[ Page 473 ]

CONTENTS

Routine Proceedings

Industrial Relations Reform Act, 1987 (Bill 19). Second reading

Hon. L. Hanson –– 473

Mr. Gabelmann –– 476

The House met at 10:06 a.m.

Prayers.

HON. MR. DAVIS: Mr. Speaker, on the floor with us today we have a former roommate of mine, the Hon. Jean Chretien, who was for 20 years a Member of Parliament in Ottawa and Minister of Finance, Minister of Energy, minister of all sorts of things, including northern and Indian affairs. I'd like the House to welcome the former minister.

MR. ROSE: On behalf of the New Democratic Party, I'd like to add my welcome. Bienvenue a Colombie-Britannique. He is an outstanding Canadian; everyone agrees about that. He's probably one of the fathers of our constitution and new Charter of Rights. He will go down in history as making a major contribution to our country, if he never does anything else, and I'm sure he will — like maybe even join the NDP in Quebec. He's famous for that famous phrase: he may speak out of one side of his mouth but he doesn't speak out of both sides of his mouth.

I'd like to welcome him, on behalf of all the House, and that's straight from the heart.

MR. CRANDALL: Mr. Speaker, also with us this morning we have the mayor of Kimberley, Jim Ogilvie; economic development commissioner, Larry Haber; and two other residents in the good riding, Metro Tomyn from Radium, and Jim Rice, I'd like you to make them welcome.

HON. MR. STRACHAN: Before calling orders of the day, I'd like to advise the House that we will be sitting tomorrow afternoon. The House will adjourn this Thursday at six and reconvene Monday next; that's to accommodate our friends opposite and their leadership convention.

Orders of the Day

HON. MR. STRACHAN: Mr. Speaker, I call second reading of Bill 19, in the hands of the Minister of Labour and Consumer Services.

INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS REFORM ACT, 1987

HON. L. HANSON: In rising to move second reading of Bill 19 I want to say immediately that the Industrial Relations Reform Act is a major step on the part of this government to strengthen the economy of British Columbia by improving our labour relations climate.

When my colleagues and I set out on our tour of the province seeking creative solutions to our labour problems, it became increasingly clear that there was a consensus for change. The confrontation that paralyzed our economy last summer had sent a dramatic signal to all British Columbians that the time had come to take action. That change was overdue.

The bill before the House, Mr. Speaker, represents that change and reflects the wide range of recommendations we received from labour, management and the public. The bill also indicates that this government is looking to the future and is not content to merely tinker with policies, systems and laws that no longer meet the needs of our citizens.

As I say, Mr. Speaker, it is important to note that this legislation is the result of dialogue and open government — submissions from hundreds of people from all walks of life, private citizens, representatives of organizations large and small throughout British Columbia. My colleagues and I have heard from virtually every significant constituency of both organized labour and management in what has been one of the most extensive exercises in consultation of this sort in more than a decade.

In the process our attention was directed again and again to certain views of labour relations in British Columbia: its adversarial nature; its resistance to change; its heavy reliance on industry-wide bargaining in both the private and public sectors; its prominence in the day-to-day affairs of the province; the potential for damaging the public interest and the impact on citizens other than those directly involved in the dispute; and finally, the adverse impact on our trading partners and on the potential for foreign investment.

Also we were struck by the very different attitudes that were brought to bear on the subject by persons of good will but of contrasting philosophies. We heard all the clichés about labour relations issues: "There are no easy answers, no simple solutions," and they were right. Contrary to the belief of some, present conditions in B.C. call for much more than a fine tuning of the law, for a neat balancing of the powers conferred upon the parties to collective bargaining. In fact, the common theme in many of the submissions we received was a call for substantive change in the overall conduct of labour relations in the province and substantive change in the provisions of the Labour Code.

The Industrial Relations Reform Act responds in general to this call for change and, in particular, to people's rights and democratic freedoms. Virtually every item incorporated in the proposed act corresponds to specific proposals received during the review or in the public hearings.

Mr. Speaker, the overall design of the act pursues the primary objectives of this government, but its individual components are derived from experience in the real world of labour relations. This is a problem-solving bill. Each section deals either with broadening people's rights or solving specific problems. Clearly a multi-faceted approach is required: first, to reinforce and enhance the collective bargaining process by introducing innovative dispute-resolution techniques within a new structure designed to protect the public interest; second, to recognize the value in preserving the rights of the individual, and to confirm those rights in the labour relations context; and third, to endorse and encourage cooperative efforts by British Columbia employers and trade unions, aimed at increasing industrial efficiency and employment opportunities for our citizens.

[Mr. Pelton in the chair.]

In total the legislation amends the Labour Code to conform with the changing times. This bill is a blueprint for reducing public frustration with labour relations, for encouraging entrepreneurial activity and for reducing conflict. It ushers in a new era of labour relations, one which is intended to contribute to the steady growth of the economy and a return to prosperity,

[10:15]

The Industrial Relations Reform Act creates a single statute, the Industrial Relations Act, to govern the process of

[ Page 474 ]

collective bargaining and provides mechanisms for the resolution of all disputes in the public and private sector of the province. The Industrial Relations Act establishes a body known as the Industrial Relations Council, comprised of a commissioner and at least two operational divisions: the industrial relations adjudication division and the dispute resolution division. The council will maintain the basic structure of the existing Labour Relations Board and will consist of a vice-chairman, members, representatives of employers and employees, and support staff. The adjudication division will concentrate on adjudicating legal issues. Its role will be more focused than that of the present Labour Relations Board. For example, it would not involve itself in the resolution of interest disputes. These changes in structure and role are a direct response to the constructive suggestions proposed by both management and labour.

The new disputes resolution division will be staffed by skilled labour relations practitioners, including those presently found in the mediation services branch of my ministry. They will be transferred to the new agency, in line with the proposals of the B.C. Federation of Labour and the B.C. Business Council, among others. This division will monitor collective bargaining, provide mediation assistance and otherwise assist employers and trade unions in the collective bargaining process, and will gather and publish statistics for the benefit of the labour relations community.

The legislation assigns special and unprecedented responsibilities to the commissioner. The commissioner's role is a very important one. He has a general obligation to oversee the administration of the act and the operations of the council's divisions. He is required to notify the executive council when any dispute poses a threat to the public interest.

He is empowered to direct a panel of the council to designate essential services in certain cases. He is authorized to direct the appointment of a mediator of a fact-finder and, where circumstances demand, a public interest inquiry board or special mediator. He may order...

MR. BLENCOE: What are you going to do? What happened to you?

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Hon. members, everyone in the House will have the opportunity to speak on this bill, so I would suggest, that we afford the minister the courtesy of listening to what he has to say.

HON.L.HANSON: ...a cooling-off period or may review public sector interest arbitration awards to make sure they conform with the act. It follows that the commissioner will need to be a very experienced and neutral party in labour relations and a competent administrator. With this in mind, I have already announced the appointment of Ed Peck to this critical post.

The proposed new act heralds certain dramatic changes in government policy. The first of these is the repeal of the Compensation Stabilization Act. Its repeal is essential if we are to reinforce our commitment to full collective bargaining. This government is committed to the democratic rights of British Columbians, and the repeal of the CSP demonstrates this fact in a real and meaningful way. When the CSP was introduced in 1982, the government decided not to interfere with contracts then in force. The decision was made to phase in the program and as a result some groups did not experience controls until the program was well underway.

In similar fashion we now propose a period of phase-out. The program guidelines will cease to apply to collective agreements expiring after September 30, 1987. This six-month period will permit the parties in the public sector to order their affairs to prepare for responsible collective bargaining.

The Public Sector Restraint Act, the contentious Bill No. 3, without-cause legislation, is also repealed. Again this demonstrates our good will and our desire to move into a new area of working together.

