Legislative Assembly of Ontario

The House resumed at 8 o’clock, p.m.

CROWN EMPLOYEES COLLECTIVE BARGAINING ACT (CONCLUDED)

Mr. Speaker: We’re dealing with the second reading of Bill 179. Would any other member like to speak to the bill? The hon. member for Nickel Belt.

Mr. F. Laughren (Nickel Belt): Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I really cannot resist the temptation to comment on the Liberal position on collective bargaining for Crown employees. If there’s anything that’s typical of the Liberal Party in Ontario, it’s their position on collective bargaining for Crown employees.

Mr. R. F. Nixon (Leader of the Opposition): It’s fairly reasonable, I think.

Mr. Laughren: Yes, well, it certainly straddles all positions.

Mrs. M. Campbell (St. George): We are so glad the member for Nickel Belt is coming around to our way of thinking.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: His colleague agrees with us.

Mr. Laughren: The Leader of the Opposition knows what happens to politicians who straddle all positions, doesn’t he?

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I don’t know what happens to them but we’re going to win. What about the member’s party?

Mr. Laughren: That’s where he is mistaken. The last member of this Legislature who tried to straddle all positions was the present Minister of Culture and Recreation (Mr. Welch). Do you realize, Mr. Speaker, that to this day he is known far and wide as Supercrotch because of his straddle. There’s a very great danger that the Liberal Party is going to end up with the same thing.

Mr. Speaker: Would the hon. member like to speak to Bill 179 to the principle of the bill?

Mr. Laughren: I certainly would, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Supercrotch, that’s a tremendous contribution to the debate.

Mr. Laughren: It describes the Liberal position on most policies.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: What area is the member super in? Would he care to describe that?

Mr. Laughren: Well, when it comes to our position on matters of collective bargaining --

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Let’s hear it.

Mr. J. A. Renwick (Riverdale): The Liberals know it well.

Mr. Laughren: -- there’s very little dispute as far as the New Democratic Party stands.

Mr. Renwick: The Liberals know the position well.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: They know all about it.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. Speak on the principle of the bill.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: The member for Riverdale is getting as touchy as the Premier (Mr. Davis).

Mr. Laughren: The Liberal Party will strike for everything but essential services and then the Liberal Party will decide which are the essential services in the Province of Ontario.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Which does the member think they are?

Mrs. Campbell: He doesn’t think.

Mr. Laughren: I would let that be the result of negotiations.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Why doesn’t he speak to his colleague, because he thinks some are so essential they shouldn’t strike.

Mr. Laughren: Well, I agree with him.

An hon. member: Does he start with the police?

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Is he trying to come down and start with firemen and policemen?

Mr. Laughren: No, I am making the point that we believe in the right to strike for the civil service.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: What are the strike issues? Money?

Mr. Laughren: The civil service should have the same right to strike as any other segment of the work force.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Except for the police, according to his colleague.

Mr. Laughren: Well, I agree with that.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: That’s our position. What is the member talking about? Of all the fatuous comments.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. Will the member for Nickel Belt speak to the Chair on the principle of Bill 179?

Mr. E. J. Bounsall (Windsor West): There’s pure gin in that glass of water.

Mr. Laughren: Mr. Speaker, I was only commenting on what previous speakers have said about this bill.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: The member should read the letters from Mr. Shouldice. He’ll get more there.

Mr. Laughren: I’m surprised to learn the Liberal Party would take away the right to strike only from the police in the Province of Ontario. That is a revelation to me.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: No, it is more than that.

Mr. Laughren: Yes, it certainly is; it is a lot more than that.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: That’s right. Well, does the member want to speak to the Liberals? Go ahead. He might as well.

Mr. Laughren: No, the Liberals are not the enemy in the Province of Ontario. There’s no danger that the Liberals will form the next government.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: They’re just like the Premier -- scared stiff of the Grits.

Mr. Laughren: No, we are not worried at all about the Liberals. Mr. Speaker, if I could direct the remainder of my remarks directly to the bill --

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Good heavens!

Mr. Laughren: I think the hypocrisy of the Liberal position has been outlined once again.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I thought the member was going to say something.

Mr. Laughren: Mind you, it would be interesting to know just how many positions there are in the Liberal Party in this particular issue.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: How ridiculous!

Mr. C. E. McIlveen (Oshawa): Leave that little fellow alone.

Mr. Laughren: How many positions are there on this particular issue?

Mr. R. F. Nixon: There is just one; and now that the NDP have changed, theirs is the same.

Mr. McIlveen: Leave that little fellow alone.

Mr. Laughren: Are there the same number of positions as there were on Spadina? How many positions were there on that one, Mr. Speaker? It is truly enlightening to be a part of this chamber and to have the Liberals come out with a new position every day.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: The member certainly is filling the chamber with his speech.

Mr. Bounsall: There are more coming in all the time.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Are there really two other NDPs here?

Mr. Laughren: Oh yes. Don’t --

Mr. Speaker: Order. Would the member for Brant give the member for Nickel Belt the opportunity to speak?

Hon. E. A. Winkler (Chairman, Management Board of Cabinet): Throw him out, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Laughren: Mr. Speaker, any time there are four Liberals in the House to two New Democrats, the odds are even. We don’t worry about numbers here.

Mr. Speaker, this bill to amend the Crown Employees Collective Bargaining Act is long overdue. We think it’s inadequate, and in view of the fact that during the last six months --

Mr. R. F. Nixon: There is a straddling statement if there ever was one.

Mr. Laughren: Mr. Speaker, if the leader of the Liberal Party wants to continue this debate in terms of the Liberal Party’s position, I’d be quite happy to do so.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Perhaps I will, perhaps I will.

Mr. Laughren: I hope the leader of the Liberal Party will stand up later and outline just what areas of the civil service are to be given the right to strike.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I have every intention -- if the member ever finishes.

Mr. Laughren: Well, that will really be interesting. Of course, he will reserve the right to change that --

Mr. Speaker: Would the member for Nickel Belt, rather than speaking to the Liberal Party, like to speak to Bill 179?

Mr. Laughren: Yes, I certainly would. Mr. Speaker, it was truly strange during the past six months or eight months, or a year even, to see the government go through those agonizing negotiations with the civil servants, knowing all the time that they were going to bring in amendments to the Crown Employees Collective Bargaining Act, and at the same time conducting those negotiations as if they had no intention of changing it. That was truly remarkable --

Hon. Mr. Winkler: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, let’s be honest. I am being very serious when I say that the member knows that we were requested by the CSAO not to bring in the amendments, and we complied with that request.

An hon. member: That’s right.

Mr. Laughren: Mr. Speaker, I was talking about the way in which those negotiations were conducted --

Mr. R. F. Nixon: The member should start again. This is a mess.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: The member made a direct accusation.

Mr. Laughren: I know the way the negotiations were conducted, and so does the minister; they were reprehensible and a disgrace to the Province of Ontario.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: The member has got to be joking.

Mr. Laughren: Mr. Speaker, I think the depth of dissatisfaction of the employees of the Province of Ontario is such that it should have been clear to this government that any changes or any amendments to the Crown Employees Collective Bargaining Act should have included some very fundamental changes, and this bill does not include those fundamental changes. The Chairman of the Management Board surely understands what those fundamental changes are. I refer specifically to section 17 of the old Act, or section 8 of the amended Act.

It is as though this government does not understand that there is a new era in negotiations with the public service -- not just in this province but in this country -- and that times truly are changing. The fight is going to continue. This Act to amend the Crown Employees Collective Bargaining Act isn’t going to change that. The civil servants are going to remain dissatisfied with the kind of contracts they get. They are going to remain dissatisfied with the way negotiations are conducted. And they are going to remain dissatisfied with the kind of legislation which troubles their employment.

When the battle does occur -- as it is surely to occur in the months and years to come -- it is not going to be the integrity of the CSAO that is in question. That is not what is going to be questioned by the people of Ontario. It’s going to be whether or not the legislation is just. it’s not going to be the demands of the civil service association that are going to be questioned -- whether they are extravagant or not -- it’s going to be whether or not the government of the Province of Ontario is conducting those negotiations in a fair and just manner.

Just as the Premier of the Province of Ontario is judged, just as the cabinet as a whole is judged, that is the way the negotiations of this government are going to be judged. That’s the way the negotiations of this government are going to be judged by the people of the Province of Ontario.

And never again, Mr. Speaker, will the government be trying to negotiate agreements with a Caspar Milquetoast in the Province of Ontario. There is a pretty big difference between Caspar and Jake, and I suspect that the Chairman of Management Board had that driven home to him very clearly during the past year.

This bill does not satisfy the civil service or their bargaining agent, and it should be obvious to him why it doesn’t. There is going to be ill-tempered bargaining that occurs in the months ahead. There is nothing in this bill that will remove that aspect, to remove that feeling by the civil servants and their bargaining agent.

I’m not suggesting, Mr. Speaker, that civil servants or anybody in the public sector can make unlimited demands on the public purse. That’s not what I’m saying at all. But I am saying that the civil servants in the province should have a much larger, much louder voice in the kind of conditions under which they work and the kind of legislation which governs them and their employment.

Section 8 of this bill is as paternalistic as the old section 17 in the bill and it’s bound to create and continue the kind of resentment and even contempt for the legislation that civil servants presently have.

It is as though the government did not realize that the winds of change are whistling all around it. We now have a work force and we now have a civil service that is better educated than ever before. They have increased expectations of what they can achieve on their job. They understand very clearly that when they are denied the right to bargain for those conditions which affect the work environment, there is a denial to them of personal growth on the job and there is a waste of human potential for those people on the job.

Until this government realizes that it is a tremendous waste of human potential, then it is really through in terms of good-faith bargaining in the Province of Ontario. It is through in terms of getting from its civil service their maximum potential.

The civil service has served this government extremely well in the last 30 years -- extremely well. I think this government is throwing that away. It doesn’t make sense.

The civil service in the Province of Ontario has every right to demand an increased say in the conditions under which it works. They have every right to have an increased say over the things for which they bargain under their contract. When this government removes that right from the civil service, then it is doing them an injustice. In the end, it is doing itself an injustice, and it is doing the people of Ontario an injustice by doing that.

It seems as though the government is traumatized by the thought of a strike in the public sector. Well, I don’t think the public is. I certainly have confidence, as I suspect most of the public does, in the public service that in the event of a dispute that ends in a strike there will be the kind of responsibility -- without taking the right away from them -- to maintain those essential services whose withdrawal might be a threat to public health or safety. I have every confidence in the civil service in the Province of Ontario to do that. But if the government says to them, “We don’t have confidence in you to do that,” then it is taking something away from those civil servants, and it is not necessary. The government need not do that.

I don’t believe that the population at large will believe the government when the government says, “We are looking after your taxes. We are being fiscally responsible. You pay for the delivery of those services and we are going to ensure that they are delivered.” I don’t believe that the public buys any more the argument that our civil service has security, that therefore they should have dedication and therefore they should not have free collective bargaining in the Province of Ontario. I don’t think that argument washes any more.

It may wash with a certain segment of the population that is anti-labour, but I don’t think it washes with the population at large. Surely more and more people in our society are saying that while we want the delivery of those services for which we pay, we don’t want it at the expense of the people who deliver it having rights taken away from them -- the rights that should accrue to everybody in a free and open society; namely, the right to withhold their labour if there is no threat to public health or safety.

