One thing that can be said so far of the Liberal government – the titles of their proposed legislation are to the point, if not exactly lyrical.
Bill C-4, An Act to amend the Canada Labour Code, the Parliamentary Employment and Staff Relations Act, the Public Service Labour Relations Act and the Income Tax Act, is a title that means what it says and says what it means.
In April, three CBA Sections wrote to the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities, to comment only on the part of Bill C-4 that repeals Bill C-377, An Act to amend the Income Tax Act.
The CBA’s opposition to Bill C-377 goes back to 2012, when it was tabled in the House of Commons. The Constitutional and Human Rights Law, Privacy and Access Law and Pensions and Benefits Law Sections have written several submissions since then, and appeared before a number of Parliamentary committees, to register their concerns with the bill, which nonetheless was passed into law in 2015.
“We were, and continue to be, of the opinion that Bill C-377 was fundamentally flawed, triggering serious concerns from privacy, constitutional and pensions laws perspectives, and that it should not have been passed into law,” the current chairs of the sections say in the April 13 letter.
In fact, in September 2012, the then-chairs of those Sections wrote that not only was it “unclear what issue or perceived problem the Bill is intended to address,” “(t)he CBA Sections have serious reservations about the bill from a procedural point of view. The bill could have a pronounced impact on the operations of labour unions, yet these processes are embedded in amendments to the Income Tax Act. In our view, it is inappropriate for operational restrictions to be brought forward as amendments to taxation legislation.”
The bill’s requirements for particularized disclosure of personal information, including salaries and wages of employees and contractors of independently governed organizations, “goes beyond what has previously existed in Canadian law” and raises red flags for breaches of both privacy and constitutional protections, the Sections said in a December 2014 letter.
Another red flag was a too-narrow exemption to disclosure requirements for solicitor-client privilege. The CBA recommended a “general exemption to the disclosure of information protected by solicitor-client privilege as opposed to limiting the exemption” to specific areas.
Meanwhile, the Sections found the definition of “labour trust” far too broad, capturing, as it did, any organization “formed for purposes which include the regulation of relations between employers and employees” – while the legislation meant to target unions, it would also capture “any pension or benefit fund that has any unionized beneficiaries.”
In 2012 the CBA gave Bill C-377 a resounding thumbs-down, essentially declaring it, as Ralph Nader did the Corvair, “unsafe at any speed.”
“The amendments proposed in this letter are not comprehensive and cannot be interpreted as an endorsement of the bill,” the sections wrote in their November 2012 letter. “The CBA Sections maintain that the bill should not be adopted, even with these proposed changes.”
We will watch with interest for the repeal.