Finally, because we desire to treat people equally while protecting the public interest, the Essential Services Dispute Act will also be repealed.

Another aspect of this same fundamental change in government policy is reflected in the decision of this government to confer full bargaining rights upon teachers by giving them the status of employees under the Labour Code. This change is made in response to submissions by the B.C. Teachers' Federation and the B.C. School Trustees' Association, among others. However, because school principals and vice principals are assigned significant management responsibilities, and in accordance with resolutions passed at the BCTF's annual general meeting, we have recognized their special labour relations status. My colleague the Minister of Education (Hon. Mr. Brummet) will be speaking on this matter in due course. Many people are saying that teachers have gained the right to strike. But in fact, teachers have gained the right to bargain. Far too many people believe that bargaining means strikes, that labour relations means labour disputes.

Timing to the matter of individual rights and the public interest, we need to remind ourselves that labour relations is no longer the, private preserve of organized labour and organized management. The law needs to be amended to reflect this fact, consistent with the times.

In general, Mr. Speaker, I will now address those elements of the industrial relations act that are aimed at recognizing and protecting the rights of the individual employee and those of the average citizen of this province. In summary, we propose the following: to reinforce the right of free speech; to provide for witness protection; to protect employees against automatic job loss brought on by reasonable dissent; to ensure equity in hiring hall practices; to permit access to apprenticeable trades in closed-shop situations; to recognize the rights of religious objectors; to emphasize the value of the secret ballot; to ensure that all employees have the right to vote on ratification, and that the parties have the right to know the results; to protect freedom of association; to ensure that union picketing rights do not adversely impact innocent third parties in a labour dispute; to permit expeditious voting on certification and decertification; to allow employers to withdraw from employers' organizations.

I want to emphasize that the recognition and reinforcement of individual rights is not intended to in any way undermine the collective rights of employees in labour relations terms.

Mr. Speaker, a more enlightened management and a more productive workforce was the central theme in many submissions we received. Productivity increases cannot be imposed, nor do they happen by accident; rather, they respond to a conscious design on the part of employers and employees. If British Columbia is to compete effectively in world markets,

[ Page 475 ]

productivity is not merely a desirable goal; it is an imperative. Accordingly, the legislation contains a provision establishing a productivity fund of $500, 000. This fund will support programs involving labour and management aimed at improving British Columbia's competitive position in world markets. These initiatives will foster gains for industry and workers and assist in promoting job creation in B.C. through higher levels of capital investment.

Turning to specific amendments to the Labour Code, many changes serve to bring our law in line with labour law in other parts of Canada. Others serve to declare the policy and intent of this government and to ensure that clear interpretations of the law can easily be made and respond to current jurisprudence.

Mr. Speaker, I now address each category in sequence, although the list is not exhaustive.

First, we are bringing our law into line with Canadian practice. In many areas under the Code, British Columbia is currently at variance in law with every other jurisdiction in the nation, for no good or apparent reason. It is important to correct this situation.

The people who invest in Canada recognize that labour relations problems specific to British Columbia inhibit their investment decisions. If we are to continue the economic recovery, we must conform with other Canadian provinces. We are talking about bringing our law into line with the rest of Canada. We are not talking about removing rights held by other Canadian trade unionists.

Interjections.

HON. B. R. SMITH: On a point of order, perhaps with all the latitudes that are allowed in this place, the banal heckling could just slow down a little bit and they could give some freedom of speech in this place.

MR. ROSE: I would like to speak on the same point of order. I think each side should treat the other side courteously as the occasion demands. There are certain kinds of decorum practised here. But also, this is a debating chamber; it's an adversarial one. I think, to coin a phrase, what is good for the goose is good for the gander. So I assume there will be no more heckling from the other side, no matter what anyone says.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Before the minister continues, the Chair has already brought this to everyone's attention. Apparently the House is not in the mood to listen carefully this morning. I would ask you once again to extend that courtesy which you would expect to be extended to each one of yourselves and to listen to what's being said. You will all have the opportunity to speak in this debate.

The minister continues, please.

HON. L. HANSON: We are moving to correct anomalies by amending section 4.1, so as to prohibit secondary boycott agreements; section 9.1, by disallowing non-affiliation clauses except in the construction industry; and section 32.4, which now requires the prior consent of the Labour Relations Board before a person can prosecute a lawsuit for loss or damages. Under the latter amendment, such consent will no longer be-necessary before proceeding to court. Section 53 governs union successorship rights. It is amended to remove the asset transfer test, which is not found in legislation elsewhere in Canada. Section 78 is amended to bring the definition of technological change into line with that incorporated in the Canada Labour Code and under Manitoba law, while section 74 is amended to provide for 90 days' notice of technological change by an employer, consistent with most other Canadian jurisdictions.

Next I want to speak to the kinds of amendments which serve to clarify the law for the benefit of the labour relations community. Section 85 is known as the picketing section of the Code. This section was amended in 1984 to restrict picketing, so that people not involved in a labour dispute would not be adversely affected. That intention was never realized, and jurisprudence following the amendments has confused and obscured the government's intent. We now move to ensure that the government's original intent is made crystal clear.

Section 37 amendments are another example of the foregoing. The current section 37 is intended to prevent doublebreasting by unionized employers who set up a similar nonunion company to defeat union certification. Unfortunately, this section has been interpreted far too broadly. Our amendment demands a narrow interpretation, while not permitting double-breasting.

Finally, Mr. Speaker, I offer examples of changes to the Code conforming to expert recommendations or current jurisprudence. The proposed changes to section 59.6 governing employer accreditation stem from a 1980 report by a joint committee of expert advisers. Among them were a former Labour Relations Board chairman and a trade union lawyer, now a judge. The amendment affirms an employer's right to withdraw from an accredited employers' association after the employer has been a member for at least two years. Another change alters the definition of "person" under the Code. As proposed, "person" will now exclude one whose labour regulations are regulated by the Canada Labour Code. This means that a federally regulated employer or union must in future look to the courts or to the Canada Labour Relations Board for decisions or orders, as they do in every other province, and not to the new Industrial Relations Council.

In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, I must emphasize that each and every change we have proposed is a change advanced on its merits. As other Ministers of Labour before me will doubtless have learned, it is not possible to introduce widespread change in the law and policy governing labour relations by somehow equalizing the changes perceived to be in favour of labour with those calculated to favour management. The bottom line, after all, is to be fair in what one is attempting to do; and that has been, and continues to be, our objective.

[10:30]

1 also want to make clear, Mr. Speaker, that the large bulk of the Labour Code remains unaltered, and that is a reflection of the belief that part of it works well.

To those who are critical of the scope and number of changes we propose, I would say this: to remain static in labour relations matters seems to me to be a very dangerous posture in a rapidly changing world. Also, I remind them that since 1973 the Code has been amended in substantive fashion no less than 16 times. Certain of the changes we have presented will please some and offend others. However, this is not a popularity contest, as I teamed from my research into the Code and its development. Indeed, certain members of the opposition will no doubt recall that when the Code was first introduced by the then minister, Mr. Bill King, it was

[ Page 476 ]

harshly criticized by both labour and management. However, the government of that day stood fast, and the criticisms were muted in the course of time.

To be frank, we know that we will not please everyone, but we have recognized the value of non-affiliation clauses in the construction industry, while removing them elsewhere. We have responded to the trade union calls for quicker certification votes and to the employer calls for a similarly quick response to decertification. The resulting legislation is fair and effective when reviewed in its entirety.

Mr. Speaker, the Industrial Relations Reform Act is designed to establish a new climate of labour relations in this province, so that in the long haul our industries and services will be made more productive, freer of strife and more attractive to investors. We want our province to be a better place in which to work and live, and as the labour relations community benefits, so will our economy and so will the lives of our citizens.