I don’t know how the minister expects to convince the population at large that there is that great danger to them when we have a responsible civil service. I haven’t seen this example of irresponsibility on the part of the civil service and I don’t think the minister has, and I don’t think he can give me any example of when they have been irresponsible. How does he expect the civil service to buy his argument of dedication to public service if it’s dedication to public service without dignity? And how does he expect the civil service, and the population at large, to have a dedication to an employer that is paternalistic, an employer that is arbitrary and an employer that is blatantly anti-labour?

I hope, Mr. Speaker, that the Crown employees in the Province of Ontario fight this legislation. I hope that they will continue to do battle with the government because of this oppressive legislation. I wish that more of them could be here to see this government in action -- not necessarily just tonight; I am just a bit player in the whole scene -- but to see their government and their employer in action on all manners that deal with labour legislation. That’s what we are talking about when we talk about the Crown Employees Collective Bargaining Act; we are talking about labour legislation.

Mr. Speaker, we shall oppose this bill. We shall oppose it because it is anti-labour, we shall oppose it because it is paternalistic, we shall oppose it because it is arbitrary and we shall oppose it because it is anti-democratic and offensive. I would say to you, Mr. Speaker, that this bill contains an essential ingredient that is in any Tory legislation dealing with labour negotiations, and that has to do with taking away the rights of working people in the Province of Ontario. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Brant.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Laughren: Now we get another half-dozen positions.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: The bill before us has been examined carefully by our caucus, and my two colleagues expressed our position in opposition to it before the dinner hour. I wanted to reinforce that position with my own comments and thoughts, and it is not my intention to give any great historical development of it since I know, sir, in your position you want us to deal with the principle of this bill. We are very much concerned not only with what it contains but with what it omits.

Let’s begin first with the matters which are directly within the confines of the amendment itself and the provisions put forward. Certainly the government has acceded at least to some of the requests of the spokesmen for the Civil Service Association in bringing forward this bill, but it hasn’t touched the basic concerns that have been expressed not only by those who are employed by the government but those who are in a position to speak for them.

There still have been those proscriptions which interfere with the employees of the province in negotiating their pension settlements. There are very hesitant and timid steps, indeed, in opening up the whole ambit which would permit those people employed by the province to negotiate in any sort of an open way on a basis of the conditions of work. The government still has a tremendously large percentage of the total number of employees who are classified in those areas of employment and responsibility which, according to the bill, do not permit them to actively participate in the civil service organization or belong to it in that manner.

We believe, and in this the member for Nickel Belt is entirely correct, it is necessary to have the powers of compulsory arbitration apply to certain groups within the employees of the province. We believe that for the safety and health of the community it should be expected by those people who join the provincial police force, who accept responsibilities in our hospitals, but particularly in the Ontario hospitals for psychiatric care, and for employees in jails as well, that their services are necessary for the order and health of the community.

Now we took that position, certainly, many years ago. I can remember a great debate among our members when the government brought forward compulsory arbitration legislation for hospitals. We supported it at that time, and I was very much struck by the position taken by the NDP, and very ably expressed of course, that under no circumstances would compulsory arbitration be permitted. I am interested in that aspect, because as a matter of fact we could do away with compulsory arbitration entirely for police, hospital workers, everybody. But I think to be fair, at least expressing the view that I hold and speaking on behalf of my party, suppose we were to say to the police: “Fine, you have the right to strike along with everybody else.” I would say it is unfair to say that, because if in fact they went on strike and I had responsibility in government or had a seat in this House and was called upon to judge the responsibility of others, I would have to vote to prohibit such a strike from taking place. Now I would hope that in exchange for losing those rights, that the normal course of compulsory arbitration would in fact be advantageous to the police, as it has been in many of the arbitrations handed down.

The argument breaks down a bit when applied to ordinary community hospitals -- and we supported the government in their bill to impose compulsory arbitration on all hospital workers. I personally have felt embarrassed about that support on more than one occasion because the ancillary advantages that are supposed to counterbalance the loss of the right to strike have not been there. The Chairman of the Management Board who is present, knows precisely what I mean, that the government was not even prepared to provide the money that was ordered to be paid by the arbitrators.

Now that has changed. The people working in the hospitals, while I am not prepared to say they are fairly paid at the present time, have had quantum increases in their pay over the last few months which have necessitated supplementary estimates approaching $250 million in this House. But I want to make this point, that we have taken the position, as has been described by the hon. member for Nickel Belt, that we are prepared to support a government which takes a stand imposing compulsory arbitration on those employees whose services are, in the judgment of the government, necessary for the health and safety of the community.

That judgment has got to be subjective. There’s no stone tablet coming down from the cloud saying the world ceases to turn if these people stop working; we know that’s true.

In Quebec, whatever the law is, the firemen stop work. As a matter of fact they sabotage those people who are attempting to perform their duties. The people were outraged. Yet; so they had a few fires I There are those who are prepared to say: “My God, we can’t interfere with their individual liberties, when all there are are a few houses to burn down.”

I don’t want to state that in an extreme way. I believe we are not being fair to those people who work for the government if we say, fine, you have the right to strike, when we know that if they do strike we are going to force them back to work right away. Because I don’t believe the community can get along without police protection, fire protection and the services, not of everybody in the hospitals but certainly of those in Ontario hospitals which come directly under our jurisdiction, and those in the psychiatric hospitals in particular.

I had understood that the NDP position was to say everybody has the right to strike. Does the member remember that? His leader said it very clearly in the elevator strike situation. One may say: “Well, what’s necessary about -- ”

Mr. E. W. Martel (Sudbury East): He wasn’t even here.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Well, somebody said it. The NDP certainly voted against it.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Bounsall: Sure we voted against it.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: All right, let me make this point.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Bounsall: We did not say everybody has the right to strike.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: This is the second point.

Mr. Bounsall: Look it up.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: We very strongly believe that the government and this House has, in the last analysis, the responsibility to put an end to a strike which is obviously not going to be solved by any other means.

Mr. Bounsall: The member sure doesn’t believe in collective bargaining to its final conclusion.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Well, what is its final conclusion?

Mr. Bounsall: The Leader of the Opposition is not prepared to let it go that far.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: The hon. member who is interjecting now -- and I’ve listened to his remarks and I thought they were quite fair -- once he got around the yelling and hollering, there were some quite important things he was saying, because he said he was prepared to accept the concept that certain people working for the government of this province performed essential services. Now that is a breakthrough on the part of the thinking of the NDP.

Mr. Bounsall: Police and firemen. We have never denied police and firemen should not strike.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: And I don’t want to try to make a cheap political point, but it is a breakthrough.

Mr. Bounsall: We have never denied police and firemen should not, let the record show that.

Mr. Speaker: Order please, order. The hon. member for Brant has the floor.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: And it’s a welcome change because it’s certainly --

Mr. Renwick: Don’t waste our time, debate the bill.

Some hon. members: Oh! Oh!

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I must be making a telling point.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Renwick: We will state our position, let the Leader of the Opposition state his.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Evidently the member lost the argument in caucus again.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Renwick: Don’t waste our time.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: He always gets excited when he’s on the losing side. I hope to God there isn’t a losing side in this, because I think actually we could spend the evening telling each other how bad the Chairman of the Management Board is in his concepts as far as this is concerned.

Mr. Renwick: He’s agreeing with the member. He doesn’t have to tell him, the minister knows that.

An hon. member: He nods his head in agreement.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: You know, Mr. Speaker, I was particularly appalled when I saw him -- was it on New Year’s day -- announcing the settlement and saying: “The Leader of the Opposition, of course, would have given them 30 per cent,” or something like that.

I really thought that the Chairman of the Management Board showed some aspect of irresponsibility in that. Because, No. 1, he was wrong. And, No. 2, he was trying to make some kind of cheap political capital either of the bad information he had or his misrepresentation of it, I don’t know which. It’s not particularly important anyway, but I just say to you, Mr. Speaker, that it certainly was unworthy of the gentleman who was nodding a moment ago and is now doing something else. I don’t know what he’s doing.

Interjections by hon. members.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Well, the Leader of the Opposition and he would waste our time, and I will agree with that.

Mr. Speaker: Would the hon. Leader of the Opposition like to get back to the bill again?

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: All right, we’ll continue now that we’ve cleared away some of those things.

But there has been no change in position. We believe in compulsory arbitration for those people whose services are essential to the health and safety of the community. We have not changed, we still believe in that.

If, in fact -- and I don’t want to sound presumptuous -- the government were to change sometime in the dim and distant future, we would bring that in at the first opportunity. We would say to those people in the police and others: “You do not have the right to strike,” and we would be prepared to apply the sanctions in the law in that regard.

The other employees, important though they be, would have the same rights as anybody else, as long as their contract was under negotiation and not in force, to withdraw their services. And there would be a delay in sending out the birth certificates and, as I mentioned earlier, the gas tax rebates and all the many important things that are carried on by the 50,000 people who work in the offices and work on behalf of the government and the people of the Province of Ontario. There would be tremendous pressures if they withdrew their services. The community and the taxpayers would suffer. But, obviously, they must have that right.

I would say to the Chairman of the Management Board that people wiser than either of us have said laws like the present one do not stop strikes, they simply make them illegal. And I think as well --

Hon. J. W. Snow (Minister of Government Services): Who is the member?

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I am quoting the gentleman who is considered to be the best --

An hon. member: Goldenberg.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Yes, Carl Goldenberg. And he’s probably wiser than the three of us -- maybe the three of us put together, I don’t know about that.

Mr. E. R. Good (Waterloo North): A man the government should have hired on more than one occasion.

Hon. Mr. Snow: I thought it was Pierre Trudeau who said that.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Ah well, he’s wiser than the three of us put together too, but that’s another matter.

Mr. Martel: The Leader of the Opposition sells himself pretty cheaply.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: In saying this, I would hope that the government would not consider this particular bill their answer to the problems they have experienced in recent months. They are dealing with a well-organized, strong force in the community. It is a force which I presume is prepared to meet the government of the day within the next few months with all of the details of the changes in the economy and, on behalf of their workers, bargain once again with the government of the day.

But I would suggest to you, Mr. Speaker, that if the government does not change the law in its present form, that they will eventually, either this year or at some other time, assuming they continue in office, face the problem of what would be in their terms an illegal strike.

I don’t know what the answer to that is. Is the minister going to put them all in jail? Is he going to fine them all? After all, the law was broken this fall, as he well knows. The law says no one leading the civil service must even advise a strike, let alone hold a strike. The minister has got it all in there; he has got all the mechanism to scare the wits out of them. And they scared the minister I

Hon. Mr. Winkler: No they didn’t.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Oh yes they did.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Not once.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: And isn’t it a shame, Mr. Speaker, that our negotiations --

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Not once.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: -- have to be undertaken in that particular atmosphere. I suppose we can’t legislate the frame of mind, either of the people representing the civil servants -- or the employees; I think we’ve got to get away from that term civil servants. Whether they consider themselves freed or not, we have got to get away from that word servant, because I think it has connotations that are not proper.

Mr. Laughren: Under the present legislation it is appropriate.

Hon. Mr. Snow: Public servants.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: All right, maybe public servants sounds a little better, I don’t know. But I think employees of the government is what they are and that’s the way they should be referred to in our statutes.

So I would just say to you, probably to repeat the warning that I put to you, Mr. Speaker, two or three years ago when the original bill came forward piloted by the former Treasurer. The people who support this bill are going to regret it. Now maybe they don’t regret it yet, but I submit that they will.

