The Conservative-dominated Senate has discovered inadvertent drafting errors in a bill targeting labour unions -- but is poised to pass it anyway. Conservatives used their majority on the Senate's legal and constitutional affairs committee Friday to reject Liberal amendments that would have corrected the mistakes in C-525. Amending the bill would be tantamount to killing it, they argued. A bill that is amended by the Senate must be sent back to the House of Commons for reconsideration. Because C-525 is a private member's bill, sponsored by Conservative backbencher Blaine Calkins, it would go to the bottom of the list of bills to be dealt with by the Commons. Given that "cumbersome" process, Tory Sen. Scott Tannas warned that amending the bill to correct the errors "will likely guarantee that this bill will never see the light of day." The bill is expected to be put to a final vote in the Senate this week.

C-525 would require a majority secret ballot vote by employees before bargaining units in federally regulated public service unions can be certified or decertified. Union leaders maintain it would make it harder for bargaining units to get certified but easier to disband them. The bill involves changes to a number of existing laws, including the Public Service Labour Relations Act, which is where the drafting mistakes crept in. The bill moves one section of the act into a new section, without simultaneously amending other provisions of the act that make reference to the moved section. Catherine Ebbs, chair of the Public Service Labour Relations and Employment Board, told the committee the technical error means her board would lose its power to regulate the evidence that must be filed when an employee organization applies for certification of a bargaining unit. "The impact of this change is not trivial because our current specific regulations will be effectively removed from our tool kit to deal with applications for certification," she said.

(Excerpted from CTV website. Read more)

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