[ Page 1619 ]

CONTENTS

Routine Proceedings

Oral Questions

Prince George mortality rate. Mrs. Boone –– 1619

Ms. Smallwood

Accord with federal government on offshore gas and oil drilling. Ms. Smallwood –– 1620

Farm income tax exemption. Mr. Rose –– 1620

Private woodlot transfers. Mr. Williams –– 1621

Falcon capture in Queen Charlottes. Mr. Williams –– 1621

University Endowment Lands boundaries. Ms. Marzari –– 1621

Ministerial Statement

Wildlife management areas. Hon. Mr. Strachan –– 1621

Ms. Smallwood

Industrial Relations Reform Act, 1987 (Bill 19). Committee stage. (Hon. L. Hanson) –– 1622

Mr. Sihota

Mr. Gabelmann

Mr. Lovick

Mr. Clark

Mr. Rabbitt

Mr. Miller

Appendix –– 1642

The House met at 2:08 p.m.

Prayers.

HON. MR. STRACHAN: I'd like to introduce a number of guests today, the reason for which will become apparent later when I make a ministerial statement: Stu Reeder, president of the B.C. Wildlife Federation; Joe Lotzkar, president of the Federation of B.C. Naturalists; Graham Kenyon of the B.C. Conservation Foundation; Ed Vernon and Al Murray from the Wildlife Centennial Committee; General Bert Hoffmeister, chairman of The Nature Trust; Tom Slater from Ducks Unlimited; Keith Connors from the Guide-Outfitters' Association of B.C.; Sharon Chow, president of the Sierra Club; Mike Green, president of the B.C. Trappers' Association; Vicky Husband, president of Friends of Ecological Reserves; Yorke Edwards from the Nature Conservancy of Canada; Tony Shebeare from the Council of Forest Industries; and from the federal government. Art Martell of the Canadian Wildlife Service. Would the House please welcome these distinguished guests.

HON. MR. VEITCH: In the gallery today are Mr. and Mrs. Max Lindenthaler from Burnaby. I would ask the House to bid them welcome.

HON. MR. REID: In the House today are two very aggressive businessmen in the visitor marketing business, over here from Surrey to visit my staff. I have pleasure in introducing Bob Olafson and John Brouwer. Would the House please make them welcome.

MR. HUBERTS: I'd like to ask the House to welcome three great constituents from the beautiful constituency of Saanich and the Islands: Mr. Jim Lang, Mr. Len Mulholland, and the mayor of North Saanich, Mr. Lloyd Harrop.

HON. MR. COUVELIER: We also have two lovely members of the fairer sex with us this afternoon. I'd ask the House to welcome Mrs. Roberta Cuppage from Saanich and the Islands, and Mrs. Pat Guest from Cowichan-Malahat.

MR. JANSEN: In the House today we have two recently married people from the constituency of Chilliwack, Dick and Lisa Van Maren. Please give them a warm welcome.

MRS. GRAN: Mr. Speaker, in the member's gallery today is a gentleman from Langley. Peter McNamara, a member of the Langley Central Rotary Club. With him he has Ron Auer, who is a Rotary exchange student from the Netherlands, and a visitor, Tony Monteiro, also from the Netherlands. Would the House please welcome them.

MR. MESSMER: Mr. Speaker, in the House today is a friend of mine from the city of Penticton, a businessman and former alderman of that city. Would the House please welcome Ron Biggs.

HON. MR. REID: Mr. Speaker, in the audience today is a lady who helped Duncan pull off B.C.'s finest Festival of the Arts ever. She's a special worker in the community: Mrs. Pat Guest. Would the House please make her welcome.

Oral Questions

PRINCE GEORGE MORTALITY RATE

MRS. BOONE: Further to my question earlier on the mortality rate in Prince George, which is 34 percent above the provincial average. what action has the Minister of Health decided to take to find out just what the causes are, and if there's anything that can be done to prevent this?

HON. MR. DUECK: Mr. Speaker, in answer to that question, we have no results yet.

MRS. BOONE: A supplementary. Has the minister decided to take any action at all to investigate this? I understand you have no results, but have you decided to investigate this in any way?

HON. MR. DUECK: Yes, Mr. Speaker, I have.

MRS. BOONE: Can you tell the House, please, what investigations will take place, and what you intend to do?

HON. MR. DUECK: Mr. Speaker. there are various areas that we're looking at now. It's mainly through my own ministry staff; we're not going to have a royal commission or anything like that. But we will try to find out why the percentage is that much higher in that particular area. We have some word back at this point that — and this is only speculation — it may be the lifestyle to a degree it may be other areas, even drinking water. It's something we have not yet discovered. We may never find out the real reason. These things are very difficult to trace.

MRS. BOONE: A new question to the Minister of Environment. The air quality in the Prince George area has been under study for about five years now, and I understand there's adequate documentation available on the airshed quality in the Prince George region. I have asked the minister's officials several times for some documentation: I hope it will be with me today. My question to the minister is: is he willing to make this documentation and information available to the public?

HON. MR. STRACHAN: The documentation is not complete yet, Mr. Speaker. There is a considerable study still being carried on, and I would at this point, until I see the documentation, only indicate to the House that I will take the question as notice.

MS. SMALLWOOD: Mr. Speaker, before I go into my question, I would like to ask a supplementary of the Minister of Environment.

MR. SPEAKER: It would have to be a new question, hon. member, because he took the question as notice.

[2:15]

MS. SMALLWOOD: A new question, then, to the Minister of Environment. Specifically on the question of the mortality rate in Prince George and water quality, the Ministry of Environment. under water quality control, several years ago cut back the chemical analysis of water in this province. We no longer do chemical analysis of drinking

[ Page 1620 ]

water. Will the Minister of Environment assure us that, for the Prince George area in particular, he will reinstate that program to do a chemical analysis of the water and look into that possible link to the health hazards there?

HON. MR. STRACHAN: I think the health and safety of water is largely dealt with by the Ministry of Health. We look at the situation from the other side, and that is that we deal with sewage but not with water.

MS. SMALLWOOD: Well, I believe there are some overlaps in responsibility. I would like to put that question to the Minister of Health.

HON. MR. DUECK: Mr. Speaker, I wasn't listening. What was the question?

MS. SMALLWOOD: The question is on water quality in this province. The minister has cut back the chemical testing of the drinking water quality in our province; that happened several years ago. Will the minister, because of the problem in Prince George, do chemical water analysis in that community?

HON. MR. DUECK: Mr. Speaker, I am not certain that the question is correct. The question is correct, but I am not certain that we cut back. We may have cut back in certain areas, but if that is the case, I would have to take that particular part on notice. But I would assure the House that on any testing that we do, when we come up with the results, they are correct.

ACCORD WITH FEDERAL GOVERNMENT ON
OFFSHORE GAS AND OIL DRILLING

MS. SMALLWOOD: My question now is to the Minister of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources. Once again this government has made a major announcement outside of this House without bringing the information to the House first. This is with regard to the offshore exploration and drilling of natural gas and oil. Can the minister assure this House that the agreement will be brought to this House for debate before the negotiations are finalized?

HON. MR. DAVIS: Mr. Speaker, what has been announced is the commencement of a negotiation with the federal government for the finalization of a Pacific or west coast accord re oil and gas. Hopefully, it can be negotiated over the next six months. Certainly there will be an opportunity to debate it and the east coast accords during the estimates of my ministry.

MS. SMALLWOOD: I take that as assurance that the minister will bring that information to the House before finalizing.

My additional question is: as there are obvious conflicts between land and sea claims for native rights in this province, will the minister tell us what steps he or his government has taken to assure that the issue of land and sea claims will be dealt with first?

HON. MR. DAVIS: Mr. Speaker, as the Minister of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources, I can't give that assurance, but I'm certain that the government will have those claims very much in mind. I can tell the member that over the last four years there have been extensive hearings leading up to today's announcement. The Ministers of Environment and other ministers have published their concerns, and those concerns have been taken into account in today's preliminary announcement.

MS. SMALLWOOD: One final question to the minister. Will the minister commit himself to a public hearing process to deal with compensation and with environment and socioeconomic conflicts in regard to these proposals before any permitting process takes place?

HON. MR. DAVIS: Those matters were addressed; they are addressed in the reports filed last year. The normal process for approving exploration, mining or in this case drilling will be followed. In other words, there will be hearings.

FARM INCOME TAX EXEMPTION

MR. ROSE: In the absence of the Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, perhaps I could direct my question to the loquacious Minister of Finance. I would be interested in his comments. The Minister of Agriculture recently told residents of the Cowichan Valley that he would stop the planned increase in farm income exemption for part-time farmers, which the budget suggested was going to go from $1,600 gross income a year to $5,000. Would the minister care to bring the House up to date on any rethinking of this proposal?

HON. MR. COUVELIER: The issue of the raising of exemption levels is one that was projected far enough into the future that we would be able to receive comments and advice from a variety of the affected citizenry. As a consequence of that and the active interest of many members of this House, we are still in the process of receiving those comments, and in the fullness of time we will be dealing with them. But at the moment we're still in the process of receiving comments.

MR. ROSE: A supplementary to the minister. Most of these part-time farmers are hard-working people; they are not hobbyists who shoot grouse in the fall or ride to the hounds every Sunday morning. Is it the government's policy to encourage part-time farmers as a way of conserving farmland in British Columbia and not jeopardize it for subdivision because of the high exemption which was envisioned in the budget?

HON. MR. COUVELIER: That's a good point, and one that the government is well aware of. It is certainly true, as the questioner brings out, that in addition to a possible abuse by virtue of the existing interpretation of farm exemptions, there is also the very real fact that the presence of some of these five-acre properties, particularly those surrounding the urban parts of the province, work to the advantage of preserving farmland. I think that is something the government recognizes and is certainly interested in supporting.

There is a fine line to be marched between the interests of property owners — allowing them to reap the benefits of their work in the farming community — and at the same time ensure that urban communities are given room to expand. Concurrent with that, of course, is the ever-pressing need to preserve and enrich the role that farmers have traditionally played in the development of our province. We are very

[ Page 1621 ]

proud of the government's protecting role, and we certainly intend to continue making every reasonable effort to ensure that farmers in British Columbia are allowed to grow and enrich their incomes. We will be monitoring it very closely, and as I said earlier, we are still interested in receiving comments and input from all citizens on that subject. We still have room to receive them and implement before the trigger date of 1989.

MR. ROSE: I'm a little concerned, Mr. Speaker, about that phrase "trigger date."

I wonder, since any exemptions given to these entrepreneurs of the farm are really borne by the municipalities concerned and shared by other residents in the municipality, whether the government has decided to adopt a policy of compensating the municipalities from the general tax roll for any exemptions which are granted to these areas.

HON. MR. COUVELIER: Mr. Speaker, I have not, to the best of my knowledge, received any such requests from local government representatives. Presumably, were such requests to be made, they would come to government through the pipelines of the Union of B.C. Municipalities, which is the umbrella organization of all local governments in the province. Having had a close association with that organization's efforts over the last number of years, I can say with confidence that that has never been a high-profile concern of the organization itself. I've not heard the suggestion for some time that there should be some assistance for local government to compensate for the loss of property tax revenue.

Just in response to the general thesis, it does seem to me that local government itself would have an interest in preserving farmland. If that is their interest, and I suspect it would be, then it's not unreasonable to expect them to make some financial contribution to enable farmland to continue. I'm not aware of any organized effort on the part of the representative organization, the UBCM but if it were to be brought forward, my colleague the Minister of Municipal Affairs (Hon. Mrs. Johnston) and I would, of course, be pleased to give them an audience.

PRIVATE WOODLOT TRANSFERS

MR. WILLIAMS: A question to the Minister of Forests regarding private woodlots that have been granted by the province. They've granted free some 480 of them. Now they are being transferred, and great profits are being made. Has the minister reconsidered transfer policy with respect to private woodlots?

HON. MR. PARKER: Mr. Speaker, no, we have not considered transfer policy. But it's a point well made, and will be taken under consideration. Thank you, Mr. Member.

MR. WILLIAMS: Mr. Speaker, I note that outstanding consultants suggest that maybe $13 million is being made in the transfer process with respect to that.

FALCON CAPTURE IN QUEEN CHARLOTTES

I have a further question to the Minister of the Environment regarding the trapping, or what ever you would call it, of young falcons in the Queen Charlotte Islands. Some ten permits, I believe, are being granted this year, and these birds are very limited in number. In previous years and under previous administrations there was a moratorium on this kind of activity. Could the minister explain to the House why he feels justified in allowing this to take place in the province today?

HON. MR. STRACHAN: With the greatest respect, Mr. Speaker, to the House and to the member who posed the question, an injunction has been filed. The ministry hasn't seen it yet but it does put me in a sub judice situation, and I can't offer any further comment.

UNIVERSITY ENDOWMENT LANDS BOUNDARIES

MS. MARZARI: A question to the Minister of Lands and Forests. The University Endowment Lands, soon to become known as the Point Grey Regional Park, is undergoing some rapid change at the moment. For ten years plans have been in the works, accepted by the community and accepted by the government, for a final definition of the boundaries of the University Endowment Lands. It has come to the committee's attention within the last few days that the Ministry of Forests and Lands is changing those boundaries and possibly removing 200 acres out of the park lands, which would be very much against what the community has been fighting for and has agreed on for some years. Would the minister elaborate or explain why, at this eleventh hour, the ministry would come in with changed boundaries and 200 acres removed from the park?

HON. MR. PARKER: Mr. Speaker, there is no park. It's under consideration, and nothing is being done in isolation. Any modifications are being done in discussion with a number of parties that have the University Endowment Lands at heart and have sonic concerns. Nothing is being done in isolation.

HON. MR. VEITCH: Mr. Speaker, I beg leave to make an introduction.

Leave granted.

HON. MR. VEITCH: Mr. Speaker, I understand that a new person has entered this world, Ryan Reynolds, your first grandson. He was born yesterday and weighed eight pounds and is the son of Paul and Nicole Reynolds. I would ask this House to bid him welcome.

Ministerial Statement

WILDLIFE MANAGEMENT AREAS

HON. MR. STRACHAN: Mr. Speaker, I rise to make a ministerial statement. I have the pleasure today of making an announcement which I am sure will meet with the enthusiastic approval of all members of the House. It concerns the establishment of six major wildlife management areas around the province to benefit significant wildlife populations and habitats.