We are now in a time of some peace with regard to those people who are employed by the government. It will be some weeks or months before they return to continue negotiation. I would just suggest that we ought to designate those who are essential and say to the others they have the same rights as anyone else. Make that clear in the law.

I trust that the good sense of everyone is going to make a strike possibility just academic. But I would say to the minister that if he leaves the law as it is, eventually such a strike is going to take place. It will be, under this law, an illegal strike. And I am damned if I know what he is going to do about it, because then the Legislature can’t come back and solve the situation. The government has not got enough cops to solve it; and I do not believe that it can use the coercion that is presently in the penalty clauses of the bill in any effective way, nor should it.

So I feel there are many substantial changes that are going to have to take place in the labour laws of this province. This bill, as an amendment to the original one, does not encompass the possibility of all of those changes.

I felt that it was necessary to reiterate our position, Mr. Speaker, because we feel that it is a sound one and one that the government of the day ought to accept. We cannot support the bill in its present form and we will have to divide the House when this debate is completed.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Port Arthur.

Mr. J. F. Foulds (Port Arthur): Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I just want to speak quite briefly on the bill. I rise to oppose it because I, for one, feel very strongly in favour of full and free collective bargaining. Instinctively, I happen to sympathize and favour the working men and women of this province, whether they are railroaders, pulp mill cutters, teachers or civil servants. This bill does not open up the collective bargaining process in any meaningful way to the vast number of civil servants who not only desire it but deserve it.

This party supports the right to strike; and not in the blind or mindless way.

The right to collectively withdraw service, labour, is one that has built up very slowly in North America over the last 150 years, after some very bitter struggles. If a person earns his living solely through his labour, whether that labour is physical or intellectual, that is the only thing that he has to bring to the marketplace, and surely he should have the right to withdraw that in conjunction with his fellows when, collectively, they have agreed to do so.

The other speakers in my party have expressed that viewpoint eloquently and adequately and I don’t intend to belabour it. I would like for a moment though, to explore one other aspect of the bill. That is the denial of political rights to public servants, and especially to community college teachers.

I find it really quite shocking that in this day and age this bill does not change the clause in the original Bill 105, An Act to Provide for Collective Bargaining for Crown Employees. The title itself in that original bill is a misnomer to say the least. It’s laughable. That Bill 105 is surely an Act to provide for collective begging for Crown employees. But the fact that within the general legislation, after we are finished with the government’s -- what do we call what the government is doing? -- it’s not a grandiose gesture; it’s a minor, insignificant gesture in bringing in these amendments. But after we are through with this gesture it will still mean that civil servants, and that includes community college teachers, will not be able to donate to or participate in political activity.

I want to just explore the community college teacher aspect of this for a few moments if I might, Mr. Speaker, and knowing your wisdom and breadth of decision I know that you will allow me to do so. We know that throughout this province community college teachers do belong to political organizations. I know one who is the president, not of an NDP riding association, but of a political party’s riding association in my own area. He does so quite publicly, quite openly. The law is not enforced.

It’s not enforced, Mr. Speaker, because it is not enforceable. In this case the law, as Charles Dickens so well said, is an ass. We as legislators should not put into effect a law that we know cannot be enforced; or even worse, Mr. Speaker, we should not put into effect a law that we will not enforce. I suggest to you that that weakens the very principle of law and the very principle of legislation.

We have no bar in this province to university teachers belonging to, actively campaigning for and contributing to political parties. We have no law in this province that prevents elementary or secondary school teachers from participating fully in political activity. Why, in God’s name, do we have legislation -- at least in terms of a law which is not enforced -- on the books which continues to prevent community college teachers from fully participating in political activities? It is frankly injudicious of us, illogical of us; it is senseless of us.

So, Mr. Speaker, I rise to oppose the amendment -- Bill 179 of 1974 -- because it does not go nearly far enough in giving to the public servants of Ontario, including the community college teachers, the rights they fully deserve. Thank you very much.

Mr. Speaker: Is there any other member who wishes to speak on this bill?

Mr. D. M. Deacon (York Centre): Mr. Speaker, I rise to oppose this bill along with my colleagues. I oppose it because I would like to see us attain in this province the degree of co-operation between those in charge of responsibility of government and those who work for it.

I was really surprised when the minister suggested that this bill might be an improvement, and hopefully provide an improved atmosphere for negotiations because it would provide for compulsory arbitration.

Where would the minister ever find evidence of compulsory arbitration in the legislation improving the atmosphere for negotiations? Every record that I’ve seen indicates that is one thing that doesn’t result. It results in a failure of the negotiating parties to really come to grips with the issues because they feel in the end they might as well leave it to the arbitrator.

That is playing Russian roulette. That is surely abdicating responsibility which these parties have been elected to assume by whoever has that responsibility.

Surely the improved atmosphere can be attained by removing many of the causes of the problems, the causes of irritation in the negotiations. Many of those irritations are in the original bill this is amending, and this is doing little to alleviate them.

Surely the delay in negotiating procedures, the refusal of the government to consider certain areas of irritation to employees as negotiable; surely the mistrust of the grievance procedures; surely the illogical, inconsistent and unreasonable restrictions on activities and the rights of those who are employed by this government; surely these are the things which destroy the good atmosphere, the good relations this minister states he seeks to attain.

I agree completely with my leader’s position -- which has been a very consistent position -- that we feel those who work for this government should have the right to withdraw their services except in very carefully defined categories where the safety and health of the people of this province are definitely affected; and they should be as few as possible.

There is no reason those who are doing the normal work of government, so much of which is not in the essential areas, shouldn’t be in a position to negotiate from a position of strength. I suggest to the minister, if he has time to listen, that he examine those categories and set them out in a revision to this bill which will be clearly equitable for those who are affected.

Insofar, Mr. Speaker, as the methods of negotiation are concerned, we have seen examples of moves by other governments; the government of Alberta, now the federal government and other government bodies, are moving to this process called “final-offer selection.” Final-offer selection is a process whereby before negotiations begin the employees decide whether or not they will abide by compulsory arbitration. The compulsory arbitration is done at their decision and their will and on the basis of the two parties negotiating to a point that is decided in legislation ahead of time as to when the arbitrators will move in.

The arbitrators’ role is not one to try to find middle ground but the arbitrators’ role is to decide which of the two parties’ final positions is more reasonable and more justified on any outstanding points at the time negotiations are to cease and the arbitrator take over. This results in negotiations taking place in a completely different atmosphere.

Last year we recommended this at the time of the teacher disputes. We felt that this was a different approach to take in a controversy that seemed too irreconcilable. I’m pleased to see now that since our recommendation this approach has been adopted in the negotiations in the Hamilton-Wentworth area and up in the Soo. It did result in what was described by the Ontario Teachers’ Federation as one of the most satisfactory atmospheres that had ever been negotiated in, because they knew that it was reason and a justified case in all issues that would result in the award going to the party that had the more reasonable of the two positions.

I urge the minister to take this approach. Throw out this idea of everyone having no right to strike and no right to withdraw their services regardless of what type of service they are providing. I urge this minister to move toward the other approach which has been found in other jurisdictions which have attempted it to be very satisfactory; even in our own jurisdiction it is now being proved to be that. Break this new ground in an area that will bring much more reason and much less likelihood of withdrawal of services, and I’m sure in the long run it will result in this province leading the way, as it has in some categories, hopefully in new labour atmospheres that we are all proud of.

I urge the minister to change this bill in that regard; otherwise there is no way that we can support it.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Riverdale.

Mr. Renwick: Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak in opposition to the proposed bill. I certainly think that the atmosphere of the relationship of the government to the Civil Service Association and the other relatively small groups charged with responsibility for negotiating on behalf of the civil servants has changed substantially during the time from 1972 to 1974.

Indeed, we in this party at the time of the passage of the original Crown Employees Collective Bargaining Act in 1972 were gravely concerned as to whether the CSAO would survive and have any vitality, because it appeared to us to be a very moribund and apathetic association which had allowed the rights of the members of the civil service of Ontario to deteriorate to a point where it was simply a question whether the CSAO would continue in a relatively formal existence or whether or not it would be rejuvenated.

There was a difference between the CSAO which confronted the government of the Province of Ontario during the negotiations toward the end of last year and the CSAO which was in existence at the time that the government under the then Treasurer, the former member for Huron, foisted upon the civil service an Act which was quite iniquitous. Indeed, I think it was one of the proudest moments of this party that throughout that debate both here and in committee the New Democratic Party fought consistently, indeed alone, indeed in many instances without the support of the CSAO, either physically being present or supporting the arguments which we made.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Is the member suggesting the Liberal Party voted for the bill?

Mr. Renwick: No, I’m talking about the tone and substance of the debate that took place.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Oh, the tone.

Mr. Renwick: Yes, that’s right.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Just as long as there is no misunderstanding.

Mr. Renwick: There is quite a bit of misunderstanding. We don’t need, and really this isn’t the night that we want --

Mr. R. F. Nixon: The member said his party fought alone. He didn’t want the record to be wrong, I know.

Mr. Renwick: -- the kind of erratic flak which the leader of the Liberal Party is so prone to these days.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: That happens to be factual.

Interjection by an hon. member.

Mr. Renwick: Mr. Speaker, I promise not to be deflected again by the member for Brant.

An hon. member: Deflected?

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Not even by the facts.

Mr. Renwick: Mr. Speaker, I want the House to know, and there is no record in committee, but the members who stood in committee --

Interjection by an hon. member.

Mr. Renwick: -- to fight against the principles and the clauses of the bill that is now before us for amendment, were the members of this party and the members of this party alone, as has always been the case --

Mr. R. F. Nixon: That’s right; all virtue with his party and mostly with him.

Mr. Renwick: -- in most instances of important legislation.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: That halo around the member’s head is blinding.

Mr. Renwick: The Liberal Party speaks in the House on the second reading of the bill to debate the principle because there they don’t really ever have to deal with the nitty gritty of the problems that are encompassed by the legislation.

Mr. P. D. Lawlor (Lakeshore): The angels are a little tired of having us on their side.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I am getting tired of the nitty gritty politicians.

Mr. Renwick: But in the committee, when the questions of detail and the specific provisions of the Crown Employees Collective Bargaining Act were debated and we faced the government with what they should be, we stood alone. There was no support, either from the Civil Service Association at that time or from the Liberal Party.

Mr. Martel: Right on.

Mr. Lawlor: That’s the truth. I was there.

Mr. Renwick: No question about it.

Mr. Lawlor: We stood alone.

Mr. Foulds: And he’s a gospeller.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: And the member was Joshua to his Moses.

Mr. Lawlor: I never did get to the promised land.

Mr. Renwick: If the House would like me to arrange to continue to speak until my colleague, the member for Wentworth (Mr. Deans), returns on Monday from Cuba to reinforce the points that I made, I’ll be glad to do so.

Mr. R. F. Ruston (Essex-Kent): He’s cutting sugar cane.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Renwick: After all, it’s only another 1½ hours tonight and three hours tomorrow and my colleague from Wentworth would be here.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Listen, the member would talk beyond the return of his colleague.

Mr. Renwick: And we would have no difficulty.

Mr. Deacon: No, they wouldn’t.

Mr. Renwick: Of course we wouldn’t.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: His return will probably not cut the member off.

Mr. Renwick: I thought perhaps it was worthwhile recalling in the debate the circumstances under which the government originally foisted this bill upon the civil service of the Province of Ontario, apparently on a weak and apathetic and moribund association.

