Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to talk today about this important issue. Bill C-5 is one step on a long road to recovery for Canadian public service workers, and more generally, for the rights of all Canadian workers.
The previous government's concerted assault on the rights of Canada's public service workers, on the value of the important services they provided, and by extension, on the rights of every hard-working Canadian have really negatively impacted our ability to attract new talent to the public sector and has seriously deteriorated the services the Canadian government is able to deliver to all Canadians. The result is costly. It is costly to the economy, to the Canadian way of life, and to the well-being of public servants, plus it creates gaping holes in our social fabric, which sadly means that particular segments of the Canadian population are left behind or are underserved.
The previous government's Bill C-4 showed little regard for basic business principles, willful ignorance of common and elementary knowledge about sickness in workplaces, and zero concern for the well-being of other people. In this day and age, there is no good reason to demand that a person go to work sick.
The previous government's trampling of workers' rights was shortsighted and unwarranted and has left a negative impact on the public sector and the Canadian way of life. Repealing the bill is obviously the right thing to do, but we can do better.
My NDP colleagues and I ask the current government to continue to stand up for workers' rights and to immediately repeal the previous government's Bill C-4, which interferes with free collective bargaining, infringes upon workers' rights to a safe work environment, and restricts the right to strike. The government should move immediately to repeal each section of this bill that undermines the constitutional rights of public service employees.
Under the previous government, we witnessed a major dismantling of important public sector departments. This made many Canadians uncomfortable, so uncomfortable, in fact, that some even wrote songs about it, which is partly why we have a new party in power today.
Many of these public sector departments provide the information, research, and analysis necessary for a government to make informed decisions. Being informed when making any decision is a key factor in making good decisions, whether that decision conforms to preconceived ideas or not.
Dr. Peter Wells, a former public servant and environmental scientist, said in an interview with the National Observer that the previous government was quite “simply anti-science, anti-evidence, and anti-informed policy and decision-making.... More than 2,000 positions and people were lost, many in my field [of environmental science], resulting in a loss of a generation of skills, knowledge, and capacity that were there to serve the public”.
“There to serve the public” is the important part here. It is there to serve the public good, not the good of a single political party or the agenda of a small group of ideologues. The public service is essential to a functioning democracy. They ensure that we live under the best conditions with the best resources and the best information available anywhere in the world. The health of our public sector plays a crucial role in whether we lead the world or fall behind. The public sector is essential to every Canadian's well-being and safety. In short, the public sector deserves respect, and public sector employees should be treated with respect.
Canadians want a Canada that trusts its public servants, because frankly, our public service workers are not the enemy. Canadians trust their public servants to show up to work every day and to diligently serve Canadians in what are often highly challenging and demanding situations. Canadians also understand that these same public servants should not show up to work sick. Passing on illnesses to co-workers and taking longer to get better only reduces productivity.
Trust is key in any healthy relationship. The Government of Canada is not a babysitter and should not babysit the people it is elected to serve. That is not the role of government. A government should trust the people who elected them, because unless we have forgotten, many of these people are our neighbours. Despite our many differences, we must respect our neighbours' right to freedom of speech, to health and well-being, and to a safe workplace. We must respect our neighbours' right to make their own decisions, to learn, and to have the space and resources to grow, because every single Canadian benefits when each of us has the opportunity to prove our potential.
Governments should provide leadership and vision, not micromanage public servants and certainly not abolish rights that will endanger the safety and well-being of public servants and ultimately the people they serve.
Moreover, our government should be working to build, not destroy. A government should protect and not harm. A government should not steal rights but respect them and provide opportunities for exercising those rights. That same government should also trust public sector workers to carry out the important work necessary to maintain the daily operations of the Canadian government.
Every day, thousands of our neighbours go to work to ensure that our food and borders are safe, that our pension cheques are delivered, and that the best of Canada is represented abroad. All of these workers make us proud, and our government should reflect that.
With any system, there is potential for abuse of that system by its users. There is always someone who will try to manipulate situations to their own perceived advantage, often at a cost to everyone else. That can be said of many systems. It can be said of governments, government services, and even representatives of governments themselves. However, like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut, the previous Bill C-4 of the previous government declares everyone guilty until proven innocent, and, in the process, smashes the entire structure to pieces so that little usable remains.
