Sheri Benson

[Public Transportation, December 3rd, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for outlining all the ways in which the federal government has partnered on public transportation in cities and larger communities in Saskatchewan.

My question was about the fact that there is no inter-city bus service in Saskatchewan anymore and that Greyhound's pulling out reduced that even more. The federal government stated that it does have a role in investing in that. Otherwise, if the provincial government says a city or municipality does not need a provincial bus service and the federal government says it is not its responsibility, we are leaving many people in Saskatchewan high and dry, especially the many who are vulnerable in rural and remote communities.

I am asking for the government to step up and provide that leadership and to give us the details that we did not get from the Minister of Transport at committee last week. I am asking this of the federal government, which can play a role in this area. It is not just a provincial government responsibility.

[Public Transportation, December 3rd, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, last week, I had the opportunity to ask the Minister of Transport directly about the withdrawal of Greyhound from western Canada. The minister made time to appear before the transport committee, and I was grateful to have had the chance to tell him in person about how serious the lack of safe, affordable transportation is in Saskatchewan.

While the minister was gracious in giving his time to the members at the transport committee, unfortunately, many questions still remain, including my question in the House of last September directed to the lone Saskatchewan minister.

Since the shutdown of the STC, many women fleeing domestic violence have had to hitchhike or turn to Kijiji to get a ride to a shelter. It is unconscionable for a feminist government to know this and do nothing.

Last January, the Minister of Innovation told the House that his government would work with me to look for meaningful solutions to this crisis. To this day, I have heard absolutely nothing.

I suggested I ask the lone Saskatchewan minister this time what he would do to ensure people in Saskatchewan have safe, reliable public transportation. The answer I received that day was from the Minister of Infrastructure and Communities, who said that his government would always be there for the people of Saskatchewan, and that there would be good news coming. He also said that I could come and see him or the Minister of Public Safety and his colleagues.

I have reached out to that minister, as well as the lone minister from Saskatchewan, to no avail, To date, I have not heard anything back from either minister, which leads me to believe that the government is very good at talking a good line, but when it comes to delivering on solutions, not so much. Take, for example, the recent announcement in response to Greyhound's withdrawal. For a full year after the cancellation of the STC, the government did nothing. It took the withdrawal of a private company for it to actually take notice of the growing transportation crisis in western Canada.

Fortunately for British Columbia and Alberta, those provinces have progressive NDP governments, which have already stepped up to mitigate the serious gaps in public transportation in their respective provinces.

Unfortunately for my province, Saskatchewan's provincial government decided to shut down the STC. The silence from the Saskatchewan Conservative MPs on this issue is deafening. It is unfortunate that when it comes to standing up for safe, affordable transportation, it appears politics trumps the needs of communities and constituents.

Have we actually heard anything from the Minister of Public Safety, who is from Saskatchewan? Sadly, no. The safety of women and children fleeing domestic violence must be made a priority by the Minister of Public Safety.

People in my province relied on STC to get them to medical appointments, to work and to school, to run their businesses and to connect them to friends and family in other parts of the province and Canada. People in northern, rural and remote areas especially need this safe, affordable mode of transportation. Surely, there is a role for the federal government's leadership and real investment when such a serious gap exists.

[Housing, November 27th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, more than a third of one-bedroom units in the Toronto area are overcrowded. Imagine a one-bedroom apartment for a family of six. This is a snapshot of Canada's housing crisis. Renters and families are among the hardest hit, and still the Liberal government refuses to make housing a right, as it promised. Yesterday, housing providers and advocates presented the government with a way forward.

What do Canadians have to do to make the Liberal government ensure that housing is a right in this country now, not later, and certainly not after the next election?

[Petitions, November 26th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to rise today to present a petition in support of postal banking from constituents in my riding. The petitioners state that whereas nearly two million Canadians desperately need an alternative to payday lenders, whose crippling lending rates affect the poor, the marginalized and rural and indigenous communities; whereas there are 3,800 Canada Post outlets that already exist in rural areas where there are fewer banks and credit unions; and whereas Canada Post already has the infrastructure to make a rapid transition to include postal banking, the petitioners call upon the Government of Canada to enact the member for London—Fanshawe's Motion No. 166 to create a committee to study and propose a plan for postal banking under the Canada Post Corporation Act.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2018, No. 2, November 26th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my hon. colleague for referring in his speech to the important piece of legislation around pay equity. I served on the Special Committee on Pay Equity, which tabled its report in June 2016. It is getting close to two and a half years later and we are finally seeing the legislation.

