on the Viceroy Resources Board, the Right Hon. Prime Minister claimed that he had received no compensation.

I know the rules of this place and would never suggest that the Prime Minister has misled the House. But the facts show a very clear incongruity between the reality and what the Prime Minister said. It is another shocking example of where we see a perceived, if not real, conflict of interest which government members just expect us to walk away from.

I know there are members on that side who were once in opposition. I know that if Prime Minister Mulroney had appointed the chairman of a board on which he served and from which he received a substantial financial benefit that Liberal members of Parliament in opposition would have raised a bloody furore that never would have stopped until somebody's head was on a platter. I say good on them because the role of an opposition party is to hold the government to account.

I was in the Liberal Party in 1987. Every single person in the Liberal Party, every political observer in the country, knew that the Prime Minister, who was then a private citizen, was likely to run again for political office. He received a personal financial benefit. It is clearly, in my view, a conflict of interest for him to have appointed to the Senate somebody from whom he received a personal financial benefit.

These examples carry on. Just today we raised another case of a former employer of the Prime Minister who received a remunerative government patronage position.

[British Columbia Economy, March 23rd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, here is a news flash for the finance minister. What British Columbians are getting from this government is a recession, more and more people out of work, more and more businesses going bankrupt, more and more people not able to make ends meet because of the tax burden.

B.C. has the highest marginal tax rates in North America, in large part because of the highest personal income tax burden in the G-7 imposed by this government.

What does this government do? It raises CPP by $10 billion. It threatens foreign investment through its foreign assets disclosure. It imposes a head tax on immigrants. It killed thousands of jobs.

When is this government going to stop delivering rhetoric to British Columbians and deliver a real economic plan through substantive tax relief, to give—

[British Columbia Economy, March 23rd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, while the finance minister has been busy talking about Canada heading into a new golden age, B.C. has been headed into a recession.

Last month the B.C. unemployment rate was increased by a half a percentage point. B.C. property values are plummeting. B.C.'s economy has gone from the fastest growing to the slowest growing under this government's mandate.

What does this government plan to do about the emerging economic crisis in B.C., give British Columbians more transfer cuts, more taxes and more happy talk?

[Income Tax Amendments Act, 1997, March 23rd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I was delighted to hear the comments of the hon. member for Mississauga West.

The member referred to the Hazel McCallion international airport. Perhaps it should be called the Liberal boondoggle international airport after this government has wasted $200 million in the botched Pearson contract buyout. It is something for the member to stand in his place and remind Canadians, like rubbing salt in the wounds, about what a terrible, atrocious job he and this government did in reversing the contract rights of people who had a vested interest in that airport which cost taxpayers over $200 million.

The member spoke as well about the need for the federal government and all levels of government to co-operate with the municipalities. He said why can we all not just get along. We need clear rules and guidelines so the municipalities know exactly what the relationship is with the federal government.

It is very interesting because the member's idea of a co-operative relationship with the municipalities is to pass Bill C-28 without their support, to impose a tax on the businesses owned by municipalities, on their utility companies. That is his idea of a co-operative relationship. That is the government's idea of a co-operative relationship with taxpayers. The federal government says “We will co-operate in taking money out of your wallet”. That is its idea of co-operation. I call it a tax grab.

What the hon. member seeks to do by supporting this bill and opposing our motion is to impose a tax on profitable corporations owned by municipal governments. These are important revenues to many municipalities. Many municipalities rely on the revenues they generate from these corporations. They turn those revenues back into the corporations to reinvest in the utility infrastructures of their cities, towns and villages. Others rely on it to help supplement their general revenues.

Make no mistake about it. If we do not support Motion No. 1 on Bill C-28 we will in effect be deciding to raise property taxes indirectly because there will be less revenues coming into municipal coffers. We will also be putting municipal politicians who have been dealing with downloading from the senior levels of government for the past decade in the very difficult position of trying to decide which areas of their utility infrastructure they can cut back on. That is not good.

We just went through the terrible experience of the ice storm in southern Quebec and eastern Ontario. Tens of thousands of Canadians are still recovering from the terrible consequences of that devastating natural disaster. If we learned one thing it is the need for all levels of government to be absolutely focused and dedicated on maintaining a top rate utility infrastructure that can defeat the attacks made on it by natural disasters like the ice storm. We need municipal utility companies.

It is interesting that on the island of Montreal, I understand that while most of Montreal was blacked out at the height of the ice storm, the municipality of Westmount was still lit up. Why? Because it has its own locally managed and owned utility company with an infrastructure that is so sophisticated it withstood the collapse of the power network.