Fittingly, this designation is being made as part of our province's celebration of Wildlife '87, the national conservation centennial which commemorates the founding of Canada's first wildlife sanctuary 100years ago. This celebration is an opportunity for the people of our province to join

[ Page 1622 ]

with our fellow Canadians in activities that focus on the needs of wildlife in its natural habitat. I am happy to say that the British Columbia conservationists have given their wholehearted support, in concert with our government. to ensure that the centennial will be a success.

[2:30]

It was on this very day in 1887, June 7, that Sir John A. Macdonald announced the establishment of the first bird sanctuary in North America at Last Mountain Lake, Saskatchewan. This was an incredibly farsighted achievement for its time, and I am sure all members will agree that it is an appropriate benchmark for measuring the wisdom and worthiness of today's conservation decisions.

I would also like to draw the House's attention to the exhibit which is presently on view in the rotunda. It is a selection from the work of thousands of young people from schools across our province who undertook the task of celebrating Wildlife '87 by creating posters with the theme of joining hands in conservation. I am sure you will agree that they have done an admirable job of bringing that message very vividly to life. Parenthetically, let me thank you, Mr. Speaker, for your cooperation in mounting this display in our legislative precincts.

Mr. Speaker, the six wildlife management areas which we have designated are in a very special way examples of the same spirit of cooperation and concern for wildlife. In recent years, each of them has benefited from the very best in wildlife management and habitat protection techniques, assisted in some cases by supplementary public and private funding through my ministry's habitat conservation fund and such organizations as Ducks Unlimited and the Nature Trust.

Beyond that, each has been preserved and enhanced with the enthusiastic cooperation and, in some cases, participation of local citizens, landowners and conservation groups. All of the areas are, to a varying degree, accessible to the public for viewing and educational purposes. Three of them are close to urban population centres, where contact with wildlife is needed most.

The six areas are: the Junction wildlife management area, where the Chilcotin River meets the Fraser — this area supports a major herd of California bighorn sheep as well as other wildlife; the Pitt-Addington marsh in the heart of the lower mainland east of Vancouver, home to a great variety of wetland wildlife, including the sandhill crane; the upper Cariboo River, northwest of Williams Lake, which provides excellent winter range for moose as well as habitat for a variety of other wildlife and fish species; the Chilanko marsh, west of Williams Lake, which provides excellent waterfowl habitat and winter range for moose; Dewdrop Rosseau Creek on the north side of Kamloops Lake, important range for mule deer, California bighorn sheep and other species; and finally Tranquille, on the flood plain of the Thompson River within the city of Kamloops, providing excellent waterfowl habitat for migratory waterfowl, songbirds and other wildlife.

The establishment of these wildlife management areas is consistent with our government's policy of preserving the very best of our natural heritage, including wildlife species and wilderness lands, through a strategy which recognizes the great variety and potential of our province's land base.

A common demand these days is that our wildlife program should be put on a broad footing, that it should manage ecosystems rather than simply manipulating game populations, and that it should pay more attention to non-game species, to threatened and endangered species and to nonhunting recreation. I would like to emphasize that there has already been a strong trend towards this kind of emphasis over the past few years, and that these designations represent a further step in this direction.

Habitat studies and habitat enhancement projects are crucial to our wildlife management activities, and we will continue to give them strong support, In general, our wildlife program is being planned to reflect as wide a public interest as possible.

In preparing these plans, wildlife staff are also working closely with other provincial agencies, resource agencies and property owners to ensure that resource developments, industrial operations and agriculture are compatible with the prime goal of maintaining healthy wildlife populations.

This is a challenging task, yet I believe that these new wildlife management areas are a practical demonstration of what can be achieved through careful consultation and well directed management. Above all, they show what can be done with the active support of citizens who take their stewardship responsibilities seriously. The message of Wildlife '87 is that this kind of conservation program can be the norm for our province when the knowledge and the will are there.

MS. SMALLWOOD: I'd like to thank the Minister of Environment, first of all, for giving me notice of his presentation to the House today. I'd like to add my voice and the voice of the opposition to the celebration of Wildlife '87. While the goals that the minister has outlined are of preservation and identifying the ecosystem as a priority rather than dealing with the problems, I would like to support him in those goals and add my voice on the need for an intensive and comprehensive program for the management of both wildlife and wilderness in this province. I also will look forward to the Environment estimates and, in particular, will be looking for additional support for conservation officers and programs within the ministry that will support this concept.

Again I would like to commend the minister for his kind words and promising priorities towards these particular management areas. We'll look forward to further explanation of how the minister will be governing and managing these areas.

Orders of the Day

HON. MR. STRACHAN: Mr. Speaker, I call committee on Bill 19.

INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS REFORM ACT, 1987
(continued)

The House in committee on Bill 19; Mr. Pelton in the chair.

On section 29 as amended.

MR. SIHOTA: I've had the weekend to sit back and consider again the debate we've been having with respect to section 29. I guess the weekend, if it serves any purpose, serves one purpose in particular: perhaps it allows people to cool down a bit and step back and have some second thoughts about the legislation. If only the government would exercise a little bit of cool thought on some of this legislation and allow the temperature, both in the House and outside on the streets,

[ Page 1623 ]

to cool down a bit, and allow us to take a sort of thoughtful, rational approach to this legislation.

But over the weekend, Madam Chairman — Mr. Chairman. Sorry, my apologies. I'm thinking of the first member for Langley (Mrs. Gran), who's normally in the chair, and I apologize for that. So please accept my apologies. I should have been looking up instead of down.

The point, I guess, that....

Interjections.

MR. SIHOTA: I don't think there is anything untoward about my comment there; I was talking about where my head was when I was making the comment. It was pointed down towards my notes.

I should say, though, that the member for Langley made some great statements on TV with respect to the performance of the member for North Island (Mr. Gabelmann) over the weekend.

The more I thought about the issue and the more I talked about it on Friday night with my wife, the more concerned I became about the word "substantial." I know it's a point, but it's awfully frustrating to hear the answers that the minister has been giving, and then to tie it in with the intent the minister says that he has with respect to the section. There is no dovetailing between the intent and the words: the words lead themselves to one conclusion, and the intent, as expressed by the minister, arrives at another. I keep on hoping the government would bring down some further amendments to clarify this legislation. My first question of the minister is this: does the minister have in mind any further amendments to this section or any other sections'?

HON. L. HANSON: No, I don't have in mind any amendments. We believe — or I believe — that the wording as we have it here now is clear. I think we've had some very enlightening discussions on the various wordings, but I would be remiss to say that if something comes forward that doesn't change in fact the intent or the philosophy — something that we have missed, although we've had such extensive consultation and dialogue with the various interested parties, both labour and management and their legal counsel — it seems to me a remote chance that there will I be any changes at this point.

MR. SIHOTA: I'm sorry to hear that, because it's clear in my mind that this section and the government's stated intent are not one and the same. Instead of trying to belabour the point and talk again about bakeries and Safeways and the words "substantial" and "assets." and all of that, let me just sort of wrap up my thoughts on this by making the following points.

I would like to believe the minister with respect to his comments about his intentions on this section, the intentions that I think he articulated on Thursday, to begin with, and on Friday. I would only hope that the Industrial Relations Council, if it ever comes into being, will take the same type of tack the minister has taken with respect to the comments that I've made on section 29. I really do, quite frankly, believe that that's asking for too much. It's a bit of a dream on my side, because I just think, reasonably put, that it would be impossible. Given the changes in the section, given the extent to which we have wandered from the wording of the Labour Code, and now have the wording as it appears in section 29, it's highly unlikely, and it's most probable that we won't see the types of conclusions that the minister arrived at during the course of debate on this section.

Therefore I think it lends credence to the argument that we've been making all along: that this clause will make it easier for individuals to be able to sell off portions of, or a lot of, their assets within the company and avoid their contractual obligations to their employees and allow for successor rights to fall by the wav,

I think that the change with respect to assets was a significant departure from what we've got right now. On the other hand, if the word "business" within the section is used to include "assets," then it's perhaps not as broad a departure as one would normally think. The minister again says that in his view the word "business" takes into account the word "assets." However, if you consider just the normal rules of judicial interpretation, and if you recognize that "assets" — or "entire assets"; I think that's the phrase — has been removed from the Labour Code in this section, I think it's unlikely that the Industrial Relations Council will come to that type of conclusion.

I also think that the approach the government has taken with respect to dealing with this section is ill-founded. The approach appears to be to say that the labour board seized on one element, whether assets or a part of or contracts with other companies or the sale of contracts to third parties or the inheritance of accounts receivable by the purchasing company — and particularly, of course, in the case of assets and parts of. The government seems to think that the Labour Relations Board would seize on one isolated situation — without looking at the circumstances in their entirety — in arriving at a decision as to whether or not successor rights should apply. I agree that the comments that I'm making are somewhat technical, but if one were to sit back and read the Labour Relations Board decisions, there are very few decisions where they focused in on one isolated attribute of the sale or the transfer or the lease in order to come to the decision that successor rights ought to apply. They looked at the circumstances as a whole.

[2:45]

When the minister says a name in this House that he thinks that the Industrial Relations Council should look at the circumstances as a whole and not at one particular attribute, I'd like to believe him. But by making the deletions that you've made in this legislation. you are telling the Industrial Relations Council, in effect, not to take a look at those attributes that you've deleted — assets, or a part of, to use two examples that I cited during the course of my cross-examination. as the minister put it at one point, of the minister on this matter. I do think that if indeed the government appreciated that the Labour Relations Board took a look at the circumstances as they were in the whole, then it would not have brought about this change.

I think that there was a misunderstanding on the part of the government in terms of how the Labour Relations Board functions and of the extent of its inquiry to determine whether or not successor rights should apply. But there you have it; you will now send a new signal to those who are arbitrating on these types of matters, and as a result of that, what's going to happen, in my view, is that a lot of situations that would have been captured under the old legislation will not be captured at all, and in trying to prevent what I called earlier on during the course of the debate "the phantom bulldozer case" from happening, you're going to prevent all sorts of

[ Page 1624 ]

other cases which were legitimately caught and properly accorded successor status from being captured by this legislation. The wording within this section 1s such that it's going to make it a lot easier — incredibly easier — for people to avoid successor obligations, so much so that it's difficult to accept the government proposition that double-breasting — to use that language; deunionization, as I call it — will be prevented by this legislation. I think that's regrettable.

So the substantial part of the business assets will no longer attract successorship. The transfer of individual skills or abilities will no longer attract successorship status. And that's certainly going to affect the construction industry and several small businesses that have been unionized. It will not, because of the changes with respect to location, address the Thrifty's situation that we used as an example earlier on, which happened just down the road.

Finally, I think it raises again the question of bankruptcy, because my reading of the labour relations law.... Over the weekend I was looking at the CLE material on bankruptcies and successor status, and the point was made there again that often bankruptcies would not result in successor applications and that again the court would look at all the circumstances. What you've done with this amendment is pretty well rule out the possibility for those legitimate cases to be captured by the legislation. I know what the legislation says with respect to attempt to evade on the section, but once again that's an issue of intent, and it's very, very difficult in any tribunal, let alone the courts, to be able to prove that there was intent to evade. Just pause for a moment and ask yourself how it would be that you could prove a mind-set within a particular individual, especially when that individual is going to be denying that type of mind-set. The wording of the section, as I read it, is going to require a tremendous amount of evidence being brought forward on the bankruptcy issue for successor rights to apply.

We've all heard of cases that upset us. We've all heard of cases where we think that successor rights should not have applied. I think that the government obviously operated on rumour of those cases; and essentially, when you begin to look at the jurisprudence in this area, those cases are few and far between. Sure, there has been the odd case, just like there are cases under the provisions of the Criminal Code that I know as a lawyer I've never been happy with the outcome of, but that doesn't warrant wholesale changes to the Criminal Code. It doesn't require — to use another phrase that has been used a lot lately — a sledge-hammer to kill a fly. There are ways in which this legislation could have been crafted, in my view, with a little bit more sensitivity, to address itself to the situation where successor rights were wrongfully applied by the Labour Relations Board, but I don't think anyone needed. to go this far. I don't think that the words "a part of it," given what the minister says, ought to have been eliminated. I think that the use of the word "substantial" totally changes the way the council is going to be looking at successor relationships in contrast to the way the Labour Relations Board did, and I think using the intent language with respect to bankruptcy is again going to make it very difficult to allow for the attachment of successor rights in legitimate cases.

Certainly, eliminating location as a variable — and skills as a variable — will once again assist in what I perceive to be the intent of the section, which is to deunionize, to make it easier to deunionize. Elements within the construction industry in particular are going to be quite satisfied with this section. It is my interpretation that it is those elements that pushed for this section, and that for some reason or other this section was not properly thought out or was sloppily worded to allow for larger leakage than had ever been intended on the part of the government.

During the course of debate in the last few days on this, if ever there was a section that would have resulted, I would hope, in more amendments on the part of the government, or alternatively would simply have been allowed to stand, I think it was this one. I certainly have no hesitation in voting against this section. I only hope that the minister will step back for a moment from the adversarial, partisan approach that sometimes this House invites and just quietly analyze this section, because I think it allows for a lot more than the minister is saying it allows for. The second member for Vancouver East (Mr. Clark) asked the minister outright: "Will you amend this section in the future if it doesn't reflect what you say your intent is?" I was disappointed again to hear the minister not answer that question directly, because it would be a measure of the conviction if that was done, and certainly there are no amendments coming forth now.

So it is frustrating. It is very frustrating for those of us on this side of the House to hear the responses that we have been getting, because the intent, as the minister expresses it, just does not match up with the words in this section. We will see a large-scale deunionization in this province. We will see innumerable cases come before the council — should it be created if this act ever passes — where unions will try to assert successor rights on the basis of the old law, and it won't hold up any more. It is a radical departure from a Labour Code section that has served us well in the past. I don't think there is any debate about that; the current section 53 has served us reasonably well.

This is such a far-flung departure that it invites all sorts of questions. It is consistent with the pattern we have seen in the rest of the legislation: the extent to which there has been a radical departure, in just about every section we have reviewed, from what is currently the status quo. That just does not sit right with the government's intent of moving incrementally to solve those few phantom cases, as I call them it goes well beyond that. It is a regrettable and awesome attack on the right of individuals to decide among themselves as employees how they want to represent themselves with the employer, and on the right of employees to be protected in the event that an employer decides to sell, lease or transfer his commercial entity to a third party.

