Pat Martin

[Supply, May 26th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak to this particular motion on this opposition day. The topic is an important subject which Canadians want to talk about. There is a great deal of interest in the subject and it is very timely to be raising it at this particular juncture.

The YOA, victims' rights, the whole subject dealing with crime and urban safety is something that I am very well aware of and deal with every day. I live in an inner city riding, the city of Winnipeg, that is home to some of the worst street gang problems, breaking and entering, nuisance crimes and a lot of property crimes.

Next to health care, the number one issue that arises from the people in my riding is: Why are their streets not safer? Why can they not feel comfortable? They want to live the way we used to live in that community when I was growing up. My father would give me $5 to go to the store to buy a quart of milk when I was eight or nine years old. I would ride my bicycle to the store, buy the milk and return home.

Now a parent simply cannot do that. They would not be acting in a responsible way if they sent their kid to the store with a five dollar bill. It would not be smart. They would not be doing their child a favour.

It is the number one concern. It is a quality of life issue. People want it to be dealt with. They want it to be addressed. They have a right to be angry. Even a lot of the choleric language that I hear from members of the Reform Party I can frankly understand. I can relate to it. We all have a right to be angry when our streets are not safe and we do not feel that our families are safe.

I recently held a round table on this subject in my riding and two nuns who run a safe house for street kids in the inner city of Winnipeg came to that meeting. They told me some stories that might be useful for members of the House to hear.

First, to give an idea of the nature of the problem, in the area surrounding around the safe house people no longer sleep in the outside rooms of their homes. They sleep in the inner part of their homes, in a den or in a living room that is away from any outside wall because there is gunfire every night. Every night around Rossbrooke House in the inner city of Winnipeg people hear shots going off as gang members threaten each other with firearms. It is serious. It is not once in a blue moon, it is every single night and families will not sleep in their bedrooms because they are afraid of stray bullets coming in through the windows on the exterior walls. Those are urgent circumstances.

They also went on to talk about some of the services they provide in this safe house. They provide a refuge for the 9, 10 and 11 year old children who are being harassed and threatened into joining these street gangs. The older gang members, when they approach these 10 and 11 year olds, whom they want to perform certain crimes for them because they are under a certain age, do not taking no for an answer. In fact, they do not threaten the little children with beating them up. They say “If you don't come and join the gang and do what we want you to we are going to beat up your mother or your sister or some family member”.

We should try to put ourselves in the position of a 10 year old child who has an 18 year old thug telling him “If you don't do this tonight I'm going to your mother's house to beat her up”. It takes a lot of courage for some of these children to say no to the gangs in my neighbourhood.

That is why the house that Sister Eileen and Sister Bernadette run is so critical. They offer a refuge where these courageous children can go to feel comfortable and safe for a little while.

The other thing they pointed out is that it is difficult for the criminal justice system to deal with some of the young street gang members. They are almost getting to the point where they are hyper acute. They are difficult to deal with because there is no place they feel safe or comfortable. They are always on edge like a caged animal. They are always restless. Their heads are always spinning around because they are not safe on the street and often they are not safe in their homes. At home they often face a violent situation. All the predictable consequences of a poor family upbringing are very prevalent. So it is very hard to reason with them. Using reason and logic does not work when somebody is frightened and not thinking rationally. It is very hard to negotiate with them, even in the safe environment of Rossbrooke House.

I wanted to preface my remarks with some of that background of what it is like in the inner city of Winnipeg where I live currently, which has the gang problem, and why this particular issue is so important to me and to the people I represent.

However, I do not believe this argument is going to be fruitful or beneficial because of the sentiment, the tone and the content of the remarks that I have heard from the opposition, at least so far today, and I am sure there will be much more to come as the day goes on.

A lot of us are victims in the inner city of Winnipeg. I have had my home broken into many times. I have actually caught kids breaking into my home. While I was holding them for the police one of them kidnapped my four year old son to use as a trade-off. It was a blackmail situation. It turned into a horrible mess. Ultimately the kids did not get charged, but I got charged with assaulting the kids who broke into my house. It took me six months to clear up that mess. So I have been there. I have been a victim.

We have a right to be angry, but there are different ways of dealing with it. If we are serious about implementing change we have to go beyond revenge. We have to go beyond the hang 'em high mentality that I have been hearing here too much.

Members of the Reform Party have indicated that victims are victimized twice in the system, once when a criminal does something to them and once by the criminal justice system. I would argue that there is a third time the victims are victimized in this country. They are victimized a third time by the exploitation that takes place in this House of Commons when their personal issues, when the crime that they just went through, is dragged before the House of Commons for cheap theatrical purposes to try to fan the flames of some kind of discontent around our criminal justice system. That I have seen time and time again. I think it is really shameful.

