CFIA S&A - Tentative Agreement Ratification

June 25, 2014

Mr. Bruce Archibald
President, Canadian Food Inspection Agency
Tower 1, Floor 6, Room 100
1400 Merivale Road
Ottawa, ON K1A 0Y9

Dear Mr. Archibald:

Our Institute bargaining groups have been working hard with your management negotiations teams at CFIA, in order to complete and sign collective agreements from the last round of bargaining. This has been a long process for all groups and a confusing one as the CFIA management teams were not always clear about the mandate they had to negotiate. The S&A Group in particular has experienced confusion over its mandate and very long delays in ratification.

CFIA Negotiators contacted Institute Negotiators on June 19, 2014 to inform them that CFIA had verbal confirmation of Governor-in-Council (GIC) approval. However, they requested that we keep this confidential while CFIA waited for written approval. Our Negotiators were happy to grant this courtesy and assumed that they would be informed prior to any public announcements, as is normal practice in collective bargaining. At the end of the day on Friday, June 20, 2014, CFIA then sent notice to all CFIA employees indicating that you had received formal GIC approval for all three of the Institute’s Collective Agreements. This was highly inappropriate and a slap in the face to our Bargaining Team. For a Bargaining Team to work so hard on reaching a tentative agreement and for them to be ignored when that agreement is approved is incredibly disrespectful. It also shows complete disrespect for the process of collective bargaining.

We look forward to receiving official notification of your ratification promptly. I trust we will be able to expect more professional behaviour from the Agency in the next round of bargaining that is already upon us.

Sincerely,

Debi Daviau
President

c.c.: Randy Millage, Chief Negotiations Officer, PIPSC
Lyne Morin, Section Head, Negotiations, PIPSC
Gloria Blaker, (gblaker@aquilaconsulting.ca)
Pierre Girard, Negotiator CFIA, Pierre.Girard@inspection.gc.ca
Brenda Dagenais, Executive Director, CFIA (Brenda.Dagenais@inspection.gc.ca)