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MPs repeal Tory anti-union bills: October, 2016
Jun 14, 2020

Reprinted with permission from Blacklock's Reporter, an on-line, paid news subscription service. Blacklock’s Reporter covers news you won’t find anywhere else: bills and regulations; reports and committees; Federal Court and public accounts. Blacklock's Reporter is the only reporter-owned and operated newsroom in Ottawa that finds the facts needed by business, labour and associations. www.blacklocks.ca


October 20, 2016 - MPs last evening voted 205 to 79 to repeal two contentious Conservative union bills. One legislator said only a “miracle” would prevent the repeal from passing the Senate.

“The repeal of these two bills is essential,” said Liberal MP Peter Fonseca (Mississauga East, Ont.) in final Commons debate; “The focus on unions in both bills is suspiciously inequitable.”

Cabinet Bill C-4 An Act To Amend The Canada Labour Code repeals all provisions of two pieces of legislation enacted in 2015: C-377 that mandated disclosure of confidential union finances on a government website, and C-525 that abolished the card check system in favour of secret balloting to certify new bargaining units in federally-regulated workplaces.

“This is likely the last time I am going to rise in the House and debate this piece of legislation unless we have some type of miracle in the Senate that protects the rights of workers,” said Conservative MP Blaine Calkins (Red Deer-Lacombe, Alta.), original sponsor of Bill C-525. Passage of the bill was cited in the 2015 rejection of a union by WestJet pilots.

MP Calkins said in an interview he held out little hope that Conservative senators could avert repeal. “I know there is a lot of senators that still support the notion of having a mandatory secret ballot vote,” Calkins said. “I don’t know what the Senate is going to do. Obviously, the complexion of the Senate has changed.”

Conservatives held a majority of votes in the Senate when the two bills were passed in 2015. Party members currently hold 40 seats compared to 21 Liberals and 23 Independents.

“If a union can’t convince people enough to go behind a curtain and cast a secret ballot vote in favour of creating a union, then a union shouldn’t exist,” Calkins said.“Every worker in Canada should have the opportunity to decide for themselves in the confidence of a secret ballot vote. Is it going to have an impact on the outcomes? Of course; it should have an impact on the outcomes. I want a true result, and I don’t think you get a truer result than through a secret ballot vote.”

“Sneaky”

Labour Minister MaryAnn Mihychuk earlier described the Conservative bills as a “back-door, sneaky approach” to penalizing unions. Bill C-525 was a “way to ensure the unionization process is as complicated as possible,” Mihychuk said. “It was simply not necessary.”

The labour department last March 22 published confidential research commissioned by the previous Conservative cabinet that concluded repeal of the card check system drove down unionization rates. “Because it lowers the likelihood of successful certification, the introduction of a mandatory vote regime can also reduce the number of certification attempts,” said the research Union Certification Regimes And Declining Density In The Canadian Business Sector.

“Under a card check regime there is a smaller window of opportunity for management to oppose a union bid,” Regimes said. “In fact, management may only learn about a successful union certification attempt after the application for certification is a fait accompli.”

Union membership in the private sector declined from 23 percent to 19 percent in the period from 1997 to 2012, by official estimate. Regimes attributed the decline in part to repeals of card checks in the period by Nova Scotia, British Columbia, Alberta, Newfoundland & Labrador, Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

By Tom Korski


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