Industry committee  Thank you very much for having me. As it was mentioned, I am the Assistant to the National Director of United Steelworkers. United Steelworkers is among the largest private sector unions in North America. We represent over 200,000 members in Canada and over 800,000 members acro

Industry committee  I am now. What we're proposing is a broad review of the Investment Canada Act. If I can echo what Jim Stanford has said, we don't disagree that the test for foreign investments should ultimately be of the net benefit to Canada and to Canadian communities. The problem we have is

Industry committee  Employment levels at Vale facilities in Sudbury have been dropping steadily since they purchased the operation, both before and after the year-long strike that was provoked by the company. I don't have the exact employment levels, but roughly a thousand or so people have lost the

Industry committee  No.

Industry committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. My name is Mark Rowlinson. I'm the executive assistant to the Canadian director of the United Steelworkers Union. I'm here to comment on the amendments to the Investment Canada Act found in part 4, division 9 of Bill C-43. The United Steelworkers

Industry committee  Let me just offer the following. I don't disagree, actually, with my colleague from the CBA that clearly there needs to be a balance in the Investment Canada process between preserving, for example, the confidentiality of business information whilst at the same time providing tra

Industry committee  Thank you very much for the question. That is exactly what we are saying. Indeed, when the legislation has an impact on foreign investment, the government and investors are not the only ones who need to be consulted; the community, workers and retirees also need to have the righ

Public Safety committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. My name is Mark Rowlinson. I'm the assistant to the Canadian national director of the United Steelworkers. I've also been a practising labour lawyer for the union for about 20 years. The United Steelworkers is one of the largest industrial unions

Public Safety committee  We had two other issues that we raised in our submission. Lesser issue one relates to limits to the grievance and arbitration process. The other relates to the concern about workers' compensation and the fact that under Bill C-7 RCMP officers may be subject to a sort of patchwork

Public Safety committee  Before I answer the question, I'll respectfully disagree, if I could, on what the Supreme Court actually said in MPAO. Yes, they dealt primarily with issues of employee choice and the autonomy and independence of the bargaining agent, because that was the issue that was before th

Public Safety committee  I think the concern is that if your employer, whether it's a public sector employer or a private sector employer—i.e., the institution that puts food on the table for your family—indicates firmly to you that it has a preference as to how you're going to vote on the question of un

Public Safety committee  Right, and I agree with you that the certification decision should be in the hands of employees. Because it should be in the hands of employees, it should be done in a manner that is confidential and private. That, in our view, mitigates in favour of a requirement to sign members

Public Safety committee  I'll give you a couple of illustrations. We have what we tend to call strategic alliance relationships with other independent unions. They're not financial relationships in any way. For example there's ACTRA. ACTRA's a national union, with members all over the country. We have a

Public Safety committee  May I make a quick point on this issue? One thing our union does is gather empirical data around why people want to join unions—perhaps not surprisingly. One thing you find is that, yes, people want higher benefits and wages and terms and conditions of employment, but actually

International Trade committee  On the forestry sector specifically, all we know is that about eight mills have closed in western Canada in the last eight or nine months as a result of the softwood lumber duties. The problem.... Regarding the package you mentioned that was announced by the government at the t