Winnipeg Liberal MPs side with employees in Canada Post dispute

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This article was published 26/11/2018 (2518 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — As the federal Liberals ordered striking Canada Post staff back to work, Winnipeggers have pushed back, from the front bench to the Senate.

MPs MaryAnn Mihychuk and Robert-Falcon Ouellette broke ranks with their party over Bill C-89 on Friday. This past weekend, Sen. Murray Sinclair convinced his colleagues in the Red Chamber to postpone a Saturday vote.

“I understand that the government felt economic pressure and social pressure to end the strike,” said Mihychuk. “But fundamentally, I respect collective agreements and collective bargaining.”

Ouellette said he was overwhelmed by constituents asking him to vote against the bill.

“If you want to have true negotiations, you have to give both sides the freedom to do what it is they need to do,” he said.

The two MPs are among six Liberals who voted against their government’s legislation.

Mihychuk cited the issues Canada Post and its union raised in their last collective agreement during her term as labour minister, shortly after the Liberals took office in fall 2015.

Ouellette said he worried forcing workers to return will lead them to provide the bare minimum service, further eroding Canada Post’s ability to compete with the private market.

However, he said the Liberals’ plan to have the parties proceed to a mediator, and eventually an arbitrator, was better than the previous government’s back-to-work legislation in 2011, which a judge later found to be illegal. He called the Liberals’ bill “not (former prime minister Stephen) Harper in style or very autocratic.”

The government has fast-tracked its legislation, citing the impact on small businesses amid the Christmas rush. But when it reached the Senate, Sinclair said that didn’t seem to be a compelling reason to breach the charter right to strike.

“The employer is getting everything they want,” said Sinclair, a former federal judge, who panned the government’s provided assessment of how its bill fits in with the charter.

“I thought it was actually a preliminary draft,” Sinclair told his colleagues.

Mihychuk and Ouellette both felt Canada Post needs a radical rethink in how it can meet Canadians’ needs without drawing their tax dollars.

“From my experience — a massive from-the-ground overhaul is required at Canada Post,” Mihychuk said, while Ouellette mulled bringing back a postal bank service, which Ottawa ended in 1968.

In Parliament, Winnipeg NDP MP Daniel Blaikie highlighted the postal union’s claims excessive work hours, longer routes, new equipment and an uptick in parcels are all related to the past decade’s rise in workers’ injuries.

“A strike could have been avoided if the government had taken its responsibilities seriously and if it had appointed managers to Canada Post who would have taken the rate of illness and injuries seriously,” Blaikie argued.

The union has also argued lower wages for rural and suburban postal carriers has a disproportionate impact on women.

Mihychuk, who sits in the front row of the Commons, was a provincial minister under the previous NDP government. She said she made her decision in part by thinking of next year’s centennial of the Winnipeg general strike.

“The labour movement is very important to all of us, whether we’re in a union or not,” she said.

She supported Sinclair using his legal knowledge to question whether the bill complied with the charter. “I think this is an example where the Senate is showing their strength,” Mihychuk said.

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca