In the wake of the filibuster in the Commons, the prospect of the Senate being recalled to sit on a Sunday seemed somewhat less surreal – despite the fact that the Upper Chamber rarely sits more than three days out of any given week. And yet, with that postal strike back-to-work legislation to be passed with some sense of urgency, recalled it was, and by eleven o’clock, we were inside the Chamber, waiting for the inevitable.
Things began as they usually do in the Senate proceedings, with Senators’ statements, to which we heard about the International Indian Film Festival in Toronto, the continued plight of Hank Tepper – the New Brunswick farmer languishing in a jail in Beirut – and a somewhat unhinged climate change denial screed from Senator Nancy Greene-Raine. And with a few cursory motions, Senate Question Period was dispensed of, and the Senate moved onto Bill C-6, which it had just received from the House of Commons.
After Senator MacDonald gave his cursory government talking points introduction, Liberal Senate leader James Cowan began his lengthy condemnation of the bill, starting with comments that Stephen Harper had written in a newspaper back in the days of the 1997 postal strike, and the back-to-work legislation that was introduced then. According to 1997-Harper, back-to-work legislation treated only the symptom and not the cause of the dispute, which in his opinion was the double monopoly of the postal service and the union, and he wanted to break both. It should be little surprise that 2011-Harper would have a contemptuous attitude toward this legislation, stemming from his neo-conservative ideology.
And then came a rather amazing speech from Senator Lowell Murray, one of only two remaining Progressive Conservatives, and on what might very well have been his last day sitting in the Senate (given that he is due to retire right around the time the Senate would be recalled in September). Murray said that he was disturbed by the kind of rhetoric that the Conservatives were spewing in the Commons, talking about “union bosses” and debates more suited for “union halls,” and in a tenor not heard perhaps since the Winnipeg general strike. Murray felt that perhaps it was in the DNA of the government that “they are not satisfied with a win, but must destroy their adversaries. They are not satisfied with adversaries, but must portray them as enemies.” The legislation, such as it was, would not only end the strike, but would actually rub the workers’ noses in it in a vindictive manner.
A few other interventions followed – Jean-Claude Rivest, Consiglio Di Nino, Terry Mercer , Bert Brown, and Pierette Ringuette – who was herself a manager at Canada Post circa 1997-2002 – who recalled last year’s omnibus budget implementation bill, and buried in those nine hundred pages were a mere twenty words that took away Canada Post’s exclusive franchise, and this lock-out and bill were the legacies of that bill.
The bill moved into Committee of the Whole, and Ministers Raitt and Fletcher were summoned to the Chamber to be grilled by Senators. By this act alone, the Senate had already gone beyond the kind of oversight that should have happened in the Commons. Senators grilled the Ministers on the language of the bill, most especially coming from Senator George Baker, who took umbrage with the technical language of the bill – use of “must” instead of “shall” in contravention to a particular Supreme Court decision, as well as a gaping hole that would expose Canada Post to massive fines under the terms the bill dictated.
There were a few other notable exchanges – Senator Murray recalled the days in which Canada Post went from being a government department to a Crown corporation, and in that move some three decades hence, it made the imposition of wages from a public service union agreement onto postal workers problematic – if we are going to treat them like public servants, then why not return them to their status as a department? Senator Percy Downe wondered if Canada Post’s management would be subject to the same wage restraints as the workers, seeing as the corporation is supposedly in a fragile state, and Senator Ringuette hammered away at Raitt’s characterisation of labour relations at Canada Post, and just what a section of the bill that referred to “comparable postal industries” really referred to.
The Senate heard from Other Deepak Chopra – the CEO of Canada Post – and it’s Chief Operating Officer, who assured Senators that they had no consultations on the bill, that they eventually went to the lockout because their complex transportation network was so disrupted by the rolling strikes that it became impossible to manage, and that no, they hadn’t bothered to get a legal opinion on the constitutionality of the bill before them. (Chopra also spoke about the “healing journey” that they would need to make with employees post-return, which made him sound a bit like his more famous namesake). They also heard from Denis Lemelin – the head of the Canadian Postal Workers Union – and his top researcher, and CUPW had similarly not bothered to get a legal opinion on the constitutionality of the bill, nor did they have anything more than a subjective list on what was deemed an “essential service” in the vein of social service cheques that needed to be distributed, while they also were asked about employee morale in a post-legislation world.
In the end, the Liberals offered up the same amendments they did in the Commons, along with two from Senator Baker that would have fixed those rather glaring issues with the wording of the bill. All were defeated, and the bill eventually passed on a vote of 53 to 26.
And what did we learn from this exercise? Chiefly that the Senate is still a vital part of our parliamentary process. More was accomplished in some six hours in the Senate in terms of substantive debate and critical examination of the technical merits of the bill than was done in 58 hours of filibuster in the Commons. There, we were treated to some eleventy different speeches on the history of the labour movement – to the point where Elizabeth May spoke out against idealising the unions too much, given that “no union is perfect and all corporations are not evil.” By hearing from witnesses involved, Senators got tales from each side, and were able to put ministers on the spot in a fairly substantial way. This far outstripped the oversight that the Commons was supposed to provide and didn’t.
Did the amendments pass? No, but the weakness of the bill were exposed, and given a full airing on the record, which was more than could be said for the Commons. Indeed, Senator Baker, in moving his amendments, admonished the Commons for letting these flaws pass unchallenged, proving that not every bill that the Commons passes is perfect, demonstrating the need for the Senate. And those were words that could not be argued.