Moreover, a parliamentary budget officer report from July 2014, requested by the former member for Ottawa Centre, shows that the previous president of the Treasury Board and the justification for this poorly though-out bill misrepresented the level of sick leave taken by civil servants. It clearly shows that the use of sick leave in the federal civil service imposes no significant cost on the government or taxpayers.
The PBO report states:
the incremental cost of paid sick leave was not fiscally material and did not represent material costs for departments in the [core public administration].
That means that most employees who call in sick are not replaced, resulting in no incremental cost for departments.
Likewise, and this is important, the PBO also confirmed that the use of sick leave by public servants is in line with the public sector. However, creating a problem where none exists to advance an ideology was the previous government's MO.
The previous government's Bill C-4 does absolutely nothing positive for Canada or Canadians and has paved the way for unenlightened ways of forcing Canadian public servants to go to work sick. Likewise, it sets a precedent that negatively impacts the whole of the Canadian working population.
Organized labour, like any professional association, is designed to look out for the well-being of its members. That is a simple fact. Every similar organization, whether it is a professional association, a chamber of commerce, or a taxpayers federation, does the same. Even pro athletes have their unions. In fact, that is the reason they organize. It to present strength through co-operation, to protect one another's rights, and to fight for more rights.
Organized labour, like other professional organizations, has provided leadership in our society. Its members have endured hardship and even ridicule while standing up for better working conditions. Their hard-won gains have benefited all Canadians, and many of these gains are taken for granted by many of us today: weekends, overtime pay, vacation pay, parental leave, health and safety regulations, and even sick days.
Creating a standard for all Canadian workers, unionized or not, to be treated with respect has led to all of us having the basic rights of association and freedom of speech and the right to a workplace that is safe. As small as it might seem, organized labour also helped set a precedent that if one is sick, one can stay home and not lose a day's pay or one's job. Despite what the previous government thought, this makes great business sense, and it has become a standard across the country and across sectors.
Today, these benefits are what helps an organization, private or public, attract top talent. It is also what helps keep that talent because measures such as sick leave ensure a modicum of decency between employer and employee, positively influence staffing efficiencies and stability, and express a confident statement regarding the well-being and health of an organization's or business's workforce. Given all the benefits that a happy, healthy workforce brings, it did seem strange that the federal government as an employer chose not to, or did not want to be a leader.
For example, Shift Development, a forward-thinking development company in my riding, pays a living wage to all its workers. Its CEO, Curtis Olson, says he pays all his employees a living wage rather than the minimum wage because he cannot afford not to. He said, “For me, as a business owner, the cost of employee turnover is a huge cost”. Mr. Olson knows the value of and relationship between high employee morale, health and stability, and increased returns from productivity, efficiency, and success. He said, “If I take care of my employees and help meet their financial and lifestyle needs, they’ll take care of the company and the growth of the company”. The Canadian government should learn from our business leaders' successes and start valuing and trusting their employees because without them the government cannot deliver a single service to Canadians.
The previous government's Bill C-4 was unenlightened and primitive. It pushed labour relations and standards back decades and set precedents that were regressive and reached far beyond the confines of the public service sector. It is incomprehensible to many Canadians why the previous government would want to erase rights that took decades and in some cases many generations to earn, rights the Conservatives wiped out in massive undemocratic omnibus swaths and a sweeping ideological mugging of Canadian rights and freedoms. These transgressions were made without consideration for the consequences for the Canadian working person, the economy, or the future Canadian workforce, our children.
Today, we are debating a return of only one of those rights. In the coming days, months, and years no doubt a great deal of time and energy will be lost to rebuilding what was destroyed by the previous government. Thanks to that government, we must move backward in order to move forward. Instead of debating a national living wage, which would increase the health and well-being of our local communities and economies, the previous government left us in the sorry state of debating the reinstatement of sick leave to public servants. If news reports about the current negotiations are accurate, the Liberal government has not lived up to all of its election promises about respecting the public service. It is all very good to promise to negotiate fairly and to bring a renewed respect to its dealings with public service workers, but if they are serving up some of the same offers as the previous government, it is not real change.
I urge the government to keep its promises and not break faith with the public service. It is my hope that the new boss is not the same as the old boss. Let us work to fix what is broken, including a pay system that has left thousands of workers unpaid or underpaid, the full effects of which are not yet to be seen. Let us get this bill passed now and move on to creating and implementing things such as a national housing strategy, which would save Canadians billions of dollars in health care and correctional services costs. Let us work on pressing issues such as quality affordable childcare, improving access to health care, and tackling climate change. Let us focus on improving the lives of families and seniors, and creating brighter futures for our young people. I know for a fact my riding would benefit from discussion on all of these issues, and I am sure my riding is not the only one in the country.
As such, while I support Bill C-5, more needs to be done to restore the numerous and hard-earned rights of Canadian workers, especially those in the public sector.
I urge the government to commit to repealing all the regressive changes made to labour law in the former government's Bill C-4. The previous government's Bill C-4 undermined the constitutional rights of federal public service employees to collective bargaining, including the right to strike. It also offered government negotiators an unfair advantage at the bargaining table. Unions, of course, fought against the changes throughout those legislative processes.
Happily, with collective bargaining about to resume in a new process for several tables of large unions, the government has the opportunity to make a gesture of good faith by committing to repeal provisions of the previous government's Bill C-4 affecting collective bargaining. That would be a start, because there are some seriously questionable aspects of that bill.
In fact, the Public Service Alliance of Canada asked the court to immediately declare that division 20 of Bill C-59, which is part of Bill C-4 of the previous government, is in violation of its members' charter rights because it denied the right of employees to good-faith bargaining by giving the employer the unilateral authority to establish all terms and conditions relating to sick leave, including establishing a short-term disability program, and modifying the existing long-term disability program; it allowed the Treasury Board to unilaterally nullify the terms and conditions in existing collective agreements; and it gave the employer the authority to override many of the provisions of the Public Service Labour Relations Act.
In short, the previous government's Bill C-4 gave the government unbridled authority to designate essential positions. It eliminated the public sector compensation analysis and research functions that had previously allowed the parties at the bargaining table to base wage offers and demands on sound evidence and facts.
The previous Bill C-4 also changed the economic factors that could be considered by a public interest commission or an arbitration board, which placed the employer's interests ahead of its employees and tipped the scales, shamelessly, in the employer's favour.
The NDP has stood with the public service workers and the public sector unions every step of the way, while right after right was stolen from them by the previous government. During and after the last campaign, the NDP proposed a comprehensive suite of reforms that would help ensure that the relationship between public service employees and government is responsible, reliable, and respectful, now and into the future. These measures include protecting whistleblowers, empowering the integrity commissioner, introducing a code of conduct for ministerial staff, and reining in the growing use of temporary work agencies at the expense of permanent jobs. We remain committed to taking these important steps forward.
However, beyond changing specific policies, what is really needed is a change of attitude. Our public service workers have been neglected, undermined, and abused by brutal cuts and restrictive legislation, under both Liberal and Conservative governments and administrations. It is time we revisit our thinking.
What do any of us know about what is possible until we change the way we have been thinking and try a new road, a road that respects the independence of public servants, that respects the important work they do, and that shows that respect by honestly and fairly coming to the bargaining table? The current government must commit to restoring capacity in the public service so that essential services for Canadians can be delivered.
The Liberal government has said it is a friend of labour, both during the election and in government, but sometimes its words and actions do not line up. Its exclusion of such important issues as staffing, deployment, harassment, and discipline from the collective bargaining process for the RCMP staff is one such disappointment.
Another is Bill C-10, which made the layoffs of 2,600 Air Canada and Aveos workers permanent by allowing Air Canada to ship aircraft maintenance jobs out of the country. The Air Canada Public Participation Act required the air carrier to keep heavy maintenance jobs in Montreal, Mississauga, and Winnipeg. In a unanimous ruling, the Quebec Court of Appeal recognized these obligations. However, instead of respecting the court's ruling, the present government decided to side with Air Canada, at the expense of workers.
I hope the government will stop saying one thing and doing another. I believe it is time it makes good on many election promises. I urge the government to make a commitment to repeal the previous government's Bill C-4.