I am delighted at one of the things which has pleased this party -- the fact that the leadership of the Civil Service Association has changed in its calibre, in its ability, in its skill and in its knowledge of what is required to deal with the second most powerful government in Canada to try to restore some measure of the rights which were lost to the civil service of Ontario over many, many years of Tory rule. It’s right within that context that the government of the Province of Ontario itself produced, as a result of its attitude over the years, the relatively intransigent position of the Civil Service Association of Ontario.

I say “relatively” advisedly, because if the government wants an intransigent position, it can continue to do what it is now doing, both in negotiations and in this Act, and I will have to drop the word “relatively,” because the civil service of the Province of Ontario will be intransigent the next time around. I’ll come to that in a moment.

The philosophy of the government has been fairly clearly expounded by the Chairman of the Management Board since those negotiations were settled. I’d like to spend a little bit of time talking about my perception of the chairman’s philosophy embodied in the amendments in this bill and the whole field of Crown employees’ collective bargaining. I think it is fair to say that we can confront the government in this party because there is, on occasion, virtue in consistency. Not always; not always. But this party has stood on each and every occasion as opposed to the principle of collective bargaining in every instance in which the legislation has come before the assembly.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Does the member want to correct that statement before he goes any further?

Mr. Foulds: Compulsory arbitration, not collective bargaining.

Mr. Renwick: Pardon?

Mr. Foulds: The member said collective bargaining when he meant compulsory arbitration.

Mr. Renwick: I am sorry, I’ll change it. Thank you. We stood opposed to compulsory arbitration in each and every instance in which that issue has come before this assembly; we stood opposed to it. I may be repeating what some of my colleagues said because I didn’t have the privilege of hearing them before dinnertime.

Mr. Ruston: He just repeats himself.

Mr. Renwick: We stood opposed on the Toronto Hydro strike many years ago. We stood opposed to the hospital disputes arbitration bill. We stood opposed to the compulsory arbitration forced in the elevator strike. We stood opposed on the Toronto Transit Commission strike and we stood opposed on the question of the endeavour to force the teachers into a position where they would have to accept the equivalent of collective bargaining. That has been our position and that’s been our clear position on each and every occasion.

Mr. Good: Until tonight.

Mr. Renwick: I want you to understand that the members of this caucus deal with the legislation which is before us, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Tell us what happened in caucus with Nickel Belt.

Mr. Renwick: We are not engaged in prejudging issues which have not arisen in the Province of Ontario, as to whether or not or what we would do in specific instances if we were faced with the question relating to what can be called the so-called penultimate essential services in the province. The Liberal members know what they are. They are always waving the red flag. Where do you stand on the police? Where do you stand on the firemen? They are the penultimate ones.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: His colleague made it clear.

Mr. Bounsall: It has always been clear.

Mr. Renwick: The one area where we agree with the Chairman of the Management Board is that we don’t think that the Widget Manufacturing Co. is an essential service, but after that we part company with him on his definition of essential services. Every time the Chairman of the Management Board wishes to deal with the question of essential services, he uses the diminutive term about the Widget Co. I have never had time to look up in the dictionary to find out what a widget is but I assume it is something in the nature of a yo-yo manufacturing company. I assume, although it may be questionable, that we could do away with yo-yos and not suffer from it as a point of view of an essential service.

Mr. Deacon: The member was pretty good at those things in school.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: He would destroy the Tory party.

Mr. Martel: There is a lot of wood over there.

Mr. Renwick: I would like to deal very briefly, because I think it need only be dealt with briefly, with the strange position that is taken by the leader of the Liberal Party. The leader of the Liberal Party says in substance that there is a reserve right in the legislative assembly to end a strike in any area.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Right.

Mr. Renwick: Now we don’t disagree with that. We don’t disagree with that but somehow or other we think that what the leader of the Liberal Party means is that if the government of the day decides that it is time in its judgment to bring a strike to an end by legislating the men back to work and imposing compulsory arbitration, the leader of the Liberal Party believes that it is our obligation, the 117 members of the assembly, to stand up and vote unanimously in favour of it.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: No, not necessarily. We can be as inconsistent as the member is.

Mr. Renwick: No, just a moment. What he is saying in substance and what he said tonight, and Hansard will show it, is that the ultimate power of the legislative assembly should be exercised by unanimous vote. All right. Let him just look at what he said because his concern about democratic rights always disappears at that point in time when he talks about --

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Why argue this? So that the hon. members don’t have to spend 20 minutes arguing about what I didn’t say, obviously the majority rules. It has nothing to do with unanimity.

Mr. Renwick: Obviously the Leader of the Opposition has rediscovered the basic principle of this assembly.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I never forgot it.

Mr. Renwick: That’s right. A few minutes ago he forgot it, because he said in substance that in such a situation as when the government calls the Legislature into session to legislate out a strike in what the government determines to be an essential service, all of us are supposed to stand up and bow.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I didn’t say it.

Mr. Renwick: That’s right.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: I didn’t mean it. I didn’t say it. That’s wrong.

Mr. Renwick: That’s what he asked.

Let me deal with another one of those strange illusions of the Liberal Party -- final offer selection. If the hon. member for York Centre --

Mr. Deacon: The member is going to go after this again, too, eh?

Mr. Renwick: If the hon. member for York Centre continues to say it long enough, my guess is it’ll probably become one of the fundamental policies of the Liberal Party.

An hon. member: It already is.

Mr. Renwick: It needs only repetition because there are very few members of the party who repeat one theme long enough for it to become policy; and the hon. member for York Centre has reiterated sufficiently that it’s now part of the policy.

Mr. Ruston: Is the member for Riverdale agreeing with the member for Nickel Belt?

Mr. Renwick: My guess is when they go down to Windsor that final-offer selection will be put forward by the hon. member for York Centre as one of the policies of the Liberal Party in the field of collective bargaining.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Shouldn’t he have the right to say what his views are?

Mr. Renwick: Yes.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Should we all stand up glassy-eyed like the member?

Mr. Renwick: Of course.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: These are the essential services.

An hon. member: Is the Leader of the Opposition disagreeing with his colleague already?

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Is the member for Riverdale prepared to tell us about how his party’s policy has changed over the last few hours?

Mr. Renwick: As a matter of fact, I think I will talk through until the member for Wentworth gets back here on Monday.

Mr. Ruston: He’ll straighten him out.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: The member for Riverdale won’t quit before then anyway.

Mr. Renwick: The interesting thing is that if one looks at final-offer selection, the proposals for final-offer selection have always come from the elitists in the society. When they come from the Beland Honderichs --

Mr. Deacon: I didn’t realize that Val Scott was considered as one of the elitists.

An hon. member: Yes he is, sure.

Mr. Renwick: When Beland Honderich decides that he’s got the solutions to the problems of labour-management relationships, and the Liberal Party adopts them, we can understand that.

Mr. Deacon: Isn’t it interesting that he isn’t aware it is quite the reverse?

Mr. Foulds: But even then the leader of the Liberal Party can change that party’s policy to suit himself.

Mr. Renwick: You know, the interesting and rather amusing part about final-offer selection, so far as the Province of Ontario is concerned, is that it actually originated with the membership of the New Democratic Party.

Mr. Deacon: That’s right. The New Democratic Party didn’t have room for such sensible policies.

Mr. Renwick: Mr. Speaker, do you know where it originated? With real working men -- the men who really toil for their dollars, the professional engineers of the Province of Ontario.

Mr. S. Lewis (Scarborough West): That’s right. In fact, it originated with the professional Hydro engineers.

Mr. Renwick: The professional Hydro engineers.

Mr. Deacon: They must be in the NDP’s black books these days.

Mr. Renwick: Good friends of mine, Val Scott and Ed Phillips, were the ones who produced the first version of final-offer selection that we ever heard of in the Province of Ontario. Fortunately for this party, it was never adopted as a solution for the working man’s power to deal with management.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Well, tell us about what Blakeney does for the working man, the Hydro engineers in Saskatchewan.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. Order.

Mr. Renwick: We’ll ask little Allan down some day to give the Liberal leader a lecture; he’d be glad to do that.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: He’s one of the brighter NDPers.

Mr. Lewis: He is. I quite agree. What about Barrett and the firemen?

Mrs. Campbell: Tell us what he did for working women. That’s discrimination.

Mr. Renwick: Mr. Speaker, it is necessary every now and then to deal with some of the relatively ludicrous arguments of the members of the Liberal Party.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Ah, yes. Now that we’ve dealt with those --

Mr. Renwick: I would like now to turn to the philosophy of the government of the Province of Ontario, as enunciated by the Chairman of the Management Board as he reflected upon the decision that was reached on Dec. 29. His reflections were open and clear, and the way in which he looks at this problem were clearly set out in the speech which, fortunately, he sent to each member of the assembly, a speech which he delivered to the Kiwanis Club in the Chateau Laurier in Ottawa on Jan. 24 last. It’s a very clear statement. I’d like to deal with it a little bit, Mr. Speaker.

In referring to the bill which is currently before us to debate, he acknowledged that the millennium had not been reached in the Province of Ontario in relations between the government of the province and the civil service. I think that’s quite an acknowledgement and quite an admission. I know he’s working toward it.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Better goal, too.

Mr. Renwick: I know it’s his goal.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Thank you.

Mr. Renwick: I have some sort of scepticism about whether he or I will be around when the millennium appears --

Mr. Lawlor: Doesn’t the minister think he’s set it back several thousand years?

Mr. Renwick: I’m inclined to think that before the millennium comes, there are going to be a number of very difficult problems that will have to be solved.

He said in his speech:

“The government currently has before the Legislature amendments to the Crown Employees Collective Bargaining Act, amendments which would change the method of making appointments to arbitration boards to ensure their impartiality is beyond question.”

That’s interesting. Now, that is one of the matters that we raised in the committee in 1972 and tried to get the government to understand at that time -- that you can’t have the kind of tribunal that was established in the present bill. We hardly consider it progress that two years later, or 2½ years later, the government has adopted the position which we took then in committee.

He then went on to say that -- oh, and he split an infinitive; but I will correct that.

Mr. Lewis: I want to speak to my colleague about that.

Mr. Renwick: I will correct that grammatical error.

Mr. Lewis: That doesn’t happen in our caucus: People don’t split infinitives in the NDP, I want to tell the House.

Mr. Renwick: Mr. Speaker, if I may --

Mr. Foulds: The Chairman of Management Board would split hairs, if he had any.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: What would the member split?

Mr. R. G. Eaton (Middlesex South): They just split, period.

Mr. Renwick: And “to expand significantly.” Mr. Speaker, I would like the Chairman of Management Board to get that -- “to expand significantly.” “To expand” is the verb; “significantly” is the adverb -- and the adverb generally follows the verb.

Mr. Lewis: He can tell that to his speech writers.

Mr. Renwick: “And to expand significantly the subject areas” --

Mr. Lewis: Grade 9 grammar.

Mr. Renwick: “ -- open to negotiation between management and employee representatives.”

Mr. Lewis: It is nothing but barbarism to split infinitives.

Mr. Renwick: He said:

“Even as we proceed with this legislation, which we believe offers some very real improvement in the existing Act, we are continuing to give active consideration to further advances in the system.”

Well, if one examines the amendments which appear in the bill which is before us with respect to those matters which are now negotiable and those matters which are reserved exclusively to management, one will see that it is a very marginal difference between the position before and after. Again, Mr. Speaker, we in this party in the committee tried to insist two years ago that those changes should be made.

