House of Commons photoWon his last election, in 2021, with 50% of the vote.
Government Accountability May 8th, 2017
Mr. Speaker, the parliamentary budget officer's job is to blow the whistle when the government cooks the books and calculate what spending schemes will actually cost taxpayers, yet the budget bill will give the Prime Minister's hand-picked Senate Speaker a veto over the work of the budget watchdog. With billions in new spending schemes and three decades worth of promise-breaking deficits ahead, why is the government trying to lock up the budget watchdog?
Infrastructure May 5th, 2017
Madam Speaker, when the Liberals said in the election that they were going to stop giving money to millionaires, they should have clarified they meant that is because they are giving it all to billionaires.
We already knew about the Prime Minister's meetings with billionaires at Davos and at the Shangri-La Hotel, where he discussed the intimate details of this infrastructure bank. Today, Bill Curry of The Globe and Mail revealed the documents showing that the government has turned over control of the establishment of this bank to the same people who will profit from it. There is nothing wrong with profit, but reward should go with risk.
This infrastructure bank will put $35 billion of risk on Canadian taxpayers so insiders can make a profit. Why?
Infrastructure May 5th, 2017
Fifteen billion dollars, Madam Speaker. The parliamentary secretary should read division 18, clause 23 of the budget legislation, which says that it is $35 billion. That is $35 billion that, on the same page, will go to things like loan guarantees that ensure that potentially profitable projects, if they go wrong, will end up costing Canadian taxpayers a fortune.
Why is the government privatizing profit while nationalizing risk?
Vesak May 5th, 2017
Madam Speaker, I rise today to invite you and all hon. colleagues to Vesak on Parliament Hill. This is an event being held on May 10, from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. in the Sir John A. Macdonald Building.
Vesak Day is the day Buddhists remember the birth, the enlightenment, and the passing away of the Buddha.
I look forward to meeting with the ambassadors of Thailand, Nepal, Myanmar, and others in this year's wonderful celebration. We will have occasion not only to learn more about Buddhism, but to celebrate the enormous contribution so many Buddhist Canadians have made to our country.
I would like to thank Vesak in Ottawa, an organization that is co-hosting this event, and invite all members to come to join with it in celebrating this wonderful occasion.
Canada Labour Code May 5th, 2017
Madam Speaker, I did not hear a question there. My colleague simply said that it was easier for him and his friends to control workplaces without secret ballot voting.
Obviously, it would be easier for him and his friends to control workers by taking away their right to vote. However, we are not here to help the hon. member control workplaces. We are here to protect the rights of workers.
If ours is the only party that is willing to stand up for this democratic principle, I will be proud to take on that role. However, we will never give up our efforts to stand up for democracy in every workplace in Canada.
Canada Labour Code May 5th, 2017
Madam Speaker, if he thinks that one or two sessions of debate is long enough to dispense with the basic mechanism of democracy known as the secret ballot, he is sadly wrong.
For as long as this government or any other tries to rob Canada's workers of their right to vote on their own workplace destiny, as long as they take that approach, we on this side of the House will fight back. We will be the champions of workers. If necessary, we will be the only party prepared to stand up for the rights of workers to chart their own course and mark their own destiny through the use of the ancient principle, the ancient democratic right, of a secret ballot vote.
Canada Labour Code May 5th, 2017
Madam Speaker, the member says that a secret ballot vote allows an employer to intimidate the employee. The problem with that argument is that a secret ballot is secret, right? Therefore, the employer does not know how an individual worker has actually voted. Thus, it is impossible to carry out intimidation or punish someone for his or her vote. In the same way, in a general election a government cannot punish an individual voter for casting his or her ballot in a certain way because the government does not know how that individual voted.
If the member wants to get rid of workplace intimidation in the certification process, then she should rise and stand up for the basic principle—in fact, the basic mechanism—of democracy, which is the secret ballot.
Canada Labour Code May 5th, 2017
Madam Speaker, to address the member's first point about Bill C-377, union financial transparency, I did not mention it in my speech because it is not at stake. That matter passed through the House of Commons and the Senate did not amend it. What is at stake here is the secret ballot. That is the only thing we are debating: whether workers should have a secret ballot vote to determine if they certify a workplace.
The member once again has said that his party obtained a document after taking power that shows that the previous Conservative government was aware that union certifications occur at lower rates when there are secret ballots than when there are card checks. The only thing this proves is that when workers are given the choice—without intimidation, without prying eyes looking over their shoulder—they decide not to certify at the same levels as the member would hope.
