The Conservative government’s latest salvo against labour unions is disguised as a plea for openness. In reality, it is something quite different.

The real target of Conservative MP Russ Hiebert’s private member’s bill is union financing.

To be precise, the target is the automatic check-off — also known as the Rand formula. Mandated by law in six provinces (including Ontario), it requires all employees in a bargaining unit that has democratically chosen a union to pay union dues.

It’s a particularly Canadian solution and is named after Ivan Rand, the Supreme Court justice who pioneered the idea in 1946.

Rand was unwilling to force all workers in a unionized operation to join that union. But he did agree that those represented by a legally certified union, whether members or not, should help defray the costs — that is, pay dues.

“The power of organized labour, the necessary co-partner of capital, must be available to address the balance of what is called social justice,” Rand wrote.

For decades, all three major political parties implicitly accepted this notion of an equitable, free-enterprise society in which unions were co-equals of business. Stephen Harper’s Conservatives, however, have moved on.

Which is where Hiebert’s bill comes in.

In fact, it is not really the British Columbia MP’s bill. As my colleague Les Whittington has written, Bill C-377 is being quietly quarterbacked by the Prime Minister’s Office.

On the face of it, Bill C-377 makes no sense. It argues that because workers can treat union dues as tax deductions, the general public has the right to know — in exacting detail — how unions spend their money.

Indeed, as drafted, the bill is remarkably intrusive. It would require the names and addresses of anyone who gives or receives more than $5,000 from a union. Unions would also have to categorize how and why they spent their funds.

Yet neither Hiebert nor his backers would extend that oversight to others claiming similar tax deductions.

Finance department figures show that the tax exemption for union and professional dues does indeed cost the federal treasury $795 million in lost revenue annually. How much is attributed to unionists and how much to others unaffected by this bill, such as doctors and lawyers, is not stated.

But the same figures show plenty of other revenue losses attributable to tax breaks. High rollers paid in stock options cost the treasury $725 million. Those claiming capital gains deductions cost $3.7 billion. So-called carrying-cost deductions reduce federal revenues by $1 billion.

Yet neither Hiebert nor any other Conservative is demanding a public accounting of how these taxpayer-subsidized moneys are spent.

Why focus on unions? In his remarks to the Commons, Hiebert has never given a plausible explanation. Some who submitted briefs on the bill, however, have.

The organization REAL Women, for instance, told MPs that unions use their money improperly to support “left-wing causes” such as abortion, feminism, homosexuality, Quebec separatism and Palestinians.

Canadian Labour Watch Association, another C-377 supporter, noted that some unions funded democracy in Burma, the Vancouver Film Festival and an anti-poverty cookbook.

The point of Hiebert’s bill is not just to strangle unions and their locals with red tape. Nor is it simply to limit their political activity. Beyond all of this, as REAL Women acknowledged, is compulsory check-off.

The unstated aim of this bill is to provide ammunition to politicians, like Ontario Tory Leader Tim Hudak, who would scrap the Rand formula and introduce U.S.-style right-to-work laws designed to sap unions.

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The Conservatives’ working assumption is that once Canadians see how unions spend their money, they will be scandalized. It is another round in a sophisticated public relations war designed to portray union leaders as undemocratic pork-choppers.

If the unions want to weather this, they will find it’s not enough to be outraged. They will have to be clever.

Thomas Walkom's column appears Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday.