Thank you, Mr. Speaker-elect. I was on the Cabinet for the last collective bargaining with the union, and that was not a pleasant experience. I certainly don't recommend that anyone who puts their name for Cabinet forget what we experienced in the last Assembly. We need to learn from our mistakes. I was also, I believe, the only MLA that, after the fact, put on Facebook that we need to change this.
My understanding is that this went on for years and years. This is not okay. It is not okay that the union and the GNWT make this a personal battle between each other, because the victims are the people who are providing the services. They are the ones that we can't forget.
I put on my Facebook, and I am open to working with standing committee on it, because I'm not the expert on it, that we need to find a solution. That was on my Facebook a couple of years ago when that all went down, over a year ago, I believe it is. It has been fast; life goes fast.
We need to look at our Public Service Act. Right now, the Public Service Act says that we have the right to go into negotiation and mediation. It does not have the right to go into binding arbitration. When the motion was made, if it had said binding mediation, we could have stood up, because that is within the act. If binding arbitration is something that the people want, then we should be willing to put it back on, but not compromising by saying, "Take away the strike vote," because that's punitive. We need to work with that.
I also believe, in the Public Service Act, that we need to have timelines. Again, I am open to feedback on that, because I am not the expert on this, but it is not okay, what we are doing. Let's put a timeline. People should not have to wait years and years to get through each process. There should be a timeline: negotiation is this long at maximum, and then it moves to the next step, that long maximum, then it move to the next step. I don't usually like to be punitive, but maybe we need to look at consequences if the union and the GNWT do not meet those timelines and do not do that.
We need to start in good faith and move forward, but we can't forget that these are people's lives. I got calls during that time, and it broke my heart, of people crying and saying, "If I don't have a paycheque, I can't feed my children," and that stays with me forever. This should not be an adversarial process. We need to work. We need to make it better, and it cannot be lip service. We need to look at our act and figure out how we can strengthen it so that we have the best interests of our employees always. Thank you, Mr. Speaker-elect.