So the very two items that the Chairman of the Management Board highlighted in his public address are two of a number of items which we had urged upon the government at the time of those iniquitous hearings back in 1972.

He referred to it in his speech as the broader questions of relationships between the civil service and the government of the Province of Ontario; the broader questions with relation to the negotiations in what he refers to as the public sector -- as distinct from what he contraposed to it, the private sector.

He appealed to his audience that since they were all taxpayers they had the right to know. That was the reason which the Chairman of the Management Board gave for all of the public announcements which he made during the very sensitive periods of the negotiation which exacerbated the situation.

It is a very selective right to know that the government of the Province of Ontario exercises. The only time it takes the people of the Province of Ontario into its confidence and says they have the right to know is when it serves the purposes of the Tory government, the cabinet of the Province of Ontario.

There have been countless occasions when this government has denied the right to know, and you can’t make it a self-serving operation -- and the Chairman of the Management Board knows it. It is a specious argument.

He then indicates, of course, that it is the taxpayers who will pay and he opposes the body of the taxpayers against the Civil Service Association -- almost as if the Civil Service Association is non-taxable. That is the distinction he really makes. They pay taxes, so far as I know. So what he is saying is that he was engaged in opposing, or trying to oppose -- fortunately he wasn’t successful, because the people of the Province of Ontario weren’t taken in by it.

He wasn’t opposing the taxpayers against the civil service. He was opposing those taxpayers, corporation and individual who paid taxes but weren’t members of the civil service, against members of the civil service who were taxpayers.

That was the confrontation the minister was engaged in and it was humbug. He ought to know it and I hope he will have enough sense in the time to come never to use that tactic again in the course of negotiations in the Province of Ontario. It was cheap. It is a management device used year in and year out in what you refer to as the private sector. They’re constantly taking the public, the consumers of the product, into their game to let them know why it is that the consumers, who happen to be their workers, are really affecting the great body of consumers.

You know, throughout the speech, the minister never knows whether to refer to them as taxpayers or consumers, because he tries to say that the public sector and the private sector are different, but he always stumbles on it because he can’t quite distinguish consumers from taxpayers. He doesn’t really believe there are any differences of any real significance and he knows it.

Do you know the specious distinction that the minister held up, Mr. Speaker? He held up that the government of Ontario would not engage in a lockout and therefore that makes negotiations in the public sector different from negotiations in the private sector. I’m not so sure; if Tory government kept on long in this province they might very well engage in a lockout. I wouldn’t be surprised if they put a lock on this assembly door if they’re in the government very much longer. We’ve had a recent example in Bangladesh of a parliament voting itself out of existence.

Mr. Foulds: It would be know as the Long Legislature.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: That would be only if those fellows opposite were in power, that’s all. That’s when that will happen.

Mr. Foulds: The precedents aren’t encouraging.

Mr. Renwick: It’s very fascinating that in his speech in Ottawa he disclosed the samples which he took in the pay sector of the private economy. The private economy is different from the public sector; bargaining in the private sector is different from bargaining in the public sector; but the gauge of earnings of members of the civil service is to be determined by private wage assessments in the private sector and that’s what the equation is to be.

That’s exactly what the minister did in this instance. I ask -- maybe I’m wrong, maybe they are available -- I ask the minister to table the comparable employment fields that were used for the purpose of making those comparisons, because the Chairman of the Management Board said, “It was on the basis of those comparisons of comparable employments” -- which is a very interesting phrase and even he had the grace in his speech to indicate that comparability was kind of difficult -- tempered by what he referred to as intra civil service adjustments that would have to be made, that it was on that basis that he made his offer on Dec. 3. He chastised the Civil Service Association for not being graceful enough to both be grateful and to accept it at that time rather than to cause him, the Chairman of the Management Board, the difficulty and the trouble which he had for the rest of the month of December.

I don’t know whether the way I look at things is so different from the way the Chairman of the Management Board looks at it that I find it incongruous that the Chairman of the Management Board would try to say to us that the very guts of the items that are being negotiated are identical in the public service as they are in the private sector, and then say that there is some difference in the nature of the process by which the negotiated settlements would be reached. The logic of it escapes me. I would be very interested if the chairman, at the appropriate time, would clarify my thinking about it. There is no difference, in my view, and there can be no difference so long as the standards which are established by this government for employment in the civil service are based primarily upon comparisons.

Then he threw in another criterion. The funny thing is that his speech started off in the factual matters of the negotiation and it appeared to be almost a complete whole and then it went very funny at the end as though he got tired and he realized that he couldn’t logically put the whole thing together.

The other criterion he used was the ability to pay, and he referred to the fact that the tax resources of the province were not a bottomless pit, and that he hoped that others would learn that hard reality. I had the feeling that he was talking about the New Democratic Party when he referred about learning the hard reality about that.

I think it is fascinating. In one of the vexed areas of this difficult problem of public sector negotiations -- in the field of hospital services -- about the very day that the Chairman of the Management Board was making his speech to the Kiwanis Club in Ottawa about the ability-to-pay principle, as it applied to collective bargaining within the public sector of the civil service of the Province of Ontario, the commission established by his colleague, the Minister of Labour (Mr. MacBeth) was reporting upon the question of negotiations in the hospital services.

The one principle which that commission ruled out as being irrelevant was the question of the ability to pay. They established quite clearly that if the status by way of salary and working conditions was to be raised within the hospital industries, the matters had to be dealt with on a province-wide basis -- for which there may be argument, and obviously the Minister of Labour wasn’t too happy about the suggestion -- and the ability to pay was not the criterion.

I’m simply saying to the minister he can’t lump into the public sector, hospital workers and a great number of other persons, categorize practically all of them as essential and suggest somehow or other that the government of Ontario, which has the final responsibility in practically all of those fields, is going to use the ability-to-pay principle which was disowned as being inapplicable in the field of hospital workers. The report, I hope, the government of the Province of Ontario will accept for the hospital workers.

Then in his address on this whole question of the broad aspects of how you deal with this next question he proceeded to indicate that yes, the essential services question was a major question. Of course, the government has already indicated that somewhere in the private sector there are essential services as well, because the assembly legislated out, with us in opposition, the compulsory ending of the elevator strike. There must be within the private sector, areas which the government will consider to be essential and not just within the public sector. But the criteria, when you move into the public sector, of what the government designates as essential services are basically services where the pay scales are the lowest.

We tried to make this point time and time again in other debates: The use of the term “essential services” is a pseudonym for, or there is another English phrase which indicates that you want to say something with a glossy term when the reality is not to be used, I forget what it is -- my colleague from Sandwich-Riverside (Mr. Burr) should be able to help me because undoubtedly it is a word of Greek origin -- it is a euphemism for the fact that the wage rates are low and we want to keep them low, therefore we call them essential services.

One can make exceptions to it, and one can say that isn’t so in all instances. But in practically every instance in which we have to deal with the question of compulsory arbitration it is with people who are getting sub-average wages across the board. This government must have recognized that, because the maximum upper limit that the Chairman of the Management Board has stated he will ever permit in the civil service of Ontario is the level of comparable rates in the private sector. That was the measure of the 20 per cent across the board that he agreed to, or whatever the final figure was.

I want to emphasize that point, that what he proceeded to put on the table as the realistic negotiating position of the government of Ontario was an offer which would do but one thing, and that was to raise the level of the 19,000 operating members of the civil service to comparable levels in the private sector.

The logic of it, of course, is perfectly clear: That they were substantially below that level and that whatever the pay research may have been -- and I’m quite certain it could be shot full of holes to determine whether or not it should have been 30 per cent instead of 20 per cent, or whether it should have been the 29 per cent or the 40 per cent -- when looked at in those terms that is an immeasurable hurdle for the Civil Service Association of Ontario to constantly and forever have to achieve to just keep themselves level.

They can never, because they are civil servants, go ahead. It can never be said in the philosophy of this government that the positions in the civil service in the Province of Ontario are worth more than the positions in the private sector.

The apologia the Chairman of the Management Board put forward was the usual litany of the defence of the free enterprise system, indicating again that, thank God, he wished that some other people would realize that the free enterprise system was going to be destroyed. Again I had the feeling the Chairman of the Management Board was talking about the New Democratic Party.

Mr. Speaker, the Civil Service Association of Ontario knew exactly what they were doing when they put forward the 62.5 per cent argument. The 62.5 per cent argument was put forward to the government to alert the government that there was something seriously wrong in the wage levels of the civil service generally and particularly in the areas of the 19,000 that were coming up for bargaining.

A 20 per cent across the board increase is a substantial increase. A 20 per cent across the board increase means that the government of the Province of Ontario was paying substantially sub-average wages for a long period of time in the civil service. And it’ll never be able to escape that. It was paying sub-standard wages. That’s exactly what it does. It says to the civil service it can’t ever get anywhere except to the standard.

What is worse, to the general category of the civil service which is coming up for negotiations -- I don’t know the exact date, but it’s not very long -- it has already said they cannot expect to get the 20 per cent. There is no evidence, and the minister certainly didn’t say so in his speech, he didn’t say that the pay research has been done in the private sector to compare the general service employees in the civil service positions with the private sector in order to determine what extent of increase the government would offer. He has already foreclosed the question that they can ever get 20 per cent.

Mr. Speaker, the minister knows they also are being paid substantially substandard. The minister knows that. I ask him again to table -- maybe I wasn’t here and maybe he has done it, but I haven’t heard about it -- to table those figures in the area of establishing the pay research that led him to offer the 20 per cent. I would like to see now the pay research figures he will use for the purpose of determining the offer which he will make to the general service employees.

Now, all right; just remember that we in this party consider that in practically all of the areas that we are basically concerned about, the government equates essential services with substandard pay. One does not have to be a genius or a student of labour history to know that substandard pay is always accompanied by substandard working conditions generally, and is always accompanied by the absolute reserved right of management to manage.

And perhaps now, Mr. Speaker, in 1974 and in 1975, you will understand why the civil service of the Province of Ontario, after 30 years of Tory rule, had to adopt a self-denigrating motto. “Free the servants,” in order to get across to the government what was wrong within the civil service so far as their pay rates, their working conditions and the managerial reserved right to manage were concerned.

I think they have made some progress in getting that across to the government, but within that context everything that the Civil Service Association of Ontario has done in the last six months has been sweet reasonableness compared with the position of the Tory government over the last 30 years to the civil servants.

And I am suggesting to the Chairman of the Management Board that when he goes home tonight, he takes my copy of his speech and perhaps reads some of the notes which I have put in the margin of his speech and tries to indicate to himself whether or not his philosophy really has any place in the Province of Ontario in 1974.

I will finish, Mr. Speaker. I understand the bill is going to committee outside the House and we’ll have an opportunity to deal with the specifics of the clauses. But on this first occasion for the amendment of the Crown Employees Collective Bargaining Act, following hard upon, and indeed part of an endeavour by the Civil Service Association of Ontario to get across to the government their concerns about the collective bargaining Act under which they were governed, the government comes up with very minimal changes in that particular bill.

The reason we are so far apart -- the reason this party is not prepared to accept some fiat statement that something is an essential service, that something requires a general legislation ruling out the right to strike -- is because we believe, as distinct from the Chairman of the Management Board and his colleagues -- and his colleagues must include the Minister of Labour -- that the right to withhold collectively one’s labour is a fundamental right established in the common law of England. It was part of the common law of Upper Canada until such time when the compromise was made between the labour movement and management. At the end of the war, there was a compromise and almost a true settlement reached. The right to strike was translated into statute law with certain rules governing it at the time of the treats---- that’s what I call it -- in 1944; but it’s a right, and there’s no question about it.