Third parties. The principle that we always hear from the other side of the House is, why should third parties be bound by these types of collective agreements made between an earlier employer and the employees? The fact is, in commercial law — and I speak as someone who has done a lot of commercial law — third parties are often bound by contractual obligations, by debt obligations. They are often bound by guarantees and liabilities and contracts with debtors and creditors. Those always survive the sale of a commercial enterprise, and their obligations to their employees should survive as well; yet for some reason the government thinks some should and some shouldn't.

I see that my time is up, so I will wrap up on that note. It is an awesome and radical departure from what we have, and it is regrettable, in my mind, that the government would see fit to make this type of a move.

[ Page 1625 ]

HON. L. HANSON: I thank the member for those remarks. I too stepped back and spent a lot of time over the weekend considering the various things that have been said.

I think there was some remark about the antagonism that goes back and forth and so on. Section 30 — and also the other sections — has nothing to do with whether you are opposed to it, therefore I am for it. That has nothing to do with it at all. Very quickly — I don't want to prolong this — I think those employers who see the amendments to this section as a blank cheque to avoid their responsibilities under the act as negotiated with their employees and their unions are in for a surprise. I certainly am confident that that will not happen.

The member made my response to a question from another member seem as if I was waffling, and I was not waffling. I'm suggesting to the member on the other side that it is always government's responsibility to monitor what happens with any legislation that we bring forward, or that any other government brings forward. If that legislation is not working as it was intended to work, after a period of time, giving it a reasonable opportunity to work, then it's government's responsibility to respond to that. I think it will be my responsibility as Minister of Labour to monitor what is happening with this section particularly, and I will do that. And if it isn't working as we intended it to after a reasonable length of time, then it will be my responsibility as Minister of Labour to respond to that.

[3:00]

MR. GABELMANN: I'm debating just what tone to use in responding to the minister's comments just now. Clearly every minister of the Crown in every government would always consider how legislation he or she was responsible for was working, and would constantly monitor it and make changes if it wasn't working. If they didn't do that, they should be moved back to the back bench. So the answer isn't particularly helpful in terms of a debate on this section. By the time government gets around to introducing the changes that will be required, the construction industry will be deunionized and much else in the province will be well on its way. An assurance that the wording will be monitored and the minister will perhaps bring in amendments if it's not working isn't particularly useful, particularly when we consider what the clear intent of the government seems to be here. I think that we heard part of it expressed well by the Minister of Transportation and Highways (Hon. Mr. Michael) on, I think, Friday morning, if not Thursday.

One of the problems we have — and it's demonstrated more clearly in section 29 than, I think, in any other section of the amendments — is that we have legislation brought in as a result of the collective view of a group of people who have either personally experienced situations in respect of board decisions on successorship status or, more frequently, have had stories told to them — more often, I would argue, apocryphal than not — about how section 53 of the Code has prevented maximizing the value of assets before a sale, and how the provisions of section 53 of the Code have prevented the selling of equipment or machinery in an effort to rationalize a particular business. In fact, 99 out of 100 of those stories are wrong. I hear them too; I've heard them for 15 years. They're almost always wrong in fact. The stories become exaggerated. They're rare, and they are not part of the mainstream of labour relations difficulties, problems or issues.

I think members of the Arbitrators' Association made the point quite well last year. They didn't say it with particular reference to this section, but what we have in this section is a response by a government that has listened not to the majority of people involved in the business. the majority of people dealing with labour relations on a day-to-day basis, but rather to isolated individual stories from friends or political supporters of theirs who have run into problems with provisions of the Code or decisions of the board, particularly in respect to successorship.

I think it's useful to put in the record brief excerpts from a commentary done for Butterworths. which is a national agency or organization that prepares commentary on legislation like this. It was done by Gavin Hume. who's with Russell and DuMoulin in Vancouver. I happen to know Gavin, because I've served on arbitration boards where he's been the management lawyer or advocate. As a result, I have some understanding of where he comes at this issue from in terms of his political perspective and his view of labour-management relations. I don't share his views. I'm sure he would feel comfortable with the minister's views, and vice versa.

In his extensive summary of the bill, he has quite a useful summary of section 29 that I think puts it all into perspective. We need to recognize that this is not a flaming left-wing view of the damage that this section is going to do to the rights of trade union members and their collective agreements and certifications. This is a balanced view, I would argue, but a view from the right.

He says, as we did earlier in this debate, that the successorship section has been substantially amended in four respects, which is the point that we made earlier. He's talking here about the section that the member for Esquimalt-Port Renfrew (Mr. Sihota) spent so much time with.

"The new provision only applies to a transfer of the business or a substantial part of the business. This is reminiscent of pre-Labour Code legislation, which spoke only in terms of the sale of a business or part thereof, but did not make any specific reference to assets. This legislation was interpreted in Amalgamated Lithographers, 1964" — a bunch of numbers which aren't too important — "and in R. v. Labour Relations Board ex parte Lodum Holdings, 1969" — again some more numbers. "The thrust of this amendment is to significantly restrict the approach that the board took in Redskin Cedar Co. et al. v. IWA Local 1-367." 

I think the second member for Vancouver East (Mr. Clark) referred to that decision on Friday.

Clearly — a point I want to make briefly in respect of this here is someone who is recognized as knowledgeable on the issue, comes from a perspective different from ours, and makes briefly the same points that we make: that is, the agenda of the government is to bring back to successor rights law the pre-1974 law as interpreted in several court decisions in the sixties. That approach to successorship was changed by the Code as indicated in Redskin Cedar, and now we're back to the days of the sixties.

We've had the debate. Clearly the government wants to move back to the sixties. We don't, and there's the division: there's the difference in point of view. It remains to be seen whether the results of the sixties, which led to an NDP government, will be repeated. By returning to them, will we go back to the situation where we win the next election as well? I would argue that the government is doing us a great

[ Page 1626 ]

favour in this respect, and if I thank them for anything, I thank them for that. It would be nice to sit on the imperilment benches again after the next election.

Gavin Hume goes on to say, and I think this confirms arguments we're making:

"The skills or abilities of an individual are not considered as the 'business' which this section applies to. Clearly, this is in reference to the construction industry, where the board has held that a section 53 successorship can occur when applied to the principal of the business, or when 'the key man' moves from one company to another."

By implication, he's saying that those decisions will now be reversed as well, so that when the "key man" moves, the certification doesn't. It's obviously wide open for manipulation with that.

"Thirdly, there is no transfer by reason only of the fact that the business performs similar functions at the same location that was previously occupied by the unionized business."

Here we go with Thrifty's again.

"This section appears also to be in response to Redskin Cedar (supra), and other cases where the board has found that the continuation of a similar or same business in a location previously used by a business which was certified creates a successorship."

There's a grey area in there, but they did find that. Whether they would have found it in Safeway-Thrifty's is an issue that we can't comment on yet, because we don't know. But there was a grey area there. He says, in fact, that it was less grey than that, but now it will be completely black or white, depending on one's point of view.

Fourthly, last of all, he writes:

"Successorship does not apply where the business or the substantial part of it is transferred by a trustee in bankruptcy under the Bankruptcy Act.... This appears to be in response to the concern expressed by many about the inability to realize the maximum value of the assets of a bankrupt corporation because of the certification and the other obligations under the Code which the sale of the assets carried with it. The council would be forced to reach a different conclusion than the board did in such decisions as Trav-L-Mate Industries Ltd. and Carpenters."

This was an 1982 decision.

I have just picked this up this morning. I hadn't seen it before now, and if I'd had it before, I might have organized my comments along the lines that he has organized his commentary, because it's quite nicely, neatly and precisely done.

What he does in summary is to confirm our fears about what the words mean and to confirm that there is a significant and substantial change in law being made with these changes, and that there will be — again by implication, but clearly, I think — a profound difference in the way businesses will be able to spin off, subdivide and maximize assets under bankruptcy in a way that denies the value of the assets of the employees.

I want to conclude by taking a minute on that subject, because we haven't spent a lot of time on the bankruptcy aspect, the fourth of the four major issues. I want to repeat that one line, because it really summarizes a difference in values between members in this House. He writes:

"This appears to be in response to the concern expressed by many about the inability to realize the maximum value of the assets of a bankrupt corpora tion because of the certification and the other obliga tions under the Code which the sale of the assets carried with it."

So we have here a clear division of view. We would argue that the assets of the company or of the business should include the people who work for it. Without those people's labour, in many cases over many years and even decades, the business would not have achieved the value it achieved. Their work, their dedication in most cases, their sweat and their tears, if not their blood, go into making a business profitable and prosperous. It may then meet bad times. If it does and goes into bankruptcy, all of those assets that the business has that were provided by labour are just kissed right off and those people are told goodbye.

We're not talking here about a situation where the bankruptcy leads to a permanent closure; we're talking about a change in ownership. The people who have put their time, effort and labour into making that business what it was over many years are just told goodbye — their value is nothing, and all that matters is the maximization of the capital value of the particular plant, operation or service.

That's a view of society which we reject. We would hold that the owner and his assets, his capital, should be treated with no more deference and given no more value than the value of the labour and of the workers and the people who have made their life working at that particular enterprise. I cited earlier in this debate on section 29 the Mac and Fitz example in the Okanagan, where this precise situation is now developing. In fact, ironically in that case, sale of that particular plant is awaiting proclamation of this section, because it will be worth more to potential purchasers to buy the plant without the people. All we would argue is that they should be required to buy the people too.

Friday in debate on this point, the Minister of Tourism, Recreation and Culture (Hon. Mr. Reid) was suggesting that my conclusion that the government is more interested in capital than it is in people is unfair and wrong and that the government is quite interested in people: "We care about the owners, and they're people, aren't they?" — that kind of response. But your clear illustration here is that the government's concern is with capital, with the owner of that capital, and not with the people who have been employed in that situation.

I guess I don't find a need to rant and rail about it. I just want to point out that we will make sure that people around this province over the next few years understand the difference between the values of that side of the House and of this side.

[3:15]

MR. LOVICK: I have not thus far spoken on section 29 of the bill, primarily because it seemed to me my colleagues were doing an admirable job and didn't need any help from me. However, as I've listened to the comments coming from the minister over the past couple of days that we have been on this, I have a certain fear that one area has not been addressed under the heading of successor rights. I'm referring specifically to the new terminology that we are now hearing much of in the province of B.C., namely, privatization.

I think it appropriate for me to put this in a context for the benefit of the minister, that he will understand I'm not merely

[ Page 1627 ]

making up some kind of hypothetical case. I attended a conference — last week I believe it was — on privatization, a conference that was addressed, incidentally. by the minister within government who is responsible for privatization. One of the seminars as part of that conference was entitled "Successor Rights." Interestingly enough, one of the participants in the panel was a member of a law firm, the name of which has been mentioned on many occasions in this debate. Another of the participants was a former vice-chairman of the Labour Relations Board. Curiously, however, the conclusion that those people drew about the whole large area of successorship rights was: "We don't know. We've looked at the new Code, we've looked at the amendments, but we don't know."

I think that is an incredibly damning kind of comment to be made by professionals in the field who are surely as knowledgeable as any. In other words, they couldn't tell us whether the Code protected existing trade unions in the event of a takeover by another entity. From their point of view, it was simply not clear. I suggest that that has the effect of a time bomb ticking away in the province at the moment, and it's something that I believe the Minister of Labour has an obligation to address. I'm raising it here because I think, as I say, it's a crucial issue; and because we are dealing with successor rights, at least tangentially, this seems to me the appropriate time, Mr. Chairman.

I want to suggest a couple of things also to support that contention. The metaphor I used was of a time-bomb ticking away. The other day I received a glossy poster from the Canadian Union of Public Employees' office launching a campaign, which says: "Privatization — what about your kids?" — or something of that kind. The reason that has come out, of course, is precisely because those individuals are wondering what happens to their status, what happens to their tenure, what happens to their rank, if you like — seniority clauses, wages, working conditions, all those kinds of things — in the spectre of privatization. I think that's a legitimate concern, and we on this side of the House certain1y are concerned that this particular measure of the bill would seem to open the door to the removal of what are loosely defined as and called "successor rights." That's the basis of our concern.

I don't think, again, that we're being unduly alarmist. I think indeed there is evidence abundant to substantiate the claim that I am suggesting now. For instance, the most famous one is a story that recently came to light about the Japanese experience — the Japanese railway system. As I'm sure the minister is aware, not very long ago the Japanese railway system was divided into 12 separate companies. More than anything, the important conclusion of that great transfer and that change in ownership was that at one point there were 270,000 employees, and the day after the dissolution of the single company into 12 companies, there were 205,000. The 65,000 individuals who were not rehired — not, I am sure, entirely by coincidence — happened to be members of one particularly irritating, troublesome trade union. I'm suggesting to the minister simply that employees in companies throughout this province are well aware of those kinds of experiences — their concern, therefore, about successor rights.

The conclusion that I'm suggesting to this rather longwinded argument — and I apologize for that, because as I say, I did not intend to speak to this particular section of the bill — is that we, the government, must give very clear and definite assurances to workers that successor rights will indeed be protected, and I think I can fairly say, on the basis of what we have listened to thus far, Mr. Minister, that there have not been those kinds of assurances. When I listen, for example. to my learned colleague from Esquimalt-Port Renfrew talk about the legal arguments, and I listen to other members on this side talk about particular cases and particular precedents. what it seems to me I recall hearing from the other side is essentially nothing — no comment. I am therefore asking, I suppose, whether the minister would perhaps be good enough to give us his sense of successor rights as they are or are not protected within the bill — specifically in this section, of course, but throughout the bill as well. Perhaps the minister would care to respond to that.

HON. L. HANSON: I'm not just sure what the member was referring to. "Is there some relationship to this section of the bill and privatization," I suppose, is one of the tenets of the argument that was advanced. In a broader term, I think what we're saying in this section of the bill is that if there is a discernible continuity, successorship should follow. To rule on specific things and so on, I would not be able to answer that. But I suppose you might be referring to something like, let's say. B.C. Rail. Is that a substantial portion of government. or isn’t it a substantial portion of government?