By imposing a tax on that kind of utility company this government would undermine the ability of municipalities like Westmount to maintain a power infrastructure which can withstand some of the challenges it needs to face. That is one of the reasons we have proposed this motion which would prohibit the imposition of this tax on subsidiary corporations owned by Canadian municipalities.

It is really another back door tax grab. This Liberal government is very artful when it comes to presenting tax increases as mere housekeeping amendments. That is why it claims it has not raised taxes in the past five years since it was elected in 1993. In fact any close study of the books will conclude that the government has raised taxes at least 37 times, not including the most recent federal government budget. It is little amendments like this one which, albeit indirectly and almost invisibly, end up sucking more out of the pockets of local taxpayers.

It is true that there is only one taxpayer. The hon. Minister of Finance has said that on many occasions. If it is true, as politicians repeat it all the time, then why do we not respect that basic truth of political reality? Why does the federal government jemmy around with the rules of taxation of businesses owned by municipalities and in effect impose a higher tax on local taxpayers?

It is not Hazel McCallion or Mel Lastman or Jean Doré or Pierre Bourque; it is not the mayors who own these corporations. It is local taxpayers who own these corporations. They belong to them. By taxing money away from the profitable utility corporations they own we are imposing a tax on them.

This reminds me of a tax change the government made in the last session, a change to the Public Utilities Income Tax Transfer Act, PUITTA, a long, technical name. Precisely for that reason the government thought it could make a significant change to Public Utilities Income Tax Transfer Act that nobody would notice.

Of course Reformers noticed. We opposed this enormous tax grab as vigorously as we could. The government still passed it. It said that privately owned utilities, private sector utilities, would no longer be able to compete on a level playing field with their counterparts in the public sector.

In Alberta, the province I represent, we have a vigorous private sector economy. We believe in something the government does not understand very well called free enterprise. We believe that privately owned, privately managed businesses in the private sector are ten times out of ten more productive and more efficient in servicing consumers than crown corporations. That is why Albertans have maintained an infrastructure of private utilities.

It just so happens that publicly owned utilities like Ontario Hydro and Hydro Quebec do not have to pay income tax or corporate tax on their profits. I do not quarrel with that. Perhaps it is a sensible policy. Until 1996 the federal government provided a rebate to consumers of private utilities because private utilities had to pay those taxes.

In effect this rebate levelled the playing field so that an elderly lady paying for her heating bill in southwest Edmonton would not have to pay the portion that was going into the tax coffers of the federal government. That is what PUITTA did. It helped that woman and millions of other consumers of private utility services. It levelled the playing field so that they were not paying more than their counterparts in Ontario or Quebec who were taking advantage of utility services provided by public crown corporations.

The government said to Alberta and private utility consumers that it was sorry they did not count as much as the people being serviced by crown corporation utility providers. It made a technical change in the tax act like the one in Bill C-28. It made a technical change, a housekeeping amendment, that most people did not notice. The government called it a spending cut and generated a few hundred million dollars in new revenue out of the pockets of hard pressed taxpayers whose utility bills principally in the province of Alberta went up.

That is what the change to PUITTA did. It is the same kind of back door, sneaky tax increase we find in Bill C-28, which we in the official opposition are trying to rectify through this motion.

In closing, my party and I believe in a principle known as subsidiary, a principle of political theory which suggests—and I believe it is a self-evident truth—that the lowest level of government, the level of government closest to people is the best level of government to serve them. We need to respect that level of government, not to treat it in the backhanded manner the bill seeks to do. We say to municipal politicians and property taxpayers that we want to avoid this back door tax increase. That is why we seek support for Motion No. 1.

[Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion, March 19th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I too am pleased to rise to speak on Motion No. 75. I wish to commend my hon. colleague from Kamloops for having brought this motion before the House even though I disagree with it in principle and will vote against it.

I think history is important. It is important for us to not dismiss issues such as this and the question of the legitimate status as veterans for those who fought in the MacKenzie-Papineau Battalion.

I will take a slightly different perspective from that which prevailed in this debate. It has been suggested that those 1,300 Canadians who entered into the Spanish civil war of their own volition did so out of a commitment to democracy and out of a desire to fight and defeat fascism.

I have no doubt that they felt so motivated, that they felt called and they felt the courage of their convictions in engaging in this war. Nor do I deny that many of these veterans acted heroically in the action they faced. The fact that so many of them died is one of the tragedies of war which we all mourn.

Several people who have spoken to this motion have rendered a simplistic and incomplete picture of the history of 1937 and the Spanish civil war. They have painted the contribution of the MacKenzie-Papineau Battalion and the Republican forces in the Spanish civil war as being, without question, beyond repute and on the side of the angels. They have suggested that the forces they were fighting were merely an extension of the unquestionably evil forces of fascism which were then gaining force in Nazi Germany.

I think it is important for us to recognize that when this House and this Parliament gave passage to the Foreign Enlistment Act in in 1937 it understood the greater complexity of the situation as it then unfolded in Spain, as did the Canadians who left to fight in Spain on behalf of the Phalangist cause.

No argument can be made that there was a unanimous view in this country about which side in this very complex and messy war had the moral upper hand.

I believe it was the hon. member for Laval West who said that the Foreign Enlistment Act, which prohibited Canadians from enlisting in a foreign war which was not recognized by this country, was passed in part under pressure from a fascist constituency in the Canadian electorate. I really think that does a disservice to Canadians, now and at the time. It does a disservice to our history. It is based on a gross misunderstanding of the reasons for this enactment.

The reality is the Spanish civil war was not a battle between good and evil. The Spanish civil war was a complex war between, on the one hand Republican forces which included communists, Stalinists, Trotskyites, anarchists and, admittedly, democrats. It was a strange and tempestuous coalition which itself came to blows internally. In fact, some of the most brutal actions in the Spanish civil war, as any historian will say, were within the republican movement itself, as the communists and Stalinists, fed by the tyrannical designs of the Russian Stalinists, attempted to seize control of the Republican movement and were largely successful in so doing.

On the other side, it was not simply a uni-dimensional coalition of fascists supported and motivated by Adolf Hitler. Indeed the German and Italian fascists supported elements of the Phalangist cause, but there were democrats, monarchists, catholics and others who opposed the Republican cause because they saw it as an encroachment of a foreign tyrannical political movement, communism, and its threatened imposition on Spain.

The reasons different people were motivated to take different sides in this war are complex. We do a great disservice to history and to those Canadians who fought on both sides of this war to suggest that it was as simple as has been presented here.

In fact, we have heard from many speakers about the atrocities committed by the Franco forces in the Spanish civil war, and understandably so. One can make no moral apology for the evil that was done in that respect.

However, it is important to enter into the record some historical consideration of the kinds of terrible evils perpetrated by the Republican cause which was supported by the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion. I do not suggest for one moment that the Canadian combatants in that war were engaged in these kinds of atrocities, but the fact is they fought alongside Stalinists and Trotskyites and anarchists and others who were motivated as much by a kind of anti-Christian and anti-catholic hatred as by a desire to establish democracy in Spain.

The eminent historian Hugh Thomas in his book the Spanish Civil War published in 1961, somebody regarded as generally a pro-Republican historian, detailed in his book the kinds of atrocities committed by the Republicans during the war. Among other things, he says that of the 86,000 people killed under the Republic, 7,900 were clergy or religious, 12 were Bishops, 283 were nuns, 5,200 were priests, 2,500 were monks and 250 were novices. These were not people killed as innocents in the war. These were religious people, not direct combatants in the war, who were sough out and killed by Republican forces.

He reports that nuns were raped and murdered in Pozuelo de Alarcon near Madrid. He reports of parish priests being seized by leftist militia men, scourged, tied to wooden beams, given vinegar to drink, crowned with thorns and then shot. He reports a crucifix was forced down the throat of a mother of two Jesuits. He reports that 800 faithful Christians were thrown down a mine shaft. He reports that in Cernera rosary beads were forced into monks' ears until their ears ruptured. The historical record shows priests having been castrated and their castrated organs being forced into their mouths. He reports priests who were burned alive.

These are all documented incidents. Faithful Christians were burned alive after digging their own graves. Others were burned or had their eyes gouged out. Churches and convents were indiscriminately sacked and burned. There were 150 churches totally destroyed and nearly 2,000 more than half destroyed.

That is just one small historical review of the record of the wonderful Republicans in the Spanish civil war.

I submit that in considering this bill and in considering the history of the passage of the Foreign Enlistment Act, which this motion essentially seeks to undo retroactively, we must be mindful of the historical complexities of the time and must not allow ourselves to be the victims of the kind of historical revisionism which suggests that one side in this combat was all sweetness and light. That is not what the record shows.

Because Parliament still recognizes the Foreign Enlistment Act some have argued that we cannot and should not extend veterans benefits to the remaining surviving Mac-Pap veterans. I would argue that if people engage in civil disobedience, as these people knowingly did, they agree to accept the consequences.

John Stuart Mill, the great political philosopher, says in his magnum opus On Liberty that those who engage in civil disobedience do so while accepting the sanctions the state imposes for such civil disobedience. Those who engaged in the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion knew full well at the time and with conscious deliberation decided to act with civil disobedience.

I suggest that 60 years later we cannot undo a decision they made at that time. I call on my colleagues to oppose this motion.

[Mart Kenney, March 17th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, in March 1928 a young Vancouver musician played his first professional date on his 18th birthday. That man would become known as Canada's top big band leader and would bring joy to millions of Canadians from coast to coast through the difficult years of the Depression, the war, and ever since.

I am talking about Mart Kenney, my grandfather, who this week celebrated his 88th birthday and his 70th anniversary as a professional musician. He is still going strong and still bringing happy memories as he plays to sold out concerts across the country.

My grandfather has always had a special love for Canada. At the height of the big band era he turned down offers from the big record producers to move his band to the States because he wanted to raise his family here. Now he has rewritten the lyrics of his popular wartime patriotic song We're Proud of Canada to herald “the heritage we each proclaim which makes us different but the same”. It will be featured this summer by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.

On behalf of all members this very proud grandson wishes a happy anniversary to a great musician, a great Canadian and a true western gentleman, Mart Kenney.

[Competition Act, March 16th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I too am shocked with the support the hon. member for Qu'Appelle has given to the big banks. It is terrible that the NDP has not only turned its backs on the Regina manifesto's clarion call to nationalize the banks, this party of markets and competition, but now it wants banks to populate small town Saskatchewan. The member wants all the big banks to go into small prairie villages.

I grew up in the little town of Wilcox, Saskatchewan, with a population of 220 on the Sioux line between Drinkwater and Yellow Grass. When the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce shut down three decades ago, a local credit union emerged. It was a local co-operative bank established by the farmers and workers in that area.

That member does not like it because he would rather have the millionaires from the Bank of Commerce running the banking business in Wilcox, Saskatchewan. I say shame on the hon. member standing up for his friends with the big banks. I will point out he did suggest in his remarks that the Reform Party was friendly with the big money people on Bay Street.

The Reform Party more than any other party, with the exception of our socialist friends, relies more on the contributions of individual donors than corporate donors. Three dollars to one is what we get in terms of individual contributions to corporate contributions. There is a good reason the NDP does not get any business contributions. It is because businesses know it is not in the best interest of Canadian workers to support its kind of monopolistic policies.

Could the hon. member comment on what happened to their policy to nationalize the banks? Even Ed Broadbent used to talk about nationalizing one of them. Did that just sort of flitter away with their other socialist principles?

[Competition Act, March 16th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar for his comments. He suggested that the Reform Party together with others were opposed to competition in the banking sector. I would like to correct the record. The Reform Party has said that it would only approve the proposed merger of the two large chartered banks if we had a more competitive banking regime.

I would like to ask the hon. member about what happened to his social democratic principles. I grew up in Saskatchewan down the road from where Tommy Douglas was first elected. As a high school student I read the Regina manifesto, the glorious socialist vision of our friends to my far left in this Chamber. It said among other things that the CCF and its progeny, the NDP, were committed to no competition in the banking sector, not to more competition but to none, to nationalizing the banking sector.

I wonder what this hon. member has done with his socialist principles. Did he lose them along with his psychedelic Volkswagen bus in 1968?

[Canada Labour Code, March 16th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of privilege. The hon. member for Palliser said that I have worked for an organization that I have never worked for. I would like him to correct the record and apologize for misrepresenting my background.

[Canada Labour Code, March 16th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak to the Bill C-19 amendments to the Canada Labour Code which my colleagues and I are opposing.

This is an anti-democratic bill which overrides the privacy rights of workers and collective bargaining, properly conceived.

Let me say at the outset that the Reform Party has, since its founding, supported the principle of collective bargaining. We believe that workers, by joining together democratically through an appropriate, open, transparent and democratic process, may decide, quite legitimately, to negotiate collectively and bargain collectively with their employers. That is a fundamental economic right which is recognized in every liberal democracy and which is also recognized by the Reform Party.