But that’s not what the minister calls it. The Chairman of the Management Board says, “I say ‘so-called’ right” -- “so-called” right, that’s all he understands by it -- “because I cannot accept the suggestion that some fundamental freedom, equivalent say to the right of free speech or religious freedom, is at stake here.”

An hon. member: Why?

Mr. Renwick: I want to say to the minister, and I want to say it unequivocally, and I want to say it just as simply and as clearly as I can: The right to strike is equal to each of those other rights. The right of free speech, freedom of religion, freedom of conscience, freedom of assembly, freedom to withhold one’s labour, are fundamental rights under our constitution; and nothing this government can say is going to suggest for one single moment that because a person works for the government of the Province of Ontario he forfeits that kind of right. The paternalistic view of this government when it comes to the fundamentals of this kind of relationship means that they just do not understand the fundamental principles which we are involved in. He goes on -- and I am going to repeat it again, because I think Hansard should show the whole context -- and I am quoting the Chairman of the Management Board, because God forbid that Hansard should misconstrue it, that I said it:

“I say ‘so-called’ right because I cannot accept the suggestion that some fundamental freedom, equivalent say to the right of free speech or religious freedom, is at stake here. Rather, it seems to me that giving an employee the power to withdraw his services in pursuit of his contract demands is or can be part of the collective bargaining process but is not necessarily essential to it.”

Mr. Lewis: Come, who wrote it?

Mr. Renwick: “In my view,” -- again, it is the Chairman of the Management Board’s view -- “it should be seen more as a condition of employment, subject, as are other conditions -- ”

Do the members know that in 1936, at Bassel’s restaurant on Yonge St., the first chairman of the Ontario Labour Relations Board designated that contract as a yellow-dog contract? We haven’t heard that term for a long time, but under the guise of the language used by the Chairman of the Management Board, the government is saying that it can subject the civil service of the Province of Ontario to a yellow-dog contract. The quote goes on:

“In my view it should be seen more as a condition of employment, subject, as are other conditions, to the wider ramification of the jobs or services at issue; and subject, of course, to any individual’s right to refuse employment should he not find the conditions attached to it acceptable to him.”

An hon. member: Oh, come on.

Mr. Lewis: Resign. He should, in fact.

Mr. Renwick: It is not a question of refusing employment if the conditions aren’t satisfactory. That luxury is given to very few. It’s a question of whether or not when one has the employment he has the right to decent wages, the right to decent working conditions, the right to a non-paternalistic employer who will negotiate in good faith.

Mr. Lawlor: Starve under bridges.

Mr. Renwick: And to enforce those rights, the right, collectively with his fellow employees, to withdraw his services.

Let me make it clear: We have said there is no place in the civil service for a bill which denies the right to strike. We believe that a government of the day, exercising its responsibility of government and its ultimate responsibility to the electorate of the province, can and should select a point in time where any disruption of the economic life of the society, be it in the provision of goods or the provision of services, can be brought to an end if the democratic process of elected members meets and passes the law to do so. It doesn’t mean the unanimous vote of all the members of the assembly, but the exercise of the constitutional responsibility of government to bring it to an end.

We say that at this time in the society of the Province of Ontario, that is a sufficient and adequate safeguard of the public interest without a blanket prohibition against any area of the public service, in its broadest sense, being denied the fundamental right without which it cannot achieve the kind of equitable pay, equitable working conditions and a reasonable management; it has never been done in any circumstances that can be quoted anywhere.

That’s what this government has to learn! I am sure that it will, unless it misunderstands the portents of the time; and if it misunderstands, then it is going to be in trouble.

They were lucky this time, they were very lucky; I may even say relatively skilful within the atmosphere of the Province of Ontario. But the things which I have tried to say tonight about what the minister designates as essential services, the standards by which he determines what offer he is going to make and his version of the collective process, is even more rudimentary or lacking in perception when he sort of suggests that on Dec. 3 he made the offer and it should have been accepted. And then on Dec. 29 he made a few minor adjustments to it -- and that somehow or other that was settled. We agree.

I’d like to call the minister by his first name just to let him know that we really do agree with him. We really do agree that he wasn’t intimidated. I mean, for heaven’s sakes, who’s going to intimidate the second strongest government in Canada -- the 19,000 operating employees?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: That’s what the Liberals said.

Mr. Renwick: Well the minister said it too. He said he wanted to let the Kiwanians know that he wasn’t intimidated. I imagine he put his shoulders back. Did the minister wear his uniform that day?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: It doesn’t fit anymore.

Mr. M. C. Germa (Sudbury): And medals?

Mr. Renwick: Pardon?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: It doesn’t fit anymore.

Mr. Renwick: It doesn’t, eh?

Listen, nobody kids themselves. The government of Ontario is not to be intimidated. It’s crazy to suggest for one single moment that 19,000 members of the population of the Province of Ontario, scattered across the province, providing certain services at low rates of pay, are intimidating or threatening the government. That sort of talk, Eric -- sorry, excuse me, Mr. Speaker.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: It’s okay, I don’t mind. I have been called worse than that.

Mr. Renwick: Well I wanted the minister to know that I really do believe it is possible to perhaps communicate with him about some of these matters. Mr. Speaker, I’ve gone on much too long. I didn’t really intend to speak on the bill. If this particular document bad not come onto say desk, if the minister had withheld it for a couple of days, the debate might have been over some time ago.

I want the minister, Mr. Speaker, at some point to read what I’ve said. I really do want him to do that. I don’t mean by that that it’s been said perfectly or imperfectly or how it’s been said.

I have endeavoured to get across to the minister the fundamental difference in the conception of what is required in 1974 for civilized relationships between the government of the Province of Ontario and those who work for the government of the Province of Ontario; as well as civilized relationships in other areas of the public sector where the government bears the ultimate responsibility.

I hope the minister will find time in the neat few days to refract the words which he used in this document to say that the general service employees of the government already can’t be expected to get 20 per cent. He’s setting himself up for extreme difficulty.

An apathetic body has been transformed over two years into -- as I said at the outset of my remarks -- a relatively intransigent, militant union. It will only be antagonized into further intransigence if this government continues to take the view that even before negotiations have started it has determined the ultimate limit. That ultimate limit is to bring them simply up to the standard.

Those people are already working for substandard wages and, in their opinion -- and I respect their opinion, because they are subjected to the conditions -- in substandard working conditions. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for St. George.

Mrs. Campbell: Mr. Speaker, I don’t intend to deal at length in my remarks about this bill. Others have spoken far more ably than I can on the subject.

There are one or two things which I feel it incumbent upon me to say. When I consider there are essential services which do require compulsory arbitration, I am relating it to my experience with the firefighters, for example, of the city of Toronto. There you have a body of men who in this case do not wish to have the right to strike.

There are reasons why they expressly do not wish the right to strike.

That is because management, recognizing this limitation, if you like, treats that body with great consideration as they sit down to bargain together. To me, that really is the secret of what we are talking about when we talk about an essential service and compulsory arbitration. It is that kind of relationship which management builds with the employee which makes the difference.

While I fully agree with what has been said on behalf of this party by my leader, personally I have this kind of concern that with this government that kind of relationship can probably never be established.

I would trust that sooner or later this government could understand human beings. I have looked for it in the time I have been here and I haven’t seen them understand human beings per se in any single area of discussion that we have had in this House. So it is difficult for me, just on that personal basis, to look at this matter and wonder just how this government would handle the relationship with those whose services are essential to the citizens of this province.

Nevertheless, I am accepting this principle. But I would like to point out something else about the way in which this government deals with people over whom they have so much control.

I thought, Mr. Speaker, that we had passed from the dark ages when management could put a person through a probationary period and without any criticism, without any single word of criticism, can then on the last day of their probation, advise them that they will either resign their position or be fired. When this government deals with people in this way, how can anyone have confidence in this kind of a bill? But that has happened.

I regret, too, that so much really is left in the hands of this government in dealing with the matter of discipline. I am sure the two ministers involved with community and social development know the case whereof I have been speaking. It is an example of a government which has the power to discipline in its own hands in circumstances under which there can be no assistance given by the association. What a delightful power to have!

When I look at management rights as they are here, and many of them are in accordance with private employer-employee arrangements, and I realize that the government has the power to decide classifications of positions and has exercised that power to continue discriminations which are contemptible in this time but weren’t contemptible when they started, I have very little confidence in this government’s concern, really, to make anything work towards a better relationship with its employees.

Mr. Speaker, I will be interested in debating this bill as it goes to committee. I’m not going to prolong this now, but I am prepared at least to indicate the depth of my concern in this bill. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: Does any other member wish to speak?

Mr. Lewis: I want to speak just for a few minutes, Mr. Speaker. I think most of the arguments have been made; most of the bases have been touched. I don’t know that I can reinforce it to any great degree. There are just some comments that I’d like to add, although I fear they will make no impact upon the minister involved.

Mr. Speaker, there is an enormous range of deficiencies in the bill and they’ve been dealt with over the course of this debate, late this afternoon and early this evening, by a number of other speakers. But I thought that the matter raised by my colleague, the member for Riverdale, toward the end of his remarks was really rather central to everything. The minister involved, the Chairman of the Management Board, has a cavalier attitude to the rights of working people. The way he dealt with the right to strike in his speech in Ottawa was clearly one of the most frivolous and mindless ways of dealing with the right to strike that many of us have seen for some time.

I don’t know to what extent the minister embraces the view. I don’t know to what extent he was simply reading what was written for him. I must say that his view of the right to strike is so thoughtless and so filled with misunderstanding that it prejudices the entire content of this legislation and this bill, and explains perhaps the attitude of the government towards its civil servants.

One of the problems is that over there on the Tory side none of them understand the right to strike. None of them know how it was won. None of them recognize what’s happened in the last 60 to 70 to 80 years of labour relations on the North American continent. None of them can envisage the battles of the 1910s, 1920s and 1930s, when working people wrested from employers somewhat more enlightened than the Treasury Board, and on occasion even now wrest from employers basic working conditions; and did it and do it through the vehicle of the right to strike.

You don’t treat a principle like the right to strike so cavalierly, Mr. Speaker. It’s not invested with holy writ; it ranks with the other rights; there are occasions when it has to be dispensed with; but you don’t toss it aside lightly in a speech to a group in Ottawa and in the process show the basic contempt you have for 60,000 or 70,000 civil servants in the Province of Ontario.

I must say, Mr. Speaker, that what the government is doing over there is alienating the civil service. I suppose most of us should really applaud. It has a penchant for alienating everyone. Every day in this Legislature feels like “The Last Post” -- I really have this sensation. I sit through days like today and between Shouldice and Spadina I have the sense that we should have “Taps” playing in the background every time we rise to speak.

They have a death wish over there that has no precedent. At least when Mitch Hepburn went under he did it with panache. They are just sinking gracelessly into the swamp and they are taking everything down after them.

They go from one calamity to another and have no perspective, no understanding, no sense of what the devil they are doing to each other. Self-immolation never had a better definition than that of the Ontario cabinet.

I want to tell you, Mr. Speaker, that what they have done to the teachers and what they’ve done to the civil servants and what they are doing to groups all over the province, of course, will reap the whirlwind. They may understand that now.

