The Alberta Teachers’ Association

Teacher organizations already provide transparency

“Transparency” is the flavour of the day and one Member of Parliament believes his private member’s bill will taste sweet to taxpayers.

Russ Hiebert, Conservative MP for South Surrey–White Rock–Cloverdale, British Columbia, is the architect of Bill C-377, which is intended to “increase transparency and accountability,” Hiebert states on his website (www.c377.ca), which features a quote from the 2011 Nanos Labour Day poll of 1,000 Canadians that “83% said unions should be required to disclose how they spend union dues.”

The bill is snaking its way through Parliament, having passed second reading and moved to the Finance Committee for study. The list of MPs and how they voted on the bill is posted to Hiebert’s website.

Under the bill, all labour unions in Canada will be required to file yearly financial statements, details of which will be posted to a public website. In this way, Hiebert says, “the public will be empowered to gauge the effectiveness, financial integrity and health of Canada’s unions.”

According to the ­Canadian Teachers’ Federation, Bill C-377—An Act to Amend the Income Tax Act (Requirements for Labour Organizations) singles out all labour organizations but does not apply to other dues-collecting professional organizations.

CTF says the bill may violate the Privacy Act and the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act because it “proposes to require disclosure of personal information (including personal health and medical information), which conflicts with legislation already in place.”

Points to ponder

CTF has published information about Bill C-377 on its website (www.ctf-fce.ca) under Resources, and then under Briefs and Position Papers. The information is adapted from material prepared by the Canadian ­Labour Congress (http://­canadianlabour.ca).

• CTF and its member organizations already make their decisions in an open and democratic way that provides transparency to members.
• Teacher organizations’ financial statements are already open to all members. Budgets are voted upon and spending is monitored by the members.
• Member organizations distribute financial reports to their members on an annual basis.
• There will be a huge cost to government to develop all the regulations needed to enact the legislation, to develop and prepare all the forms and instruction booklets required to develop the software programs to file, receive and process the information; and to develop an online searchable database. A conservative estimate is that this will generate additional costs in the hundreds of millions of dollars. The bill will be costly for the government to administer, and it will cost taxpayers money. The CLC says the government will need to employ many full-time staff—auditors, accountants, lawyers and administrative workers—to process those reports. In comparison, there are currently about 100 employees at Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) processing and auditing charities that have disclosure requirements not even close to the detailed reporting requirements that are proposed in this bill. Hiebert, however, says that by “using electronic filing, the annual filing expense incurred by unions and by the federal government should be negligible.” According to the CLC, there are 25,000 union organizations and internal divisions of union organizations in Canada that will have to file incredibly detailed reports under this bill. All those reports will have to be processed.
• Hiebert says that “public disclosure will help the public better understand how the benefits that are provided are being utilized.” But he also said in an interview that he had not received a single call or complaint from any member of a union or the general public wanting the information and being unable to obtain it.
• Bill C-377 would allow employers and anti-union groups to get extremely detailed information about everything a union spends money on, and how strong the union they are bargaining with is. This information, provided to these groups at taxpayers’ and unions’ expense, can be used to threaten collective bargaining rights and organizing drives. In the United States, a similar database is a gold mine of information for anti-union employers. The United States Office of Management and Budget estimates that completing the forms (which require less information than Bill C-377) requires more than 550 hours of work each year.
• The strongest supporters of the bill in Canada are the merit shop contractors and other open-shop contractors (many of these contractors are resisting union efforts to require the use of properly trained and qualified tradespeople), the Canadian Federation of Independent Business and the Fraser Institute.
• Bill C-377 is an intrusion into the internal affairs of unions to provide information to employers and anti-union groups while penalizing unions with significantly increased costs. This legislation doesn’t apply to other organizations that also charge tax-deductible dues, for example, professional organizations like law societies and the Canadian Medical Association.
• The bill would violate the privacy rights of individuals, companies and organizations. It requires that all transactions and all disbursements over $5,000 be shown along with the name and address of the payer and the payee, the purpose and description of the transaction and the specific amount. This means that all businesses or professionals that do work for a union will have all the information about their contracts and what they are charging disclosed to the public, and therefore to their competitors. The effect would be bad for businesses that have contracts with union offices. Businesses like photocopier suppliers, telecommunications companies and office supply companies would have their negotiated contracts publicly available for their competitors to see.
• The bill would also require labour organizations to disclose specific details of any invoice from a legal firm over $5,000. This is a gross violation of solicitor-client privilege. No one should be required to disclose to the government and the public the details of his or her relationship with legal counsel.
• Trusteed pension and health plans will have to disclose the details of all pension- and health-related expenditures over $5,000, which violates individual privacy rights.
• The requirement that there be a report of all disbursements to employees means that everyone from the receptionist to the president will have their names, salaries and benefits disclosed to the public. Yet the Prime Minister’s Office does not disclose the salaries of its employees because it would be an invasion of privacy.
• Bill C-377 is not at all about taxes, so it does not belong in the Income Tax Act. Clearly it is an interference in the labour laws of Canada, most of which fall under provincial or territorial jurisdiction. The bill is an overt interference in the labour relations process that is designed to give significant advantages to employers at taxpayer’s expense.

“The bill is a politically motivated attack on the association rights of workers,” writes Jonathan Teghtmeyer, ATA News editor-in-chief, in his editorial of September 11, 2012. “It attacks workers’ organizational ­abilities through costly distractions, preoccupations and mischief making.”