What Bill C-19 seeks to do, by amending the Canada Labour Code, is to change the legal framework within which those collective bargaining rights are exercised by people who work in industries regulated by the federal government.

This bill changes the name and the powers of the Canada Labour Relations Board to the Canada Industrial Relations Board. The cosmetic change of its name reflects a significant change in the powers which will be given to the board.

One of the principal objections I have to the bill is that the new board will have, as my colleague from Medicine Hat mentioned, the power to ban replacement workers in federally regulated industries. That means that a company which has done its level best in fair negotiation to provide a fair deal to its employees but which finds that the union leadership, for one reason or another, decides to strike, will be held ransom. Its livelihood and ultimately the livelihood of its workers will be held at the whim of the union leadership. This company will not have the right, if proscribed by the Canada Industrial Relations Board, to replace striking workers with people who can continue to provide those goods and services. In other words, the economic viability of various companies and indeed various industries can and may very well be threatened by this bill if it is passed.

As the hon. member mentioned, the government recognizes the flaw in empowering the CIRB to ban replacement workers by exempting those workers employed in the area of grain shipping and handling at the ports. In the past there have been several instances when those workers have gone on strike and caused enormous economic turmoil for prairie grain farmers because of their inability to export overseas the grain they have produced. These amendments do not really solve that problem. The ability to hire replacement workers will not necessarily mean that grain will move. What it does mean is that we are creating a double standard for workers, one standard for those who do not work in the grain handling unions and one standard for those who do.

If banning replacement workers is wrong in the grain handling situation, then it is wrong for those who do not handle grain, those who handle other commodities, those who provide other goods and services, those who are as essential to the Canadian economy as our grain workers.

We would seek to remove the provisions of this bill which, in a discriminatory way, create a double standard with respect to replacement workers.

Another serious concern I have with the bill is its treatment of the certification issue. This bill would empower the CIRB to certify a union local at a particular place of business even if the majority of the employees at that place vote against certification.

My colleagues will correct me if I am wrong, but I thought we were living in a democracy. I thought that in a democracy the majority, or at least a strong plurality, prevailed. However, in the case of the amendments to Bill C-19 the government is saying that the principle of democracy can be marginalized.

If a bunch of appointed members of this board, likely Liberal patronage hacks, decide that a particular local place of business is to be certified, it will be certified by that board even against the overwhelming objection of the people who work there.

My colleague mentioned the recent case of a Wal-Mart store in Nelson, British Columbia, which has similar legislation to that being introduced here, where the B.C. labour relations board ordered that the Nelson Wal-Mart employees be unionized even though they voted against it in their certification vote. A similar thing happened at a Wal-Mart store in Windsor, Ontario. We could see the same thing happening across the country in federally regulated industries if these amendments are passed.

We are also concerned about the question of privacy. This bill would undermine the privacy rights of union workers. This is a very serious consideration. People are often forced into a union. We are talking about a labour regime of closed shop unions where the board can force the people to be in a certified union. Now we are saying their privacy rights are to be compromised by this bill. This is really big brother manifest in this kind of legislation and that is why we are opposed to it.

What we ought to do is look at a fair, open and transparent regime for regulating labour unions. We have no objection to people legitimately exercising their collective bargaining rights. However, this bill would create a double standard, would jeopardize the privacy rights of workers and would jeopardize the livelihoods of many businesses and potentially some industries through its treatment of replacement workers.

Finally, this bill would override the principle of democracy which should govern the treatment of unions in the certification process. Frankly, I think it is an exercise of statist tyrannical power to tell a majority of workers that they are going to be forced into a union and forced to pay dues against their will. That is simply wrong.

We ought to look at bills like this at the level of first principles. So often we get buried in the details of technical amendments like this and we lose sight of first principles. One of the principles of liberal democracy is freedom. I know it is a quaint notion to some of my friends opposite on occasion. However, that notion dictates that people cannot be coerced by the state to surrender their freedoms without their consent. Bill C-19 would seek to circumscribe the economic freedoms of workers to not be unionized, not certified and not forced to pay union dues if they choose not to.

We ought to put Bill C-19 and these amendments back on the drawing board. As the Senate committee suggested, we ought to start all over again and listen to the business groups across this country that are speaking out against this. I have received several phone calls, letters and faxes from different businesses and business organizations that say this bill constitutes a very real threat to the competitiveness of the Canadian labour force and our labour markets.

I would ask all my hon. colleagues, including those on the Liberal side, to look beyond the spin they are getting from the labour department and look at the first principles behind this bill and vote against Bill C-19.