Category Archives: Reporting

Stories I’m reporting on in my own independent capacity

Former conservative labour minister weighs in on back-to-work legislation

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Since the last election, the Conservative government has made use of back-to-work legislation for Canada Post and Air Canada workers – even though Air Canada pilots, mechanics and baggage handlers weren’t even off the job yet. But while the NDP – traditionally the party of labour – has often decried its use and famously filibustered the first instance of such a bill, there are those on the small-c conservative side who also see the use of such legislation as detrimental.

Progressive Conservative Senator Elaine McCoy was provincial labour minister in the Don Getty government in Alberta back in 1989, and saw some major strikes during her time in office, including a teacher’s strike and an illegal strike by social workers. Her perspective comes from those experiences.

Labour relations are about the balance of power between labour and management, and the financial pressure that a strike or lockout can place on the other party, McCoy says, and back-to-work legislation destroys the balance of power.

“You tilt the balance of power by putting the full weight of the state on the one side, and it is really on one side, because it means that the revenues to the management continue,” McCoy says. “There’s no benefit to the workers. Suddenly you’ve removed all penalty from management.”

Back-to-work legislation also erodes the close working relationship between workers and management, which should be based on respect.

“What you get is resentment on labour’s side,” McCoy says. “It builds, and therefore much less desire to come to agreement of any sort, and a desire to get revenge. When you encourage one side to gloat and bully, and the other side to want revenge and bully, you what you have is long-term unrest. You resolve the immediate, but you plant the seeds for more trouble in the long term.”

As for the strikes that happened under her watch, McCoy kept those principles in mind.

“When the teachers went out on strike, we had to bring additional people into my office to answer the phones, because everybody’s grandmother and everybody’s parent was phoning to say ‘get those teachers back to work. I can’t handle the day care,’” McCoy recalls. “And indeed, there were quite a few members of caucus who wanted to use the sledgehammer and use back-to-work legislation, but I had to talk them down because as I say, it might give you an immediate Band-Aid, but it doesn’t resolve the underlying situation.”

This was also the case with the illegal strike by social workers.

“Some labour ministers feel they should get involved themselves,” McCoy says. “I never felt that personally I should go to the bargaining table. I didn’t have that kind of training or skill, but what I did do was use the services of some people who were well respected in the labour relations field to work behind the scenes to help the two sides get together quietly and to iron out their differences. Yeah it took a week or ten days, but they did ultimately, and everyone walked away satisfied.”

Judging the current labour situation and the instances of legislation but forward to date, McCoy says that if she were a federal labour minister, she would be reluctant to do any kind of back-to-work legislation simply because it’s bad public policy.

“I think the current government is sowing the seeds of discontent and labour unrest, which is going to be more disruptive in the long run than a strike or lockout situation would have been,” McCoy says.

Neither does she buy the argument that the economy is too fragile.

“There would have been a great deal of pressure on the labour and management teams to get back to work, but that’s part of the bargaining power,” McCoy says. “There is always in these public service kinds of situations, an attempt by both labour and management to win the hearts of the public, and sometimes management succeeds and sometimes labour succeeds in doing that. But public opinion is important. Air Canada has to respond to its customers and the union has to be careful that it doesn’t alienate public opinion because that doesn’t do it any good in the long run either.”

Conservative Senator criticises foreign money inquiry

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Conservative senator Nancy Ruth has occasionally found herself on the other side of positions taken by other members of her party, and today was no exception. In the Senate earlier this afternoon, Senator Nancy Ruth took issue with her fellow Conservative senator Nicole Eaton’s inquiry into foreign money into Canadian non-profit organisations. Eaton and several of her fellow Conservative senators are going after environmental groups primarily, who they see are asserting undue influence on the Canadian political process, as well as our economic interests when it comes to natural resources – thinking primarily of course of the Alberta oilsands, and pipelines needed to transport the bitumen to places where it can be upgraded into more conventional oil forms.

Nancy Ruth says that while she supports the pipeline, she has three questions around the inquiry – why is the net being cast so narrowly in that it targets only charities, what evidence is there that these foreign foundations are pushing Canadian groups into taking positions that they wouldn’t otherwise, and why the current mechanisms for policing charities are inadequate.

“If the concern is about foreign influence, then why is the inquiry not considering the lobbying efforts of foreign corporations with huge interests in the development of the oil sands and the construction of the pipeline?” Nancy Ruth asked. “Why is the inquiry not considering the lobbying efforts of Canadian corporations with foreign investors?”

Nancy Ruth also wonders about the proof, considering allegations made by Senator Eaton of “interference, abuse, political manipulation, influence peddling, manipulation,” and by  Senator Daniel Lang of “money laundering and support for terrorism, and active engagement in elections.” These allegations are coupled with the notion that the foreign funders are somehow exerting undue influence.

“Could it not be that Canadian charities went looking for financial support both within and without Canada to support their positions?” Nancy Ruth wondered. “Furthermore we live in a global culture with global ideas.”