Mr. Speaker, I move that the bill now be read a second time.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: In recognizing the member for North Island, the Chair has been advised that he has been designated as the main speaker for the opposition. He will therefore be allowed to speak in accordance with standing order 45.

MR. GABELMANN: Mr. Speaker, the Premier and members of the government have been fond of telling British Columbians over the past number of months that it's time that government got off the backs of people; it's time that government intervened less in the economy; it's time that government allowed business to do business and people to operate more freely in society, without the yoke of Big Brother, big government, interfering in their daily lives. This particular bill interferes more in people's lives than any legislation that I know of ever introduced in this Legislature. It interferes directly and specifically with freely negotiated contracts between employers and employees. It says by legislation, in section after section, that what they have chosen to do freely is no longer allowed and is void. No legislation that I know of — and this includes the Mediation Commission Act of 1968 — interferes in the lives of British Columbians as much or as dangerously as does this bill.

I want to talk in general terms as much as I can, and leave for committee stage, if the House decides to proceed that way.... And I hope it doesn't; I hope it decides to refer this bill to a parliamentary committee for informed discussion and debate. But if it decides to proceed in the way the old government always proceeded, and to refer it to a Committee of the Whole, then we will discuss in great detail the serious implications of this bill clause by clause. It's necessary, however, today in my comments to make some reference to specific clauses. I note that the minister was not drawn to order for doing that, and I assume, Mr. Speaker, that the same laxity will be allowed to members on this side because of the nature of this bill.

But before discussing some of the technical questions, and before discussing the philosophy of the legislation, and before discussing the incredible departure in law with the establishment of a commissioner with powers unprecedented to bureaucrats in North America, if not the western world, I want to talk about the context of this legislation.

Mr. Speaker, the government has talked repeatedly of the need to gain or have provided a calm, peaceful and harmonious industrial relations climate in British Columbia so that investors will be encouraged to come to British Columbia to help our economy grow, to provide more jobs and to ensure that prosperity is available to everyone in British Columbia. That's a goal that the government has expressed; it's a goal that the opposition has expressed. We have different mechanisms, perhaps, to get to those goals, but we share the goals of trying to create a society which is prosperous and which is fair.

So the government says to the public and, through its statements, to the world that its intention is to create a good economic climate in British Columbia. So what does it do? It brings in legislation without consultation with the parties affected, without developing a consensus of the parties affected. The minister is making a note, no doubt about his public hearings. The public hearings were not called to discuss this document, and those presenting briefs or making comments at the public hearings never in their wildest dreams thought that they would have to address the concerns raised by this legislation.

By adopting what is in effect a confrontational tactic in presenting the legislation, the government has, just by that alone, created an attitude and an atmosphere out there that does exactly the opposite of what the government says it wanted to do, which is establish harmonious and peaceful labour relations so that our economy could improve. Exactly the opposite effect will be achieved not just by the bill but by the way in which the bill was introduced.

Mr. Speaker, I wouldn't make the argument, but some could make the argument, that this bill might work. In a world of the very best of intentions and a world where people trusted each other, perhaps provisions of this bill could work. But they can never work unless the provisions are agreed to by all of the parties who are involved, and that includes the public. I don't have any problems with that particular point of this bill, but if the parties are not involved in the processes to determine the bill, just by that definition it can't work. We're already beginning to see the reaction not just from the labour community, whose reaction has been clear and unequivocal; but anyone who understands labour relations who listens to the employers' response on this bill knows that they are quite critical as well, despite having been asked by the government to support the bill, despite having been asked by the Premier before the bill was introduced to stand up and support the legislation because there would be hordes of pinkos on the lawns as a result of the legislation that was coming in.

It was a clear indication to anyone who is listening that the Premier, in soliciting support from management against an expected reaction from labour, knew full well that this was a pro-management bill and sought management's support in a vocal way for the legislation that was yet to be introduced. Government's responsibility in administering labour-management relations isn't to choose sides, but that's clearly what the government has done. It has clearly chosen sides, and in choosing sides, it has made unworkable whatever provisions are included in the legislation.

The minister made some reference in the latter part of his comments to the criticisms of the 1973 Code introduced by Bill King. He said that that bill must have been good because everybody opposed it. Well, in fact, the opposition was muted and was restricted to three or four sections of the bill, criticism which I happened to share in at that time. But it was

[ Page 477 ]

limited to some special provisions of the Code and was not a reference to the entire Code.

The reason the 1973 Code worked as well as it did until the amendments started coming in in the late seventies was simply that the parties were involved in putting the bill together. They were involved in the discussion. The legislation wasn't brought into the House and rushed through within days. It was left for discussion and debate. It was left for a consensus-building process which occurred prior to the introduction of the bill through the famous three wise men traveling the province, talking to labour, to management and to the public, developing a consensus about legislation that could work. And it did work. Its intent was to promote harmonious labour relations.

[10:45]

That intent is gone from this bill, and we'll get to that in some detail later on. The legislation no longer calls for the development of harmonious labour relations, peace in the industrial community. It calls for a recognition of the competitive market economy. What it calls for is the de-unionization of British Columbia.

Mr. Speaker, those of us who have listened to reaction to the bill in recent days have been interested by the kind of reaction we're hearing. We heard Jim Matkin on the radio yesterday morning, talking about this bill. I'm going to paraphrase; these are my words, not Jim's, because I didn't write them down, but the intent is there. He was talking about this bill having the potential to create industrial havoc out there because it's ahead of its time. The bill is designed to deal with a de-unionized society, and the government hasn't quite got the de-unionization process underway to its logical conclusion. What he was saying was that the bill will deal with the de-unionized British Columbia very well, because it's a good bill for that, but in the process, while the de-unionization is going on, this bill will create havoc. That's a pretty damning indictment of the government's intent. And that comes from the employers' side.

The government has made clear, in a variety of ways, its intention that it wants to be competitive in the world. How does it want to achieve that? Clearly by invoking working conditions, wages and benefits and labour standards that are akin to those standards that exist in the Pacific Rim. Canadians will not stand for that. That's one of the reasons why the reaction to this bill is as strong as it is. The intent is clear. One only has to spend time dealing with it section by section to see that.

But to go back to the consensus-building. The Labour Code of '73 was developed through that consensus. This was not. This bill has more damaging content than any other labour legislation in the history of this country; damaging not to one side or the other, but damaging to the people and to the economy of this province.

Mr. Speaker, reference was made by the minister in his speech to the need to modernize, to be able to compete, to be involved in the competitive economy. Those weren't his words, but there was a reference in his speech notes about that. I just want to depart from what I'm saying for a moment by talking about an incredible thing that's happened in British Columbia in the last five years. That has been the willingness of members of the IWA to give up literally 10,000 or 15,000 jobs in this province in recognition of the need to make the forest product industry more competitive. The IWA sat down with the employers in a cooperative fashion — town by town, plant by plant, local union by local union, and regional office to the Council of Forest Industries. At every level there was a willingness to sit down and cooperate to achieve a jointly recognized need, which was to make that industry more competitive, to modernize the plant. That was achieved because there was a degree of cooperation.

With legislation like this on the books in British Columbia, the kind of trust that has existed between those parties will be destroyed. If the minister doesn't believe me when I say that, he need only talk to leaders of that union or members who work in the plants or in the woods around this province, many of whom have resisted those changes, many of whom have been concerned about the job loss but have gone along because there was some trust, a recognition.

I don't want to predict havoc out there more than it's going to happen, and I'm understating what the impact is. When you bring in legislation that totally destroys the balance between two parties, you destroy the trust between those two parties. And if you destroy the trust between those two parties, you inevitably destroy the ability of those parties to work together to achieve the kinds of results that have been achieved in the woods industry in British Columbia in the last few years.

So not only do you risk the kind of industrial unrest in the specific bargaining situations that we will get to later; you destroy the ability of British Columbians to make our plant modem because you break the trust that is required to establish that kind of modernization. Why? Why bring in the legislation without consultation? Why rush it through? What is the need for all this haste?

Mr. Speaker, if the bill is as good as the government says it is, it would stand up to public scrutiny. Take it out to the public and let them judge. The profound implications — and here I am not talking about the profound implications between labour and management in their daily relationship; we will talk about that — to the economy of this province, the damaging effect to jobs, to prosperity, to fairness that will be caused by this bill, are so great, in my view and in the view of many people who have looked at this bill, that it is counterproductive to what the government says it wants.

If the government thinks I am wrong and thinks the critics are wrong, then what is wrong with taking it out to the public for a long, careful look? Let's set the labour and justice committee of this House to work. We will travel around the province, members of that committee, six government, three opposition — we're not going to beat you by numbers. We will go out there and we will listen to the public so we can talk about the public interest. We will go out there and we will listen to the parties who have some experience on a day-to-day basis with how the changes and how the law impact on them.

If you are not prepared to do that, it says to me that you are afraid to do it. The law doesn't have to be passed by April 15 or April 30. It can be passed in May or June, even in September. There is no hurry. Is the government's determination to bring a bill of this magnitude in on a Thursday and start debating it, if it had had its way, yesterday — but here we are on a Tuesday, five days later — guided by the knowledge that if people begin to understand this bill, there would be no public support for it? Or what is the motivation? Why the hurry?

Mr. Speaker, a practice in this House that has been developing in recent years has been to introduce legislation in one session and leave it on the order paper over the summer or over a period of time and come back the next session and

[ Page 478 ]

debate it then, giving people an opportunity to look at it. That's gone with this.

I want to talk a little bit about public interest and the government's continual reference to needing to protect the public interest. Public interest is difficult to define at the best of times. If Solomon were here, he wouldn't be able to define it. It changes. Public interest seven or eight years ago was to keep wages down, you could argue. Public interest today when there are no strikes and no lockouts and no impending strikes and no impending lockouts wouldn't relate to that issue. The public interest during the IWA dispute was to see that resolved. The public interest changes; the public interest isn't uniform.

But I want to back up from that, having said that, and say to the government that even if you accept, and in large measure I do, the government's stated definition of public interest, which is harmonious relations, resolution of disputes, a good investment climate — those are the kinds, of statements of public interest that the government is concerned about — how do you achieve it? Isn't that an important question? How do you achieve that public interest?

[Mrs. Gran in the chair.]

In the minister's speech he talked about the impact of the IWA-forest industry dispute last year, and the length of that strike. Does the minister think that this bill would make that dispute shorter? The government intervention at that time made the dispute longer. The Premier's personal intervention on two occasions actually prolonged that labour dispute, and parties on both sides of the table will tell you that. Now you want to institutionalize that kind of intervention, which has the impact of prolonging the dispute.

The government will respond: "Well, no, Mr. Peck with all his powers can in one way or another put an end to the dispute." Workers in British Columbia who have been used to having democratic rights, which includes the right to strike, will not be put back to work by a commissioner even with the acquiescence of cabinet — not in this province.

Workers in this province recognize that Canada is a signatory to international labour covenants. One of those covenants to which Canada is a signatory is the right to strike. This law violates our signature on that international agreement. We have been in violation of ILO covenants over the years in at least four different areas of law, but we now violate in such a major way as to make it difficult for me to find the right words to describe the impact.

Workers who feel they have a just cause - and I might say employers, too, in some circumstances — and who feel that their just cause is going to be denied will not easily be put back to work because Mr. Peck tells them to go back to work. So if you think that the 28- or 35- or 42-day mechanism which is in there is going to somehow put an end to industrial unrest, you are sadly mistaken. In fact, what that will do is heighten that unrest and, unfortunately, make illegal all kinds of activities on the part of otherwise law-abiding citizens. You make law-breakers out of decent, law-abiding citizens with this kind of law.

We won't just have the occasional dispute that results in a strike –– 5 percent of collective agreements now resulting in some kind of dispute, a minor fraction of that 5 percent resulting in extended disputes. We can all name extended disputes over the last decade; there have been a handful. There were two last year, none yet this year, and none of any consequence the year before. There aren't many, but what this law will do is to take those few disputes that we now have and create many more. We will no longer be able to have 95 percent of collective agreements reached without some dispute of one kind or another.

Let me tell you why. The disputes resolution mechanism envisioned in part 8.1 of the new law provides a variety of solutions to resolve a dispute, including several kinds of compulsory arbitration — final offer selection, simple arbitration and so-called mediation at the disposal of an unelected bureaucrat.

Now when parties sit down to bargain, what happens? Demands are on the table. Increasingly there are demands from both sides. It used to be that demands usually came from labour to try to get management to agree, to certain clauses. Now the clauses come from both sides, and in the course of bargaining the parties decide to abandon certain claims and they decide to wait for another year to get certain language in the bill. They begin this process of trading off, where they finally get down to the two or three crunch issues, and in the normal course of events they trade those off too, and they reach a collective agreement. ,

When you know that at the end of that road, if you don't reach a collective agreement, you face compulsory arbitration, you will not trade off any items during bargaining. Because if you trade them off, you give them up during bargaining, and when you go to arbitration, you no longer have them for the arbitration board or the final offer selection process to choose from. You no longer have the bargaining clout with the arbitrator or the arbitration process, because you've given up those clauses as you've gone toward a resolution which, didn't then happen.

[11:00]

So what's the incentive to bargain? There's no incentive to, bargain. In fact, there's an incentive to hang on to as many clauses in your list of demands as you possibly can, so that in case it goes to arbitration you've got some clout with the arbitrator. That flies in the opposite direction of what labour law should do. Labour law should encourage parties to settle, not discourage them. Why is it that the government doesn't want to encourage free collective bargaining to reach a settlement, without the intervention of third parties? I'm not talking here about mediation efforts or preventive mediation or assistance from third parties. That's all fine and good if the parties need it or want it. In some cases it's appropriate, even when the parties aren't too happy about it, that there be some kind of third-party assistance; no problem with that.

But when they know that the final step in the process is compulsory arbitration, they won't bargain. So instead of having 5 percent of contract negotiations ending up in a dispute of one kind or another, you're going to have significantly more. I can't predict how many more. My guess is that you will triple or quadruple the number of disputes that arise out of collective bargaining. Instead of having 95 percent reached successfully, we may be down to 80 percent or thereabouts, resulting in three or four — or some multiple number — times more disputes in British Columbia. When they go to a dispute, they'll go to strikes or lockouts, and if that happens we've got more disruption in the economy. I say "if" it happens. There's not much doubt on the part of practitioners that it will happen.

So why would the government do that? Why does the government want to bring in a law that would lead to having

[ Page 479 ]

more disputes, more unresolved collective agreements between the parties? Are there back-benchers who are going to stand up and explain that, or will the...? The minister didn't in his speech. Why would the government want more disputes? We're going to be known in the world as the land of 28-day strikes. We're going to have more 28-day strikes.... And what's that going to do to this mythical Hong Kong or Taiwanese or South Korean investor? Not to get into that argument about how we build our economy, since all the money we need for investment in this province is right here in this province. How are we going to develop a climate that will attract investment, whether it's local or offshore? Not to get into that argument, but how are we going to develop that climate — by having a multitude of 28-day strikes, by having illegal activities on the picket line? The government may not wish to have that happen, but it's bringing in a law that says it will happen.

Let's talk for a moment about Mr. Peck and these awesome powers.

AN HON. MEMBER: Awesome, sweeping....

MR. GABELMANN: I remember that language from this side of the House from '72 to '75 — 13-hour speeches from Don Phillips. Awesome, sweeping, no right to appeal — on and on and on,

AN HON. MEMBER: Jackboot legislation.