In the recent tragic case of the death of Reena Virk, the very next day members of the Reform Party were jumping up out of their seats saying “These kids are going to have to be punished. We are going to sentence them like they are adults”. Those kids were not even charged yet, never mind convicted. What about the presumption of innocence? Yes, perhaps there was a group of kids involved, but all the information we had was from a radio story that indicated that a young girl had been beaten up by other young people. Yet members of the Reform Party were on their feet virtually calling for the gallows for these kids.

Fortunately the justice critic for the NDP challenged them and said “If you are so anxious to hang these kids, build the gallows right here in the House of Commons. Build it the right number of feet high and bring these 14 and 15 year old kids in here and hang them. You guys do it yourselves because we are not going to be a party to it”.

It was a pathetic thing to witness and listen to people drag out the worst possible aspect and dig deep for that most base sort of thing that all people have in them, hatred and intolerance. Reformers are capitalizing on that. In fact they are marketing the malice which some people have inside them. Reformers seem to be experts at digging down and finding the worst in the Canadian public, pulling it out and slapping it on the table.

I have heard graphic details about sexual assaults and pedophiles coming from those members. Every time they stand up they seem to have some new horrific case, and the bloodier and gorier the better. They recite them in great detail in the House of Commons, not because they are trying to do anything constructive in protecting Canadian people, but because they want the cheap populism that comes with being associated with that kind of enforcement.

It is sick. There is a morbid fascination that Reform members seem to have with dragging these issues before the House of Commons.

The extreme right wing in every country has always been heavy handed in terms of criminal justice. Let us face it. The extreme right wingers, and we can go all the way through history, will avoid the obvious comparison which we are getting tired of using. Not only in Europe but in any right wing, fascist dictatorship we see a very heavy hand in terms of criminal justice issues, often extending beyond human and civil rights.

These things seem to get mixed up and confused in the rather simplistic world view of the Reform Party. Reformers get the issues of individual rights, collective rights and human rights jammed into some unworkable, unmanageable ball. I do not think they have thought it all through.

We are critical of certain aspects of the criminal justice system. However, I do not share the opening remarks of the member who put this motion forward as they were full of a lot of sensational terms—

[Canada Labour Code, May 15th, 1998]

You don't like that, so you shouldn't like this either.

Even if there are 100% of the cards signed, the way they envision it there would still have to be a supervised vote. It is fundamentally wrong. It is unethical and it gives the employer another chance to use intimidation and coercion to try to tilt the scale in its favour.

Unfortunately, there is not enough substance and background in labour relations in the entire Reform caucus to present that argument with any real substance.

It is put to bed now once and for all. Bill C-19 recognizes the legitimacy of 50% plus one constituting a majority and we are glad of that.

Successor rights are a very important aspect. These things have been improved in Bill C-19 and we are very pleased to see that.

In closing, the first task force chair described the following three beliefs that the Sims task force members shared as part of a vision statement.

First, that the existing Canada Labour Code basically continues to serve its constituencies well. Second, emphasizing stability, they said that pendulum like changes to the code are neither necessary nor desirable. They are a bad thing. Third, they said that consensus between the parties is the best basis for decision making on legislative change.

I am glad to say that after the years of consultation since the Sims task force we have held true to those three founding principles. We have managed to introduce changes that are meaningful and will serve the labour relations climate in this country very well for many years to come.

[Canada Labour Code, May 15th, 1998]

Some of them are no longer here. I understand.

We hold strongly to the view that true anti-scab legislation minimizes the number of days lost due to strikes and lockouts.

I have made this point before. If industry is truly concerned about lost time and lost productivity, it is not strikes and lockouts they should be worried about.

In my province of Manitoba we lose 50,000 days per year to strikes and lockouts, but we lose 550,000 days per year to injuries and accidents. If they are serious about lost productivity and lost profits, it is not strikes and lockouts that are the problem, it is the carnage in the workplace that is the problem and that is easier to rectify.

We have heard a great deal of whining and bleating from Reform Party members that they do not like the idea of automatic certification. They want a mandatory vote.

They think it is undemocratic to try to level the imbalance in power that exists between employers and employees.

In actual fact, if 50% plus one have signed the cards, the people have spoken. To make them vote twice is undemocratic. How many times will they make them vote? Until they get the answer they want? Over and over and over again? How democratic is that?

[Canada Labour Code, May 15th, 1998]

Nobody really listens. Some people do, unfortunately, in the west where I come from. It is kind of frightening.

The whole rise of the right wing is worrisome to working people.

We were here the other night speaking to a private member's bill about the Mac-Paps, the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion. I could not help but think there were parallels here. We heard about that courageous bunch of people in the 1930s who went to Europe to fight fascism, to fight right wing extremism. It took a lot of courage to do that. The right wing extremism was born out of a period of economic recession, much like we saw with high interest rates and the slowing of the economy. That kind of depression spawns right wing extremism.