Again, the jurisprudence is going to be developed by the Industrial Relations Council, but I would think that B.C. Rail.... There certainly would be a discernible continuity in that case. It would boggle my mind to come to any other interpretation. I don't know if that's the answer you're looking for, but it's fairly clear to me. Again, you can go on and pick this little thing or that little thing, and try to determine under the specific circumstances what the determination would be.

What we're saying is that in section 29 we're trying to make sure that the Industrial Relations Council determines that there has been a discernible continuity, and that the essence of a business is there when successorship rights go with it.

My critic mentioned a paper prepared.... I've forgotten the lawyer's name, but I have read it. I think it was prepared prior to the amendments being introduced, as a matter of interest, and I think it referred to some of the things about skills and abilities and so on. We did bring in an amendment to the bill when we recognized that we were excluding skills and abilities from part of the determination of a business. but it should be amended to say that they shouldn't be not determined. They shouldn't be the only determination: they should be part of the determination.

MR. LOVICK: I was struck by a phrase that the minister used on a couple of occasions here that I don't recall encountering before: "discernible continuity." Is that a phrase that appears somewhere? It isn't in section 29. Is it somewhere else in the Code? I'd like to know, if that's the case. Or is it some new terminology to be considered when we're talking about privatization too?

HON. L. HANSON: It's not in the legislation.

MR. LOVICK: It isn't? Okay.

It's a useful construct. It seems to me. Did that just leap to mind as the minister was reflecting on this matter. or is there

[ Page 1628 ]

in fact some principle enunciated and embraced in that particular phrase? I'm curious, frankly.

MR. GABELMANN: The minister argues that what this section 1s designed to do is to provide that successor rights will be declared if there's a discernible continuity; I think that's essentially what was said. I would argue that that's what the original legislation said. The problem we have is in finding the right legislative language to properly define "discernible continuity." I would argue that any continuity that you could discern would be continuity. Most of the cases about which the law has defined this issue in the past few years, essentially without using that language, relate to that issue. Was there a continuity of business that can be discerned by the panel on the board?

Decisions were made where sometimes they said yes, sometimes they said no. Every commentator who has made reference to this section argues that the language is weaker, the test less onerous than it was before. If the test is not less onerous, why make the changes? Clearly, the government, and I think it was expressed by some other members of the government caucus, wants the test to be made less onerous.

The question that the board has to make a decision about now is whether or not there is a discernible continuity. Is it the same business carrying on and trying to evade its responsibilities of certification? The board makes decisions, has been making decisions based on the weight it gives to various bits of the evidence and inevitably in the close ones makes a judgment call, a subjective kind of judgment. Occasionally the judgment may have not pleased members of the government caucus.

You might well find that there are as many as a half a dozen or a dozen cases over the last year where the decision went in a direction different from the direction that the government wanted. I think the former Premier on occasion made that kind of comment. It was expressed along the lines of an argument that said boards and agencies shouldn't be making government policy; government should.

We've gone the flip side on that one now. The minister keeps saying that the board will make these decisions. Bill Bennett's view was that the board should not be making these decisions. However, that is another issue. But this discernible continuity question....

Interjection.

MR. GABELMANN: If it was talked about last week, I missed it.

[3:30]

MR. SIHOTA: I talked about it.

MR. GABELMANN: You talked about it? Well, I missed it. Then I won't pursue it much further, if the member for Esquimalt-Port Renfrew did talk about it. But it is what the law used to say. Why change it?

Section 29 as amended approved on the following division:

YEAS — 29

NAYS — 20

On section 30.

MR. LOVICK: I really thought for a moment that we had arrived at a particular plateau in terms of debate and procedure in the House where we were going to have a brief elucidation and explanation of the intent and purpose of a given section. I would therefore like to suggest to the minister that perhaps that was just an oversight and that he is indeed prepared to tell us briefly what he sees as the intent of section 30, before we begin — if the minister is willing to do so.

HON. L. HANSON: I agree that that's a reasonable approach to take. The section 30 amendments are in relation to voting procedures. There have been suggestions that not all votes, as it relates to the collective bargaining process by voting of the membership, have been held so that it isn't determinable which way the individuals have voted. We've ensured in this section that there is a guarantee of the secrecy of the balloting.

We've also suggested in here that the voting results — be it the accredited employer organization or the employees who have voted — be revealed in terms of numbers for, numbers against, number of ballots issued, numbers destroyed, etc. Of course, as I said earlier, it applies to votes held by both the union and the employers' organizations. The votes are to be counted in accordance with the regulations which will be made by the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council.

There's another here also; we have felt that there have been instances where a strike or lockout ballot may be worded in a manner that doesn't really give the employees — or the employers' organization — the chance to respond to the issue. We've also said in here that if they aren't held in a prescribed form, the votes will be invalid.

I think that there's been a lot of press and media and so on. Most recently in the IWA forest industry dispute there was a suggestion that there were "yes" and "no" ballot boxes, even though the vote in fact was held in secret — that there was a means of determining how the individual did vote.

MR. WILLIAMS: The danger of a "no" ballot in a "yes" box.

[ Page 1629 ]

HON. L. HANSON: I suppose the member opposite approves of that performance.

To sum up, it improves the current voting procedures and ensures democratic voting practices. It extends the secret ballot requirement to all votes conducted by a union respecting collective bargaining or as ordered by the council. They must be conducted in a secret manner. It ensures that the knowledge of the results of those votes is made available to the two interested parties. I think that fairly well describes the intent. I suppose that there will be a number of questions, and I will be prepared to answer.

MR. LOVICK: Mr. Chairman, first of all I want to thank the minister for extending the courtesy of a brief explanation of what he perceives to be the intent of this section. I think that is indeed a good niodus operandi for this House, and indeed for all legislation, and I commend the minister for that approach.

This section of the bill is not as causing of consternation and concern to us on this side of the House as other sections. That is not to say that we don't have some difficulties with it, but we recognize that this is not some matter of fine and elaborate principle that must be defended to the last breath, or some such thing. I hasten to point that out to begin with: I'm not prepared to stand here and declaim or denounce or any such thing. However, I think there are some problems with this section.

The main problem, as we on this side of the House see it, is that this section seems to be animated and given life by a starting premises that we have difficulty with: namely, that you can't trust those people. The whole thing is couched in these terms: we have to legislate fair and legitimate democratic procedures because, if left to their own devices, those individuals will not use fair and democratic election procedures.

Now I picked up a couple of the allusions made by the minister about departures from what is right and proper in terms of the normal procedures for elections. But I'm wondering how many those are, or whether those are indeed not aberrations — significantly aberrations; that is, very few in number, certainly in relative terms. It seems to me a mistake, frankly, for a government to begin to set up a policy because there has been one violation at some point in the past, and therefore to say no more of those violations will be allowed to occur, simply because of fiat — because we will outlaw the possibility of those kinds of violations occurring.

[3:45]

I hope at some point the minister will indeed share with us how widespread the evidence was to suggest that there were practices of voting that were irregular, to use that terminology. To put the question more specifically, are there large numbers of recorded cases where trade unionists — from our point of view the primary concern here — have indeed been demonstrated to be engaging in unfair voting practices? If that's the case, then I think we owe it to the trade union movement to state that it is the case, rather than to leave it just as a sort of nudge, nudge, wink, wink. to use an old phrase.

So that whole business, to begin with — simply the matter of trust. Does this whole thing proceed from the assumption that you can't trust individuals, and therefore the state will get involved?

The other concern — and I'm struggling with this a little bit, Mr. Chairman, because I realize I could readily be out of order — is that this section assumes the passage of the next section, namely 55, and it is 55 that causes us concern, because 55 is the one that says non-union members will be allowed to vote. As I say, I'm struggling, because I want, I suppose, to consider these so-called reforms to voting procedures in the context of that other amendment. But again I recognize that that is somewhat premature, given that it is after all the next amendment.

We are concerned also, I suppose. about the whole business of publishing the votes. I want to suggest to the minister that this will certainly be perceived by many to be an antiunion strategy — an anti-union measure. The reason is simply this. Trade unions customarily look upon having various votes as part and parcel of their strategy. Whether or not to release the results becomes a matter of the technique used in bargaining — the technique used as part of the strategy. It would seem that this particular measure will effectively take away that option on the part of a trade union. In other words, all results apparently must be published. Again, as I'm suggesting, the trade union will. I suspect. perceive this as being yet another manifestation of government taking sides, interfering on behalf of the other guys. and that causes us concern.

The other broad area of concern is the whole business of government supervision being required for all voting that has to do with collective bargaining matters. I'm wondering if the minister has given any thought yet to whether that will necessitate the development of a brand-new bureaucracy or the hiring of additional staff or some such things. Because, in fact, it is the case that trade union negotiating committees will frequently have matters that they want to discuss with their members and present to the membership that, by this rather loose wording, will be called "matters referring to collective bargaining."

All of those votes or decisions that have to be taken may well come, then, under the provisions of this section and require some kind of government supervision. The question, I guess, is whether it is the intention to have a whole new batch of individuals hired as part of the Ministry of Labour to go around supervising all votes or some such thing. I realize I am engaging in what is traditionally called the reduction argument — you know, where one takes it to its logical absurd extension.

But I think it's a fair question, nevertheless. In other words, are we suggesting that all of those kinds of votes that have loosely to do with collective bargaining will now require government supervision? Those are the broad concerns. We have a couple of larger ones — dare I say we'll call those philosophical. I started with the notion, and what appears to be the starting perception of this government, that you can't trust these people and therefore we, the government, must get involved to supervise all of these activities called ballots and voting.

But I'm wondering if, on a somewhat more profound and serious level, the kind of legislation proposed here, this kind of interference with the democratic right to choose and to cast one's ballot, is entirely compatible with Canada's obligations in international law. For instance.... I shouldn't say "for instance." The case I'm making, and that I ask the minister to note, is that Canada did indeed sign the International Labour Organization convention agreement of 1948, and the heading there, of course, is: "Freedom of association and protection of the right to organize."

That particular section of that international covenant lists something very specific in article 3, and I'd like to quote that if I could, because, as I suggest. perhaps this proposed

[ Page 1630 ]

legislation is not entirely compatible with that section. Article 3 says as follows: "Workers' and employers' organizations shall have the right to...organize their administration and activities.... More specifically, the clause says the public authorities "shall refrain from any interference which would restrict this right or impede the lawful exercise thereof."

As well, in article 8 of the same document, we read as follows: "The law of the land shall not be such as to impair, nor shall it be so applied as to impair, the guarantees provided for in this convention." The question again, then, is whether this statement that we, the state, will supervise your particular voting procedures, we shall also tell you how the questions are to be formulated and presented, and we shall, indeed, make sure that that is effectively supervised and we shall also determine the nature of the question and we shall also say that the results must be published at a given point on a given time or given date is compatible with that bit of international law to which Canada is a signatory. That's the other question, and I think it's an important one too. So perhaps at this point I will simply ask the minister if he'd care to respond to any of those concerns.

HON. L. HANSON: We did look at that — the ILO — and we feel that this is nothing but living up to those principles. I guess the concern that the member mentioned is whether these things are being put in place as a result of a lack of trust, I guess, of the procedure that is there now? Then I think he mentioned: are we getting too far into the internal operations of the unions? I don't think that's the case.

During any bargaining process and during the bargaining processes that I've been involved in, the negotiating team had been back to their membership a number of times asking questions of this and keeping them involved as it relates to this as a very major issue, and this is where we are on it. Maybe asking for shows of hands as to whether we should continue in that direction, or how they feel.... I don't think we are interfering in that at all. All we are suggesting is that there is a requirement for a democratic, secret kind of vote, as we have in all of our elections, but certainly not from the point of view of saying: "We don't trust you to do it on your own." We were simply saying, like we do in all our elections, be they civic, hospital — well, hospitals are societies, usually — school board or all of the other things, that there is a democratic process that should be followed.

But the internal workings of the union and the deciding of the union, as well as the employers' organization, as to what position they are going to take, what stance they are going to take, whether the issue is large enough for us to pursue all of that sort of thing, I think, isn't affected by these voting procedures. But there is no doubt that there is a.... I think that, as the member opposite says, the democratic process is fulfilled in.... I guess, on the other hand, that if it is being fulfilled and everything is fine, there is nothing wrong with putting it here to ensure that it is fulfilled.

But again, no, I don't think that we are interfering in the union's internal business. I think that there is nothing here that says those sorts of discussions and those sorts of votes that go on within, when they decide their bargaining position and all of the other things...that does not fall under this section; that is, their internal discussions and their internal decisions as to what they....

Of course, these provisions also apply to employers' organizations, if they are an accredited organization. The individual, of course; one employer with one union is not a.... But no, I don't think that.... Certainly I have had a lot of discussions, and I don't feel that that....

MR. LOVICK: Mr. Chairman, I stated just a moment ago that here is precisely where the minister and I have some disagreement, because I would suggest from a close reading of this particular section that it effectively opens the door to precluding and forbidding show-of-hand or voice votes. Let me just quote the particular section I am referring to. It says in section 55(l): "All voting directed by the council or by the commissioner under this Act and other votes held by a trade union or employers' organization of their respective members regarding a collective bargaining matter...."

MR. MILLER: Straightforward to me.

MR. LOVICK: It seems to me entirely clear, very straightforward indeed. What that suggests is that any kind of vote, any kind of preliminary strategy session or whatever that the trade union might be having where it wants to simply say, "Are we all agreed to that, guys?" will have to be by secret ballot — moreover, apparently, in the manner prescribed and government-supervised. That, I suggest to you, is (1) administratively unworkable, probably; (2) very costly; and (3) a prima facie intrusion into the rights of that democratically elected organization.

I don't think, as I say, we are being at all alarmist, through you, Mr. Chairman, to the minister. I think, rather, that we are simply reading the words as written here. I think perhaps the words are simply carelessly drawn or some such thing. So perhaps the minister would like to respond to that to begin.

HON. L. HANSON: I am sure you are referring to: "All voting directed by the council or by the commissioner under this Act and other votes held by a trade union or employers' organization of their respective members regarding a collective bargaining matter, shall be by ballot cast in such a manner that the person expressing a choice cannot be identified.... That is certainly not my interpretation, but I will take that under advisement. The question is: is the wording as such...?