How much more appropriate it would have been to come into this Legislature and to say: “We are altering the bill substantially to incorporate the recommendations of our own employees. We trust them. We assume they wouldn’t put proposals to us which were extreme or irrational. We’ll incorporate them in law and we’ll see how they work, including the right to strike.” The entire civil service would applaud them -- for reasons of surprise if nothing else -- and even the public would say: “Maybe a measure of sanity has returned to that extraordinary group across the way.” But it can’t return; it’s laughable. This place is laughable. The government goes under with regularity and it is doing it again in this piece of legislation.

As I say, I have profound philosophic objections to its contents, but I have no objection to having the government stand on the decks of the Titanic, none at all.

Mr. Speaker, the Leader of the Opposition, the Liberal Party, indicated; my colleague from Riverdale affirmed; I state it’s not a secret, that the government of Ontario always has the right on any occasion to order a group of workers back to work. You don’t have to remove the entire right to strike from a legitimate group of working people in order to protect the public, Mr. Speaker. If on day one the civil servants walked out -- God forbid -- the government brings this House in and it passes legislation with its majority at the time -- we would oppose it, but the government would pass it -- it has the right to turn them back.

It is not done just by Tories, New Democrats do it too. New Democrats did it in British Columbia with the firemen; New Democrats did it in Saskatchewan with the hydro workers. I’m not pretending any particular self-righteousness, but they don’t legislate in advance. They don’t deprive people of their rights in advance of the Act. They don’t invite the confrontation by legislating it. If something is out of hand they cope with it afterwards.

That’s the difference between a rational, moderate, civilized government and people who are headed for intemperate confrontation. That’s what’s happened to this government and I don’t understand it. It is not fashionable for Tories as a rule, except for Tories who are so fossilized in social attitudes that all of the currents of change around them eddy and swirl and no one is affected by it -- least of all, if I may say, the Chairman of the Management Board who, in his own magnificent monolithic way, could walk through any fire and never notice the flames. He could walk through quicksand and not know when he began to gurgle.

Mr. Lawlor: He would sink on rock.

Mr. Lewis: He could tell the Legislature he was walking across the water and never notice that he’d sunk. It’s a kind of penchant the minister has --

Mr. Lawlor: He would be the last one to see it.

Mr. Lewis: -- for being totally indifferent to what goes on around him in the world. But the world is moving.

Mr. M. Gaunt (Huron-Bruce): Oblivious.

Mr. Lewis: Oblivious, which is, I think, generically related to oblivion.

Mr. Laughren: Yes.

Mr. Lewis: Yes, right, okay. The deficiencies of the bill have already been dealt with by my colleagues. The right to strike is something that the government does not need to take from working people, civil servants. Who are these civil servants, these incendiaries, these revolutionaries it wants to take the right to strike from? Who? The people who inhabit the Frost building? Where are they? Where are their Molotov cocktails? What is it about them that the government has to take away their rights? They are ordinary, decent people, working well for the Province of Ontario. They haven’t got the slightest inclination or wish to strike. All they want to do is to bargain collectively in good faith.

It’s not only the matter of the right to strike. The government does it in questions of working conditions. It prescribes the area which can be collectively bargained in a way which gives it, the management, certain prerogatives which very few managements have. Again, I don’t understand the necessity of that. In this day and age, in the 1970s, except for some Neanderthals it’s possible to give to working people the right to negotiate everything, understanding that they too will proceed in good faith.

Mr. Speaker, the whole bargaining process in this last episode was profoundly bizarre. It was preceded by public attacks on both sides. I didn’t like the civil service ad campaign and have said so publicly. I liked far less the belligerent and antagonistic response of the government. For civil servants whom the government has debased and oppressed for a good many years in a manipulative way, it’s perhaps understandable that their frustration would lead to them to an unwise ad campaign. But a government with all the power around it doesn’t have to engage in that kind of belligerence itself on the floor of the Legislature. That’s quite unnecessary, entirely unnecessary. And, of course, it heats up the process almost to the point where it can’t be retrieved.

The government has existed in a state of paternalism vis-à-vis its civil servants for -- what? -- 33 years. It has never taken them seriously. There’s never been serious bargaining. The Civil Service Association, I have no hesitation in saying it, had a lousy representation until the last year. It broke my heart to be part of the debates in this Legislature, having to fight the leadership of the Civil Service Association to win certain rights for their workers. It really bothered us in this caucus that the Civil Service Association sat silently while the fight raged in the Legislature. But it changes. Unions change. Associations change. The civil servants have new leadership. It all altered in the last year or two. And now we are into a profoundly different situation.

Interjection by an hon. member.

Mr. Lewis: Both of the sides then took positions which were very unfortunate. The government took a ridiculous position; the Civil Service Association took a ridiculous position, although, as my colleague from Riverdale pointed out, what they were saying was that 33 years of manipulation have ended. They were saying: “We are going to catch up. We want a quotient additional in real money and we want the cost of living.” They in fact put together a very impressive argument for the 62.5 per cent. If that had been apportioned out over the previous five or six years, when they were being neglected by their own leadership, they would be at that level now. But, of course, in a one-year contract they couldn’t expect to get the 62.5 per cent. We may yet get the vote tonight, Mr. Speaker, I can say to the minister.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: All right.

Mr. Lewis: Fine, don’t panic.

Then there was a great deal of posturing on both sides. The government, as I understand it, made one of those extraordinary tactical errors. It went to 20 per cent right away. It moved from 16.5 to 20 per cent. I don’t know where the error occurred. I don’t know whether it occurred in cabinet; I don’t know whether it occurred amongst the negotiators But it went to 20 per cent sooner than it intended, and it left itself no negotiating room whatsoever.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: What is the member saying? Is he saying we gave too much?

Mr. Lewis: No, I am not, I am saying that in the government’s crazy view of the bargaining process it found itself so trapped in the Legislature that it left itself no room for bargaining. And because the minister didn’t understand what the civil servants were demanding, he was prepared to see it to the crunch. What did the CSAO move from? They moved from 62.5 down to --

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Forty-one.

Mr. Lewis: -- to 41, down to --

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Twenty-nine.

Mr. Lewis: -- down to 29, and then systematically down after that. Okay.

I think that the way the negotiations were conducted was just beyond belief, utterly irresponsible. I want to tell the minister that I discussed it informally once or twice -- I know the Leader of the Opposition did too -- with the Chairman of the Management Board in the Legislature in passing. It was understood that this is the way the crazy negotiations were proceeding, but that doesn’t legitimize them. The fact that the government was able to participate in it doesn’t legitimize them.

And those last 72 hours, I couldn’t believe it. The minister was closeted over there in the Park Plaza; I was closeted over there in the Hyatt Regency. Both of us were watching what was going on, and the minister has to admit that it had a certain surrealism to it. Everybody knew, including the CSAO, that the government would come up a little. How much it would come up nobody was certain.

I had spoken to two cabinet ministers -- Mr. Speaker, they shall remain nameless -- in the last couple of days, and was persuaded that the government would come up. The workers were persuaded that the government would come up. But the government dug its heels in, and the workers came down from 29 to 26 to 24 to 23, and the government wouldn’t move.

And at that last meeting at 6:30 in the morning, the government negotiator sat down at the table with Chris Trower and his negotiating team for the Civil Service Association, and said in effect, “Go to the devil. We are not moving.” And then he takes Chris Trower down the hall and says to him, “I’ll get you 21. Perhaps if I twist an arm I might get 21.5.” And Chris Trower says, “You get me 21.5 and we’ll have a settlement.”

What the devil kind of bargaining is that in the public sector with 20,000 civil servants waiting to find out what happens? And the whole of the public potentially affected? That’s not the way it works.

I understand taking it to the 11th hour. There were conversations in confidence all over, Mr. Speaker, during these days. The Leader of the Opposition and I went in and met one evening with the bargaining team of the CSAO, and chatted with them informally. And I am sure we pursued our separate ways and separate contacts. But I must say it’s one thing to take it to the 11th hour and it’s another thing to take it to 45 minutes before the meeting. That’s not collective bargaining, that’s collective absurdity and it destroys bargaining in the public sector.

It was a neat game, and both sides had to play it. And I understood it had to be played, and I know the Chairman of the Board understood it had to be played. But now that it’s all over I am asking him to reconsider the process, to recognize that there was too much at stake ever to allow that to happen again. And I want to put to him what has been put to him before: Bargaining in the public sector, particularly the civil service, has to be honourable, which means that you have got to set an initial offer which reflects comparable rates in the private sector. That’s No. 1.

No. 2. If the government insists on taking away the right to strike, it has to accord to the civil servants other special rights -- which is an absence of exploitation -- in terms of their rights to negotiate and in terms of their wages and fringe benefits.

No. 3. If the government is going to deal effectively in the public sector then it has to give to civil servants the right to appeal somewhere, and that appeal should go to the chairman of the Ontario Labour Relations Board, and they should have the right to find the government guilty of bargaining in bad faith, as the government should have the right to find the Civil Service Association guilty of bargaining in bad faith, if that is what it comes to. In other words, there has to be an apparatus which reinforces good faith bargaining.

Then the government needs a group of civil servants skilled in public sector bargaining, who have some sensitivity about it and who will handle it appropriately. The minister has no such bargainers now. He had a bargainer on his side with capacity and the civil service had Chris Trower on the negotiating committee, but he had no intermediary who understood the nuances and sensitivities involved and could have brought that dispute to a settlement within the last two weeks much more readily and with much less acrimony than was the case. That is also true for teachers, for hospital workers, for transit workers, for the Catholic Children’s Aid workers and for the Big Brother workers. The government has got no apparatus in this province which can deal appropriately with the public sector.

One day I will have the opportunity to outline some of those labour disputes, to deal with them virtually one by one in this Legislature, and to suggest the alternative at the right moment in time. This isn’t the time. But I know that we could have changed the fractious and antagonistic situation with the civil servants, had all of that been available to us -- an appeal to establish bad faith bargaining, if it existed, and a group of mediators who had the confidence of both sides because they understand public sector bargaining.

As it happens, the CSAO got a good settlement, relatively speaking. I don’t dispute 21.5 per cent. I don’t think it was too high by any means. I don’t think it was quite fair. It should have been a little higher. But in terms of what they have ever received from the government, it was okay. But in the process, the government fashioned solidarity in the civil service and developed a political consciousness in the civil service which never existed before. All over Ontario, civil servants were wearing “Free the servants” badges; wherever one went to public meetings, they were in the audience. Now we have 60,000 people who are much more aware of the injustice of government, and now the minister brings in a bill which is a slap in the face, an outright provocation to them. Well, that’s his decision.

We will oppose the bill. I mean, we oppose it with good heart. We want no part of it. Very little progress is made; very little of it makes any sense. But the minister wants to pass this bill. He wants to declare war on the civil service again. He wants to antagonize them in an election year. He wants to mobilize yet another group of people against the government in Ontario. Does he know what happens when the government systematically alienates individual groups everywhere -- teachers, hospital workers, civil servants, farmers? Ultimately they represent all the people in the province, and then they change government. That’s what they are doing over there, and they are doing it so systematically that I can’t believe it -- but it’s happening again in this bill.

You know, Mr. Speaker, I say to the Chairman of the Management Board that I have sat in this House more often feeling like a student of political science or in my old undergraduate days of history than I do a politician. I wish I had a column in one of the papers, not to espouse the cause of socialism but to analyze what is happening over here. It is like a death rattle. It is like rigor mortis. It’s as though they cannot move their cerebral processes enough to understand the self-destruction that’s taking place. That’s what this bill is doing.

