Human Resources committee  On the issue of pendulum swings, I think the Ontario experience that I referred to was classic. There is a risk in this. It was simply that the process lacked involvement of both parties, in the case of former Premier Rae's amendments. There's an article I can refer you to on the 16th annual Sefton Memorial Lecture, given at the University of Toronto by Kevin Burkett, a respected and neutral arbitrator still at work in Ontario.

Human Resources committee  The essential service provisions in the code have been interpreted fairly broadly. They were not intended to include economic harm; it's clearly safety and security of the public. There's been, perhaps, a tendency to interpret more widely. For example, I gather that in Marine Atlantic the whole of the service has been declared under that provision, even though the summer service only runs in the summer, so that in the winter we have a problem under essential services.

Human Resources committee  I should qualify that the four years contributed to it by the fact that you had an election in between things. Bill C-66 was at third reading in the Senate when the election was called, so we had to do the same thing all over again with Bill C-19. It was really a two-year process.

Human Resources committee  Thanks very much, Mr. Chairman. Good morning, members of the committee. Thanks for allowing me to appear before you this morning. I'm here as an individual, but in a previous life I had much to do with labour administration and the development of labour relations policy and legislation.

Human Resources committee  Excusez-moi, Madame, mais je vais prendre mon temps. I'm here as an individual, and I don't intend to take a position on the bill itself, but I want to address the process by which I believe labour laws are best amended. During 33 years in the labour department, I saw two major reviews, one in the mid-1960s and the other, in which I was intimately involved as assistant deputy minister, was the Sims review and the legislative changes just mentioned.