[4:00]

MR. LOVICK: Sorry, Mr. Chairman. I recognize I may sound like the classic pedant here, and please forgive me if I do, but knowing a little bit about language, I can tell you that what we have here is a compound subject. There are two subjects for one verb. The second subject in this case is "all other votes held by a trade union...regarding a collective bargaining matter." I suspect — and I'm delighted to see the look of consternation on the minister's face, and on his adviser's face — that this is not their intention. I wonder if we might get some assurances from them that that will be changed — or thrown out, or whatever.

Interjection.

MR. LOVICK: Or changed now, yes.

HON. L. HANSON: I would be perfectly prepared to stand this section over until I can get that looked at carefully.

[ Page 1631 ]

MR. CHAIRMAN: Is it agreed that the section be stood over'?

All I right then. We'll defer section 30 and we'll come back to it as we proceed through the bill.

On section 31.

HON. L. HANSON: I move the amendment to section 31 standing in my name on the order paper, [See appendix.]

On the amendment.

HON. L. HANSON: We make two changes here, and one is a very technical one that I'm not sure will cause a lot of concern. But the substantive change is that.... We did not intend in the first place, and do not intend now, that there be any misunderstanding that replacement workers are eligible to vote in matters relating to collective bargaining procedures. I think that pretty well describes it.

The second one refers to the Post Office, and I think it's just a.... We had "an office of the Canada Post Office." The original wording was just to make absolutely certain that we're referring to the.... This clarifies the reference to the Canada Post Corporation Act and to the Post Office. So it's really a definition.

MR. GABELMANN: I just want to say for the record that we appreciate that amendment. It would have been an appalling situation if the original wording had stood. We say thank you to the minister for doing that.

I might also say thank you to the minister for his response on section 30. I think that's an appropriate and useful way of conducting business in here when that kind of situation develops. That's good.

Amendment approved.

On section 31 as amended.

MR. GABELMANN: I'd like to ask the minister why it is that he believes that non-members of a trade union should have the right to vote on issues affecting the trade union. A general rule of law in our society.... Well, it's the law of the country that non-citizens cannot vote. We make it a point that when you become a member of the country by becoming a citizen, you then gain some rights, the most fundamental of which is the right to vote. As I read it, and I'm sure the minister would agree, this section is akin to giving noncitizens the right to vote in general elections, because we're saying that non-members of the trade union will be allowed to vote. It seems to me that if they don't participate in the organization, as they've chosen not to do by not being members, then they should not have the right to vote. I say it's akin to the question of non-citizenship, but it's even worse. It's not a precise analogy, because this is a clear choice not to join made by an individual. In the case of citizenship, there is a required three-year waiting-period during which you cannot make a free choice to become a citizen and thereby have the rights, including the right to vote. I just want to try to get some justification from the minister as to why he thinks that kind of standard should exist in trade unions when it doesn't exist in our country.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Just before I recognize the hon. minister, the Chair has been advised that the second member for Saanich and the Islands would like to make an introduction. Shall leave be granted?

Leave granted.

MR. HUBERTS: Mr. Chairman. I ask the House to welcome members of the Tsartlip Cub pack from the constituency of Saanich and the Islands. Also, I wish to mention that two sons of the second member for Langley, namely Kevin and Ryan Peterson. are members of the Tsartlip Cub pack, and they are sitting in the Speaker's gallery. I ask the House to give them a warm welcome.

HON. L. HANSON: We've had a number of cases presented to us by individuals suggesting that there may have been some restricted access to ratification votes for those members doing picketing duty. We have covered in another section of the bill an issue where the removal of a membership within the trade union — as a disciplinary method within the union — should not cause them to lose their jobs unless there was an arbitration procedure and it was determined to be fair and reasonable. That's the reason we put that clause in. We're trying to make it clear that all members of an affected bargaining unit should be entitled to vote on the matters that directly affect them and their livelihood. Of course, in another section the people who have received religious exemption are restricted from voting.

MR. GABELMANN: It's not the major section of the bill. It's a concern. I guess the way this issue was resolved in a broader sense, historically, is Justice Rand's decision in 1948, I think, which allowed persons not to join. As long as we have as many Rand formula situations as we do, I suppose a section of this kind. If not appropriate. Is understandable. I am no, going to make a big to-do about it.

[Mrs. Gran in the chair.]

On the second clause. I want to deal with the issue of announcing voting results. I assume that section 55.1(2) is in place in order to prevent the IWA, for example, from announcing its strike votes or its ratification votes on a local-by-local basis where there is a coordinated bargaining situation. Is that a correct assumption'? If it is, can we also assume that this clause is in place because of the strategy employed by the IWA last fall?

HON. L. HANSON: I would be misleading my critic and the members opposite if that did not have a very large influence on this. Certainly I think I as Minister of Labour and my colleagues look at the situation as similar to how we handle our provincial elections, if you will. Parts of our province are in a different time zone than others, and I guess we produce the results in coordination. But again. It goes back to what the member suggested: the influencing of various units of a multi-unit bargaining situation. We don't believe that the announcement of the results in one place should happen so that it unduly influences the result of the other places either way, pro or con.

MR. GABELMANN: Again, not the end of the world in terms of an amendment to this bill. and one of the things to

[ Page 1632 ]

which people could have said,"We don't like it, but we can live with it," but I think yet another illustration of the imbalance that exists and is exacerbated by these changes. The trade union will be impeded in its ability to conduct its bargaining and its strike strategy by the result of a number of other sections, but also here as a result of being required to announce its decision all at once, without announcing decisions local by local, or however. The employers don't have any comparable restraint. If the employers have weak components, the union and the public don't get to find out. It's all conducted in secret. The votes that might take place, whether within a council or within the board of directors, or between a husband and wife in a small business, or whatever structure that might exist.... All of the discussions, all of the votes and all of the strategy are determined privately and secretly, and without the legislative restraint that unions are forced to conduct their strategy under.

In our minds it is just another illustration of an attempt by the government to bring in legislation that so grossly imbalances — if I can make a verb out of that noun — the labour relations situation in this province. Employers have all the clout as it is. They can pick up their capital and move to Taiwan or Brazil. Workers as a group don't have those kinds of options. Capital already has all the cards, and the labour legislation should be an effort to give some rights to workers, so that they can begin to deal with the power of the corporation, with the power of capital, which is untrammelled by legislation. Here we go, section after section, putting further restraints on the way in which workers can conduct their business. In this case, they're going to be told that they can't maximize their bargaining position by a technique of conducting a vote or perhaps releasing a vote at different times.

[4:15]

If the balance was equal on the other side, I would say fine, I can understand why you want to have this kind of provision. But it isn't equal on the other side. The board of directors may be having a horrendous fight about tactics or strategy or about how strong they are or how willing they are to back up their particular position by a lockout or whatever. No one will ever know about that debate in the board of directors' meeting. No one will ever know that half or just under half the directors wanted to do one thing, as opposed to what the other half wanted to do. Yet when the trade union expresses its views, it's wide open in public, and constrained in a way that allows them no latitude whatsoever.

I want to make the point again: I could live with this section 1f it were balanced, but it's not. I guess that's the theme of our objections to this legislation throughout.

MR. SIHOTA: I'd hate to see this section pass without at least having the opportunity to add my thoughts to the record. So I thought I would take advantage of the opportunity to register my concerns.

It is very interesting, this section. My friend from North Island has talked about the imbalance, so I won't, and as a result keep my comments short. You know, the minister often wonders how those of us on this side of the House come to the conclusion that the playing-field is not level, that it's being tilted in favour of one group or the other. This type of clause is one that tends to get you there, because it seems to apply to one side and not the other. This is one of many qualities that show up in this legislation that cause that concern.

The section on 55(l).... I take it that the intent once again is not to influence, as the minister says. It talks about a vote. The way the section is worded, sure, you cannot take a vote, but there are other ways to influence. You can certainly call whatever voting you're having done at a particular time a poll, as opposed to a vote, and taking a poll isn't banned. It's very easy for one to work their way around section 55.1(2) by simply doing polling of various locals: "No, we're not having a vote; we're just conducting a poll." If you want to cut out the question of influence, the section doesn't do it. Really, it's sort of taking an attack at the trade union movement to try to tell them that they can't do something that they've done in the past, one of their tactics. It just removes it because of a perception on the part of the government, I guess, that it influences votes further down the line. Quite frankly, I don't think it does, and I don't think that it will in the future deter from strong votes or mediocre votes. It's certainly my experience of trade unions that they're sufficiently democratic and that the word gets down such that the members are quite capable of making decisions on their own as to which way they should be voting on a particular matter. Instead of having a 92 percent vote, you may get a 91.5 percent vote. But it's not going to change the end result of the vote in any substantial way. All it does is show a bias and serve as another element of provocation. I guess that's the concern that I had.

The whole section 55.1(2) is a little bit like federal elections. During the course of federal elections, as the minister knows, they start and finish voting in Newfoundland and start counting the results in Newfoundland way before we even get out of bed — some would argue — in British Columbia. There's always a debate in this province as to whether or not the results of federal elections should be released in advance as they're being counted across the country. I guess we've got a law that says you don't do that. In the United States they have a law where you can track the results across the country. But anyone who's been involved in the political process knows how it is that you can work your way around and get that information in any event. So I guess 55.1(2) reminds me a little bit about the law in relation to Canadian elections.

I don't have strong feelings with respect to opposing the changes in section 31 with respect to 55.1(2) anywhere near the degree that I did with the other sections, but I just want to point out to the minister that it's very easy to get around the section; it's very easy to do what the minister says he's trying to prevent. I think the section really is another one of those that just serves to inflame, provoke and tip the field. That's all you're doing here, and I don't think it was particularly necessary.

Section 55.1(1) is a similar matter. I won't reiterate the comments about imbalance, but it is again.... I understand that when I was out of the room someone did make the point about elections in Canada, in terms of whether or not.... It's a little bit like saying that everybody in Canada is eligible to vote, whether they are a British subject or a recent immigrant, or whatever. We've set down some laws in terms of who can vote, and perhaps the same type of thinking ought to apply in trade union matters — particularly in trade union matters — where I think that people who are voting on the collective agreement ought to be members of the union. But I think you've heard that, so I don't intend to repeat the arguments on that as well.

I guess there's somewhat of an ambivalent feeling on my part about the section in terms of its wording, but there's no ambivalent feeling in terms of the shot it takes at the tactics of

[ Page 1633 ]

trade unions. It's not a burning issue, but it starts to burn when one starts to read the act section by section, and begins to see that the little things that they were able to do in the past are now being denied of them. This is the kind of section that will inflame; that's what it serves to do, Mr. Minister.

MR. CLARK: I just have a simple question for the minister, tying this one in with the section you just stood a minute ago. I understand that this allows all people who are not members of the bargaining unit — but, I assume, paying dues — to vote on all matters of collective bargaining. In the old Code, as I understand it — I could be wrong — everybody got to vote on whether or not to strike. I see your assistant nodding his head. They got to vote on whether or not to strike, so now they get to vote on all matters of collective bargaining. Is that your intent, or is it the intent to say that for all ballots that are decided upon under the previous section, which you're going to bring back, whenever there us a government supervised secret ballot, all members of the bargaining unit get to vote? Or is it your intent to say that on all matters of collective bargaining, regardless of whether the secret ballot is ordered, all members get to vote? Do you understand the distinction?

HON L. HANSON: Are you suggesting that we want everyone to vote on all of procedures that go on within the union, and so on?

MR. CLARK: Is that what you want?

HON. L. HANSON: No.

MR. GABELMANN: I'd like to clarify it. I think the existing legislation is that everybody, member or not, who is an employee in a certified operation gets to vote on strike votes. The change appears to be that they will get to vote on all matters relating to bargaining. Is that correct, first of all?

Interjection.

MR. GABELMANN: Yes. I have the assurance from the Minister of Tourism that that's correct, and that gives me a certainty that it's correct. Madam Chairman, I won't make any further comment.

All matters relating to collective bargaining include a variety of matters that are normally internal union discussion relating to strategy and issues, and the public, the Labour ministry and the employer never even knew there were discussions or votes going on. But unless I'm not reading this correctly, it seems now, if it has anything to do with collective bargaining, that there will need to be a vote which will include people who are not members of the union. If that's the case, I'm a bit concerned. I wonder if the minister would clarify that.

HON. L. HANSON: As I said, we passed over that section which was one concern on who could vote and so on. There was an intimation there that this voting procedure, secrecy and everything, dealt with everything that was going on within the union.

What we're saying here is that those who have, in a very broad sense, a substantial interest in determination of a strike, which, of course, is in the legislation now.... But the ratification of a collective agreement, a vote on an employer's offer. those votes that are ordered by the board, should be party to the members being affected by it. But the people who are conscientious objectors are removed from that. They don't have the ability to vote on it.

MR. GABELMANN: I accept, and I think we would agree, with an intention or with language that concluded, in effect, the Rand formula. Non-members would have the right to participate in a strike vote, would have the right to participate in a ratification vote and a subsequent ratification vote that the employers might now put to the union under the new language. You can't rationally or reasonably argue against that. Everybody who's going to be affected in that way should have the right to vote on those issues. But it doesn't say that.

I would accept that that is the intention of the minister. It may well have been the intention of the drafter, who knows? But it doesn't say that. It says, and I hadn't picked up on this myself very well earlier. I confess. but suddenly now I see the consequences in a way that I hadn't seen before. It says that these people who are not members — shall be entitled to participate in votes held by a trade union of its members with regard to a matter related to collective bargaining." It doesn't say in votes that are ordered by the board or requested by the employer or government supervised strike votes or government supervised ratification votes. It doesn't find language to deal with any of those issues: it simply says: "If a trade union is having a meeting...."

Let me describe a situation that could happen under this clause, as I read it. The trade union has a meeting to discuss its strategy in respect of the collective bargaining that's underway. The meeting might be to delay for a week the next meeting with the employers: or it may be on a whole host of different issues. Now non-members will be able to come to the meeting and vote. We're not talking here about a supervised vote. We're talking about: "...participate in votes held by a trade union of its members" — those are often by show of hands at a meeting — "with regard to a matter related to collective bargaining. That will allow non-members to come to the meeting to participate in a show-of-hands vote about strategy in respect of how the collective bargaining should or shouldn't proceed. I don't believe that that's the government's intention at all. But I believe that what I'm suggesting would happen under the law the way it's worded.