The minister will stand up and speak to this bill. He will explain how useful it is. He will say that the right to strike can’t be given. He will say he has extended the rights. But there isn’t a civil servant in the Province of Ontario who believes him any more. There isn’t a civil servant in the Province of Ontario satisfied with this bill. Why does the government want to alienate all these people? Are there no lessons they have learned from the by-elections, the Gallup poll, the party’s own surveys?

Will it never end? Is the government unable to accommodate any reasonable request from any reasonable person or group? Is it unable to change its policy without humiliation? No to Spadina. Is the government incapable of doing anything that registers faithfully in the public mind, that has about it the quality of integrity? The answer is no, and this bill digs the government deeper in. I don’t want to save them. I’ll be there to cavort and chuckle on election night as they write the incredible stories saying that after 33 years it’s all over.

Even the minister’s attitudes predate George Drew. Maybe then we’ve come full circle and it’s time to get out of it all. It’s a disgraceful bill; it really is. The minister had such excellent possibilities for some enlightened amendments which would have won applause everywhere. Instead he has made the predictable, irrelevant alterations. So we can’t support it, civil servants don’t support it, the public has no reassurance, and the government is on its way yet again to another defeat. I don’t know why. C’est à toi. We’ll vote against this.

Mr. Speaker: Does any other hon. member wish to take part in this debate? The hon. minister.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Mr. Speaker, thank you very much. I have a tremendous number of notes here to answer. I’m not going to speak at any great length, except to answer some of the things that have been said, and to let us have some clear understanding in regard to what I think myself and what I intend to do.

Let me say immediately that in the vein of the discussion that took place over there this evening, the disagreement or the argument that took place between those two parties indicates that although they’re both going to vote against the bill, I think in many instances some of them will wonder why.

Mr. Bounsall: Not on this side; not in this party.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Well, no, not those members; that’s true. I say it justifiably, Mr. Speaker, because a lot of the discussion this evening -- and I listened very carefully -- was certainly not on the principle of this bill, but on many things other than the principle of this bill. I don’t deny them that right under these circumstances. A few of those points have to be set straight as well, I might say.

Let me say first and foremost that as far as the leader of the NDP is concerned, let me remind him that although this might not please the entire membership of the CSAO, or himself, what we’re doing in this bill -- and, as I’ve said myself, maybe not going as far as I even would like to go -- is, in fact, in direct response to the request of the CSAO. It’s not some contrived idea that I’m out to alienate people. By no means. In fact, I’m endeavouring to co-operate with them to the degree that I hope it’s one step.

I’ve forgotten what the debate was prior to the closing of the House at Christmastime, when the member for Scarborough West had made some statement and some suggestions about what improvements there should be. I suggested at that time some little area of agreement, and I want the member to know that that was not just by error. I am following that line of thinking with my colleagues. I want to tell the member this, if he thinks that I’m putting this before the Legislature as something to be great and final, then he is wrong. And time, a very short time, is going to tell him that and prove that point to him.

Let me also remind the hon. member that, for instance, in the United States, Mr. Meany has said that where he has had the right to strike in many big instances in many areas, he said it’s no longer of any use to him, there has to be a new way; and that’s the area we’re exploring.

Mr. Lewis: I just want to tell the minister not to quote George Meany to me. I consider him a labour fascist. I’m not interested in George Meany.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Okay. And the president of the United Steelworkers, also in the US, has expressed precisely the same view, and I want to tell the member something, I feel the same way.

Mr. Lewis: It doesn’t always work.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: When he talks to me about my lack of understanding, when my friend talks to me personally as Eric Winkler -- and both of the members over there use the name, the terminology, which I appreciate, in that personal sense --

Mr. Lewis: Vernacular.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: -- have a look at my whole background. If the member doesn’t think I understand, have a darn good look at it and he’ll know then that he is wrong. Then I hope he will believe me when I tell him that this is the beginning, from my point of view. I probably could have come in a little tighter than this in regard to the terms of what I have accepted from the CSAO. Certainly I could have. He knows that, too. When we sat down and discussed it with the leadership of the CSAO a couple of times, thy expressed great surprise that we had gone that far.

Now, who is kidding who? I don’t think I am giving everybody everything they want; certainly I don’t. But I want to tell you, Mr. Speaker, this is step number one in the right direction. I say this to the legislative assembly and to the private and the public sector, whoever they may be in Ontario:

Let’s hope that the more sensible heads in this country will get together and find a system that in fact 1’dl solve the strike problem and give the people, whether it be the civil service or somebody else in this country, the proper avenues to solve their problems. And I will ply my efforts toward that end.

Mr. Bounsall: Has the minister ever said this before?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Oh, Yes, I have said this on a number of other occasions. I have it under active consideration with my colleagues now. It is a government policy and the members will hear about it in due course. As I said just a moment ago to the Leader of the Opposition, the members won’t be waiting too long.

Mr. Bounsall: We will look forward to it.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: The member can be sure.

Mr. Bounsall: In three or four months?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: I am not going to give the members a time frame. It might even be well less than that. But they are going to hear from us; be sure. It won’t satisfy the opposition anyway, so what difference does it make? That will be nothing new as far as I am concerned.

There were a couple of the other things that were said tonight in regard to what happened in the course of the negotiations.

It is very easy for the leader of the NDP to say it was a shambles. It was no shambles because it was contrived from day one. He said we would have had a much easier opportunity to settle if we had done things some other way.

I do not blame the civil servants for that campaign in the news media, whenever it happened, whatever month. Sure, it was their money that was used; but that was a disgraceful campaign and did them no good. I want to say that. And I will say that directly to the leadership of the CSAO too, if that would satisfy anybody to any greater degree than we understand happened at the moment.

Now, there were personal attacks on the Premier of this province. Regardless of what you or I think; regardless of the political ploys we put forth to gain the support from the press or whoever -- such as went on in this chamber tonight, Mr. Speaker, I can tell you that. That’s all it was. A little game to attract the attention of the civil service of the Province of Ontario to some other quarter. I want to tell the opposition that the civil servants of this province are a darn sight smarter than they think they are if that is the game the members opposite are playing.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Speaker: Order please.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: I want to get at some of the other personal things that were said. The leader of the Liberal Party made mention of the statement I made at a press conference -- I just forget exactly what date it was. I will say this to you, Mr. Speaker, and the other members of the House, the information that was given to me by a member of the CSAO at headquarters the day he visited was that they should stick at 25 to 30 and they would win.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Baloney.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Well, the member can say “baloney.”

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Well, all right.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: I got that information right from the headquarters of the CSAO.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: The minister’s stool pigeons just tell him what they want him to hear; I am telling him that is wrong.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. The hon. minister has the floor.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: That is just despicable on the minister’s part. What is he clucking about?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: No; no, it is not. Mr. Speaker, that came to me directly from the CSAO headquarters.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: From the CSAO?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: That is correct. And if the leader of the Liberal Party denies it, I will accept that denial -- because he is the gentleman that was there, not me.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Well, that’s right; I don’t believe it.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: That’s fine, he can believe as he chooses. I don’t care.

Mr. Lewis: That was never said in the room that night, never. That was never said in the room that night.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: I am just telling the members that it was -- that I was informed by people who were in the room that day. That’s why I said it was unworthy of the Leader of the Opposition.

Interjection by hon. members.

Mr. Lewis: On a point of privilege, Mr. Speaker, although the Leader of the Opposition can obviously defend himself. I followed the Leader of the Opposition into that room. I asked all of the negotiating committee specifically what he had said and under no circumstances was that put at any point. That he should have believed that crap is an indication of what happened to the collective bargaining process.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Lewis: Excuse me, I meant claptrap. That’s a diminutive which crept in.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. minister will continue.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Mr. Speaker, just so that I don’t take up all of the time that is left, there are a couple of other things that I have to respond to.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: Can’t he get to something of substance? He has just got his wires crossed.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: If that’s the case, it all went haywire. It’s a peculiar thing to hear what the hon. member said this evening in regard to the settlement because I think he rather supports what I did and the settlement I made, that is, in regard to the figures. I think he does.

Mr. Lewis: The figures were below that which I understood would occur but maybe he and I would be better off if it weren’t discussed in the Legislature.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: That may be quite so.

Mr. Lewis: I think so.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: That may be quite so. But I’m going to say this to him, that when people who did negotiate at the table went out and talked to the full body of the CSAO and told them they could have settled for much less, I tell him that is the height of something or other.

Mr. Lewis: It is indeed.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: It is indeed. Okay, we agree on that one too. Thank you.

Mr. D. C. MacDonald (York South): That is a rather isolated point, though.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: The other point I want to raise, Mr. Speaker, before I conclude, is the matter of essential services. We can discuss that until we’re blue in the face and that is not what is going to solve the issue of the settlement of any strike.

Mr. R. F. Nixon: It can’t be solved.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: No, and we can come back, as somebody said, and we can legislate everybody back to work we want to. I want to tell you, Mr. Speaker, that is not in my thinking. That’s not in the terms of what I understand a solution should be for the problems that face us and will face us. I want something better than that and I want something better for the members of the CSAO. The civil servants of Ontario deserve something better than that. I simply hope, Mr. Speaker --

Mr. Lewis: The government takes away their rights in advance.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: -- as a member of this government, no matter what they said about me tonight, I can be part and parcel of a solution that will stand the test of time and will be adopted in many other jurisdictions. Mr. Speaker, I thank you.

Mr. Martel: The minister doesn’t believe that, does he?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Yes, I do.

Mr. Speaker: The motion is for second reading of Bill 179.

The House divided on the motion, was approved on the following vote:

Ayes	Nays
Allan Auld Bales Belanger Birch Brunelle Carton Drea Eaton Evans Gilbertson Havrot Hodgson (Victoria-Haliburton) Hodgson (York North) Kennedy Lane MacBeth Maeck McIlveen McNeil Meen Morningstar Nixon (Dovercourt) Nuttall Parrott Potter Root Smith (Hamilton Mountain) Snow Taylor (Prince Edward-Lennox) Timbrell Villeneuve Wardle Winkler Wiseman -- 35.	Bounsall Braithwaite Burr Campbell Deacon Edighoffer Foulds Gaunt Germa Good Haggerty Laughren Lawlor Lewis MacDonald Martel Newman (Windsor-Walkerville) Nixon (Brant) Renwick Riddell Ruston Spence Young -- 23.

Clerk of the House: Mr. Speaker, the “ayes” are 35, the “nays” 23.

Mr. Speaker: I declare the motion carried.

Motion agreed to; second reading of the bill.

Mr. Speaker: Shall this bill be ordered for third reading?

Mr. Renwick: No, standing committee.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Mr. Speaker, tomorrow when we sort out what’s happening in the other committees, I shall refer the bill to a standing committee.

Mr. Speaker: Agreed?

Hon. Mr. Winkler: I am just informed that it has to be referred now, and it will be referred to the social development committee.

Mr. Speaker: The House leader indicates it will be referred to the social development committee. Is it agreed?

Agreed.

Hon. Mr. Winkler: Mr. Speaker, before I move the adjournment of the House, I would like to say that tomorrow we will deal with item No. 3, Bill 176. At the opening of the House there is one minister who will not be available to me or at least he couldn’t be this evening. I will announce what will follow that before the House opens.

Hon. Mr. Winkler moves the adjournment of the House.

Motion agreed to.

The House adjourned at 11:15 o’clock p.m.