Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member of Parliament for South Okanagan—West Kootenay.

I want to extend more than anything my sincere thanks to members of the Nanaimo, Ladysmith, and Gabriola detachments of the RCMP for the work they do in the riding that I am honoured to serve. There are 159 sworn members of the RCMP who form the ranks in my riding, and they join 18,000 members across the country. As we talk today about Bill C-7, I am reminded that it does not only affect officers in my riding and across the country, but it also affects their spouses, grandparents, children, classmates, our entire Canadian community.

To remind us of what it is we are debating today, I have an email that was sent to me by Robyn Buchanan. She writes:

As you know members of the RCMP have waited a long time with lower than fair wages due to both conservative and liberal governments. This past weekend they are banding together by removing the yellow stripes from the side of their uniforms. This peaceful protest is to speak to the government and let them know that they are dissatisfied with safety issues and wage issues. Plainclothes members and members of the public are showing their support by wearing yellow ribbons. Often these ribbons are made from the very stripes that are removed from the uniform.... I can make you a ribbon myself, as my husband is an RCMP officer on Vancouver Island.

I am wearing one of those ribbons today, as are many members here in the House.

I also have an email dated April 4 fromDavid Buchanan who said:

The Treasury Board's stance is that as an RCMP member I am just another federal employee. I assure you we are not just average federal employees. I was one of the first police on the scene at the Nanaimo Mill Shooting. I ran towards the gunfire and not away. I also arrest countless impaired, unlicensed and dangerous drivers. I am not just another federal employee, I am a police officer. We should be compensated as police officers. I put my life on the line. RCMP members have the added stress of feeling undervalued and unsupported by our government. We are watching police officers falling to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder on a daily basis; yet we are considered “just another federal employee”.

I am just one police officer attempting to make things right for my other police brothers and sisters.

These fine men and women do dangerous work on our behalf. Collective bargaining is about fostering respect for workers and their rights, creating a safe working environment, and rewarding workers for their dedication and growth. It allows employees to have a voice and enables employers to listen. The cornerstone of collective bargaining is that respect. This is a right that is enjoyed by a vast majority of federal workers and those rights generally allow workers to be part of the conversation about staffing levels, deployment, relocation, and sexual harassment, except for the RCMP. That is what the court ruled in 2015 and it ruled that it must change.

We appreciate that the bill in front of us today does include those elements, that workplace safety and sexual harassment issues be allowed to be collectively bargained. We heard that loud and clear from RCMP members over the last year and a half that they have been writing us letters.

The extent of sexual harassment in the force has been widely documented and widely covered in the media. What makes it especially troubling to me is that it was explicitly excluded from the first version of the government's bill, which we debated a year ago.

On workplace safety, rural officers have special concerns. I think in particular of the terrible tragedies in Mayerthorpe and Moncton, where there was a terrible loss of life of RCMP members. There remain issues as to the extent to which they were protected. These men and women stand up for us and we should stand up for them.

A letter was sent to me by Thomas Trachsell, in which he said:

The RCMP has fallen so far behind almost every other police force in Canada in almost every area that we are literally on the verge of breaking. We are near the bottom of pay in Canadian police forces, our training opportunities now routinely lag far behind that of most other police forces, and our equipment is often years out of date or decades behind schedule being deployed.

If the government restricts us to negotiating pay and benefits alone, that may help us recruit more people, but it won't stop our members from dying because they are working alone in remote places without radio communications or proper backup because local managers creatively interpret backup policies or ignore them altogether.

It won't stop over-worked people from descending into depression, losing families and committing suicide. It won't stop abusive managers from bullying and intimidating the men and women that they supervise. It won't fix our broken promotion system. It won't promote any change in the imbalance of power between management and employees in the RCMP that has bred a culture of fear and distrust of management among many members, a culture which actively opposes innovation and creativity.

Tell the government that RCMP members deserve to be given the dignity of being free to bring all matters relevant to our working conditions to the bargaining table, a freedom that every other police force in Canada enjoys, so that we can begin to fix our own problems from within.

How did the government embrace this plea for support and this call to action? The government bill that we were debating a year ago excluded staffing, deployment, harassment, and discipline from collective bargaining. Most witnesses at the committee that studied Bill C-7 expressed great concern about what was left out of this collective bargaining agreement. In the New Democrats' view, this meant that the bill failed to live up to the court's direction, but the government members voted down our amendments at committee which would have brought those vital topics into collective bargaining and would have amended the bill at that time.

The government then shut down debate last May, a year ago, because it was so urgent that we move forward. Then the Senate did its work and did it quickly. It removed those exclusions from collective bargaining. It allowed those matters to be included in the legislation for the purposes of collective bargaining. It reported to the government in June 2016 and the government sat on those Senate changes for 11 months.

I still feel that if the government had taken the opposition's advice a year ago, it could have incorporated those amendments early and could have given RCMP members some satisfaction that they were being heard. I am glad that the government members are listening to the Senate's advice on this matter, but still the government only told us this five days ago, and stakeholders did not hear before then, and it is shutting down debate tonight. I believe I am the second-last speaker. We have had closure on debate twice on a bill that is still not perfect. With respect to the Senate amendments the government is going to receive, we cannot tell entirely whether the government is going to accommodate all of the supports that our men and women on the front line need in order to be safe themselves while they keep our communities safe.

I will end by noting what Corporal Clover Johns from Nanaimo reminded me. He said that members of the House have what RCMP members do not now have. We hold the power to listen and to voice their concerns when they were not afforded an opportunity to do so. We have the power to enact just laws that enhance the national police force, to treat its members fairly, and to advance public safety in Canada. We should do that today and we should guarantee members of the police in Canada equitable, open, and harmonious labour practices.

Sheila Malcolmson

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