Just as it took a lot of courage for those people in the 1930s to go to Spain to fight fascism there, it also takes a lot of courage for people to stand now to fight right wing extremism in our own country. I really saw a parallel there because there are people who think there is too much democracy in the world. I keep hearing the word misused. The right wing seems to have stumbled on the word democracy and finds that it likes it too.

However, the people who are promoting the MAI, the actual people who are pushing the MAI, are saying that there is a surplus of democracy in the world today that is interfering with the free movement of capital and investment. Is that not a frightening thing? Some people actually believe there is a surplus of democracy. This is the same right wing that would like to keep the labour movement down. That is typical. Right wing zealots always go after the trade unions first when they start to repress rights. They lock up the trade unionists. They outlaw unions. It is a real trend and a real theme. It is a pattern that we see developing in the Reform Party. It is interesting to watch, but it is also frightening to watch when we see these parallels.

Time and time again we hear the Reform Party standing to defend the interests of capital. It is a good thing that some of us are looking at legislation that will defend the rights of working people to move forward the advantage of working people. That is exactly what Bill C-19 does.

The good thing about Bill C-19, without commenting on the changes to the labour code that Bill C-19 will introduce, is the process that took place. A spirit of co-operation resulted in what we know as Bill C-19. It was almost an unprecedented consultation process where government, labour and management sat down in a tripartite fashion and decided on things that would make the system work better. That is the kind of model we would like to see used in a number of other areas. In countries that are moving forward socially as well as economically, that is what we see. It is a truly tripartite model where business, labour and government sit down together to chart out the future.

The extreme right wing wants to deny the existence of labour. It wants to keep labour away from the table. It wants to stamp labour out. That kind of adversarial attitude is what is going to hold us back as a nation. The right wing might think it is progress. It is not progress. It holds us back. We all move forward when we move forward together. We are not trying to wipe out the right wing, so it should not be trying to wipe out labour.

One of the real contradictions about this whole debate has been the Reform Party trying to stall and block Bill C-19 when it claims to represent the interests of the prairie agricultural industry. There are 130,000 prairie farmers who are dying to see Bill C-19 go through so they can be confident their grain shipments will not be interrupted at the ports. What a contradiction. These champions of the western agricultural industry are doing everything they can to stall, delay and block Bill C-19 when 130,000 farmers want it. We do not only see an anti-worker sentiment, we see an anti-farmer sentiment. It seems like a real contradiction to me. I do not understand it.

It was awkward to watch some of the debate at the committee stage because, frankly, the Reform Party was handicapped by its complete naivety about industrial relations. We heard some things at committee stage that would make people roll their eyes. If people knew the level of debate that went on in Ottawa about this complicated issue they would be horrified. They would be horrified because it was mean-spirited, it was narrow-minded, it was parochial and it was self-interested. It did not have the interests of labour relations in Canada at heart. It only considered the narrow, political self-interest of the very narrow population that it is serving.

I will use the bit of time I have left to talk about the four items that are most positive about Bill C-19 and why our caucus is proud to support it.

First, the restructuring of the labour relations board into a truly representational board is one of the most important things that came out of the Sims task force, Bill C-66 and Bill C-19. It was something that all parties could agree on. Labour had always complained. It was always frustrated that there was a lack of consultation in the process of making appointments to the board. With the new changes and the new Canada Industrial Relations Board we will see the representation which we felt was necessary.

There are other changes which we think are very positive. The single neutral chair will be able to hear certain cases to try to fix the backlog. There is a terrible backlog, especially in applications for certification. Some 90 applications for certification are currently pending. We are hoping with the speedy passage of Bill C-19 that some of that backlog will be alleviated.

We are critical in one respect. One of the recommendations that labour was making was that there should be consultation with labour and management when making appointments. The actual bill says that there should be consultation with members who represent employees, not necessarily the legitimate labour union. We are very concerned that some of the rat unions, the non-unions, for instance in western Canada, will claim they deserve to make appointments. I am referring to the Christian Labour Association of Canada and other employer-dominated unions that are not legitimate representatives of working people.

The General Workers Union, CLAC, all those unions are not real unions and they should not be consulted. It should be the legitimate labour unions that are consulted because they represent the working people.

The one place where we did part paths in terms of our support for this bill was with respect to replacement workers. We do not believe that the replacement workers' clause is nearly strong enough. We supported the amendment put forward by the member for Trois-Rivières to try to make that clause more powerful and actually prevent strikes and lockouts by banning replacement workers, period.

I was surprised that there was not more support from the other side of the House because in 1995 the House of Commons voted on a private member's bill, Bill C-317, introduced by a Bloc Quebecois MP which had very strong anti-scab provisions in it.

