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Decentralized Democracy

Member of Parliament

Charlie Angus

  • Member of Parliament
  • NDP
  • Timmins—James Bay
  • Ontario
  • Voting Attendance: 60%
  • Expenses Last Quarter: $134,227.44

  • Government Page
Context: House Hansard - 317 - May/24/24
Mr. Charlie Angus
  • May/24/24 12:48:48 p.m.
  • Watch
Mr. Speaker, I invite the hon. member to come talk to my mom. She would give him a few lessons in moral justice. The reason why I am talking about my mom is that my mom is a hard-rock miner's daughter. My mom always said to me to do the right thing throughout my life. Do we know what my dad said? He said to never cross a picket line. That was the family that we grew up in. When my mom calls me about justice, I listen, and I think the hon. member should listen about justice too, because my mom is not an extremist. My mom stands up for what is right. We are all called to stand up for what is right, which brings us to this bill. Year in and year out, workers have had to fight for their basic right to be recognized. If they are facing injustice or poor pay, they have a right to withdraw their labour. Nobody ever gave the union movement or the labour movement anything in this country, certainly not any Conservative who has ever lived. In my community, the fight for the eight-hour day was won at the Coniagas Mine in 1914. The miners who went on strike at the Coniagas Mine knew what the consequences were. The consequences were that half that workforce was fired and their families were evicted from their homes. None of those men were radicals or extremists like the Conservatives of the time called them, but they had reached a point where they were not going to put up with the brutal conditions underground anymore. They knew what the odds were. They knew that, if they stood up, many of them would be thrown out on the street, their families not able to be fed. They did it for the bigger vision, the bigger right. The arc of the moral universe may be long and it may take a long time, but it bends inevitably toward justice. I think of all the strikes and labour battles that we have seen in the north and some of them have been brutal. They are stories that are told in our region. There was the 1958 Inco strike, which one of my old-timer friends, Mike Farrell, told me was the Mine Mill union's Stalingrad. Families lost everything in that fight. They lost homes. They lost their cars. They lost their marriages. When I was walking with the copper and nickel miners in 2010 during the Vale strike, their grandchildren told me that their grandfather and grandmother were in that 1958 strike and that they were there today to live up to that obligation, because the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice, because people know what is right. What I see from Conservatives is that they tell me that we should not speak up about international things and just talk about what is at home. That is not the Canadian way. That we should not get involved in something that has nothing to do with us is not the Canadian way. The Canadian way is that we bend toward justice because it is the right thing. We are at this moment in Parliament where we may finally pass anti-scab. I have to say that I have my suspicions. If a Conservative government comes in, does one actually think Conservatives will ever defend workers? There is not a chance. We are going to see them stand up and see whether they stand for the right thing, because this is the moment. I was talking about the strikes in the north. There is nothing more bitter than when someone brings in scabs to tell a family that they are going to starve them out, that they are going to bust them, that they are going to use the cops and use the state to beat workers down and take away the one right that we have as workers, the right to either supply our employment or take it away if we are not being treated with justice. We have had many of these horrific battles. It was mentioned earlier about Peggy Witte, one of the most horrible corporate leaders ever, who was lionized by the Canadian mining industry and who led to the nine men being killed in Yellowknife's Giant Mine. What they also do not tell us about what Peggy Witte did was that she robbed the pensions of workers from my region at Pamour mine, and she got away with it. We have to have laws that protect workers and protect them in strikes so that they can engage fairly. On this day, when we are here at the final moment to maybe get past the finish line with anti-scab, while the international community is now calling out the genocide in Gaza, we have to think about how powerful it is to be at this moment. Yes, the struggle is long, the struggle is hard and the struggle does not end easy, but we have to always bend that power toward justice, fairness and the right of the individual, whether in their union or as a civil human being, to live in dignity. That is what we are here for.
882 words
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  • Rabble!
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