In pointing to the existing policing mechanisms, and the fact that any charity can’t spend more than ten percent of its budget on political advocacy as it stands, and the fact that there are already disclosure rules for non-residents, Nancy Ruth doesn’t see the same issue that Eaton does.

“If you want the CRA, the NGOs or charities to make foreign monies public – that’s fine with me – if it does not infringe on the Canadian laws on privacy and the principle of confidentiality of tax,” Nancy Ruth said. “More transparency suits me, as it would let me see who is funding Ethical Oil and who it’s ‘puppets’ are.”

She drives home her point about the tone being set by the existence of the inquiry as one that attacks Canada’s democratic principles.

“What is really being advocated is that some groups should have influence, and others should not,” Nancy Ruth said. “What is really being advocated is that some points of view cannot be questioned, while others are a waste of time and cause delay.”

Fellow Conservative senator Dennis Patterson, who represents Nunavut, followed up by decrying the misinformation given by these environmental non-profit groups and their “convoluted” financing, which he blamed “lazy journalists” for propagating. As an example, he talked about protests against seismic tests in Lancaster Sound, saying that it was based on falsehoods.

He then said that Canada does not need foreign aid, and that groups in these countries, be they from the States or Europe, they should turn their attention to their own backyards, and worried about “philanthropy as an instrument of foreign policy.”

At the end of the day’s debate, before it was adjourned, Liberal Senator Jim Munson stood up to ask Patterson about why those “poor, impoverished lobbyists” wandering around Ottawa aren’t similarly being asked for the same kinds of transparency.

Senator Eaton was not amused, and called the question ridiculous, though Patterson did concede that perhaps the transparency requirements shouldn’t focus solely on charities.

Voter misdirection is not an error: Mayrand

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The appearance of Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand before the Procedure and House Affairs Committee was to a packed house. Everyone was happy to see him there – even if most of the NDP MPs on the committee were late in arriving, and the fact that Bob Rae turned up to join Marc Garneau for the Liberal contingent was sure enough of a sign that he was taking this seriously.

Mayrand’s opening statement gave us a few new facts – that the volume of contacts that Elections Canada has received has climbed to 40,000, of which some 800 are specific complaints; that the Elections Commissioner and his investigators have been looking into specific complaints since May 5th of last year; and that there were some 61 late polling location changes in the last election. But perhaps the most important thing that he kept hammering home was that Elections Canada does not have a list of voters’ phone numbers. They couldn’t call voters even if they wanted to. And this is a very important thing to remember.

Why? Because the narrative that the Conservatives were trying to build was that this was really just about errors on the voters list. Yes, there are errors on the list, Mayrand says. It’s hard not for there to be – it’s a database of 24 million names. It can never be fully accurate because the moment you print it out, it’s no longer accurate since people move all the time, and it’s not mandatory that people notify them. And yet one Conservative MP after another kept returning to the point of these errors. That, or trying to minimise the extent of the issue. It works out to one complaint every 100 polling stations – not that they’re trying to minimise this. 800 specific complaints in 200 ridings? That’s like four per riding – not that they want to minimise this. At the same time, they would say that one legitimate complaint is too many. But of course, these 800 complaints are “unsubstantiated,” which by the way is not another word for “unproven,” even though they tried to use the two interchangeably. Oh, and can’t this be chalked up to errors on the voters list?

No, Mayrand put his foot down. Calls from people claiming to be Elections Canada to misdirect voters are not errors – they’re outrageous and should be dealt with severely. And to that effect, Mayrand spoke about reviewing the penalties currenty in place within the Elections Canada Act, which he says need to be improvement as many penalties are simply too lax, and he’ll be submitting that report to Parliament in addition to the one on the ongoing investigations.

There were a few more interesting revelations: that they’ve determined that some 6700 calls went out from RackNine in the Guelph riding, of which they only received 70 complaints, so make of that ratio what you will. There are 250 files now open on the election being investigated. That they are looking into evidence of “voter augmentation” in those ridings, but much of the evidence is vague, or that what is being taken to the media is not necessarily proper (like copies of special ballots, which are not voting day registration forms). And that the court proceedings currently underway in eight ridings, trying to overturn the results, are a separate process that he will cooperate with when asked, but are otherwise not his jurisdiction. Oh, and he didn’t pre-clear those robo-calls that Frank Valeriote’s campaign made, but it’s not clear if they fell under the legislative grounds of advertising – which is his domain – so they’re continuing to investigate it, no matter how much Tom Lukiwski tried to get him to condemn them as having been illegal.

But above all, Mayrand’s message is this – let the investigations continue, and don’t draw any conclusions prematurely. He plans to have his report on the issue tabled in Parliament within a year, but will certainly try to get it tabled as soon as possible. In the meantime, the committee has agreed to call Mayrand back before the House rises in June so that he can update them as to the progress of the investigations, and that they will also call the Commissioner of Elections for him to discuss his own investigations – or at least as much as he’s able to reveal at this juncture anyway.