Even though the bill was voted down, there were 104 MPs, including 49 from the government, who voted in favour of that bill. We were hoping to see those same 49 people vote in favour of anti-scab provisions this time, but hope springs eternal.

[Canada Labour Code, May 15th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak at third reading, the final opportunity to talk about Bill C-19.

It has been an interesting process for me because as a rookie MP I have been able to watch the bill from the time it was tabled, through the various stages of debate, through some rocky times and through some very interesting manoeuvres in terms of some people with a will to try to stop the legislation. They have thrown everything they could to grind it to a halt and to avoid this day actually happening where we are finally at third reading.

Prior to question period we heard two very lengthy, long winded speeches that were very negative about Bill C-19. They were very critical about the content. They even went beyond the content and the actual amendments to the Canada Labour Code. They seemed to challenge and attack the whole idea of a strong and healthy labour movement in Canada. They seemed to have an underlying tone, almost a sinister undertone, to their comments and remarks that indicated to me they were not supportive of the idea of a free and active trade union movement in the country.

I regret there is a group of people and organizations that do not see the value of the trade union movement as an integral aspect of democracy. Even as we debated Bill C-19 the larger issue was not really the amendments to the Canada Labour Code. It was the pursuit of social and economic justice and labour's role in that pursuit.

I personally do not believe that any legislation will lead us toward social justice. I do not think social justice can be achieved through parliamentary means. I think that is the role of the labour movement, but we do need to create the legislative framework within which unions can flourish, prosper and do their job and help to distribute the wealth of a great nation to larger groups so that we can narrow that gap between rich and poor.

That is really what the last two years have been about as we have been spiriting Bill C-66 and now Bill C-19 through the process whether or not it has been stated overtly.

We have been talking about the redistribution of wealth and the ability of unions to function, prosper and flourish in our community and in our society.

Some of the amendments put forward by the Reform Party were very worrisome. There is a point in law which states that a person can be presumed to have intended the probable consequences of his or her actions. Thinking that through, it is kind of scary.

I wonder if Reformers really did think through the probable consequences of some of the amendments they were putting forward. If they had, what they would be advocating is limiting the ability of labour organizations to elevate the standards of wages and working conditions of the people they represent. I think most Canadians would agree that is not a good thing, a valuable function or a valuable role.

As I listened to some of the amendments put forward by the Reform Party, there was a familiar theme. I almost felt that I was having déjà vu, that I had heard all of this before.

After going through committee stage and hearing speaker after speaker as they filibustered, and then coming to the report stage and listening to the same diatribe, the same tired, lame, old thoughts, it came to me where I had heard this before. It was all contained in the right to work doctrine being pushed by the Fraser Institute. It is yesterday's news. It is a tired and outdated ideology that somehow the Reform Party has stumbled upon and thinks it has come up with a new idea in labour relations.

In actual fact, the right to work means the right to work for less. There are 21 states in the United States that are burdened with this right to work legislation. The way we talk about the states in the United States now is that there are free states and there are right to work states. The 21 right to work states are not free for workers. There is no free collective bargaining because they have essentially outlawed it. They have passed legislation that has stopped the ability of unions to do their job to elevate the standards of working people.

In those right to work states all the social indicators about social well-being, wages, mortality rates, infant mortality rates and the amount spent on education per student are far below the national average. In the right to work states they have managed to grind down the standard of living by eliminating the ability of unions to help keep the standard of living up.

If those are the consequences that the Reform Party has contemplated by its amendments, then I really wish it would reconsider them because what it is pushing is poison. It is bad for working people, it is bad for the economy because consumers have less disposable income and it grinds the economy to a halt.

The point of our caucus is that fair wages benefit the whole community. There is nothing wrong with the concept of workers earning fair wages and spending accordingly. That is a good thing.

We are very frustrated and frankly tired of listening to the right wing Reformers pushing this particular brand of poison.

[Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion, May 12th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member across the way for a very enlightening and well researched speech. He made some very good points which I agree with.

I do not agree with the basic premise that the Mac-Paps were going across on some kind of a flawed premise that they were doing something noble and honourable and then found out they were actually pawns or were being used by a larger power.

When the group went over to fight fascism they were right. A couple of years later the Canadian government agreed and declared war. That group recognized the fear of fascism in Europe earlier and chose to take up arms. If the group can be criticized for being aligned with the communists by working with the republic of Spain then so can any of the allies as we joined forces in the second world war to do what we thought was right, which was to smash fascism.

The purpose of the motion as it was worded was to investigate ways to grant some form of recognition to these noble and heroic Canadians. It did not limit us to any particular course of action although first and foremost the goal was to have these people declared and treated as veterans with the full status that veterans enjoy. There are other options which I think we should be talking about today as well.

