Finance committee  I've got it and I'd have to provide it to the committee after the fact, but I've started to survey all of the provincial jurisdictions and a smattering of some the larger municipal jurisdictions as proxies According to the Mercer database, 97% of employees in this country cannot bank sick leave.

Finance committee  Not to my knowledge. I think that the idea of banking went away a long time ago. It's starting to disappear in the public sector. It went away a long time ago. As I said, I was in the Bank of Montreal in the 1970s where we had the system the government is now proposing for the Government of Canada.

Finance committee  These changes should have been made 40 years ago, 30 years ago, 20 years ago, 10 years ago. I was moving my daughter and her beautiful new identical twin granddaughters on the weekend. There's no good time to move. It's always a bad time to move. It's always a bad time to introduce change where you're taking something away from somebody that they've become used to.

Finance committee  I'm not a lawyer, but I've certainly been reading the legislation. It started when I did my Ph.D. thesis on the post office. I didn't intend to get into collective bargaining, but because the post office was at the origin of the introduction of collective bargaining in Canada at the federal level, I ended up spending about a third of the 850 pages on the introduction and evolution, and reading the various acts up to the time of my thesis.

Finance committee  No, I don't. That's what I was trying to argue. I think it's a very unfair system. It benefits older people who have accumulated a large bank of sick leave. I'm very aware of the system. My father was in the government for almost 40 years. He was a member of PIPSC for the last 25 years.

Finance committee  Absolutely, with the caveat I just provided in my opening comments, that I really urge you to get rid of that seven-day waiting period to access short-term leave. Again, I will repeat, a lot of people have been contacting me because I'm well known, am tenured, and don't belong to any party, and don't consult.

Finance committee  I thank the finance committee for the opportunity to appear before you and beside these distinguished witnesses. However, in sharp contrast, I do want to note that while they're at the very top of their unions and organizations, I'm merely a dues paying, rank-and-file union member at the very bottom.

Finance committee  I am doing that right now. I've been breaking it down, and it's a bit misleading to use that aggregated average. I'm going to say something that's probably going to annoy two of the witnesses here. The imbalances at the lower level...and you already know that not only anecdotally, but the minimum starting wage in the private sector is about one-third of what it is in the Government of Canada.

Finance committee  To respond to your question, and the comment by Mr. Keddy earlier, prior to collective bargaining, public servants were paid far less and they were dealt with very badly. Now, over the past 40 years, the pendulum has swung the other way and gone to the other side. Now we're in the middle of a rebalancing of the pendulum.

Finance committee  I published an article on how Ottawa spends, in 1997. It was published by McGill-Queen's Press in this article called “Pink Slips and Running Shoes”. I documented it. It was the largest downsizing in Canadian history—public sector or private sector. That article is on the record, with all the numbers.

Finance committee  I wasn't defending university salaries on April 25 whatsoever. I think you brought it up, if I recall; I don't have the transcript. You brought it up in a reference to some comparative thing. I said that's under separate collective bargaining, and professors are unionized in most universities—not all universities—and in most colleges.

Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Keddy. The reference to Runnymede was really a reference to my op-ed in the Ottawa Citizen about a year ago on how English-speaking democracy has evolved over 800 years. It has evolved a whole series of checks and balances over a very long period of time. It wasn't a one-off on one magic day and then everything was fixed in stone.

Finance committee  Good morning. My name is Ian Lee, and I'm a professor at Carleton University's Sprott School of Business. I thank the finance committee for the opportunity to appear beside these very distinguished witnesses today, presidents and vice-presidents and directors general. However, in sharp contrast, I must plead your indulgence, for I'm merely a dues-paying, rank-and-file union member, who, as a public servant in a public university, toils in the vineyards of the academy educating the next generation.