I will review some of the things that I think are salient about this situation and see if I can shed some light on it, hoping that it does some good to the discussion we have had here.

The first thing is to look at Canada Post. It is the most important public service for delivery of mail and other things that are really important to us.

As a public service, it is worth noting that it has been profitable every year for 15 years. It is also worth noting that it is facing challenges and its profit margin is going down in competition with other areas, competition with email and with commercial carriers like UPS and FedEx, even though it was able to take over Purolator and run it very profitably.

It is in a challenging situation. One of the reasons it continues to turn a profit, and in the last year I could find was for 2009, a $281 million profit, is due to the dedication and professionalism of its workforce.

We take these things as good starting points for maintaining what we want. I presume we all want Canada Post to be a public service and not privatized. I agree with my friends in the official opposition that there is some risk of that, but I do not think it is as blatant as they do. We have to guard against privatization by ensuring Canada Post remains public and profitable.

Into this we now have, and have had for some time, difficult labour management relationships between Canada Post management and CUPW. The remaining issues on the table, when things fell apart, really had almost nothing to do with the wage issue except for the differential wages for younger workers. Other issues included health and safety issues, which makes sense given what the postal workers go through, as well as staffing issues, sick leave, questions of short-term disability, wages, pensions, benefits, job creation and the ongoing issue of training.

These issues are certainly solvable. I practised in a number of areas of law, but for about three years I practised union-side labour law. I am somewhat familiar with collective agreements and bargaining, working with unions and having long negotiations. Eight months really is not that long as long as a collective agreement can be honoured and stay in place while the parties negotiate.

This is just some of the background that came to me and it is worth looking at it.

We all know the chronology. As things began to fall apart, CUPW instituted rotating strike action, which led, very short days afterwards, to a lockout. I think we all find it somewhat inexplicable that Canada Post management took that route because it brought mail service in Canada to an absolute standstill. We now find ourselves here.

I will start with where we all agree. Then I will deal with what I think are the red herrings where we do not agree. I believe we all agree that we want the mail to move. We all agree that we would like it to move as quickly as possible. I think we probably all agree that we would rather not be here at 2:15 on a Saturday morning. I think that is a presumption that will probably be shared around the room.

On the other hand, despite the occasional moments of lack of decorum, overall all members of Parliament from all parties have conducted themselves with that sense of duty, recognizing that we are here and this issue is important. It falls on us as elected members of Parliament not to just argue endlessly, but to solve it.

I think we would all agree with those statements.

Where do I see red herrings? A couple of them really relate to the larger cultural problem of this place, which is an addiction to partisanship, but I will leave it aside. However, I cannot vote for this legislation as drafted.

I am uncomfortable with some of the accusations. Some of the members of the official opposition make a good point and then take it one step too far. I find myself thinking it was too partisan, it was a cheap shot. On the other hand, in defending the position of the government legislation, some government members have gone too far. If we could tone that down, it would help. I do not mean to sound like I am preaching or lecturing, and I hope members will forgive me.

On the other hand, in defending the position of the government legislation, I think some government members have gone too far. If we could tone that down, it would help. I do not mean to sound like I am preaching or lecturing and I hope members will forgive me.

Something that is a problem and a bit of a red herring is that the issue before us is what do we do as members of Parliament to ensure that the mail starts moving, that there is a fair collective agreement bargaining process that works for all parties. That is our job. It is not really relevant to discuss the fact that other workers do not have such a good deal.

I can say that until May 2 I never had a pension plan, medical benefits or paid vacation time. I have never had any of those things nor have other people in my family, but that is not relevant to what we have in front of us. What we have in front of us are legal entitlements of CUPW negotiated under Canadian law that must be respected. It is not to insult other workers that we respect unionized rights. It is not to divide one set of workers against another.

We have a responsibility to uphold Canadian law and Canadian law says CUPW has a legitimate collective agreement that has been negotiated under Canadian law, which is valid for a very important public service delivery of our postal system. Workers do a fantastic job and one of the reasons they do a fantastic job is that they are in a good union that negotiates well. That is the issue before us.

There are other questions. Does the 2007 Supreme Court decision in the B.C. hospital workers case have any bearing here? I know the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Defence said it does not, but I think there are questions.

I will now come to the difference between us. One group of people in the House believes the best way to get the mail moving is to push through Bill C-6, come hell or high water. One group of people in the House thinks the best way to get the mail moving again is to fight as hard as possible against Bill C-6 in the hope that somehow, while we are in this place in our suspended animation of June 23, there will be some progress somewhere else that solves the problem.

But it is in members’ hands to solve the problem now. I made this point earlier today and I will ask my friends in the government to consider it. The fastest way to get the mail moving, which I know is their number one objective, is to change Bill C-6 through amendments that allow all of us in this place to agree that we have respected collective bargaining rights, the labour laws of Canada and Canadian workers, and we have acted quickly in the interests of all people, whether they are small business people or families waiting for cheques.

We should not allow ourselves to be so enamoured by our own rhetoric that we forget that the fastest way to get the mail moving is to amend Bill C-6 so that we can all agree, get the mail moving and go home at some point this weekend.

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It would also be better if I were not to speak in French, given that I am very tired.

I will speak to the motion in a couple of ways. I find the challenge of being original, after 31 hours of debate, is my main obstacle. We have heard a lot of very fine words on all sides of the House, but it has become, and I hope I do not offend anyone, a little repetitious. Therefore, I thought I would take a different tack.