In my own research on this subject I was very interested to note that the Mac-Paps were named after Mackenzie and Papineau who led the 1837 Rebellion in Upper and Lower Canada. In fact the year the Mac-Paps were formed, 1937, would have been the 100th anniversary of that uprising. I presume that is how the name was chosen.

The member who spoke on behalf of the government was correct. My research shows that 1,300 volunteer soldiers banded together from all parts of Canada to go abroad. Approximately half of them came home. Not all of them died. Some were missing in action. Some actually settled in Europe and did not choose to return to Canada.

The point I would like to dwell on is that ordinary Canadians have to be diligent just as those young Canadians were diligent. When the extreme right wing raises its ugly head, ordinary working Canadians have to be aware of the risk and the threat to democracy as well as the threat to the treasured institutions we value and which make our country great.

I would like to think that is what those people did. In the 1930s those young people were watching the newsreels in their local movie houses and saw the jackboot storming across Europe, the rise of fascism. Canadians travelled overseas to see firsthand what it was like. Tommy Douglas was one in the mid-1930s to visit Europe to see whether it was true. He wanted to find out if the rise of Hitler and the rise of fascism was as threatening as they were hearing. People read about it in the newspapers and came to the very logical conclusion that fascism was the greatest threat they faced.

Rather than talk about it and rather than wait for the government to act, because the Canadian government could have been quicker in getting on board to smash Hitler and smash fascism, that group of people saw fit to put their own lives aside, leave their homes and loved ones and hike off to Europe unsanctioned in a formal way by the Canadian government.

We gave them thanks by making them outlaws. We threatened them with two years jail time for having the temerity to get involved in the battle. It was a battle which we knew at that time to be just and right because within 18 months we were in the same boat as a country leading the fight as one of the early countries in the great struggle of World War II.

These young men and women realized the danger. Instead of being criticized and threatened with legal action they should be recognized and championed and given the full status and full rights other veterans enjoy. They gave their youth for the fight for democracy against fascism.

A parallel can be drawn today in the need for us to be vigilant as pockets of the extreme right wing surface again across Canada. Even within political parties in Canada the right wing is rising up in circumstances similar to what we saw in the 1930s. Many parallels can be drawn. Fascism in Europe really grew out of a period of very poor economic times, tight fiscal policy, high unemployment, and general dissatisfaction. That is when working people and otherwise decent people seem to seek out these extreme alternatives.

Regarding the rise of fascism in Germany, when Eichmann was interviewed in his prison cell he was asked what did he think Adolf Hitler would be remembered for most. His answer was the great way that he solved the unemployment problem. He said nothing about the killing of six million Jews. It was the great way that he solved the unemployment problem. They were really desperate for some kind of relief in the miserable lives they were living.

We saw the recent rise in right wing populism coming out of a period of tight money and economic fiscal policy. The Bank of Canada was trying to fight inflation with high interest rates and screwed it up. It resulted in truly desperate times for a lot of people, especially where I live in western Canada. They sought out extreme right wing solutions. This is what led to the rise of the new right wing populism. As I say we have to be ever on guard and ever vigilant because looking toward those kinds of options brings us all down and threatens the institutions that make Canada great.

The Spanish civil war in many ways acted as a dress rehearsal for the second world war. When Canada saw the international brigades mobilizing, taking action and doing what was necessary, it probably served to inspire Canadian leaders and other world leaders to become motivated and get active.

We are aware that it was not just Franco they were fighting. The Spanish fascists were being backed heavily by Mussolini and by Hitler. They were pouring money in.

This courageous rather ragtag group went over there on dimes and nickels. They passed the hat around to pay their way over. They were poorly armed. We can imagine how much courage it took to go into that kind of armed conflict against some of the greatest world powers of the time. That should be recognized.

Norman Bethune's name was mentioned. He was certainly one of the more famous persons to go over during that period. He was an honourable and noble man. He dedicated his life to elevating the standards of the poor. In health care he broke new ground in terms of transfusion techniques some of which actually was learned on the battlefield in the heat of battle doing triage.

The only valid criticism I have heard against Motion No. 75 is if we do it for this group, how many other groups are we going to have to recognize in some way and apologize for? Nobody is asking for apologies. We are just asking for some serious second consideration in this case. We are looking at a situation where we believe there should be some kind of recognition. If people cannot see fit to grant the full veteran status that we are asking for, then surely they can do two things.

One was made reference to by the Minister of Veterans Affairs. In a letter about this recently he came back reminding us that an order in council was passed at the time making it a criminal offence for Canadians to serve on either side of the Spanish civil war. No charges were actually laid but technically these people committed a crime against Canada by going to fight the fascists on our behalf. The very first and foremost thing we should be doing is striking that, eliminating that stigma which these 40 or so living Canadian veterans of the Spanish civil war still have to wear.

