Justin Trudeau: 'Globalisation isn't working for ordinary people'
- Thread starter mentalfloss
- Start date
Yes.........
Canada is in exploratory free trade talks with China, whose recent free trade agreement with Australia included provisions allowing Chinese businesses to import their own workers and set wages and working conditions on projects in Australia.
With Chinese businesses already investing in natural resource projects in B.C. and Alberta, workers in Canada are concerned they’ll lose out in a free trade agreement.
Hajdu said she would fight for the best deal for Canadians.
But the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) wants to know “which Canadians?”
“Are you talking about workers, or are you talking about Bay Street?’” asked Angella MacEwen, a CLC senior economist.
“It’s well-know that there are winners and losers in trade. [Is government] taking into account whether this deal is making us more or less equal?”
The current federal government is trying for a better relationship with the country’s labour unions, creating legislation that Hajdu said is informed by input from workers and employers.
“This government was elected on a promise to grow the middle class,” she said. And after speaking with union leaders on the campaign trail, “it became clear that [Bill C-4] had to be one of the first pieces of legislation that we introduced, because it was foundational to a strong and healthy organized labour movement.”
The Liberals put the legislation forward almost immediately after winning the 2015 election. But it took almost two years to get the legislation passed because of Conservative members of the Senate, Hajdu said.
“Many of the Conservative senators who were involved in pushing through that [Conservative] legislation, fought long and hard to try and ‘amend’ the bill — it was in fact about ‘gutting’ the bill,” she said, adding she refused to include their amendments in a new version of the bill.
“It was narrowly passed the second time [in the Senate].”
MacEwen said the CLC is “happy enough” with Bill C-4’s repeal of the previous Conservative government’s Bills 377 and 525 that restricted union certification and forced financial accountability measures that no other Canadian organizations had to abide by.
https://thetyee.ca/News/2017/07/06/Labour-Minister-Promises-More-Protections-Workers/