[4:30]

Again, it may be useful to stand this section down as well, because it relates to a similar kind of issue, where the language is clearly ambiguous and does not lead to the conclusion apparently sought by the government.

MR. RABBITT: If the minister is wanting to respond, it might answer one of my questions. following up on the line of questioning from the critic and the definition of "matter related to collective bargaining : 2 — in 55.1(1). Would that in clude such things as the selection of the negotiating commit tee and the formation of negotiating demands?

HON. L. HANSON: I believe that when you look at the definition in the interpretation section of the Labour Code, it says that "'collective bargaining' means negotiating in good faith with a view to the conclusion of a collective agreement or its renewal or revision, or to the regulation of relations between an employer and employees." I'm sure the IRC will follow that definition and narrow the voting considerably.

[ Page 1634 ]

Again, I don't get that interpretation that my critic is giving me, quite frankly, from that: "All employees in a bargaining unit, whether or not they are members of the trade union or of any constituent union of a council of trade unions, shall be entitled to participate in votes held by a trade union of its members with regard to a matter related to collective bargaining." When you look at the definition of collective bargaining, I believe that that does narrow it down to those issues that I talked about earlier: that is, ratification, strike votes and that sort of thing — mind you, strike votes are covered in any case. But I don't agree with that interpretation. I'm sure the IRC will determine that in a much narrower manner, taking that into consideration.

MR. GABELMANN: I'm sure the IRC will want to do just what the minister is suggesting; but I'm also sure — absolutely sure — that it will not be able to do what the minister thinks it should do. The minister read the definition of collective bargaining. It means negotiating in good faith. Part of negotiating in good faith, presumably, would be presenting a package of proposals to the other side which are good-faith proposals. The union will have a meeting of its members long before the contract has expired. They will sit down and discuss which items should go into the package, which issues should be put on the table for bargaining. That's related to collective bargaining. Normally that takes place in a meeting. There are no ballots sent out to the full membership about that. It's a meeting process; it's almost a seminar process. Normally only members of the union participate in that particular process. Now if you read this, I think that without any doubt, if you determine or if you judge — and I think the IRC will be required to judge — that what goes into a package of demands or proposals from either side, but in this case the trade union, does relate to collective bargaining.... Because that's what collective bargaining is all about: the proposals and the counter-proposals.

So everybody, whether they are a member or not, shall be entitled to participate in a vote. Votes are held in various ways. Votes are not just held by government's supervised, government-worded questions, but are also held at a meeting by a show of hands. In this situation of formulating contract proposals, that's almost always the way it's done in a democratic organization.

So what you're saying here is that non-members will have the right to come to the meeting and vote. Now if you want to inject a note of instability into collective bargaining, this is a good way of doing it. Let's say that the minister suggests that our interpretation — or my interpretation; I haven't canvassed this with my colleagues to see if they agree with me or not....

AN HON. MEMBER: You're right; you're always right.

MR. GABELMANN: No, I'm not. If a non-member of the union demands to be allowed to go the meeting to discuss what form the collective bargaining will take, whether it is formulation of the contract demands, whether it's tactics in respect of how and when to bargain, whether it's tactics as to whether or not the union will ask for a mediator to be injected — a whole variety of issues which can come up.... A non-member can go to the meeting and say: "I demand to be able to have a vote on this issue." Or a whole group of them could go; you can imagine what that will do to the meeting. If the chair of the meeting says,"No, you're not able to vote; I won't count your votes," they could then go to the IRC and say: "We weren't allowed to vote, and section 5 5.1(1) of the Code says we can vote, because it says we 'shall be entitled to participate in votes held by a trade union of its members with regard to a matter related to collective bargaining."'

All they will have to prove to the IRC is that the matter that they were refused permission to vote upon was a matter relating to collective bargaining. Formulation of contract proposals surely is a matter relating to collective bargaining; determination of where and when to bargain surely has to do with collective bargaining; a decision about whether to seek the assistance of a third party, a mediator, is surely related to collective bargaining; and on and on and on.

I think the argument is unassailable, frankly, and I also think that the government's intention is to require that these people have a vote beyond just strike votes — also ratification votes, and with that point we don't disagree. We say fine; we'll let the section go, if that's what you want it to say. But the member for Yale-Lillooet (Mr. Rabbitt) raised an even bigger issue, in a sense: who conducts the bargaining for you is surely a matter of collective bargaining.

The member knows. I'm doing this thinking as I go; I haven't had time to think this one through and prepare myself. But you could have a situation where a majority of nonmembers could show up at a meeting and select the bargaining committee over the objections of the union, which has been charged under the law with conducting the bargaining. That's a bizarre situation, but it's conceivable, if not likely. We need to be precise in matters of law, particularly of this kind.

The new bill is not going to stand or fail on this section, that's for sure, but it's clear that there is a loophole here that is too broad and potentially destabilizing, and it is simply an error in drafting, probably. The simple solution now would be to do with this section what we did with section 30, which is to stand it down.

HON. L. HANSON: I honestly don't think there's a problem, but it's so closely related to section 30 that I will agree to standing it over and coming back tomorrow morning.

MADAM CHAIRMAN: Does section 31 as amended stand? Is that what we're asking?

HON. L. HANSON: No, Madam Chairman. I've agreed, with the opposition's agreement, that we will revisit 30 and 31 tomorrow.

MADAM CHAIRMAN: Okay. Section 31 as amended is deferred.

On section 32.

MR. GABELMANN: We have no problems with section 32, except as it relates to the imbalance in relationship to section 33. I think we would more appropriately have this debate under section 33 than section 32. Ironically, the amended 58 is seemingly the precise wording that existed in the 1973 legislation. We've gone back to that; I hadn't realized that until someone else pointed it out.

It's tortuous wording; you have to be a lawyer from Philadelphia to understand it. We didn't have a debate about it in 1973, but we might have. Nevertheless, the principle that

[ Page 1635 ]

a council of unions must have permission from the IRC prior to dissolution is good. I think the principle is sound — that that discretion should exist with the IRC. We would argue that the IRC should have discretion in a whole variety of areas, and for that reason, unless someone else has any comment on 32, we'll have the debate in 33 about this whole principle.

Section 32 approved.

On section 33.

MR. GABELMANN: The very principle of the IRC having discretion about whether or not a trade union council can be broken up is violated in 34. If the employers' councils choose to break up and follow the rules in terms of timing, the IRC has no discretion. It's either a curious view of how labour relations should work — which is that the employers should do whatever they want without regard to what the IRC might think, and the employees have to do precisely what the IRC thinks — or the government's just made a mistake.

I'd like to stop at this point, before making any speeches, and ask: is it in fact the government's intention that unions have to have permission to break up their councils, but employers don't — that they can get it automatically?

[4:45]

HON. L. HANSON: That's interesting to hear, Madam Chairman. I guess the reaction to the accreditation of employers' organizations and their ability to withdraw was as a result of a number of presentations to that effect from individual employers. If it had been raised as a matter of concern that unions wanted that same ability, we might have responded to it, but it was not even raised as an issue, as to the certification as a bargaining unit. The whole thing behind it was that there was a great concern expressed by a number of employers as to why they wouldn't want to join an accredited employers' organization, because it was almost impossible to get out of it if they changed their mind later. There is a different procedure, of course, advocated in this. But we never heard from anyone that there was a concern by the organized labour to have the same privilege.

MR. GABELMANN: Madam Chairman, that is an absolutely appalling admission by the minister. In my words, what the minister said was: "We brought in section 33. We didn't make any changes in respect of 32, because we didn't have any requests for changes to that particular section in respect of trade unions, but we brought in changes in respect of employers' councils, or councils of employer groups, because there was a request." You don't make labour law based on requests from parties. The essential element in labour law is that (1) it be fair and balanced, and (2) that it meets some objectives.

Later in the discussion on 331 want to get to the whole question of objectives — the whole question of allowing for whipsawing and all of the bad old days in terms of a million different negotiations going on, rather than having coordinated bargaining. But first I've got to deal with the suggestion from the minister that because trade unions did not request that they be allowed to break up their trade union councils, no change was made; but a change was made because the employers asked for permission to be able to act out of accredited employer groups without reference to the IRC, just by asking. If the labour law of this province was based on a summary of the requests of all the parties, we would have a mishmash that would be absolutely unmanageable. We wouldn't have labour law at all.

The government must have some objective in this matter. Either it wants a return to whipsawing and the old style of 17 different sets of negotiations in for example, and literally hundreds of different negotiations in the forest industry; of it wants the continuation of a trend that began in the early seventies, which was to try to get coordinated bargaining. The government, by these two sections, has demonstrated that it has no policy at all, because it goes in one direction in respect of employees and in a contradictory direction in terms of employers. It clearly has no game plan, no goals. It doesn't know whether it's in favour of whipsawing and individual bargaining between employees and their employers directly, without accredited groups. It doesn't know whether it's going in that direction or in the direction of coordinated bargaining, such as we've had through CLRA and FIR and other groups in British Columbia, and in the building trades by the council that exists.

My speech isn't together. It's a bit jumbled, because I'm still standing here astounded that the minister is suggesting that he's going to allow employers to break up accredited bargaining councils simply by saying they want to, without reference to the IRC, and not give that same right to the unions. I don't think either of them should have that right. They should both be required to justify to the IRC why it is in the public interest — if I might use those two words — that that particular bargaining council and particular relationship should be broken up. When you go back to the bargaining that took place a year ago — or whatever it was — between CLRA and the building trades unions. It's clear there were CLRA members who wanted to get out of CLRA, for a variety of reasons. But was that useful to the public good in the long term? I don't know. Maybe it was; maybe it wasn't. But shouldn't the governing agency for labour relations have some say over that particular issue? Isn't that what you have a Labour Relations Board or an Industrial Relations Council for — to make some determination as to whether or not that's appropriate?

If, however, you’re going to say no, it's not appropriate that they have that right. that say; that if MacMillan Bloedel wants to get out of FIR. then let it go; it goes by virtue of having applied to go.... If that's what you believe should happen, then surely to God you've got to say to the union members that they have the same right. Let's use the CLRA building trades unions analogy, because it's clearer and more understandable in this context. rather than mixing it up with the FIR, IWA, PPWC, CPU issues. Look at what happens in the buildings trades. You're saying that individual employers, if they do it in time and follow the procedures, can pull out of CLRA and effectively bust it: in the current climate, it would break up CLRA. But member unions of the B.C. and Yukon Territory Building and Construction Trades Council cannot do the same thing. They can't simply say, as you might expect two or three unions last bargaining to say: "We want out because we don't like what the majority of the council has imposed on us." It's just bizarre.

What we should do when we look at this kind of lawmaking is say to ourselves. particularly when it comes to councils of unions and accredited employer groups: what are the objectives of public policy here? I would argue that the

[ Page 1636 ]

objectives of public policy are to achieve as much coordinated bargaining as is possible; to not allow fragmentation: to not allow whipsawing; to achieve some kind of rationality in the collective bargaining process; to achieve a situation where you do in one set of bargaining what might take 17 different sets, or many more, in other industries. But there is no clear expression of public policy in these amendments.

I heard the minister saying: "When I went around the province, I heard some employer groups" — and I can imagine they were CLRA members, incidentally — "saying, 'We want to be able to get out.' I didn't hear any union groups saying: 'We want to get out."' So the minister just said: "Well, they've asked for it, so we'll give it to them." That is not the way to develop public policy.

I have rambled a bit and taken a bit longer in hopes that the minister, in his discussions over there, would have an opportunity to reflect on what is being proposed and to see whether or not he wants to either justify it or perhaps stand it down too.

MR. CLARK: I will be brief and let the minister respond. The member for North Island has explained most of the rationale. I find it somewhat bizarre, and I am not sure the minister understands the consequences of allowing these kinds of units to break up.

Let me give you some examples. There are two things that can happen in terms of whipsawing. On the one hand, an employer can attempt to break out of the council one unit that has a weaker bargaining unit, attempt to force down the wage at that competing weaker bargaining unit, and set the pattern for the rest of the industry. I can think of a number of cases where that would be the case; for example, the Metal Industries Association, where they could pick off or carve out a couple of units, drive down the wages and attempt to force the overall wages down because they are all competing against each other.

The second area would be the converse: the trade union could pick off one company that is split off from the bargaining unit and attempt to strike only that one unit and drive the wage up and set the pattern for the rest of the industry that way,

It has tremendous consequences, particularly where there is a competitive environment. In some areas it is not quite as serious, because you can have differing wage rates, for example, within bargaining units in the same industry, if they are say an export market. But if it is a domestic market like the steel — fabricating industry, and you've got 30 or 40 steel-fabricating companies competing against each other, then the wages, it seems to me, have to be kept in common. That is why there is the Metal Industries Association, a master organization that bargains for that industry. But if you allow them to be carved off, then you are setting it up either for the trade union to drive the wage up and set the pattern, or for the employer to take one of those sectors down and therefore have a lower wage for the whole unit to set the standard.

It has tremendous consequences for industrial stability. That is the purpose of having it very difficult to get out. Many employers don't like having councils. I understand many municipalities don't like being forced to be members of councils. But there is a rationale for it, and the rationale is industrial stability. It is a public-policy rationale that has been fought over and fought through for years. To allow, with the stroke of a pen, the ability of individual employers to get out of their councils sets up this kind of checkerboard situation in terms of striking, lockouts and setting the pattern. It really has tremendous consequences in many sectors; the forest industry for example, in which we have had lots of talk in the pulp bureau of different pulp companies getting out.

It is exactly the situation we had in the sixties with trade unions, where we had construction unions whipsawing each other and strikes shutting down the whole construction industry because of one trade union. That is why we had a council of trade unions forced on those trade unions for that kind of stability.

This says: "We're going to keep that, but we are going to allow employers to do the reverse." So the council of trade unions in the construction industry, for example, presumably would have to sit down with each individual employer if there is no CLRA — if they are all split up. It is impractical, but worse than that, it is going to mean significant disruption. It doesn't make any public-policy sense.

The minister, in all fairness, hasn't given us a broad public-policy rationale. He said they had some employers come to them and say: "We want out." Of course that is going to happen; lots of employers want to get out. They think they can get the wages lower, for example, in their own unit, and maybe they can. But where is the public-policy rationale, in terms of how that affects British Columbia and industrial stability?