The other thing we can do, and I think there is interest in this and in fact we have some interest on the government benches, is to put up a monument to the Mac-Paps on the grounds outside the House of Commons. That would be a popular move. It would be the very least we could do.

[Canada Labour Code, May 12th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I really hope the 130,000 prairie farmers who are waiting for this bill to be passed so that they can be comfortable that their grain will move without interruption this fall are taking note of the delays and the stalling tactics that have been going on in this House. I hope they are paying attention. I am sure they are. They will make good note of that.

What I was getting at and the reason I rose to speak is that while we are happy with the package in total, our one criticism of Bill C-19 is that the anti-scab aspects of the bill do not go far enough to really fulfill what the parties had in mind when they sat down to draft Bill C-19.

We understand that the whole package was a compromise. Nobody at the table really got everything they wanted. There was a lot of give and take and a lot of goodwill. Finding a balance is never easy, but having reviewed the motions we have before us from the hon. member for Trois-Rivières, I believe Motion Nos. 19 and 26 would serve the bill well in making it the piece of legislation Canadian industry really needs and should be asking for.

The virtues of anti-scab legislation are obvious. We have the case study right in the province next to us. We can look to the province of Quebec and monitor the experience and the benefits from its long tenure of the anti-scab bill. We know from that experience there are fewer days of lost time due to strikes and lockouts. The parties are not likely to risk pushing a bargaining session to an impasse knowing that their anti-scab legislation would preclude the ability of using replacement workers. Naturally the parties are forced to a position where they have to work a little harder to find a reasonable solution.

We also know that the incidence of picket line violence is lower. I agree with the previous speaker that we should not be charting our course by the lighting on a passing ship. What I mean to say is that we should not be crafting legislation to preclude violence. Nobody is going to be drafting legislation under threat or some veiled threat. That is not the case. The actual fact is that both parties often allow tempers to flare and incidents of violence do take place on picket lines when scabs try to cross picket lines. If that is precluded or eliminated, then there is not that problem.

I have been to the scene of strikes in the city of Montreal. I joined my fellow brothers with the carpenters union when they were striking in that industry in the city of Montreal. The first thing I did was I went to a major site where I knew there were carpenters working. I wanted to join them on the picket line, not really thinking through that there was not going to be a picket line. There did not need to be a picket line.

Picket lines are there to keep scabs out. Once it has been shown that there is a strike, a couple of placards are put up and the public knows there is a strike at the site and the product is hot as a result. There are no scabs crossing the line. There is no need for workers to be walking the line keeping vehicles from going in and out, et cetera. That is where things flare up.

Just the very fact that there is solid anti-scab legislation in the province of Quebec minimizes the number of days lost due to strikes and lockouts. It minimizes the incidents of people stooping to violence on either side, whether it is the replacement workers or frustrated employees at the location trying to defend their jobs.

Another aspect of Bill C-19 deals with anti-scab and I believe it needs to be improved. The burden of proof is currently on the union to demonstrate that the employer is using scabs in a way that undermines the bargaining rights of the union, or it is the intent to undermine the union by the use of scabs. Regarding that burden of proof, contrary to what we heard from the previous speaker, it is going to be very difficult to get any board to rule as to what was in the mind of the employer when the scabs were hired.

The advantage is clearly to the employer in the current language of Bill C-19 if it is not amended. I would certainly argue that it does not matter what labour leaders were quoted, obviously the advocates for the employees are going to argue that the union is trying to undermine the bargaining rights and that therefore the scabs should be outlawed. I frankly do not think that they would win. It would be a terrible uphill battle and a very difficult argument to win. The Reform Party should take some comfort in that. The way I read Bill C-19 on that aspect, the advantage is clearly for the employer.

This is one of the most sensitive parts of Bill C-19 for our caucus at least and for the labour movement. The right to withhold services in a way that puts economic pressure on the employer is the only peaceful means of negotiating benefits for workers that is available to us. It is really the only tool in our tool chest. When bargaining breaks down and we are trying to elevate the standards or the wages and working conditions for the people we represent, passive resistance and withholding service are the two things we can legally use to add weight to our points of view.

As a result, these clauses and the motions put forward by the member for Trois-Rivières are very important to us. They would add that small bit which is lacking in Bill C-19 to make it a truly satisfactory package that will add lasting labour peace to the Canadian industrial relations environment.

The whole idea of strikes and lockouts may get more attention than it deserves in these debates. It has been stated over and over again that over 95% of all rounds of bargaining are settled without any lost time. While lost time due to strikes and lockouts is a problem in the industry, it is dealt with in a way that is out of proportion.

In Manitoba we lose approximately 50,000 person days per year due to strikes and lockouts which is a big problem. Management howls about lost productivity and lost profits, et cetera. It is a problem. However we lose 550,000 person days per year due to injuries on the job and workplace accidents. If they are serious about lost productivity, the answer is to clean up the workplace, to stop the carnage in the workplace. Then those 50,000 person days lost per year will be put into perspective.