We do want to stay on the subject, and the subject of the motion is a hoist amendment. It is useful to go back and reflect on the fact that hoist amendments used to be used by the government, not by opposition. They were used most commonly around 1867. That is why most of us had not heard of them before, but we have learned more about hoist amendments.

However, what it comes down to is the fact that to accept a hoist amendment in these circumstances is basically to reject Bill C-6. Why would we want to reject Bill C-6? Those reasons have been well canvassed.

I want to state the position of the Green Party on this as clearly as I can.

We sympathize with all those people who are disadvantaged by the current lockout, work stoppage, however one wants to put it. Small businesses are disadvantaged, some in my own riding. Others disadvantaged are: small operators of all kinds; individual Canadians waiting for their cheques, whether they are seniors, or single parents waiting for child support cheques; the workers are disadvantaged, people who cannot go to work when they want to, who are not receiving their paycheques.

I would like to take it as a given that every member of the House would rather have the members of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers do their work with a management structure of Canada Post that allows them to do that work efficiently, effectively, with proper supports for their training. A lot of the issues that have come up have to do with new equipment purchased by Canada Post. I hear from Canada Post workers in my riding that it did not provide adequate time or adequate training. There are some structural issues here that are real.

For CUPW, it has not really been primarily about the salaries. We have also heard that. That was not the big sticking point in the negotiations. What then was? Issues of fairness, issues of pensions, issues of this training equipment.

How are we to resolve this? This is where I would like to try to be original. What are our duties as members of Parliament? To whom do we bear allegiance?

It was not long ago that every one of us in the House swore an oath of allegiance. Members may recall, unless they have individual practices within their own parties of which I am not aware, that none of us put our hands on the Bible to swear allegiance to our political party or the leaders of our political parties. Quite simply, we all swore allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

We did that not because we admire a very admirable woman of enormous sense of duty and responsibility, named Betty Windsor, who lives in England and has a lot of grandchildren and some great-grandchildren. We take the oath to Queen Elizabeth II because she represents to us, as head of state, our country. Our primary duty in this place is to our country. As such, I would beg of each and every one of us to think primarily about what is in our national interest, which is clearly to end the lockout, to get people back to work and to stop blaming each other for how we got in this pickle.

The Government of Canada clearly sympathizes more with Canada Post. That is understood. I think all of us in opposition tend to sympathize more with CUPW. However, the opposition is not CUPW and the governing party is not Canada Post. We cannot continue to be proxies for people who cannot get to the bargaining table on their own. We need to fix this for them and we should not fix it in a blunt way, with a draconian instrument, that would cause long-term damage to something we need to thrive, our national public postal system.

I know I have heard from many members, and I am not pretending for a moment that this idea is original, certainly in the official opposition and from some within the governing party that we should be able to bend a little. We should be able to fix this. We should not conduct an ongoing echo chamber in our House of Commons that leaves Canadians from coast to coast absolutely stupefied as to what we are doing here.

Let us surprise the people of Canada by having the members of the 41st Parliament act differently. Let us actually get together out in the corridors, and maybe people are already doing it. Let us remove those sections of Bill C-6 that are unacceptable at least to this side of the House. Let us find a way that gets the postal workers back to work as soon as possible, which satisfies all the needs of the people that we have heard so much about, the people who need their glasses, the delivery of food to the north, services to small communities. All of those needs and hurts will be mended the minute we take the locks off the door and get people back to work. People who want their mail delivered really do not care whether we keep clause 15 in Bill C-6 or not.

I beg of all of us in the next few hours that we find a way to hoist ourselves out of hoist amendments. In studying this I learned to my horror that we could move a hoist amendment again and continue to debate the bill. We could be here for days. That is in no one’s interest.

Let us move to unanimous consent on things that make sense and let us solve this problem. Let us get the postal workers back to work and do it in a way that shows a collective respect for them and their work.

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It is important for us to put this whole debate into perspective. The Government of Canada is not taking sides in this dispute. This is a dispute between two parties: the corporation and CUPW. Both parties, unfortunately, have not come to a resolution upon expiry of a collective bargaining agreement.

The government attempted, through mediation, to get the two parties together despite that. There was a series of rotating strikes initiated by CUPW and then on the other side management decided to lock out the union.

What a responsible government would do in a monopoly situation where there are no alternatives for millions of Canadians is to legislate workers back to work to ensure the continuation of this essential service for so many Canadians. When the Liberals were in government, they did the same thing.

What a responsible opposition would do is not filibuster this legislation. In fact, it would allow this to pass. The problem here is that the official opposition is taking a side in this issue and that shows that the official opposition is not ready for prime time.

Elizabeth May: Madam Speaker, in response to my friend the member of Parliament for Wellington—Halton Hills, I wish we could put aside whether or not the NDP is ready for prime time or anything. That is not the issue. I do not think it is quite as clear that the government has not taken sides.

As I mentioned earlier in the House today, the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations in reviewing Bill C-6 has come to the conclusion that it would violate key elements of the Supreme Court decision and it would set back collective bargaining across Canada. Why would they think that?

There is nothing wrong with back-to-work legislation. Nobody would deny that it is an appropriate thing for government to do. The reason that this piece of legislation is offensive to some principles of labour law is because it is overly prescriptive, it ties the hands of an arbitrator, it puts in place in section 15 a schedule of payment to the workers that is less than what was on the table when negotiations broke down, and it further has a rather bizarre section that suggests that the arbitrator must be guided by the need to find terms and conditions of…

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