I want to call to the attention of my hon. colleague how long women have been waiting for their basic human right, and that is to receive equal pay for work of equal value. It is their constitutional right. It has been over 42 years.

Now, with this legislation, much of which did not take into account amendments proposed by our expert witnesses, it has actually watered things down. I do want to call to everyone's attention that Canada did have the gold standard of a pay equity report done in 2004, the Bilson report. Most people who came forward and spoke to the Special Committee on Pay Equity said that the government should implement that report, not redo everything, and actually move forward and start to look at the intersectional issues of pay equity between gender and race.

I just wanted to bring that forward. Could the hon. member comment on the fact that it will be four more years before any pay equity impact lands in the lives of working women?

[Resumption and Continuation of Postal Services Operations Legislation, November 23rd, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I also listened to my hon. colleague's words about investments and pensions and I am more than willing to have a conversation outside of this debate.

However, what I am here today to talk about is the workers' constitutional rights being violated by a federal government. I think that is abhorrent. Government should be here to protect people's constitutional rights and not be part of legislation that will violate those rights.

I would invite a conversation with my hon. colleague to talk about the constitutional rights of workers. Perhaps we could share his comments on the natural resources sector.

[Resumption and Continuation of Postal Services Operations Legislation, November 23rd, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague would have more experience with reading decisions than I do.

I will put it back to him and ask what the employer's incentive would be to follow what the member said. Those are all good words and I understand that. Everyone goes to the bargaining table with good intentions, but ultimately, both sides bargain for what they want. The actual process of free collective bargaining is that both sides need to be able to negotiate and they need to be together at the table forcing themselves to work.

Back-to-work legislation is like an awning hanging over the collective bargaining table. What is the incentive for an employer to bargain? The employer can simply sit back and wait for workers to be ordered back to work through legislation. Back-to-work legislation takes away all the power of workers to work toward things like improving health and safety. I am not suggesting that employers are not interested in health and safety but what I am saying is that to get the best health and safety in a workplace it needs to be bargained collectively free and with the ability to strike.

[Resumption and Continuation of Postal Services Operations Legislation, November 23rd, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I am profoundly disappointed to have to rise today to speak to a motion that will ram through back-to-work legislation. Indeed, today is the day we leave behind sunny ways and see the dark days ahead for workers' rights in Canada.

I want to remind the government that Canadian workers have a constitutional right to free and fair collective bargaining and a constitutional right to strike. However, here we are, back to the future, in 2011. We have had a change in government since then, but the new boss sounds like the old boss, it seems, when it comes to legislating workers back to work at the behest of commercial interests, and in violation of workers' rights.

It is disappointing that this government came into office promising to be different, and as we have heard, promising to respect workers' rights, but when it really matters, at the very first opportunity to really stand up and be counted to answer the question from that famous labour song, Which Side Are You On?, this government chooses the side of its Bay Street friends.

It is unconscionable for any government, let alone a government that says it respects workers' rights, to undermine the collective bargaining process with the threat of back-to-work legislation. How can postal workers expect their employer to bargain in good faith when the government has already signalled that it sides with the employer? With back-to-work legislation hanging over the bargaining table, why would Canada Post bother to bargain? It knows that the government has its back. Just wait it out, and the workers will be ordered back to work.

What about the workers? We really have not heard as much about them and their rights from members opposite. Here are some facts to bear in mind. Over the past two years, the accident and injury rate for Canada Post workers has increased by 43%. In 2017, 25% of postal workers were injured in the course of their duties. Workplace accidents among Canada Post employees are five times higher than the average in other federally regulated sectors. In rural areas, women make up 75% of Canada Post workers. Rural postal workers work under unfavourable conditions compared to their urban colleagues. Since the postal transformation, the workforce has been cut in half and the workload and volume of parcels has increased by almost 100%.

Postal workers are experiencing extreme stress and anxiety due to working conditions that currently exist at Canada Post. All they want is to have their health and safety concerns addressed at the bargaining table. I think most Canadians can understand and support that.