Another aspect deals with picket line incidents. One of the positive aspects of Bill C-19 is that employees who are off work for a strike or a lockout will be guaranteed their jobs when they go back. Those who may have been disciplined during their absence will have the right to the grievance procedure and arbitration. This is a case of natural justice. They should have access to some avenue of recourse. If in the heat of the moment an incident happens, this provision in Bill C-19 will recognize that everybody deserves the right to the use of that avenue of recourse.

Our caucus will be voting in favour of Motions Nos. 19 and 26. We believe they are necessary and that they will add substance and weight to what is already a worthy piece of legislation. In the interests of minimizing the lost time due to strikes and lockouts, I would hope the other members in the House can support the motions put forward by the member for Trois-Rivières.

[Canada Labour Code, May 12th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, this set of motions in Group No. 7 is a bit of a quandary for us. There are two motions which the NDP caucus is in favour of and others that we are not. I presume we will have the opportunity to vote on them individually.

The two motions we are in favour of deal with strengthening the anti-scab aspects of Bill C-19. We have spoken in favour of Bill C-19 in total. We recognize its value and we recognize the long and exhaustive consultative process it took to get us to this point. However our one criticism of Bill C-19 has always been and still is that the reference to anti-scab is too soft and does not really follow through to the degree—

[Division No. 137, May 12th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I was not going to rise to speak to this group of motions, but because of what I am hearing from the two sides I would like to comment on Motion No. 18 in Group 6. As I understand this motion, a strike would not be allowed or would be ended if economic hardship could be demonstrated.

I question how anybody could be that painfully naive about labour relations to put forward a motion that would call for a strike to cease if there was economic hardship demonstrated. What is the purpose of withholding services if not to peacefully apply some kind of economic pressure on the other party? That is the very nature of withholding services, to try to motivate somebody to your way of thinking. There is a level of naivety there. I hope it is naivety and not just plain ignorance.

We are speaking against the idea that this motion should even be entertained. Anybody who has some labour relations background in this House would see through that immediately and would not give it the time of day.

The people who are putting this package forward should remember that Bill C-19 was born out of a truly co-operative consultative process which was almost an experiment. It was almost a pilot project on how to amend labour legislation. Labour and management worked together for more than two years to try to find the balance they were seeking, the balance recommended by the Sims task force. They have done an admirable job. Many of the motions we are dealing with today would tend to upset that delicate balance and would jeopardize the success of the whole process.

There are other tripartite models of labour, management and government working together around the world. Those countries are moving forward as nations and are doing a good job of elevating the standards of the living conditions of the people they represent. Those countries have realized that it has to be a tripartite model. The hostility and the adversarial qualities that we sense from the tone of some of the Reform Party motions will only hold us back as a nation. There is no future in that kind of thing, with one party determined to stamp out the other. Instead the more civilized model is the three parties working together and moving forward.

What we are hearing from the Reform Party, in many of the motions it is putting forward, is a reworked version of the right to work movement. Do we want to go in that direction? We should be cautious. We should look at those places where right to work is a reality before we take that particular road.

North Carolina is a right to work state. Everybody has heard of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire in 1913 that founded the whole idea that workplace safety and health is an issue. The whole world agreed that it was too horrible to ever let it happen again. I have news for members. In the right to work state of North Carolina, 20 women died recently in a fire in a chicken processing plant because they chained the doors closed from the outside. They were convinced that these low-waged women were stealing by-products from the chickens, like wing tips, to make soup when they got home.

From 1913 to 1995 we have come the whole circle. With that kind of environment, where there is no worker representation on joint labour-management safety committees, standards quickly erode if we are not diligent about trying to elevate the standards and working conditions. Right to work is a step in the wrong direction in that regard.

Some of the other motions deal with the movement of grain through the west coast ports. This is key and integral to the whole balance I was talking about in Bill C-19. The whole process of Bill C-19 was a trade-off, where none of the parties really came away very satisfied that they got everything they wanted.

We would have liked to have seen a lot tougher anti-scab legislation. Nobody likes to give away the right to strike, the right to peacefully withhold services, and in this case they have not, but in actual fact the grain will keep carrying through.

The positive side of this, the upside and the side that seems to be lost on the Reform Party, is that there are about 130,000 Canadian farmers who are anxiously awaiting the speedy passage of this legislation so they can feel secure that their crops this year will not be interrupted by any kind of a dispute at the west coast ports.

Talk to pool elevator operators, the UGG or the whole agribusiness. They want this bill to go through, and yet we have the Reform Party, largely made up of representatives from western agricultural districts, being an obstacle and a barrier to this very real benefit to the whole prairie agricultural industry. It is a real contradiction. I hope Reform members are thinking this through. As they stand to speak they should be aware that the industry is watching these debates very carefully. I am sure they are scratching their heads wondering right now how they can see fit to justify being a barrier to the speedy passage of this particular bill.

