Harper’s anti-union bill rises from the dead

OTTAWA—Stephen Harper’s notorious, proposed anti-union legislation is still floundering in its fourth year, unloved, unnecessary, unfair and largely unconstitutional.

But not dead.

Bill C-377, first introduced by British Columbia Conservative backbencher Russ Hiebertin December 2011, has been revived by a Senate committee and there was Hiebert this week, again staking his claim to some type of Conservative medal as the man who has most doggedly pursued his boss’s agenda.

Hiebert is still flogging what must be considered the most fundamentally flawed piece of legislation to come from this majority government, a punitive assault on labour unions which would tip the collective bargaining process in the country to the employer, violate privacy and freedom of association rights of union leaders and tie up unions up with unnecessary, trivial, insulting paper work.

In short, it is just the type of confrontational piece of legislation Harper would like passed before an election.

It is a solution in search of a problem, but those “big labour bosses” the Conservative caucus loves to rail against provide just too much of an inviting target.

There was the tenacious backbencher back at it, wrapping his legislation in gauzy talk about transparency and accountability and “empowering (Canadians) to gauge the effectiveness, financial integrity and health of Canadian unions.”

Or, as Canadian Labour Congress president Hassan Yussuff, calls it, “an unwarranted, unconstitutional, venal and indefensible bill that is inherently flawed and must be withdrawn.”

This legislation has already once collapsed in the Senate.

Former Conservative senator Hugh Segal led the rebellion, leading his colleagues in amending a bill he called “badly drafted, flawed, unconstitutional and technically incompetent.’’

The law, as proposed, would require unions to publicly disclose any spending of $5,000 or more and any salary of more than $100,000. All documentation would be supplied to the Canada Revenue Agency and then to the public on searchable website. It would include the addresses of the union officials.

It would compel union leaders to account for their political and non-political activity, forcing them to divulge work with minor hockey teams, church groups or scout packs.

It intrudes on provincial turf.

It would also extend to those who have business dealings with unions. In essence, it would force unions to publicize their budgets, their expenditures, how much they would be able to pay workers in the event of a strike and what type of money they would have to promote their cause in the case of a breakdown of a collective agreement.

Employers would not be compelled to disclose any of that.

Segal’s amendments raised the spending disclosure threshold to $150,000 and the salary threshold to $444,000. He won the backing of 16 Conservatives (four others abstained) but Harper prorogued Parliament and the bill was reborn in the Senate, without the amendments.

The Hiebert bill and a companion piece of private legislation introduced by Alberta Conservative MP Blaine Calkins which would make it more difficult to join a union, but easier to decertify one are “designed as a direct attack on unions, meant to diminish and weaken the labour movement in our country,” Liberal leader Justin Trudeau wrote this week in a message to the Senate, urging rejection.

They may no longer be Liberals, but the senators Trudeau kicked out of his caucus are taking up his battle.

The bill has many backers, and former Supreme Court Justice Michel Bastarache argued it is constitutional because it is about transparency and accountability, not an attempt to regulate labour relations.

But Yusuff argued the onerous paper work involved would force him to “sit in my office and write nice letters to wonderful people like you, thanking you for your kind service, even when you’re screwing my members. That will not happen.”

There may still be Conservative opponents sitting somewhere in the Senate, but they didn’t appear to be sitting around the committee table.

Manitoba Conservative Don Plett showered praise on Hiebert for his hard work and announced it was time to make this bill law.

But when he clashed with Paul Cavalluzzo, a constitutional and labour lawyer with more than four decades of experience, the bombastic Plett insulted the witness by telling him he considered “your time and my time to have been wasted with you here today not answering my questions.”

Plett’s wrong. The real waste of time has been that of all parliamentarians who have had to deal with Harper’s overzealous piece of legislation since its 2011 birth.

Original Article
Source: thestar.com/
Author:  Tim Harper