Maybe the minister didn't explain it well enough the first time, and I will give him an opportunity now to give us a broad public interest rationale for allowing employers' accredited associations to be split up.

[5:00]

HON. L. HANSON: First of all, we didn't respond just because someone raised the issue of accreditation. The issue was raised and an awful lot of thought was given before it was brought in.

The fact is that we believe that the ultimate effect of allowing this is that the employers' organizations won't break up; they will become stronger than they are now. Certainly the issue, as my critic suggested, was raised by the CLRA, by a number of municipalities and by a number of lumber industries who had some concerns. I think that now, as a matter of fact, the interior lumber manufacturers who bargain as a group are not an accredited organization; they're simply an association. A few of the members split ranks during the recent IWA forestry strike, but are in fact now back in the organization and stronger than ever. They're united, and I think that in itself is relative proof that there is a benefit to some democracy in that system. Where there is a union bargaining council, it has been imposed on the unions by the Labour Relations Board after a specific reference. In an accredited employers' organization there has been no such imposition. The employers have voluntarily joined together, and we've only made it difficult for them to leave an organization which they've voluntarily joined.

To suggest that because it was a cause for concern we reacted to it without giving it careful consideration is just not true. We spent an awful lot of time discussing it, and the concerns mentioned here today are items that were addressed and of concern to us through this process. We believe that the end result will be accredited employers' organizations that are much stronger and that will in fact have to work in a cooperative manner to the benefit of the group, also keeping in mind the individuals' concerns because of this ability to get

[ Page 1637 ]

out of the organization, if you will. But the ability to get out of the organization is not a simple application. There are some time-limits and so on involved in it. As I recollect the municipal field.... It's interesting to note that when the accreditation was originally brought in, it was fought tooth and nail by the building trades, for one, and by a number of other unions, in my experience. Again, I think we've given it an awful lot of consideration. We feel that the ability of employers to get out of accredited organizations, under certain conditions or after having lived up to certain conditions, will make those organizations stronger.

MR. SIHOTA: Madam Chairwoman — I got it right this time — I want to talk about this section because it really doesn't make any sense in my mind to allow for what the minister calls voluntary and I'll call unilateral spring boarding out by employers. I know that the minister has had some experience at the municipal level, as have I, and I'll talk in a minute or two about experience at the municipal level with this type of provision. But let me tell the minister what it seems to me this section achieves.

I guess I never did practise labour law, but when I was going to law school I did take the course, and I think we used to call it the big bang theory at that time: the classic example used.... I see some of the assistants are smiling, so my memory must be serving me reasonably well.

Interjection.

MR. SIHOTA: I hope that comment from the second member for Nanaimo (Mr. Lovick) never made it into the record.

In any event, this situation.... I can't remember whether it was in Canada or the United States. The inverse used to happen with airports in the United States. There used to be different unions representing the different constituent elements of employees within airports. You would have, for example, the baggage handlers, and on one day the baggage handlers' contract would come up and they would want to go out. They would go out, there would be picket lines up, everybody who was working at the airport would respect the picket lines, and the next thing you know, the whole airport would be shut down. Then a week or two later the ticket agents' union contract, for example, would come up, they would reach an impasse, they would go through all the necessary steps, nothing would happen and they would go out. They would put up their picket lines, and the airport would be shut down again. The following week it would be the maintenance workers.

I think the minister is catching on to the principle. At the end of the day it was deemed that all of these unions had to get their act together and bargain as one entity. There was an association of trade unions representing workers employed in airports, to ensure that there weren't consistent and continual shutdowns at airports.

The inverse of that is being allowed to happen by this section. You can just take the forest industry as an example in this province. If you're saying, which you are, through this legislation, that forest companies will be allowed to opt out of their accredited organization, then what you're really saying is that each individual organization or employer gets to negotiate with their individual trade union. So you have the situation where you could have a small sawmill, let's say in Shirley, British Columbia — if it's still there: it's been a long time since I was up there and working — and you could have a dispute. You could have the employer opting out. You could have no contract being executed by employer and employees there. You could then have all the normal processes you could have going on — mediation, arbitration and so on — and at the end of the day you'd get a strike. And the 35 workers at that operation— or two of them — could walk down to Prince George, with the wording of this proposed legislation, and put up their pickets somewhere outside of another sawmill.

The potential for allowing employers to opt out, as I read this section.... The minister wants to tell me where I'm wrong, and he should. The potential for increased walkouts, strikes, disruption and further instability within the field of labour law, if I can put it that way, is heightened by this type of voluntary opting out without a check or balance under the provision of the legislation. The check and balance used to be the Labour Relations Board or, in this case, the IRC. It ought to have a say in whether or not these people should be allowed to opt out.

If I want to put on a hat as an employer, I can remember my experience — and the minister had experience, I believe, at the municipal level — in Esquimalt as an alderman and as one of the people in charge of the finance committee at the municipality. We were engaged in some fairly heavy negotiate tions not only with CUPE but with our police unions, and all the municipalities in greater Victoria were one and the same.

We were engaged in a joint bargaining process. Now if Esquimalt — in the example that I experienced — was allowed to opt out, and so were Saanich, Victoria and Oak Bay, then you would increase by fourfold the potential for strikes, walkouts — and I've probably picked. In the case of the police, what would probably be deemed an essential service.

You've just increased the potential for a walkout by fourfold.

It was that big bang theory: you get all of the employers and all of the employees together. and the consequences of an impasse and a breakdown in negotiations in a strike are so severe that that pressure in itself would assist in keeping people at the negotiating table working towards an agreement. In a funny sort of way. the big bang theory worked. Much as it worked in airports. It worked at the local level in the municipalities on southern Vancouver Island. Believe me, at that time I was one who advocated that Esquimalt should opt out, because I know we could have got a better deal than anybody else got with respect to their police. because there's a unique relationship between Esquimalt's police and the municipality. But in other areas — in Victoria. Saanich and Oak Bay — that may not necessarily have been.

You are heightening the potential for further labour unrest. If the purpose of the legislation is to prevent that type of unrest, that type of breakdown in the process, to prevent economic injury being inflicted by either side on the other, then this section doesn't achieve it. It totally frustrates the intent by allowing an employer.... And I realize there are certain time-frames. etc., that are attached; I understand what the minister is saying about that. So long as those are satisfied, it frustrates the process, because it allows the employer to opt out. The moment you allow the employer to opt out, you're inviting the potential for.... This is what this whole legislation is about. It's about, I think, trying to prevent the potential for breakdowns and labour unrest — or management unrest, if you want to put it from the other point of view. Yet this legislation increases that potential; this section does.

[ Page 1638 ]

If they want out, they ought to make their case. The legislation, as it stands right now, says that labour unions must make their case if they want to opt out, à la the experience with airports. It seems to me that the same ought to apply to employers, not just for reasons of equity and equal treatment, which are important in themselves, but also for reasons of increasing the chances of harmony and dispute resolution and agreements at the end of the day without disruption, which is, as I said — certainly I would like to think so — the intent of some of the things that are being proposed, even from the minister's perspective. You're frustrating that.

I don't know who it is that has requested these changes; the minister said it was certain groups during the public hearing process. I guess that matters or it doesn't matter depending on where you're coming from. I know some of you have remarked about how it matters. Either way, it seems to me that it ought to have been thought out a little bit more carefully than it appears in light of the comments being made now in response to the minister's opening explanation of this section.

I do think that this section also should be stood because it simply increases the chances of disruption. If not, perhaps the minister could explain how he thinks that view of it is flawed. I'd like to know where he thinks that that thinking I've just outlined has a hole in it, and how it is that he thinks that this will not create the potential for further labour unrest or disruption in the workforce.

[5:15]

HON. L. HANSON: I think that the members opposite have been attacking this from a very negative point of view, if you will. I'd like to explain a little bit the other side of that equation. The construction industry is one; municipal field is another one. It was certainly brought to my attention — and, I believe, with a great deal of integrity — that the strength of employers' accredited bargaining units is being hampered by the restrictiveness of opting out of the organization; that, in fact, there are a number of municipalities, if you want, a number of unionized construction firms and so on, that would become part of an employers' accredited bargaining association if it wasn't so difficult for them to get out of it. The permanence of joining that organization made it very difficult for them to join an employers' organization, and that's the negative side of the way it is now.

But, you know, I do see in my mind quite a difference between an employer having a contract with seven or eight different unions and trying to negotiate each one of those individually as opposed to an employer and a group of trade unions as one group and one employer. I see quite a difference in that relationship and what we're suggesting here; that there's an ability for an employer, if he so wishes, to negotiate with his own people after he's lived up to certain conditions and when he wants to get out of an employer's accredited association. I believe, and I think that that's what we'll prove, that this clause of Bill 19 will, in fact, strengthen the employer's organizations and you will see a growth in that accreditation not only in terms of numbers of accreditation but numbers of people who belong to an accredited employers' organization.

MR. MILLER: There has been a change in the last couple of years in the traditional thinking of employers with regard to employers' organizations. I know particularly in pulp there has been a lot of debate among employers about the advisability of staying in what is called the bureau, which is the Pulp and Paper Industrial Relations Bureau. In fact, some companies have expressed even publicly the desire to opt out.

The minister may recall that in the last set of negotiations in the pulp industry that did happen. Various companies announced their intention to remain separate from the bargaining process. The reaction of unions was perhaps a bit strange, if you go back even further in history, because unions have really, I think, liked the opportunity to whipsaw. Certainly when I was active in the trade union movement, if I thought there was an opportunity to do that kind of thing, or to leap-frog, as they call it.... Our job was to get the best we could, and we would use any tactic within the rules and regulations, etc., to do that. But the reaction of the unions was that if the intention of the companies in opting out was to try to pick off a so-called weak local — for example, one that had suffered perhaps an extraordinary amount of downtime — or if the company was particularly shaky, the union served notice that that was going to happen irregardless.... Sorry — regardless. It's a good thing my colleague from Nanaimo wasn't here, or he would have chastised me for that.

AN HON. MEMBER: He would, too.

MR. MILLER: I know!

The unions, in responding to that situation, said: "We intend to treat the employers as one. Whether you are or are not, that's the way we're going to treat you, and if you try to pick one off, you're dealing with all of us." So there has been a bit of a change or a shift, if you like, in traditional thinking, I think, as a result of the severe recession and the impact that that's had on both employers and unions, and in their response to that very difficult period of time. Also, stories have come out with regard to the IWA-FIR dispute of last year to the effect that.... Obviously we were able to see publicly that a number of companies were quite prepared to settle with the IWA. Presumably, though, there were some companies there in the background who maybe didn't say, but who obviously had enough clout to prevent that from happening and in fact threatened.... I don't know if they ultimately did it, but they threatened to take member companies to court for signing an agreement, for breaking the employers' bargaining organization.

Getting back briefly to another section that we've discussed in terms of employers voting — in other words, treating employers' organizations as democratic organizations — presumably there is one person or one company, one vote. I can be forgiven the suspicion that that was not the case. In fact, some single companies had a heck of a lot of clout when it came to determining what the company's position was with regard to that set of negotiations and probably previous ones as well. You can also draw the conclusion based on some of that information that that dispute might not have gone on that long if the employers had been more reasonable.

You might want to say that given that, why shouldn't we have the situation where employers can opt out and sign agreements with their respective unions? I think the other side of the coin is even worse or has more potential for problems. I recall the former Minister of Labour, Mr. King, when he dealt with the question of joint bargaining among the construction unions. In fact, he was fairly forceful in saying: "Get together and bargain. We can't have this, one union one

[ Page 1639 ]

week or one union the next month. We can't have it. It is too chaotic."

So for the sake of some kind of stability in the process, there has to be that joint approach. Both sides really were dealt with in the same manner under the existing labour legislation. In other words, the discretion of the minister is there, and it is more than curious that the bill, which is extremely interventionist in terms of the activities of trade unions, when we talk about the activities of employers, all of a sudden it is not interventionist and somehow employers are not the problem or possibly the problem when it comes to labour relations matters; it is the unions.

I would be interested, when we get back to that section of voting, in whether there is one company, one vote when it comes to employers' organizations. Given the interventionist nature of the legislation, why would the minister want to take that discretion that exists under the legislation now with respect to employers opting out of employers' organizations'? Why would he want the council to lose the discretion where obviously some situation could arise where the council might, in the public interest, decide that it would be inappropriate for employers to opt out of an employers' organization — that for the sake of harmonious labour relations, it would simply be inappropriate? At the present time he has given away that discretionary power.

If the problem is simply, as the minister just stated, the difficulty of withdrawing, then change it, but retain the discretionary power, because in the long run I think labour relations, or bargaining, would be better served with that discretionary power retained under the act.

HON. L. HANSON: I think the member opposite was telling me some of the things that had happened. As I understand what happened in the seventies, I think it was a Labour minister, probably by the name of Williams, who ordered the joint trades to bargain as one.

The CLRA and the other employers' organizations are voluntary organizations that they form on their own. There's no mandatory requirement for them to do that; they form it on their own. I have some difficulty in understanding why they should not be allowed to get out of it if they so desire.

One of the difficulties that I expressed earlier — and it's certainly been exhibited to me many times — is that there is a reluctance in some cases for employers' accredited organizations to grow and continue in strength as they should, because there's a great fear of the ability to get out of the organization once you join it. It's practically impossible to get out, unless there are very unique circumstances. It seems to me that the ultimate result of this ability is that those employer organizations will eventually become even stronger.

I guess the members know that section 57 provides that a council of trade unions may be certified. If that is required, to secure and maintain industrial peace. Multi-trade bargaining in the construction industry is an example of a decision made by the Labour Relations Board, as it relates to that section of the act. There is no equivalent power in the employers' responsibilities, or at least in the act. Employer bargaining associations are voluntary bodies, and they were created as a means to meet the needs of the employers to bargain with the unions. They found it advantageous to bargain in a collective manner, or together. I believe the amendment will ensure that this is a viable option, but I believe that it also will ensure that ultimately those organizations will become even stronger. In any case, I guess we have a difference there.

MR. IMILLER: Mr. Minister, are you saying that you don't want to retain the discretion because there is some difficulty in the council dealing with the question? Is that really the issue" With discretion. surely ), on have the ability to allow employers to opt out. Are you saying it's going to be just too hot an issue and you don't want to deal with it; therefore we'll cast the le2islation so that the words "fulfilling certain conditions'' mean they shall be able to get out? It seems to me that's the only explanation I've heard as to why you would want to forgo that discretion. Whether they were voluntary organizations or not. there's no denying, particularly in the forest industry. that it's a significant set of ne2otiations to this province and to a number of employers an employees. I think we would probably agree that that's better undertaken in the form it has been in for the past while, and that's through joint bargaining with the employees and the employers.