We know that the favourite right-wing think tank of the Reform Party is the Fraser Institute. The Fraser Institute, that tax deductible, right-wing melting pot for all their ideas, is pushing the idea of right to work. Donated copies of the book promoting right to work as the answer for labour relations in the 21st century have arrived in our mailboxes. They are trying to imply that Canada is backwards because we believe in a more progressive labour relations climate.

The Fraser Institute and the Reform Party are going down a dangerous road as they advocate this particular labour relations environment. It is the role of labour and the role of governments to provide the legislative environment in which unions can do their job to elevate the standards of wages and working conditions for the people they represent. It is a matter of the redistribution of wealth. It is a matter of spreading the wealth of this great nation among the working people. Anything that we do to hold that back does not move us forward in any way at all. It is a myth.

The fact is that fair wages benefit the whole community. I do not see what it is about that concept that bothers the Reform Party, but it seems bound and determined to reduce the ability of unions to do their job in elevating the standards of the community. Holding us back in that regard does not help anybody.

It is middle-class people with money in their pockets who can go out, purchase things and get the economy moving. Screwing them down in terms of wages does not benefit anybody. That is the empirical evidence. The statistics of all the right to work states in the United States, the 21 right to work states, show that some of them have no minimum wage. All of them have a lower than average industrial wage. They have worse health and safety legislation. They even have a higher infant mortality rate and all the predictable things one would see in the low-income category.

We believe in our caucus that society does not move forward unless we all move forward together. The motions that are being put forward by the Reform Party are completely the opposite of that point of view.

[Division No. 137, May 12th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, when we first saw the amendment with the idea of reviewing the role of the conciliation officer et cetera, we viewed it in a favourable light. Our caucus wrestled for quite some time as to whether we would support the amendment. At this time we are satisfied that the changes made to the original Bill C-19 will address some of the things we recognized as being problematic. Moving from a two stage process to a single stage process was a very positive step. Given the spirit and the history of how the amendments that form part of Bill C-19 were arrived at, we were very reluctant to upset that fine balance or compromise that went into the changes we see in Bill C-19.

I regret that our caucus will not be able to support Motion No. 10. We will be voting against it, but not for the same reasons we have been hearing from the official opposition. We are finding more and more that the tone of the official opposition's comments regarding this whole piece of legislation, no matter which group of motions we are talking to, has an underlying sinister quality to it. There is an anger and a bitterness surging forward in all Reformers' comments that reveals their true attitude toward the industrial relations climate in Canada. I do not think it has its basis in the same spirit of co-operation that was in the original Bill C-19. I am disappointed to that degree.

We saw some of the delay tactics that went on during committee stage and the filibustering that occurred during report stage. I wonder what prairie farmers think as they view these deliberate stalling tactics which hold back a very worthy piece of legislation. The agriculture industry in my province is looking forward to this legislation. We are coming up to another season when grain will be shipped through the west coast ports. The producers want the security that their products will be handled at those terminals no matter what kind of labour relations climate might exist at those terminals.

With its stalling tactics, at least until the closure motion of today, the Reform Party has jeopardized the possibility of moving this bill forward in a timely fashion, at least in time for the harvest season when grain shipping at west coast ports will be an issue again.

The tone of the rest of Reform's comments reminds me of another message I have heard for years. It is a poison that has been sliding across the Canada-U.S. border in recent years. That poison is called right to work legislation. This seems to be the songbook that Reformers are singing their hymns from. It is not original, but it seems they have glommed onto it as if it were a new idea. It is sort of like the way they have glommed onto final offer selection as if it is some brand new idea they have just come up with.

Everybody knows what right to work is about. The Fraser Institute has just written a book and sent a copy to all MPs in an effort to promote this idea as the way we should conduct ourselves in the 21st century within the labour relations climate. We have another book that shows the empirical evidence, the actual statistics, of what it is like to live in a right to work state. One of those states had lower than average incomes and the poverty level was higher. The right to work is really the right to work for less.

The Reform Party is using the debate on Bill C-19 as a platform from which to launch its ideas on right to work legislation. They were frustrated in Alberta. The Klein government looked at right to work legislation and found it was too radical and too conservative.

In fact, it was bordering on fascist in a lot of its attitudes and it actually dropped it. It did not want to use it, and to its credit. Now we are having people shopping it around Ottawa trying to get people interested from a federal point of view.

I think Canadians should be cautious about the spirit and the tone being used in these arguments. Read between the lines a little. What will really be seen is a warmed over version of right to work legislation trying to be foisted on the Canadian people through the back door, through debate on a very worthy piece of labour legislation, Bill C-19.