44th Parl. 1st Sess.
December 14, 2023 10:00AM
Mr. Speaker, I am particularly pleased and proud to be able to rise in this debate on Bill C-58.
It should go without saying in this country that workers deserve respect, fair wages and safe working conditions. However, success in achieving those things has depended largely on the free collective bargaining process. The success of every business, every enterprise and every government program depends on all the workers involved: Those who clean, those who provide security, those who drive and those who provide child care. None of our economy functions without all of us working together. In fact, I would speculate that if the top CEOs and directors stayed home for a day, their businesses would continue to function, because workers would carry on providing those services to the economy and to the public.
However, we should also recognize today that increasing inequality will eventually undermine social stability in this country. We have had the spectacle of Galen Weston, a CEO, appearing before a House of Commons committee and saying it is “reasonable” that he earns, in one year, 431 times his average worker's salary. I would say to Mr. Weston that it is reasonable only in some other universe than the one the rest of us live in. In fact, it is actually even out of scale for the top 100 CEOs, who only, on average, earn 243 times what their average worker does.
A study by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives demonstrated to us that, in a typical year, and we have a new year coming up, before the end of the second day, the top 100 CEOs will earn more than their average worker in the entire year. By my own calculations, by the end of that year, the CEOs will have earned more than their average worker will earn in a lifetime. Therefore, we have a serious problem with growing inequality in this country, and one of the only ways that we can, on a practical basis, see progress is through free collective bargaining.
We face huge challenges in our society, and I could spend time talking about the challenge of climate change. We face huge challenges, as I said, in inequality. We face all kinds of challenges in our workforce, with labour shortages. How do we address them? We certainly are a wealthy and well-educated country. We have a dedicated workforce, and if we all work together, and everyone pays their fair share, we can meet those challenges. We know what we need to do.
I would cite the NDP dental care plan as an example of how we can meet the challenges we face. This is a health challenge, in particular, for many seniors I hear from in my riding. They worked very hard all their lives but did not necessarily have a job in which their health benefits continued into retirement, if they had them at all. I have had many people approach my office to say that the quality of their life is really impaired by their inability to afford dental care. How is this relevant? If everybody pays their fair share, we can afford dental care for all Canadians.
Some of my Conservative friends have said, “Well, you always support spending. Why is that? You will just support deficits.” I try to correct them by saying that, as a New Democrat, I do not support deficits; I support fair taxation. If we apply the principles of fair taxation, including a wealth tax in this country, we can afford to take care of each other, which is an important principle.
However, where did that principle of taking care of each other come from? It came from trade unions and collective bargaining, where workers joined together and said, “Let us not have some of us succeed at the cost of the rest of us in the workplace.” They negotiated contracts that provided fair benefits, fair wages and better working conditions for everybody in the bargaining unit, and the employers could not just reward those they favoured in the workplace.
I will tell members a door knocking story from an election campaign. I went out one Saturday morning, too early for me and obviously too early for some of my constituents. A gentleman came to the door and said, “Oh, you're the New Democrat. I can't support you.” I said, “Why can't you?” He said, “You're way too close to the unions.” I said, “What day is it?” He said, “What do you mean, what day is it?” I asked again, “What day is it?” He said, “It's Saturday”, and then he looked at me and said, “I see where you're going with this.” I said, “Yes, you're home on the weekend because collective bargaining got people weekends off, which made it a standard in our society.” He said, “Oh, next you're going to talk to me about health care and all kinds of other things unions got.” I said, “That's absolutely what I'm going to talk to you about.” He said, “I still can't vote for you”, and shut the door. I did not succeed in convincing him that day, but even he understood that a lot of the benefits he enjoyed as a non-union worker came from the work of trade unions.
Why am I giving all these examples when we are talking about anti-scab legislation? We know the importance of collective bargaining. We also know, if we stop to think for a minute, that most collective bargaining processes do not lead to strikes or lockouts; the vast majority of them do not. I have seen various statistics. In some sectors, up to 90% of contracts are completed successfully without any work stoppage at all.
What happens when replacement workers get involved? Again, the studies will tell us quite clearly that if replacement workers are hired by an employer, two things happen. One is that the strike, on average, will last six times longer than if replacement workers were not involved. The second thing the use of replacement workers does is to introduce an element of hostility and division in the community, because workers who are on strike see replacement workers as a threat to their livelihood. Quite often, replacement workers are hired through employment agencies or other ways in which they have no idea that they are being sent into such a position of conflict as a replacement worker.
