OTTAWA – The Liberals used their majority Monday to kill a Reform party proposal that strikes and lock-outs be outlawed in the grain movement system.
But they also issued broad hints in recent days that the government is entertaining some anti-strike ideas of its own.
Manitoba Liberal David Iftody (Provencher), said the government will be looking “in a very decided way” at how to end grain movement disruptions.
“I don’t want to have to stand up every spring on behalf of farmers to ask what is happening in Vancouver while our grain sits there and rots,” he said in an interview after asking a House of Commons question about “long-term measures” to ensure grain movement is not disrupted in the future.
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Labor minister Lucienne Robillard, as she sponsored two back-to-work bills during the past week, said she wants a newly announced inquiry of West Coast labor relations to consider an alternative to work stoppages.
Alternatives to labor strife
And agriculture minister Ralph Goodale said in a March 20 interview the government will be involved in “an earnest effort” to find alternatives to labor incidents which make Canadian food export promises unreliable.
All of this talk gave Reform MP Ray Speaker (Lethbridge) some hope.
He said the Liberals seem to be serious.
“I would say the government is considering something and if they acted, it would be the best way for the Liberals to undercut Reform out in my country,” he said. “I would be happy if they did that. For a little while, I’m prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt.”
It was Speaker’s private member’s bill that was defeated 91-31 in the March 20 vote.
Liberals and Bloc QuŽbecois MPs voted against it, complaining that it was anti-labor, would destroy the collective bargaining system and was too simple a solution to a complex problem.
In his “Grain Export Protection Act”, Speaker suggested the right to strike for anyone who can affect the movement of export grain be replaced by a system of ‘final offer arbitration’. If the parties could not agree, an arbitrator would ask for final positions and then choose one to be imposed as the settlement.
Although the Liberal government recently outraged unions by unilaterally rescinding job protection clauses in the contracts of government employees, several Liberal MPs argued that the Reform proposal would attack the Liberal principle of supporting collective bargaining.
