OTTAWA – Parliamentarians on Thursday were preparing to stay in the House of Commons until the wee hours of the morning – or longer – carrying on debate about legislation that would force locked-out Canada Post employees back to work.
"Parliament could be sitting all night. Who will be first MP to Tweet something they’ll regret later?" Tony Clement, Treasury Board president and avid Twitter-user posted on his account.
The House of Commons has to go through several votes – all of which are likely to pass with the Conservative majority – before Canadians will learn when they can expect to start receiving mail again.
The parliamentary battle over the legislation was reignited Thursday morning after a one-day break. But debate on the actual bill forcing the postal workers back to the job won’t begin until 8 p.m.
In the morning, MPs voted to spend the afternoon and evening debating whether to pass a motion allowing the back-to-work legislation, officially known as Bill C-6, to be passed in one sitting.
Typically, a bill goes through three readings and is studied by a committee before being voted.
Bill C-6 is on track to go through the House of Commons in one sitting, meaning MPs would stay in the chamber until the bill is "disposed of," or voted on.
Talks between Canada Post managers and their unionized employees broke off Wednesday night after 72 hours.
Canada Post spokesman Jon Hamilton said at the time that the offer Canada Post made to the union on June 9 is still more generous than what workers could expect to get for comparable work in the private sector.
The federal legislation, which Labour Minister Lisa Raitt introduced Monday, imposes lower wage increases than the managers offered.
Opposition MPs have condemned the wage reductions specifically and the bill as a whole, saying it undermines the right to collective bargaining.
Canada Post locked out its employees on June 14, after 12 days of rotating strikes by the Canadian Union of Postal Workers.
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