MR. GABELMANN: We heard it all in this place. I think those days are gone, thank God.

Interjection.

MR. WILLIAMS: Yes, they were your guys.

MR. GABELMANN: It came from you guys. That's right, Madam Speaker; it came from the other side of the House. Unfortunately we learned some of those words over the years and.... Anyway, I'm digressing.

It's hard to know how to get at a bill like this when clearly it is, if not deliberately designed, then at least designed to foment unrest, to create distrust and to leave an impression among our trading partners, our potential investors, our own society, that British Columbia continues to be a society where labour and management can't get along. That's the kind of impression that's going to be left.

What's been happening in that regard in the last few months? We've had unprecedented events occurring in British Columbia. We have letters to the minister from the presiding Coumdent of the Business Council of British Columbia, with carbon copies to the president of the B.C. Federation of Labour. That. in itself is remarkable in British Columbia — that there's any dialogue or any kind of discussion between those parties. For years they wouldn't talk to each other. It's beginning to happen; there's beginning to be a development of trust. 

So the employers' council writes the minister and suggests, so a series of things that could be done to enhance the industrial relations climate in British Columbia, a series of the it the labour movement has agreed with as well. What's the government response to that? To take some of the suggestions and twist them all out of shape, and to ignore others, and most importantly, not to take advantage of the developing trust that was beginning to happen in that community. It's very fragile. We've had a history in the province, going back to the Dunsmuirs, of what's been called labour warfare but could more fairly be called economic warfare. Capital and labour have been in conflict for more than a hundred years in this province, often not talking to each other outside the regular discussions at the collective bargaining table. But slowly some trust begins to develop. Slowly links are made. Slowly from that developing trust proposals begin to evolve that can lead to enhanced industrial relations, to a diminution of the economic warfare and to cooperation.

What does the government do with these beginnings of some trust and some sanity, as you might call it, in our industrial relations? They throw it out. They decide that they're not going to be bothered with that; that labour and management are not part of the public interest. The public interest, somehow, is the workers, the individual members; and the public interest is the non-union sector, both employer and employee; and there's no public interest at all in developing good relations between the employers and the employees.

People might say that organized labour is only 46 percent, or thereabouts, of the workforce in British Columbia. That workforce produces 68 percent of the income. Organized labour and organized employers are the dominant feature of our economy, even though it may be less than half of the actual numbers of people. Dominant — two-thirds of the economy. So why would the government turn its back on those tentative links that are being made, those beginnings of a civilized relationship between employer and labour, turn its back on those people and say: we're not interested in what two-thirds of our economy is up to; we're not interested in having peace between the parties that reflect two-thirds of our economy; we're more interested in dealing with the one third; let's find some protection for that one-third of our economy; let's ensure that their lives are fair and free and prosperous.

One of the best ways of ensuring prosperity and fairness is the European model in this respect: to encourage greater unionization. If you had 95 percent of the people in this province organized, you wouldn't have any poverty, because the wealth would be shared by the mechanism of collective bargaining. I know that's hard for some free-enterprisers to understand. I can tell you, there are a lot of free-enterprisers in the world out there who do understand that. I can tell you that the free-enterprisers in Scandinavia.... Incidentally, they have a more free-enterprise economy than we do here in British Columbia, in terms of the ownership of the resource and of the so-called means of production. In Scandinavia, 90 percent or thereabouts are organized. The employers in that country find it the civilized thing to do. Employers in that country recognize that by virtually full unionization in the economy, wealth is shared, and shared relatively equally. Consumers have some purchasing power, so Volvos and Saabs get purchased — unlike here, where 40 percent of our economy can't buy Chevies and Fords, because they can't afford them, because the purchasing power hasn't been shared.

I digress when I say that, but it's an important element in a debate of this kind, Trade unionism, in its most fundamental way, is the best element for redistribution of wealth in society; better than having governments do it, better than having laws that say everybody gets X number of dollars. None of us want that kind of society. But when you allow people to

[ Page 480 ]

band together collectively to bargain, and you allow everybody to be in that framework, then the wealth is going to be shared. There's a limited amount of wealth. Some aren't going to be outstandingly well off and others will not be so poorly off, as they are now. You're going to have a redistribution.

My friend from Coquitlam-Moody reminds me of an old George Bernard Shaw statement, that the shorter time you have to prepare for a speech, the longer it is, and the longer you have to prepare, the shorter it is. Unfortunately, with this bill, my speech is longer than it might have been if we'd had the proper time to study it and to get ready for it.

However, I was talking about the powers that Ed Peck has been given under this particular legislation. Mr. Speaker, heretofore in British Columbia if a dispute was to be resolved through compulsory arbitration, unless it was agreed to by both parties that dispute had to be the subject of legislation in this House before the fact. Now under this particular bill, Mr. Peck can phone the Minister of Labour. This would be about the only job the Minister of Labour has left to do, to answer Mr. Peck's call, and Mr. Peck says: "Please, would you get a cabinet order to put an end to a certain dispute and I'll take it from there." What's the government to do? All of the information is in Mr. Peck's hands. The mediation services are in his hands. The whole apparatus is over there. The ministry is denuded, so the minister won't be in receipt of the information that Mr. Peck has, and everybody knows in this business that information is power. So Mr. Peck will have the information and the power to ask the minister for an order-in-council to put an end to a dispute.

Now cabinet has had power in the past to order a cooling off period. That power is being shifted over to Mr. Peck, who can do that without reference to cabinet now. Now the actual termination of a dispute still has to come to cabinet, but it used to have to come to the Legislature. Now it only comes to the Legislature if it's sitting, or if it's not sitting, retroactively. What happens if the Legislature won't pass that bill? What happens if the Legislature, in its wisdom, decides that it's inappropriate to send that dispute to compulsory arbitration, or to send that dispute to a mechanism envisioned by Mr. Peck? What happens if the Legislature, which supposedly is a body of 69, at this time, free men and women, who can make up their minds.... What happens if they decide not to pass that bill? The bill in effect was implemented some months before by a bureaucrat.

[11:15]

These are alarming powers to give to an individual who is not elected, not accountable to the so-called public interest — no accountability whatsoever. He's free to choose courses of action without any responsibility to justify to the public, who pays his magnificent salary — at this time $108,000 a year. We're paying this man more than we pay the Premier of British Columbia. Is his job more important than the Premier's? You usually pay people for the importance of their job, the power of their job. Are we to assume that in this case this individual is twice as powerful as the Premier, or almost twice as powerful? If you judge by how much we pay the, two individuals, that's a clear indication. If you look at the language of the legislation, it's a clear indication. He has power to take actions that, as I say, heretofore have been in the hands of either cabinet or this Legislature. And now they're only in the hands of this Legislature in a limited fashion, retroactively.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

I'm not sure that we live in a democratic society when parliaments lose the control to make decisions they are mandated by law to make. The decision is effectively made by the bureaucrat, and the Legislature is asked to ratify after the fact. What are we here for? I've never been a fan, as a lot of members of this House know, of legislative intervention, but I have never argued that we don't have the right to intervene. We do. But no one else in a free and democratic society should have that right.

Labour law has historically been perceived as a requirement only to govern the relationships between the parties, to try to provide some balance between the parties. That's the history of labour law, first of all to guarantee some rights. Those kinds of rights could also be gained through employee activity in many parts of our society, but not entirely. We've all recognized in a civilized society that labour laws are required to guarantee these rights, to provide protection for individuals, to provide protection for employers, to create some balance between the sides. We all accept that there has to be labour law. Until now there has been a general acceptance, even in British Columbia with the amendments that we have seen, the 16 amendments that the minister referred to, over the years. There has been some recognition that there needs to be some balance in law.