That's the only explanation I can see: that if you left the discretion in there. then somehow the council would have to deal with the question and might not want to do it.

[5:30]

MR. SIHOTA: I'm still looking for an explanation from the minister. because I certainly didn't perceive that the minister's answer addressed the concern that I laid out. Could the minister explain why he thinks this section is not fraught with the potential for increased labour disruption?

HON. L. HANSON: I think I did explain why I thought it was not fraught with labour disruption. The Labour Relations Board makes a decision as to the accreditation of an employer's organization. They look over it to see if it's an appropriate one, but they don't make the decision as to who would be members. The members who come forward for the accreditation process do it voluntarily in becoming part of the organization, even though the LRB makes a decision that they are an accredited organization once it's brought forward.

It seems to me that the member opposite doesn't subscribe — and I grant him that right to disagree with me — to the fact that voluntary membership in an employers' accredited organization equates to voluntary removal from it, living within the bounds of these time-limits we have set here. There's no doubt in my mind that, employers being reasonable and rational people — and unions being the same — the benefits of belonging to an employers' organization will be apparent to individual employers and that they will stay in.

I think that the ultimate result of this will be stronger employers' organizations. As a matter of fact, it's my understanding, although I don't have that before me in writing. that the forest industry has said, and the Labour Relations Board has accepted it, that if anyone wishes to opt out of their organization they certainly have no disagreement with that. They wouldn't oppose anyone wanting to opt out of it. So that's a truly democratic sort of situation. Voluntarily in and voluntarily out, when you belong to any association, should be the criterion, particularly in the case of employer organizations accredited for bargaining purposes. It certainly ensures that any employers' organization has to be responsive to the concerns of its individual members, within reason and as it relates to the whole of the organization. The ultimate result, I think, is going to be a stronger employers' organization as opposed to a weaker one.

[ Page 1640 ]

MR. SIHOTA: Well, let's take it from the other angle then, and the other angle basically is this question: why does the minister feel that employee organizations and trade unions who join associations voluntarily ought not to be allowed to remove themselves voluntarily? What public policy reasons are there behind not allowing voluntary opting out in the case of employee organizations?

HON. L. HANSON: I know the member understands the difference. I don't know whether he's questioning me to see if I understand the difference, but they've been put into the council as a result of due process. I know the member understands why they were: because there were sometimes six, seven or eight different unions representing various sectors, particularly in the construction industry, of the trade or of the trade area dealing, because of the diversity of the construction industry, with one employer.

[Mr. Pelton in the chair.]

I think there's quite a difference between one employer negotiating with one representative of all of those unions and one employer dealing with seven representatives of all of those unions. I am sure that the member opposite understands exactly why they were ordered into a council in the first place. But there is quite a difference with one employer dealing with one bargaining team representative of all of the unions that he must deal with as opposed to all of them dealing with one employer.

MR. SIHOTA: If the minister sees that there is a problem with one employer dealing with seven different trade unions, does not the opposite hold, in that is there not a problem with one trade union having to deal with seven different employers? For example, in the forestry trade, isn't it exactly the inverse of the airport example I used earlier on? Does the minister not see the same problem in principle there, and if not, why not?

HON. L. HANSON: Well, no, I don't, quite frankly, see the same.... To me, the individual employer negotiating with seven or eight different unions that he must deal with through the course of his business is totally different than a number of employers getting together in an accredited unit to bargain their contract.

In fact, with the forest industry — and I guess the majority of the representatives of the forest industry are IWA, without much question — whether an employer decides to bargain with that unit individually or collectively is quite different than if he had seven different labour organizations that he had to bargain with. I mean, the whole idea, the whole concept, is totally different. It just doesn't even relate together in my mind.

MR. SIHOTA: One of us here is not communicating, and one of us is not seeing the point, but it strikes me that the point is simply this: let's take the inverse again of what the minister is saying. Take the case of a trade union, the IWA, and let's say.... I don't know how many employers there are out there, but let's just say for argument's sake that there are 150 employers operating sawmills. The union would then, potentially, if all of them opted out, have to enter into 150 different agreements with 150 different employers. If 149 of those settled and one didn't — particularly in the case of a large employer — then potentially those employees representing that trade union, where the agreement didn't go through and there was a strike, could then set up pickets at the other 149. The reason you wanted everybody together was to prevent that type of situation from happening, both on the employers' and the employees' side.

It seems to me that the argument that the minister puts forward for employers is the same in terms of employee organizations. If not, could he explain why not? Am I off the wall on this?

MR. GABELMANN: You're not off the wall, but you made one small mistake.

AN HON. MEMBER: You are in order.

MR. SIHOTA: My friends tell me I'm on the mark. But I wonder if the minister could explain why he thinks I'm off.

MR. LOVICK: I was amused by that last interchange. It seems to me that the minister refused to answer because that would be a value judgment. Clearly, we don't need to worry.

I'm intrigued, as I've listened to this debate.... I had to go make some phone calls, but I've been listening in my office, to try and see if we ever got back to what I think are the crucial points — not to say the others aren't important — made earlier by my colleague the member for North Island (Mr. Gabelmann), who was really asking us whether we were to be confronted with a policy regarding labour relations in this province that seemed to amount to a kind of adhocracy, as opposed to a coordinated and coherent strategy. I have some sympathy for that case.

You know, as I listen....

Interjection.

MR. LOVICK: No, no: "adhocracy." Okay? Sorry about that. I just assumed that was well known to one and all.

As I listened to the description and the minister's justification for this particular section of the bill, it struck me that we have a brand new principle being enshrined in this Legislature, and it is probably called the freedom of dissociation. That is in fact what it seems the minister was saying: that what really is important here is that people must have the right to get out of things. I think that is given. The real question, though, is whether that particular philosophy is in any way compatible with what we are after finally in terms of industrial relations management in this province: namely, some kind of macroeconomic management, some kind of commitment to trying to set up a climate in which industrial relations can operate and function, and can do so effectively.

I think it is fairly safe to say that what will happen with this particular kind of measure.... If I can put it quite bluntly, Mr. Minister, it seems to me that what we are prescribing here is effectively an easier way for employers' councils to disband. I think that is a fair rendition of what this particular clause means. If indeed we are doing so, I would ask the minister to consider whether in fact we are not also, by that action, decreasing the level of stability of industrial relations within the province. Most of the large groupings we have had, whether on the labour side or the management side, have in fact been promoters of stability, partly as a result of the phenomenon my colleague described as the big bang theory. Another rendition of that, of course, is simply that

[ Page 1641 ]

when mistakes become so much larger and the players become so many more in a given game, what inevitably happens is that the level of expertise rises, and the stakes, because they are perceived to be so high, tend to engender and encourage a degree of responsibility. I think that is a very good case.

What I am concerned about in this particular measure before us is whether making it easy for particular individuals who are members of councils to get out of them will in fact have the opposite effect from the one that we all, I am sure, desire; namely, to promote some kind of stability and make it possible, frankly, for people to do a kind of longer-term economic planning. Clearly, if we understand the labour relations landscape in the province, people who have capital to invest and who are interested in becoming major players in the B.C. economy will have a little better sense of the landscape. If we are saying that, rather than setting up a long-term plan, what we want to do instead is to make things as voluntaristic as possible, to make it possible for individuals to change their allegiances on a fairly regular basis, then I think we have the opposite effect. I think indeed we are in danger of destabilizing relations.

I guess I'm asking, in all of this, simply whether there is in fact another argument embedded somewhere in new section 59 that makes more sense than the three we've heard: namely, that small is beautiful, freedom of dissociation is good, just and true, and somehow volunteerism is the sum of all virtues. Frankly, I have not heard any other arguments than those adduced. I sincerely hope it is my hearing that's in error, and I would invite the minister to offer us some other positions to justify this particular change to the Code.

[5:45]

HON. L. HANSON: Mr. Chairman, obviously the second member for Nanaimo doesn't agree with the conclusion. I think that if the member, in all fairness, would suggest that the strengths of an organization that is voluntary, that lives within a very democratic process...is greater than one where there's difficulty in getting out.

While we disagree on the basic philosophy, I think that the fact of the matter is going to be that the employers who are part of an accredited association.... We're not saying smaller is better; I don't see how you can get that connotation from this.

Interjections.

HON. L. HANSON: We're simply saying that if it's a voluntary organization formed in that manner, there should be a due process voluntarily so that those individuals can get out of it. That organization then must, by that ability, recognize the differences of its members and, within reason, not only encourage those members to stay part of it, but recognize the concerns that those members have. I'm not suggesting that isn't the case as it is now, but if there is a voluntary ability to join an organization, there also should be a voluntary ability to get out of it. The end result of that is that if the employers see the benefits of a larger scope of bargaining, they can in fact hire better expertise and whatever, because of a result of that joint bargaining process; that we in fact will not see people leaving the employers' organizations; and that in fact they will become stronger and the members will become more dedicated to the organization than they may be without this voluntary ability.

MR. GABELMANN: Mr. Chairman, the minister's basic argument is that if it's a voluntary choice to get in.... People are more likely to get in if they can get out easier. That's essentially the nub of it. Easy in, easy out, more will go in, is essentially what the minister is saying.

In response to our various arguments he has suggested a couple of things. One is that if you're a single employer it's more convenient in effect to bargain with a group of unions as a council of unions, rather than to bargain with each of them separately, when we construct that argument. On the reverse, apparently it's not a parallel to argue that one union should have the right to bargain with a group of employers in a similar common way. Let's leave all of that aside. We don't agree, but let's just leave that aside for the moment. Let’s deal with the simple issue of stronger organizations being voluntary organizations — essentially the basis upon which the minister has made an argument — and let's take a theoretical example.

We'll call it OMMLRA — just as a theoretical example — and on the other hand we'll have another theoretical organization whose initials are CUPE. Single employers with single bargaining units.... Previously the city of Penticton, the village of Osoyoos. the city of Kamloops and the city of Vernon would negotiate individually and separately with its certified union, CUPE — one union, one employer. There's no question here about a multitude of employers or a multitude of unions. It's simple: it's straightforward. For one reason or another events proceed and there comes into place a council of unions and an accredited employers' organization — OMMLRA, on one hand: CUPE, through its joint bargaining, on the other. It's still the same union, so its not even a council of unions; it's one union, but they're different locals.

Let's just back up a bit. to be really clear about this. There is one union in each of these towns, villages, cities and, I guess, regional districts. I can't remember if they're in or out, but let's leave it alone for the moment. One union is being bargained with. If it's stronger and more effective for the employers to be able to get in and out easily, then why isn't it stronger and more effective for the unions to get in and out easily? What's the difference?

HON. L. HANSON: You know, the situation the member was describing is one that I'm quite familiar with, and that's the reason he described it. The organization in place, the Okanagan Mainline Municipal Labour Relations Association — it's a long one.... The city of Vernon, long before I ever became involved, chose not to join that organization because they found that it would be very difficult to get out. But the situation of one CUPE organization negotiating with the OMMLRA is.... I don't think that the CUPE association there is a joint council accredited to bargain with all of those. It's simply that the volunteer organization is accredited to bargain on behalf of all the employers, and I believe CUPE chooses to bargain with them. I don't think they have an obligatory right to bargain, except that that is an accreditation they bargain with. They go ahead and settle a lot of their internal things with each individual city. In other words, I think that CUPE are not.... They have the — I've forgotten the name of it; our fellow joined it recently — Okanagan Labour Council? But that isn't the bargaining unit as such, not like the construction joint trades council. It's quite different, I think, is it not?

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MR. GABELMANN: Well, there are two entirely different issues going on here, and I want to get the one the minister is dealing with out of the way, because it is a separate issue. It is the question of whether or not the CUPE local unions in the member municipalities represented by OMMLRA are certified or not. Of course, if the Minister of Labour chose to make an application that these local unions actually do form a council of unions, that is available to him under the law, then and now.

That issue aside, I was trying to get at a more fundamental question. Let's go from what actually happened last year or the year before — I have lost track of time — to this theoretical situation, but in the same area. Let's assume that the government decided it was in the best interests of industrial relations that CUPE become an accredited organization in that area for bargaining purposes, and there was a joint council of CUPE local unions formed in that area. Let's just assume that that happened, to "foster, secure and maintain industrial peace and promote conditions favourable...." etc. So the option is there. Let's assume that happens. On the other side of the table, the employers have decided to do just that: to have an accredited organization. Under the new law, the employers can come in and out whenever they want — not whenever they want; they have to do it in time, but let's leave that. The timing is required, but if they meet the timing requirements, the employers can quit OMMLRA, just by getting out. The trade unions cannot. The trade unions have to get permission from the Industrial Relations Council to quit.

If the argument that the minister makes is valid, that organizations are stronger and more effective if they are voluntary, why not allow for a voluntary dissolution of the trade unions in the same way as there is a voluntary dissolution of the employers? That is the point that we have been trying to make, and I think this is the simplest example of all. When there is an even situation, one employer and one union, and they represent the same territory theoretically, the rules are different. Employers can get out and unions can't. There is no logic to that at all, that I can see.

I wonder if the minister wants to respond. Perhaps the useful thing, Mr. Chairman, would be that the minister think about it overnight.

The House resumed; Mr. Speaker in the chair.

The committee, having reported progress, was granted leave to sit again.

Hon. Mr. Strachan moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

The House adjourned at 5:57 p.m.

Appendix

AMENDMENTS TO BILLS

19 The Hon. L. Hanson to move, in Committee of the Whole on Bill (No. 19) intituled Industrial Relations Reform Act, 1987 to amend as follows:

SECTION 31, in the proposed section 55.1

(a) by adding the following subsection:

(1.1) For the purpose of subsection (1), an employee working during a lawful strike or lockout as a replacement for an employee who is on strike or locked out, is not an employee in a bargaining unit., and

(b) in subsection (3) by striking out "an office of the Canada Post Office" and "with the Canada Post Office" and substituting respectively "a post office as defined by the Canada Post Corporation Act (Canada)" and "with the post office".