Photo by Sean Kilpatrick
The Confederation of Canadian Unions and its affiliates throughout the country have been leaders in the fightback against the bureaucratic and anti-democratic C-377, a private members bill put forth by Conservative MP Russ Heibert.
As we have said before, the bill will radically increase red tape and the administration costs of unions, cripple organizing efforts and political and social activities, and interfere with the private, internal activities of democratic organizations.
C-377 requires all labour organizations to file detailed financial reports with Revenue Canada, with information to be published on a government website. This includes any and all expenditures on organizing, education and training, conferences, political activities and lobbying, and collective bargaining. Payments to officers, staff and even the recipients of pension and health plan payments are also required to be included in the reports.
According to Mathieu Ravignat, a Quebec NDP Member of Parliament, Bill C-377 will create approximately 17.5 million hours of paperwork for unions throughout the country, and each of them will need an average of 700 hours of work annually to comply with the requirements.
And because of these huge additional costs, as well as the enormously expensive penalties for not being able to comply with the law, C-377 specifically targets moderate-sized, independent unions like CCU affiliates.
Independent unions, some of which have under 50 members and one or two staff persons, will in no way be able to fulfill this mandate. Even so, CCU affiliates, like other unions in Canada, already impose stringent constitutional requirements on all financial activities, some of which are even subject to a democratic vote by an elected executive.
What is becoming clearer every day about C-377 is the growing opposition to the bill, and if you believe it’s just coming from union members and the labour movement, think again.
[blockquote align=”right”]What is becoming clearer every day about C-377 is the growing opposition to the bill, and if you believe it’s just coming from union members and the labour movement, think again.
[/blockquote] A group of Conservative Senators, led by Hugh Segal, put forth amendments in June 2013 that seriously alter the bill, arguing that C-377 intrudes on provincial jurisdiction, violates privacy laws and modifies the existing balance in collective bargaining in Canada. This bill, said Segal, was “bad legislation, bad public policy and a diminution of both the order and the freedom that should exist in any democratic, pluralist and mixed-market society.”In total, 16 Conservative senators joined their Liberal counterparts in approving a number of amendments to the bill.
One important amendment that passed the Senate makes the legislation apply only to unions with more than 50,000 members. Although this would make all CCU affiliates exempt from the bill, the CCU still unequivocally opposes C-377 for all other unions in Canada.
And then there’s the issue of the 2011 opinion poll utilized and widely cited by Hiebert and the Harper government, in the attempt of demonstrating public support for the bill. The poll, which showed that “83% of Canadians support financial disclosure,” was paid for by the Canadian LabourWatch Association, a Vancouver-based, anti-union front group funded by non-unionized construction firms and other corporations.
LabourWatch has made a name for itself by “advancing employee rights” and “informing employees of informed choices,” according to its own website. And just how do they do this? By providing information to “informed employees” on how to cancel a union card during an organizing campaign and decertify a union, among others.
The opinion poll that LabourWatch initiated, and administered by Nanos Research, is now the subject of a disciplinary review by Canada’s chief organization that sets polling standards, the Marketing Research and Intelligence Association.
Veteran pollster and former Conservative Party consultant Allen Greg said the questions in the poll were “horrendously biased” and “not the kind of polling that people in our discipline should be doing. Clearly it’s being done by an advocacy group that’s got a particular perspective on the world and an axe to grind, and they’re using the poll not to illuminate their understanding of public opinion but as a PR (public relations) tool.”
It appears that for Prime Minister Harper and Conservative MP Russ Heibert, when you want to pass an odious piece of legislation that violates privacy laws and democratic freedoms, you first have to violate the truth.
The fightback against Bill C-377 has just begun.