What we have in the series of amendments to the existing Code — and here I am not any longer talking about 8.1, but all of the other amendments.... What we have in this particular bill is that someone sat down and looked at all the cases that Jordan and Gall have lost in the last ten years and has fixed them up so they would have won. This could be called the "Jordan and Gall lost cases restitution act." I recognize that there is a limited community out there who understand that reference. I'll tell you that Don Jordan and Peter Gall will certainly understand it. Every case they have lost has been fixed, and the cases in dispute, one after another, were judged not on a fair document but on a document that had already been made unfair by amendments brought in by Bill Bennett, a document that was unbalanced by all accounts because both parties didn't agree that it was balanced.

You get a balanced labour law when parties agree: "Yes, we don't like this; we don't like that; we can live with this; we can't live with the other, but we both suffer those kinds of indignities. We both suffer the unfairness. It's fair." We haven't had that. We had it for a while; we had it post-1973 for half a dozen years or so. Gradually that balance, the fairness, began to be lost. But even so, until this day, with the unbalanced Code that we've lived with and are still living with until this bill is passed — if it is — it is in favor of management. Management has still lost some cases at the board. They don't lose many, but they've lost some cases where the board has decided that unfair as the legislation is toward management's side, it still has some protection for working people and their organizations. So the board has ruled on a number of cases in favor of a union application to the board about a point of law in the Labour Code.

Jordan and Gall get singled out as the employer representative because they are so frequently there, and I guess because Don has such an important role to play in helping to write legislation like this. So they get singled out, and I know he won't mind me saying this. But every time they lose something in this unbalanced situation which was already in

[ Page 481 ]

their favor, they have it redressed. Section after section after section you can attach the name of a case, whether it is Wall and Redekop, Trizec, or on and on and on.

I heard the minister on the radio one morning shortly after the bill was introduced defending a particular provision, and he said: "Well, an example would be: say there were two brothers who were in business, and they were operating separate companies." Well, that wasn't just an off-the-top-of his-head reference to say there were two brothers; there was an actual case involving two brothers. This relates to the double-breasting questions. I heard other defenders of the bill, including the minister in another case, hypothetically saying: "Well, let's just say there was this certain circumstance." People who know what goes on in labour relations in this province say: "Aha! that's not hypothetical; he's talking about a specific case."

We'll get to this in committee, and I intend to talk about it in committee. It might take some time, because it's extensive — it happens in virtually every section.

Let me just pick out the double-breasting issue. In first reading, the minister says proudly that this bill does not provide double-breasting, and he repeated it today using different words. There is no overt clause which says double-breasting will be allowed, but the amendments, when taken together, do allow double-breasting in the construction industry in British Columbia, contrary to what the minister suggests. It does allow it.

Off the top of my head, in a non-legalistic way — since I'm not a lawyer — let me describe how that can happen, without getting caught up in the minutiae of the language of the legislation. Let's just talk about what can happen in respect to double-breasting. A unionized contractor who wishes to establish a non-union company can do so simply by having different operational control of that non-union company. If it is different "operational control," then it's allowed. If the same superintendent runs both companies, it's not allowed. But if it's different operational control, it is allowed.

When you take that, together with a number of other sections that have slippery amendments to them, you have essentially full-blown double-breasting. There isn't a management lawyer in this province who won't know how, if they haven't already done it, to advise their clients to invoke the double-breasting provisions that now do exist in this legislation. There probably isn't one company out there who would like to do that who has not yet had the advice. They've all had the advice, I'm sure, as to how to do it. It's wide open, and for the minister to assert, as he did, that there is no doublebreasting permitted is to fly in the face of the language of this particular legislation. If he doesn't believe me in my general comments now, we will have this discussion hopefully in a parliamentary committee, as we travel around the province listening to people's expert views about the fact that this does provide double-breasting. The minister shakes his head, an indication, I suspect, that he's prejudged the need to take this out there, to have some informed debate.

As much as I know about labour relations, and I know a little bit, I don't know 10 percent of what I need to know to discuss this bill intelligently. I'd wager, with all due respect to every member of this House, that there isn't anybody who knows half of what they need to know to discuss this bill intelligently, and yet we're expected to do it. We should go out there and talk to the people and listen to the people who do know what it means. The minister will find that that kind of informed debate can take place in a parliamentary committee, because we can summon witnesses, we can hear people who wish to appear, we can determine our own agenda and we can listen to other people.

We can't do that in here. We have to listen to people like me who have a smattering of knowledge. It's not informed. This bill is so complicated and the provisions of the doublebreasting section are so complicated that we require that kind of, informed debate.

There are so many provisions. Another of the assertions of the minister is that the CSP is finished. Well, let me tell you that CSP is alive and well and living in the IRA. CSP is alive and well and protected magnificently in the language of the industrial relations act.

Let me tell you, if you think the IRA caused trouble in Ireland, you wait until you see what the IRA does in British Columbia.

MS. CAMPBELL: That's pretty contrived.

MR. GABELMANN: I'm sorry, Kim.

I want to just talk a minute about that CSP. The section of the bill talking about ability to pay, giving Mr. Peck — this omniscient, omnipresent, all-powerful, unelected individual — the right to determine, through a process, the public's ability to pay.... We still will have wage controls as a result of this legislation, I thought that on my own when I read it, and I listened to Tony Hickling, who is, as far as I know, a neutral in the field. He's a professor at UBC, a man I don't know personally. His interpretation of this particular section — and it took him a little while, too — is: "Surprise, surprise, CSP is alive and well in the provisions of this particular legislation."

Why would the government choose to be Orwellian in its description of this legislation? It says "no double-breasting," and double-breasting exists. It says "no more CSP," and it's all wrapped up inside the new council and the new 8.1 of the Code. Doublespeak is alive and well. George Orwell lives post-1984. We can't get into detailed description in second reading, but I make the assertion that CSP is alive and well, and I intend to prove that case during committee stage. We'll have an opportunity to debate back and forth, and the minister can say: "No, you're wrong." I intend to demonstrate to him why I think that he is in fact wrong in his assertions.

Mr. Speaker, I should warn you that this will take some months to get through, because it's long, complex and difficult to go through a bill of this kind.

Mr. Speaker, I want to go through a list of issues that the minister referred to in his speech and pick up on the ones that I haven't yet dealt with in the course of these comments.

I dealt to a certain extent with the issue of the minister's opening comments, which were in effect that we had this dreadful dispute last year, the IWA and the forest industry, and we need to find some mechanism to resolve that. That was in a sense almost a theme of the minister's opening comments: that we cannot any longer afford to have that kind of dispute in British Columbia. Mr. Speaker, the powers that Mr. Peck is given under this legislation to order an end to that dispute existed by recall of the Legislature last year, if the government had chosen to use those powers. It could have recalled the Legislature and done any number of things, because this Legislature is all-powerful in that respect. It chose not to.

[ Page 482 ]

[11:30]

The Legislature chose not to intervene in that dispute, because in that particular case any intervention would have been on the side of the workers. Hank Hutcheon was on the side of the workers. Even the Premier was on the side of the workers — twice. The other individuals involved in the attempted mediation and solution of that dispute all said that the position demanded by the employer in terms of contracting out was wrong, and that the workers should continue to have the right they have had for decades. That was the conclusion of all of the interventions during that particular dispute. So why didn't we get compulsory arbitration in that dispute? Because it would have led to the workers getting something and the management losing something. So we didn't have it, and that's the reason. There's no question in my mind that if the Legislature had convened and decided to invoke as law Hank Hutcheon's recommendations, the IWA would have "won the dispute." So the Legislature didn't intervene.

