Vol. 77/No. 4      February 4, 2013

Bill C-377 was adopted Dec. 12 in a 147-135 vote. This was largely split along party lines, with the governing Conservative Party in favor and the Liberal and New Democratic parties opposed. The bill now goes to the Senate.

The financial reports would be made to the Canada Revenue Agency, which would make the information public. It would include salaries over $100,000 and expenses over $5,000. Unions already make records of their finances available to their members. Brent Rathgeber, a Conservative member of parliament who voted against the bill, said during the debate, “I do not see that nonmembers of unions such as myself have any interest in how the unions spend those dues.”

“This bill is nothing more than an attack on the 4 million hard-working Canadian union members,” Ken Georgetti, president of the Canadian Labour Congress, wrote in a letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

The Social Alliance, a coalition of major unions and student associations in Quebec, said in a Dec. 10 statement that the bill “expresses the desire to paralyze union activities and to make the population believe that union organizations are involved in shady activities.”

Before a House of Commons committee, the Canadian Bar Association said the bill could be interpreted as an infringement on union business and therefore the right to association.

Conservative member of parliament Russ Hiebert, who submitted the bill, argued that “there is a genuine public purpose served by requiring financial transparency in all institutions which receive a substantial public benefit.” The benefit has tax-exempt status.

In a column entitled “Transparency Benefits Labour” in the Dec. 19 Globe and Mail, author Lysiane Gagnon supported “more transparency from the labour movement.” She ended her piece with examples of things she doesn’t like unions spending money on.

“Last spring, the three major Quebec labour federations allocated thousands of dollars to support the often-violent student protests against tuition fees, in a crude attempt to topple the [Premier Jean] Charest government, even though two-thirds of Quebeckers, including countless unionized workers, strongly disapproved of the ‘red square’ movement,” she wrote.

In a related development, the New Democratic Party was ordered by Elections Canada, the agency overseeing federal elections, to return about $344,000 it had received from unions and a few other organizations for advertising at three different NDP conventions. In Canada, unions are prohibited from contributing funds to political parties. Elections Canada acted after a complaint by the Conservative Party.
 
 
Related articles:
NYC school bus workers stand up to union busting
‘Our wages, benefits, jobs are at stake’
On the Picket Line
Canada gov’t targets unions with financial disclosure law
 
 
 
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