Peter Julian: Madam Speaker, the member for Wellington—Halton Hills made an intervention that was a pathetic attempt at political spin. He is generally a little more fact-based in his approach.
The government is clearly taking the corporation’s side. Rather than dealing with the lock-out, which was caused by the government’s actions in allowing management to do this, we have legislation before us that does not address the issue.
Would the member not agree with members who have been speaking over the last few hours that the most prudent and responsible approach that the government could take would be to take the locks off and then allow collective bargaining to run its course? The government should just take the locks off and get the mail workers back to doing what they want to do, which is serving Canada and making the mail…
Elizabeth May: Madam Speaker, I do agree with the member for Burnaby—New Westminster on one thing but not on another.
I quite reject the notion that the adjective “pathetic” could ever be applied to the member for Wellington—Halton Hills. It does not apply all.
I do entirely agree that the prudent thing for the government to do would be to get hold of Canada Post and tell it to take the locks off the doors so collective bargaining could begin in a free and appropriate approach.
It was legal for management to lock the workers out. It was legal for the union to apply revolving strikes. The less that we inject ourselves as parliamentarians, and worse as political parties, into a management-labour dispute by taking sides, the better this debate will go over the next several eons.