The minister says this law is needed to prevent those kinds of disputes. If the Legislature wouldn't intervene in the course of a five- or six-month labour dispute that was clearly having great economic impact, not only on the workers but also on the whole economy of British Columbia.... There's no question about that. Coming from the kind of riding I come from, I knew that full well. Community after community was economically devastated, and the government wouldn't intervene. What is different about this legislation that would make the intervention by Peck successful when the government couldn't intervene successfully? Would Mr. Peck intervene where the government wouldn't intervene? What is the minister saying — that we need to give these awesome powers to this individual so that he can prevent the kind of strike we had last year, when the even more awesome powers, I thought, of the government couldn't end the strike last year?

In fact, the Premier's personal intervention lengthened the dispute, according to the parties involved, on two separate occasions. Things were coming on the table that could have put an end to the dispute, could have helped — they may not have done it, but at least there was some movement to try to find a way of dealing with the contracting-out issue especially; there were other issues, too, but that was the tough one. Things were coming onto the table, and the Premier marched in, with David Poole flying the flag, the items came off the table, and they were back into the difficult situation they were in long before the Premier arrived.

What's different about this law? The Premier couldn't put an end to the strike. The government couldn't, or wouldn't, put an end to the strike — because, I think, it didn't want to have to intervene on the side of labour on the contracting-out issue, because clearly that was the recommendation of everybody who knew anything about the issue. The employers didn't want that to happen, so the government couldn't solve it. If the government, the 18 or so members of cabinet, with all the powers of this Legislature, couldn't put an end to the dispute, how can Mr. Peck put an end to the dispute? What magic potion will Mr. Peck have at his disposal to resolve disputes that the government doesn't have?

The minister may say, well, there's a whole section of other mechanisms that are now available: preventive mediation and the government's mediators — now Peck's mediators — can get involved early, and they can go in and do all kinds of other things that they weren't able to do before. Not so.

Parties always had access to private mediation if they wanted. There was always access to the mediation services branch to assist the parties. If the parties chose, they could not through the mediation services branch, because the policy wouldn't allow it, but through private arbitrators — have mediated if they wanted to. A whole variety of mechanisms exist. If they chose to, they could even have opted for the final-offer solution, on a voluntary basis. Any of those things could exist, and in many cases do exist, in certain sectors of our economy.

So what is it about the act that prevents the IWA strike from lasting for five months, and keeps it down to 28 days or 35 days or 42 days or any multiple of seven? What is it about this legislation that gives Mr. Peck more power than the government? If the government is saying this mechanism is needed to prevent that kind of strike, then the government is admitting that Mr. Peck and his agency have more power than the government has. Is that what you want to admit to? I don't think so. In fact, on a reading of the legislation.... Well, on the reading of any legislation, the government — the Legislature, I should say — always has more power than any powers conveyed to anybody, however awesome they may be, as they are in this case.

So I want to take a minute with this. I don't understand what he has at his disposal, what this new council has at its disposal, that is different from what the government, by introducing a bill in this Legislature, has at its disposal.

MR. WILLIAMS: They're on an ideological trip.

MR. GABELMANN: This isn't dispute resolution. As the member for Vancouver East says, it is pure ideology, and if there's one place that ideology shouldn't exist, it's in the conduct and management of labour relations. There's no room for it there.

So what do we have? We have a situation where, I guess, the government is saying that Mr. Peck would have, on day 28, made a recommendation to cabinet last fall, if this bill had been in place on day 28 of the dispute. The House wasn't sitting, as I remember, on day 28 of that dispute. The cabinet would have given Mr. Peck the authority to put an end to the dispute.

What would Mr. Peck have done? He would have ordered the parties back to work and some mechanism would have led perhaps to a mediator or an arbitrator, or some form of arbitration leading to a conclusion similar to Hank Hutcheon's, presumably. The government chose not to take that action last year. Why is it the government is thinking now that Mr. Peck would have taken that option last year? If the government felt it was important to let parties get hungry — and there's another issue I want to deal with in terms of balance in just a moment — so they would settle on their own, why is it different now with Mr. Peck? How is it different? What's he going to do? He's going to not let the parties get hungry; he's going to put an end to it.

The government could have done that. The government chose not to for good industrial relations reasons, and I applauded the government. Nobody covered me, but I said that it was a good decision on the part of the government not to intervene legislatively in that particular dispute. It was a good decision. If I'd said it was a bad decision, I would have got it in the paper, but I said it was a good decision and nobody noticed. It was a good decision because the government was aware of the issues involved. The government knew

[ Page 483 ]

that an arbitrated solution or forcing people back to work against their will or against their inclination when they were out on what for them was a life and death struggle.... It was a "having a job or not having a job" kind of struggle. The government knew that its intervention wouldn't have worked, and so it didn't. Now is Mr. Peck going to intervene when the same facts would pertain? That's just the first argument that the minister made.

I said a moment ago I wanted to talk about the balance question. In that dispute woodworkers were losing their homes, woodworkers were losing possessions, woodworkers I know were selling a boat that they'd managed to acquire through years of hard work, and were selling a second vehicle. I know one woodworker who sold his own personal chainsaw to try and bring in some money to keep house and home together, to try to keep the damage of personal relationships at home to a minimum. It was economic devastation of the worst kind imaginable by families in this province.

At the same time, on the other side of the table, forest companies were making record-level profits during the strike, record-level for this decade, more money than they had made in seven or eight years. Where was the neutrality? Where was the economic pressure? There was none. Why was there no economic pressure on the employer? Why did the strike take so long to resolve? Because they were making money hand over fist selling pulp and paper.

That gets us into the secondary picketing question. The IWA suffered maximum impact; they suffered 100 percent damage to their lives, to their membership. They had no other recourse. In a society with 15 or so percent unemployment, there aren't jobs they can go to to supplement their strike pay. There just aren't those kinds of jobs for 90 percent of the people who are on strike, and they walk the picket line or they sit at home — suffering maximum economic pressure, which is what strikes and lockouts should be all about. On the other side of the table were forest companies making, for this decade, record-level profits. The longer the strike went on, the more money they made. They didn't have to pay IWA workers to produce lumber that wouldn't have been making them any money if they had been producing it.

Without secondary picketing, the IWA can't go and picket a pulp mill. If you can't picket a pulp mill, you can't exert maximum pressure on the employer. If you can't exert maximum pressure on the employer as the employer can on you, then you don't have a balance; you don't have equality, freedom or fairness. You have all these buzzwords that are littered throughout the legislation. That strike would have been over within weeks if secondary picketing were legal.

If the minister is determined to prevent long strikes, the way you do that is to make sure that the parties involved suffer the maximum economic pressure. That's how you make sure that strikes and lockouts don't last long. There are way of doing that. I recognize that at the present time there are some imbalances. If you went to a full secondary picketing situation, there are some imbalances on the employees' side in terms of an ability to earn an income, which could minimize the economic impact on the workers. Redress all those balances. Allow for maximum economic pressure, and you won't have long strikes. And that's the only way in a free and democratic society to ensure that you don't have lengthy work stoppages.

There's another way of making sure we don't have work stoppages of any great length — and they know it very well in the Soviet Union; they know it very well in Chile; they know it very well in South Africa; they know it very well in Taiwan. The state can intervene massively and make sure that workers don't have those rights.

MR. WILLIAMS: And that's what this is.

MR. GABELMANN: This is not yet that. It is a statistic solution. It is state intervention of the worst kind.

Interjection.

MR. GABELMANN: The Minister of Environment and Parks (Hon. Mr. Strachan) says: "Well, we'll change that." That's the kind of attitude....

Interjection.

MR. GABELMANN: I know it was in jest, but, Mr. Speaker....

Interjection.

MR. GABELMANN: He withdraws. Okay. But it's the kind of attitude....

MR. WILLIAMS: Many a truth told in jest.

MR. GABELMANN: That's so true.