What I think is really good about the legislation is that it would bank this practice. British Columbia and Quebec have already had this kind of legislation for years. Of course, the NDP has been trying to get it introduced at the federal level. We have introduced a bill eight times in the last 15 years. The last time we introduced it, in 2016, both the Liberals and the Conservatives voted against anti-scab legislation.
The Conservative Party leader likes to talk about working people and how he is a friend of working people. I would say that the bill gives him a chance to demonstrate that concretely. His previous record does not show that. His party voted against minimum wages. His party, I guess I would say, has never seen back-to-work legislation it did not like. The record is clear on one side. If the Conservatives want to change that record, the legislation before us gives them an opportunity to demonstrate that they really are friends of workers and friends of progress, in terms of our economy.
Who are the workers most affected by the use of replacement workers? I am going to make a strange argument here, but quite often it is actually the non-union workers, because it is unionized companies and unionized sectors that set the standard that employers have to meet, even if those standards are not legislated. When we talk about the people who work in the lowest-paid, non-union jobs, they would actually be protected by the legislation as well, because it would allow unions to have shorter work stoppages and to negotiate better conditions, which would eventually spread through our economy.
Once again, I am back to the point I want to make. We hear a lot about how society and Parliament in Canada are suddenly dysfunctional. I do not believe that is true. I believe what we have are the choices that we are making. We make choices in the economy. It is not inevitable that we have great inequality. It is not inevitable that we have homelessness in our society. We make policy choices that have real outcomes that disadvantage many Canadians. We can make better choices and we can make different choices.
When we are talking about whether the House of Commons can do that, if the House of Commons appears dysfunctional to people, I believe that it is currently the result of choices being made by one party in the House to make the House of Commons appear dysfunctional and to make sure, as the party's leader declared, that we cannot get anything done anything in the House. He said he is going to grind the House to a halt, and we have seen him trying to do that. What is the impact of that on workers? It means we cannot get to legislation like the bill before us. It means we cannot get to a fair bargaining process for workers in the federal sector across the country. I represent a riding where there are lots of workers in the federally regulated sector. I know that this is important to them because they know it would shorten labour disputes and result in less hostility around the picket lines.
One last thing I want to talk about is that the improvement this legislation would make over what exists in B.C. and Quebec is that it considers the issue of remote work. One of the challenges we have now is that, in many industries, if there is a picket line, there is no need for employers to get someone to actually cross a physical line; they can hire people to work remotely. The federal legislation would actually be an improvement over what exists in British Columbia and Quebec, and I look forward to being able to vote in favour of it.
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- Dec/14/23 11:30:49 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I rise to this morning to speak of workers, the labour context, industrial relations and replacement workers. One of the main factors to consider in today's debates is the Liberals' mismanagement over the past eight years. Liberal mismanagement has raised the cost of living for all Canadian workers.
The Liberals' disastrous mismanagement and astronomical deficits sent inflation and interest rates soaring to levels not seen in 40 years. All these factors combine to put pressure on Canadian workers. People have their working conditions and their wages to count on, but when everything is going up, when the price of rent and housing doubles, when people go to the supermarket to feed their family and are forced to spend $150 more each week for the same groceries but their pay stays the same, they can no longer make ends meet. The math is simple.
The Liberals constantly preach at us. My colleagues will no doubt remember how, just after it was elected, this government said it was there for the middle class and those working hard to join it. We even had the joy, the pleasure, of witnessing the creation of a new minister of middle-class prosperity. What a joke. That position no longer exists. As we can see, the government's actions yielded the opposite effect, making the middle class poorer. This is what is happening today.
Furthermore, during the past eight years of Liberal mismanagement, labour disputes in Canada have surged. In recent years, Canada has experienced over 300 labour disputes. This is unprecedented. All this was caused by current conditions. People are struggling to stay afloat. They are at their wits' end. Food banks are overwhelmed with record demand. Two million people are visiting food banks every month. I even see it in my region near Quebec City, where everything usually hums along and people have a good standard of living. Now, queues of people line up for food boxes every Thursday. This is unheard of.
There is so much pressure on workers, and that is causing tension and unrest. That is what we are seeing in Quebec nowadays, but that is a different debate. That is for the Government of Quebec to deal with. Public sector workers are striking, people like nurses and teachers. The same thing is happening at the federal level. The federal government created negative economic conditions in Canada that have led to unrest. Workers are struggling. They are anxious and worried, and for good reason.
I have no choice but to blame the government, because those are the facts. The facts are the facts. Certain actions were taken. The insane spending that has been going on in recent years has doubled the country's debt. As we know, we are going to have to pay $50 billion a year in interest on the debt, the equivalent of 10% of all federal funds. Ten percent of all federal revenues will go toward paying interest to banks in New York and London. This creates a situation where workers can no longer make ends meet. That is untenable, so workers ask for more. Employers are also experiencing inflation. They, too, have to cope with rising costs. The entire market, every industry, is affected by the decisions made in recent years by the Liberal government, decisions that have had a negative impact on everyone.
Other decisions that are entirely inconsistent with the current intention are those relating to Stellantis, Northvolt and Volkswagen. We have learned that Stellantis, which will receive $15 billion in public funds, will be using foreign replacement workers, most of them from South Korea. At first, there were supposed to be 1,600 of them. We now know that about 900 foreign workers are coming to work in Canada.
They are bringing in replacement workers from abroad to take Canadians' jobs. Some will say that these are specialized jobs. I understand that new technologies sometimes require workers with special knowledge to come explain how they work, but not 900 of them. The proof is that, when we first started asking questions, the Prime Minister said there would be no foreign workers. Then one of the Liberal ministers said that there would be a few, and then the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry said that there would only be one. At some point, they changed their minds. They realized that 900 Koreans would indeed be coming to Canada to take jobs away from Canadian workers.
Let us not forget that this is an investment of $15 billion in public funds. If a private company sets up shop in Canada and pays for staff from outside the country with its own money, that is its prerogative. However, this is taxpayer money that the Government of Canada is investing in a business with an unproven track record. The Parliamentary Budget Officer said that it was going to cost far more than anticipated. They are not even sure that it will be profitable and that they will get their money's worth. Regardless, foreign workers are being brought in to work in Canada.
It is the same thing with Northvolt, the company that is setting up in Quebec, halfway to the leader of the Bloc Québécois's riding. This company is also going to bring in foreign workers. The situation is not clear and we are trying to find out more. We asked to see the contracts. We understand that contracts for services with governments contain business-related clauses and they have to be careful, but we are entitled to find out some basic information about the number of foreign workers and their conditions.
Let us not forget that it is taxpayers who are paying for this. We are investing tens of billions of dollars in these projects. These are not small investments. We should have access to this information. The government must find a way to give this information to the opposition parties so they can determine whether it is a good agreement or not. The government does not want to be transparent. This once again creates conditions that make Canadian workers turn around and ask for protection.
What is going on? On the one hand, the government says it wants to protect its workers. On the other hand, it brings in foreign workers, even paying companies to do so. It is being inconsistent. This creates conditions that make people suspicious about what is going on and the way the federal government operates in Canada. They are right to be suspicious.
That has repercussions on the Canadian economy. The COVID-19 pandemic caused severe supply chain disruptions, and the recovery has been difficult. Canada lacks synergy and efficiency in terms of rail, marine and air transportation. We need more consistency, efficiency and predictability. That is what is lacking now in Canada. Other countries are worried. Companies and marine carriers are wondering whether they should be going through Canada to reach the United States because they never know how the trip will unfold.
These worries were created by the government. We saw it during the strike at the Port of Vancouver. The government knew months in advance that there were issues to address. The minister was not able to foresee the situation and find solutions to avoid a conflict. The conflict caused half a billion dollars in losses. It could have been settled ahead of time, and all that could have been avoided.
There are several factors that must be taken into account when it comes to workers. Right now, the main problem is inflation and interest rates, which put pressure on workers, who are worried. Another problem is that the government does not appear to understand that it must ensure effective management and orchestrate public investments. In the case of companies like Stellantis and Northvolt, the government should avoid bringing in foreign replacement workers and give preference to Canadians who are willing to take on the work.
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- Dec/14/23 1:44:05 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, once again, I find it very hard to connect the member's speech to the subject in front of us. I suspect that is because the Conservatives do not really want to take a position on the anti-scab legislation because they are busy posing as friends of labour.
By talking about inflation, is the member actually saying that it is workers' wages that are driving inflation? The Conservatives have been arguing all the time that it is the carbon tax. When we look at what is driving inflation, we find it is the war in Ukraine and the increasing greed of corporate profits in the gas and oil industry.
Is the member, by focusing on inflation, saying it is the workers' fault inflation is happening?
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
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