That is like saying that a study just came out showing that if Liberals had been allowed to go around with card checks over the last century and half and elect themselves government, they would have had more success in dominating the Canadian electoral landscape than they in fact had, and therefore it would have been much easier for the Liberal Party to take power over those years if the country had simply done away with the secret ballot.
Democracy exists even when the voters choose an outcome that the authorities are not happy with.
Canada Labour Code May 5th, 2017
Madam Speaker, today I rise in defence of the secret ballot, a cherished tenet of democracy. I begin again, as I did earlier, by quoting the ruling by Justice Ivan Rand in the matter of Ford Motors versus the United Auto Workers–CIO of 1946.
Before I quote this passage, let me explain its importance.
The ruling of Justice Ivan Rand in 1946, in this dispute, has created the framework for our entire union certification and subsequent union financing policy right across the country, in all 10 provinces and in the federal jurisdiction. The resolution to which Mr. Justice Rand arrived was that all members of the bargaining unit at Ford Motors would be required to pay union dues, and the union would be required thereafter to provide representation to all of those workers. That union would sign collective agreements and would represent those workers in grievances. However, for the union to control that bargaining unit and act as its agent, it would have to secure majority support from the workers in the union. How one determines whether a union has the support of the majority of workers in the bargaining unit is what we are debating here today.
There are two options. One is a process called “card check”, where those who want to certify or take over a workplace go around with a petition and ask workers on the floor to sign that petition. When they have enough signatures to reach 50% plus one, they then go to the Labour Relations Board and say, “We have a majority. Please give us exclusive representational powers over the entire unit.” The other option is that once those signatures are collected, the board says, “You are now authorized to hold a secret ballot vote.” That is so that the will and volition of the members of that unit can express themselves, free of intimidation from either the employer or the aspiring union. The workers go into a secret voting box, mark their X, yea or nay, and if the union receives 50% plus one, it becomes the bargaining agent for the bargaining unit.
Now I will get back to Justice Ivan Rand. Among the very first pages in his ruling, he wrote:
But unguarded power cannot be trusted and the maintenance of social balance demands that the use or exercise of power be subject to controls. Politically this resides in alert public opinion and the secret ballot.
Why do we need a secret ballot? Why can we not simply collect public signatures and have those signatures trigger representation? The answer, of course, is that the only way for persons to truly exercise their will is to do so in the privacy of a walled-in voting booth where they select a yes or a no, without anybody finding out what they chose. To deny them of that opportunity means they could face potential consequences from people on either side of the question at stake. The result is that, out in the open where people are forced to put their names on a public list rather than exercising their will in private, they could experience bullying by the union, or the employer, for that matter.
We heard arguments today from the minister that holding a secret ballot is too costly, too time-consuming, and too difficult for those trying to unionize a workplace. Let us address each one of those objections.
She said it was too costly. She pointed out that under the current law in Canada, in a federally regulated workplace, an aspiring union not only has to collect signatures to trigger a vote, but then has to campaign to win that vote, that ballot boxes have to be arranged so that the vote can be administered, and then, of course, that workers within the bargaining unit have to take the time out of their day to mark an X next to their preferred option.
All of those things are true. They are true in the workplace and they are true in a general election to select this Parliament. It is true that it takes time to hold a general election. In fact, we shut down this entire Parliament for 36 days; 36 days while no bills are passed, no debates are held, no government announcements are made, almost no government business at the executive level is conducted. Why? Everybody is too busy devoting their time to this gigantic distraction, this gigantic enterprise that the Liberal Party condemns in the case of workplaces as democracy.
Is democracy time-consuming? Of course it is, but when we compare democratic nations to non-democratic nations, we find the return on the investment of that time to be spectacularly worth it.
Now, we know voting costs money. I think the last election cost something like a quarter of a billion dollars. Ballot boxes had to be purchased. Ballots had to be printed. Returning officers had to be hired. Halls for voting had to be rented. All of these things cost money. If the government's view is that we cannot spare any expense to administer democracy, that would be akin to arguing that we cannot afford elections in Canada. We know the Liberals tried to change the entire voting system to favour themselves without consulting the Canadian people through a referendum. In itself that action illustrated their hostility to the practice and institution of voting. Could it be that same contempt has spilled over into Canada's federally regulated workplaces?
Does democracy cost money? Yes, it costs money, and it is worth every single penny expended. It is worth it, because it is the only way to truly evaluate the will of those over whom a decision must be made.
Speaking of money, what is the decision that is being made when we certify a union in a workplace? We certify that union's ability to uphold taxation power over all of the workers in that workplace.
In Canada, people who work in a unionized bargaining unit must pay union dues, even if they choose not to be a member of the union, even if they object to the way in which that money is spent. Workers are not allowed to opt out of it. We are one of the very few countries in the free and democratic world that has this rule. Increasingly across Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and elsewhere, workers are given the ability to opt out of union dues, because those countries have freedom of association in the workplace. Here in Canada, in all 10 provinces and in the federal jurisdiction, a unionized workplace empowers the bargaining agent to forcefully collect dues against the wishes of many of its members.
The trade-off is that in this system, an exclusive majority representation, we must have at least a majority in order to enjoy that spectacular and unmatched privilege of collecting mandatory dues from people within that sphere. Remember that no other advocacy group in all of Canada enjoys these privileges. Even those groups that advocate to the benefit of other people do not have that power. Some say, ”Look, unions are fighting for the rights of the workers; therefore, those workers should pay for the value of that advocacy, lest we have free riders.”
The Canadian Cancer Society is fighting for cancer patients, but we do not collect mandatory union dues from cancer patients in order to fund the Canadian Cancer Society. People contribute to it through voluntary donations. I make this point not even to argue against mandatory union dues, but merely to point out the extraordinary privilege that our unions enjoy once they have certified a workplace. The least that we can entitle our workers to have is the right to vote on whether that privilege should be extended at their expense.
If the government is so worried about saving money by avoiding the enormous cost of holding a vote, is it not at all worried about the subsequent cost that certification imposes upon the workers who must pay for it? Of course, at the risk of being repetitious, I say that if the government believes voting is too expensive in our workplaces, why would Liberals not simply argue that voting is too expensive in our democracy? In fact, I am sure, if we look through the encyclopedia of tin-pot dictators, many have made exactly the same arguments that the government makes today to avoid facing electorates in their own countries.
Finally, they say a secret ballot makes things too difficult for the unions. If there were no secret ballots, then they would succeed at certifying more workplaces, more easily. In fact, when the minister's predecessor pulled a document out of my former department when I was minister of employment and social development, she said, “Aha, when there are secret ballots, there's a lower rate of union certification. Gotcha. Now we've found out what your agenda is.” It was the silver bullet. It was the smoking gun. “We have just proved that when workers are given the opportunity to vote, they make decisions that we don't like, and now we have proof of it, and because they make decisions we don't like, we are going to take away their power to make that decision in the first place.”
That is their idea of democracy. If people vote in a way that the Liberals and special interest groups which back them do not like, they will take away the right to vote altogether as an unnecessary costly and burdensome inconvenience. Democracy is not an inconvenience. It is the basis of our entire country.
Finally, the Liberals said that allowing a secret ballot would permit employers to exert undue pressure on workers. A secret ballot is secret. The employer does not find out which way the worker voted. Only under the regime that the government is trying to reinstate would the employer even know what an employee does with the certification decision. We on this side of the House are trying to free the worker from intimidation and undue influence by both sides in a certification dispute.
We see these four arguments: secret ballot voting is too costly, that it is too distracting, that it gives employers the ability to influence the outcome, and finally, that it makes it too difficult for a union to certify.
I guess the government could argue that the secret ballot is very dangerous in the election of Parliament because it might make it too difficult for Liberals to get elected in future votes. Right? It would just be too difficult. Therefore, let us find a simpler system that gives the Liberals the outcome they want. Of course, this is not about workers, unions, improving workplace dynamics, or rebalancing the scales. This is about taking power away from workers to give it to the powerful interest groups that helped elect the Liberal government.
We on this side continue to stand for the right of workers to vote to determine their own destiny, rather than having it imposed upon them by either the current government or any of the interest groups that elected it.
Therefore, I move, “That the motion be amended by deleting all of the words after the word 'that' and substituting the following: the amendments made by the Senate to C-4, An Act to amend the Canada Labour Code, the Parliamentary Employment and Staff Relations Act, the Public Service Labour Relations Act and the Income Tax Act be now read a second time and concurred in.”
I am thankful for the opportunity to make this motion. I will submit it to the dais, and I will give all members of the House the opportunity to reaffirm the Canadian commitment to democracy and one of its central pillars, the right of every man and every woman to carry out his or her franchise in secret, free from pressure and undue intimidation, and that we highly resolve that this democratic principle will exist across the land and in our workplaces.
Canada Labour Code May 5th, 2017
This is unbelievable. They're all just laughing at your point.