I guess what I'm saying is that there are several ways to prevent strikes and lockouts: one is to do what the dictatorial countries have done, and that's just not to have them. You'll end up in Siberia, or you'll end up at the end of a firing squad, or in Chile you'll end up being shot by the militia. There are lots of ways to stop a strike: the law can do it, or the free market can do it. It's a wee bit ironic that I'm standing up here talking in favour of allowing the free market to determine the course and conduct of strikes and lockouts in collective bargaining, and those guys on that side are talking about state intervention, statist solutions.

[11:45]

MR. WILLIAMS: It's not ironic at all; it fits.

MR. GABELMANN: That's right. As the history of British Columbia has developed in the last few decades, we have gone from being the ideological party to a situation where now Social Credit is the party of ideology.

So to return to that theme, how do you stop disputes? You have the state intervene massively, as they do in the dictatorships; or in a major way — if not massively — as you're doing by this bill; or you allow the free market to play its course, with the problems that ensue. There is no question that there are problems. Freedom is expensive. I am prepared to pay the price, I believe British Columbians are prepared to pay the price, and I believe Canadians are prepared to pay the price. The price is some economic dislocation on occasion.

MR. SKELLY: It's cheaper than the alternatives.

MR. GABELMANN: It's cheaper than the alternatives, but more importantly it's more democratic, it's more fair and it's more appropriate in a free and democratic society.

If the parties in the IWA dispute had had at their fingertips the availability of maximum economic pressure, that strike

[ Page 484 ]

would not have lasted a month. It would have curtailed pulp and paper operations; no question. It would have affected a lot of workers in that industry. It would have affected the balance sheet in the employers' annual report; no question. But it wouldn't have impacted on it in the way in which this dispute has impacted on it — not nearly.... It would have been over quickly. One of the problems with that, of course, is that through that mechanism the IWA would have been able to resist the contracting-out proposals put to them by the employer. The government clearly, as it always has in the history of this province, intervening on the side of the employer, didn't want the mechanisms to exist that would allow for that equal balance between the parties.

So we have some choices, and starkly put they are: free market — allow for that to go with a modicum of legislation that ensures some balance, some rights and some responsibilities; labour legislation that does that, but the free market makes the determination. Or you move to a statist solution, and statist solutions have a variety of applications. Some states just say "no strikes." Workers don't have freedom of association or any of the rights that flow from that, and the right to strike is certainly a right that flows from the right to association. Other states have modified laws in that respect. British Columbia is now increasingly moving in the direction of the statist, interventionist, dictatorial system in terms of the countries that use these kinds of mechanisms.

MR. WILLIAMS: That's the fresh new start.

MR. GABELMANN: Is that the fresh new start? Why is it that you want the whole of our society to be free of red tape, to be, unhindered by government, to have some freedom in the marketplace, and you say to individuals who band together collectively: "You don't have those same freedoms. Because you've chosen to band together collectively for bargaining and defence purposes, you don't have the rights that we are proclaiming everybody should have"? We could have a long debate — and I won't get into it now — about the relationship between group rights and individual rights. In any free society there is a tension between those rights, and the government has proclaimed its belief in individual rights and its desire to change the law to promote them. It even tries to mask the draconian changes in this bill by describing them as rights and freedoms of individuals. What happens when you take those rights and give them to an individual? What happens to the right of the group?

Let me give you an example. The religious conscience clause of section 11 of the bill — or of the act or of the Code; I can't remember which — now says — incidentally, I am not going to make a big to-do about this in committee — that a worker who chooses, for religious conscience reasons that are legitimate and so demonstrated.... He can choose to have his dues paid to a mutually agreed-upon charity or a charity decided upon by the new council. The principle there is that the individual should not be constrained by the group to have his or her dues go towards a purpose with which that individual doesn't agree.

Let me raise the parallel. Society is also a collective, a group of people, in the same way that a union is. Many people in our society oppose war. Some people in our society would like to have the 10 percent or thereabouts of their income tax that goes towards the war machine diverted to peaceful purposes. It is a conscience issue with some people. There is a case in front of the Supreme Court of Canada right now on this issue. There are a whole variety of points of law to be determined, and one is the test of whether it is a true conscience issue or whether someone is just playing games. If it is a true conscience issue.... In the case of the Quakers, for example, their religious beliefs would lead them to the conclusion that it is immoral and wrong to pay money for war machines. So they say they would like to be able to divert their money to some peaceful project and not have it spent for war.

Society has generally said that these individual rights do not apply. The collective has decided that 10 percent of our income should go to the ministry of defence or war planes or all of the activities related to that, I am opposed to that spending. I pay my taxes toward that spending. Because more people in our society are in favour of it, my rights as an individual don't apply. My rights as an individual do not apply, because the collective is judged to be more important in our society than the individual.

I haven't heard a Socred or a Progressive Conservative or, for that matter, a Liberal, although there may be one, who has stood up and said that the present case being fought by a woman here in Victoria — it's gone to the Supreme Court — is a good idea; that the rights of the individual are so important, so paramount, that they supersede the rights of the group. I haven't heard a single "right-winger" in our society defend that particular activity. You don't dare defend it, I suspect, because you fear for the fabric of our society.

Those of us who are opposed to private schools may say that the portion of our taxes that goes to private schools is going to be deducted from our income tax and go to public schools. Imagine the consequences of a whole series of personal decisions of that kind.

The collective often has more rights than the individual. The balance of rights between individuals and the collective are always in tension, but the group has rights. It's a fundamental tenet of our society. Yet the government has decided that in labour relations matters the individual is more important than the group. Why? It wouldn't make that argument in respect of any other matter in our society.

I don't want to stray too far into that particular section; I've tried not to do that and to deal with the principle.

Having said that, I don't have any particular problems with an individual who for religious reasons is genuinely opposed to supporting the union. I don't have any great problems with that, as long as it's administered properly by the council and interpreted fairly. I just want to make that point. But I make it in the context of this discussion about individual rights versus group rights.

If we in society can determine that we have group rights, then why can't a group of people who work for a particular employer decide that they too have group rights? Why can't the group of people — to come onto another issue — who work for a contractor make a decision together with the contractor, an agreement with the contractor, that only people who belong to that particular union will be employed in that particular industry, and that they will be chosen on a rotational basis, and that the person who hasn't worked the longest may go first to the job, and that kind of thing; except where certain people are named because the employer wants that one individual to do that kind of job, and all those kind of things — a freely arranged deal between the person who needs the workers and the persons who supply the labour.

The government says: "Oh, no, we don't like your personal arrangements. We're going to open that up and say that

[ Page 485 ]

if you the employer wanted to hire 'an apprentice' or, in even bigger quotation marks, 'a trainee,' you could do that and disregard the freely agreed-upon procedure" — which is a procedure developed to protect the group. What you're saying is that, among other things — this is the whole closed shop, open-shop issue — a contractor can begin to hire his nephews and his nieces and his cousins and his brothers and his friends under a trainee clause to eventually open the shop. It will no longer be a closed shop, and then there will be a decertification vote and the union is bust, by that particular clause.

There are a whole bunch of arguments which I am going to make later about the whole closed shop issue. But here again we have a violation of the collective rights. When the collective makes a decision that people who have made their living from and support their families from that work should have an opportunity to do that work, why can that list be broken by somebody who has never worked there before? That's an important question of rights. The government is saying that it prefers the rights of the 20-year-old over the rights of the 50-year-old who has made a living for all his or her life in that job, who has developed a mortgage, who has got kids to feed and a life to live, and that those rights of that individual are less important than the rights of an individual who has come out of school and who wants a job with his uncle's contracting firm,

I'm going to make that argument further later on — more particularly in committee but again later this afternoon in more general terms — so with that I would move that this debate be adjourned until the next sitting of the House.

Motion approved.

Hon. Mr. Strachan moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

The House adjourned at 11:58 a.m.