I am ashamed that the government has seen fit to table this bill and ram it through Parliament. This bill would reinstate the working conditions of the CUPW and Canada Post expired contract. By CUPW's calculation, that means that in the four and a half weeks between now and Christmas, at least 315 disabling injuries will happen to postal workers; rural and suburban mail carriers, mostly women, will work roughly 250,000 hours for free; urban postal workers will work thousands of hours of forced overtime, missing evenings with their families without a choice; temporary workers will continue to be stuck at that first rung of the pay scale while delivering the holidays to us; and RSMCs will continue to be treated, as Canada Post says, with pay equity but not equality. This will be the direct result of the Liberal government's proposed legislation rammed through Parliament through an undemocratic process that stifles debate.

Postal workers are our friends, neighbours, customers and part of our community. We do not want them being hurt on the job, being paid unfairly, or being expected to work excessive amounts of overtime. They have a right to negotiate with their employer for fairer conditions. I do not think Canadians would begrudge any worker this right, and neither should this government.

I want to share a letter that was sent to the Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Labour and copied to me. It is from Brian Jamieson, a postal worker from Victoria and a member of CUPW, Local 850. He says:

Canadian postal workers are trying to negotiate for safer work conditions and equality for all workers regardless of gender. I strongly believe that legislating them back to work will irreparably damage their ability to accomplish these goals.

One of the most important challenges postal workers are facing is inequality. Currently there are two faces to this inequality: gender inequality faced by [rural and suburban mail carriers] as addressed by Arbitrator Maureen Flynn in her recent decision; and the two tiered wage system new hires are faced with for doing the same work as their more senior counterparts.

In an article from The Globe and Mail...interim Canada Post CEO Jessica McDonald stated, “Pay equity is a basic human right and therefore pay disparity on the basis of gender is wholly unacceptable for Canada Post.” Unfortunately to date, none of the offers presented by Canada Post address pay equity for RSMCs (mostly women) in any meaningful way going forward. This seems to suggest that Canada Post's position on pay equity is somewhat insincere....

Would you consider it to be reasonable, or fair, for Members of Parliament in rural areas to make less money than MP's from urban areas simply because they are in more isolated or less population dense regions? Or worse, because they were women? I hope not. They do exactly the same work and have the same responsibilities as their urban counterparts. But this is what is happening at Canada Post, both with [rural and suburban mail carriers], and with a two-tiered wage system that holds employees hired after February 2013 to less pay than coworkers hired before....

Canada Post and CUPW have been negotiating for almost a year now, and to date, Canada Post has made virtually no movement on the issues I have outlined herein. Now that rotating strike action is underway, and as the Christmas season approaches, Canada Post is finally feeling the pressure, and beginning to talk on these key issues. It is my fear that back to work legislation will remove that pressure and provide absolutely no incentive whatsoever for Canada Post to come to an agreement around the many equality and health & safety issues that need to be addressed.

By tabling this bill, the government has decided to tip the balance in favour of the employer. Fifty thousand Canada Post employees have been thrown under the proverbial bus.

On January 30, 2015, the Supreme Court of Canada released a landmark labour law decision, Saskatchewan Federation of Labour v. Saskatchewan. It concluded that the right to strike is a constitutional right.

In a democracy, free and fair collective bargaining must be allowed to happen. The power dynamic has always been and continues to be with the employer. Strikes are a last resort for workers when their employers cannot and will not negotiate, and it is not a step they take lightly, but that step is a right workers have in Canada, and it is protected under the Constitution.

It is offensive in the extreme that the government has decided to take sides in this process, and it is adding insult to injury that this legislation is going to be rammed through without proper debate. It makes one wonder who the Liberals really represent in this place.

In closing, as my colleague, the member for London-Fanshawe, has said, it is a black Friday indeed in Canada, for democracy and for Canadian workers.

[Postal Services Resumption and Continuation Act, November 23rd, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, we heard time and again this morning that the government had only one option, and that was to violate the workers' constitutional right to strike. I would like to make a proposal and hear the minister's response.

There was one other option, and an equivalent option. That is to put the onus on the employer to accept what CUPW has asked at the bargaining table. Instead, it is pretty clear that the government is on one side, and that is on the side of the employer and not to protect the constitutional right of workers. I would like the minister to respond to that.

[Housing, November 22nd, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, a year ago, the national housing strategy was announced, but the housing crisis in Canada deepens every day. There is still no sign of an indigenous housing strategy.

As we approach another brutal Canadian winter, shelters will be overflowing and more people will be left out in the cold. The most vulnerable are being asked to wait until after the next election.

On National Housing Day will the government enshrine the right to housing in legislation so that everyone can have a safe, affordable place to call home?