Hon. Seamus O’Regan, P.C., M.P., Minister of Labour: Senator, with all due apology, I wish my French was advanced enough on this subject that I could offer an answer in the language in which you have asked me.

Let me just say that in answering this question, I will get back to you with particulars on exactly what we are doing. I do not think there is any argument about where we want to be. I do not think that we have any argument about the goal. But I would like to get you a more detailed answer on precisely how we plan to get there, aside obviously from employment equity and other reports and legislation that we are working on.

I will get back to you on that.

Hon. Seamus O’Regan, P.C., M.P., Minister of Labour: Thank you, senator, for the question.

Here is some background. We have been working for some time now to strengthen the legislative framework to make workplaces more inclusive and to promote equality through proactive pay equity legislation, pay transparency and accessibility legislation. We also, as you said, launched an independent task force to conduct the most extensive review of the act that we’ve seen since 1986.

The task force completed its consultations with stakeholders, which included collecting statistical information and hearing about the lived experiences of many groups, including visible minorities, women and persons with disabilities. They will submit the report in the spring — this spring. It will include concrete, independent and evidence-based recommendations on how we can modernize the act.

[Translation]

Hon. Seamus O’Regan, P.C., M.P., Minister of Labour: Senator, with all due respect, I will have to get back to you with answers to those five questions, I think, that you asked. We will get back to you very shortly on them.

Hon. Seamus O’Regan, P.C., M.P., Minister of Labour: Senator, we are far away from that.

In regard to the issue of replacement workers, I come back to the remarkable record that my team has at the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, or FMCS, which is our mediation and conciliation team. The longer you can keep people focused on the table, and not on other things, the better. What we have learned are the lasting — and extremely scarring and emotional — effects of using scabs or replacement workers. It can poison a work environment for years, if not decades. When all of that is happening, the emotional turmoil of that and the physical time it takes in order to coordinate it distracts people from a solution at the table. That is where I’m coming from on this.

I want security and stability in our supply chains. I do not want further disruption. It will be crucial that we get this legislation correct and the regs that stem from it. At some point, senators here will have a hand in that, but I want you to know — and I will impress this upon you — that the stability of that table means the stability of our supply chains. The more that I can have unions, industry and business focused on finding an agreement that is long-lasting, the better. I do not think that finding third-party sources is going to do any of that.

Hon. Seamus O’Regan, P.C., M.P., Minister of Labour: Oh, senator, it is good to be back. I appreciate the question. The quote is not accurate.

What I was referring to was just stoking fear and anxiety in things like a government would cause a cold winter. That was my exact quote. Quite frankly, I used a phrase that is often used in Newfoundland: “My nerves are rubbed raw.” People’s nerves are rubbed raw. I do personally resent it when we get carried away with partisan phrasing that causes and invokes unnecessary anxiety.

The fact of the matter is that with the federal buyback on the price on pollution, 8 out of 10 families will get more money from it. To be honest with you, I have spent an inordinate amount of time putting my head around it, writing script for it and speaking to my iPhone to get the message out. But the bottom line is that we do want to make sure we put a price on pollution, and we do want to make sure that families are not the ones to take the hit for it. In other words, they will get cash back. In Newfoundland and Labrador, they are about to get roughly a little over $1,100 back per year, four times a year. It will be listed in their bank accounts, and they’ll get it directly.

Hon. Seamus O’Regan, P.C., M.P., Minister of Labour: As you well know, Senator Yussuff was very much on top of that file in terms of coal transition.

There is a significant, and fundamental, difference in that coal is being phased out altogether. It is not only being phased out in Canada, but we want it phased out around the world — you cannot just do that, though, for jurisdictions that do not have an alternative. In Canada, in the meantime, we have alternatives — and we have for some time — whether those are fossil fuels, hydroelectricity or nuclear power. Therein lies a big difference.

This message gets so muddied and politicized. I learned during my tenure as Minister of Natural Resources that the most important thing you can do is singularly focus on one thing — and that is lowering emissions. Everything else is noise; everything else can become a distraction.

It is on two fronts: We have to lower emissions for its own sake, but we also have to lower emissions because, competitively, it will place our product and our fossil fuels in a far better place in the world, as the world shops around now — not only for cheap sources, but also for sources at lower emissions.

Hon. Seamus O’Regan, P.C., M.P., Minister of Labour: I don’t know whether if you put “just transition” in air quotes it shows up in Hansard.

Look, it’s not a matter of workers finding themselves in a low‑carbon environment. Workers will create that environment. They will lead this. Let me finish an answer that I did not get a chance to finish earlier.

When I sit down and talk with the union leadership in Saskatchewan, Alberta and Newfoundland and Labrador, they are firmly in charge of this. We doubled Union Training and Innovation Program funding for union training centres, for instance, and I will be a big advocate for increasing the funding for them. In other words, I want them to point out where the opportunities lie as we lower emissions and build up renewables. That is what we’re doing. That will all happen with energy workers. It will all happen with people who are currently in the industry, and I would argue that we need more on top of it.

We have to build up carbon capture. To be honest with you, we have a great agreement with the Alberta and Saskatchewan governments, and certainly Newfoundland and Labrador.

Industry is embracing this as well. With great pride, I acknowledge that the industry association in Newfoundland and Labrador, which was called Noia, the Newfoundland & Labrador Oil & Gas Industries Association, is now called Energy NL. They completely not only embrace and champion oil and gas, as they always have, but now they’re embracing hydrogen, hydro and all of the in-between and how they all work together. That is how we go about it. That is how we do it.

I’m very proud of my crowd. I think out my way, we see the world very practically. This is the way the world is going, and we want to be on top of it.

Hon. Seamus O’Regan, P.C., M.P., Minister of Labour: Not since the State of the Union, senator, I will admit, but I keep in constant contact with Secretary Walsh, my colleague who, according to CNN, at any point now could be named head of the NHL Players’ Association. I’m just hoping that he continues to honour his invitation to me to appear at the Boston St. Patrick’s Day Parade. We have a good relationship.

I think that trade unions, to be honest with you, senator — you bring up a very good point — will be important allies. These are brothers and sisters who work across the border. I can tell you, under the stresses and strains during COVID and dealing with the Trump Administration, I found allies before I ever envisioned myself being Minister of Labour. I found allies in the trade unions, such as operators, engineers and others, who were working on various issues that we were working on, senator, like Keystone XL and trying to get that pushed forward and on Line 5.

Those are extraordinarily important relationships because we have an administration now that is raising the bar both on how they view workers and trade unions in their country and also, remarkably, with the Inflation Reduction Act, which could be one of the most seminal pieces of legislation in terms of lowering emissions in the world. This is a very different problem than I had when I was dealing with the Trump Administration, I can tell you, where it was very difficult for me to look at Canadian businesses who saw the bar being lowered. Now they are seeing the bar heightened. It is a good problem to have, but it is a big challenge, I acknowledge, in making sure that we look after Canadian workers with our most important trading nation.