I’m going to be brief because I know we’ll be going to members’ statements soon.

I want to talk about one of the themes, and I’ll expand on more of this when we get into the debate later on. But one of the themes of this bill is about changing things to electronic documents, and I have concerns with this. I understand the ease of use and how effective it is. I understand in some workplaces how helpful that will be. But the concern I have with electronic documents is that a lot of workplaces don’t have access. And I know people will say everyone has a phone or everyone has a computer, but the reality is, not everyone has a phone and not everyone has a computer. A lot of workplaces don’t have connectivity. I come from mining and the underground, and a lot of mining organizations don’t have connectivity underground.

There’s a requirement to have paper documents because it’s the easiest way to communicate with people, especially older workers. I don’t want to be ageist, because I’m old, but there are older people. We’ve all been in a situation helping our parents hook up the VCR in the old days or helping our parents get on the Internet. There are just some people who are not comfortable with electronic documents, and when it comes to health and safety, if we’re not sharing information as easily as we can, there’s an expression when it comes to health and safety that you learn because something tragic happened to you or someone told you about something happening to you.

So if you’re making it difficult for workers to have access to information—for example, of who their joint health and safety committee is and who the members are and where they are in the workplace—a lot of workplaces are small and everybody would know, but at my workplace, when I was a worker safety rep, I represented the filter plant and the furnaces, I represented the converters and casting and cooling and crushing and I represented the copper end. It was the size of about two or maybe two and a half football fields: more than 400 workers, plus contractors, plus management. There were a lot of people there who might not know who I was or where to find my office, let alone the other people on my committee from management and the workers’ side. And we had a really good committee; we worked really well together to solve these issues, but not every workplace is like that. And so, Speaker, when I talk about information being posted online, it may make sense to a lot of people, but for some people, that’s going to be a detriment.

A few weeks ago, we just talked about intimate partner violence, and we know it’s a concern. The Conservatives, as well—I know, often, as critics, we end up pointing the finger and yelling, but the Conservatives as well embraced the idea of intimate partner violence and declaring an epidemic. If you don’t have a harassment policy posted in the workplace, some people may not see that. And although it’s common sense to us in this room that you shouldn’t behave in that manner, there are some people who don’t realize that or what to do or how to make a complaint.

All that information is on your harassment document, your policy, and the policy points to the procedures which should be easily accessible to people so they can find out how it’s followed up on. What do you do when there’s harassment in the workplace? Who do you contact? How do you move it forward? How do you have it addressed? And I’m not talking about how you have it addressed in the most extreme examples, it’s how you have it addressed in terms of correcting behaviour, to explain to people that certain things are unwanted? Because I know sometimes people are doing things that are considered harassment or offensive and not realizing that their language is outdated and inadequate. These are things that really concern me in this bill.

The minister is here and, often, when we debate, we’re not able to speak at the same time, and so I want to say, there’s some really great parts to this bill, like the occupational disease section for wildland firefighters. I was just at FONOM yesterday speaking with the wildland firefighters. They knew, Minister. Already when I came up to them, they were very excited about it; they knew that the bill was coming forward. And I know that this is something we’ve all, as—