Mr. Speaker, the regulations that existed before the passing of Bill C-34, amendments to the Canada Transportation Act in June 2000, required grain handling firms and rail carriers to provide information to the Minister of Transport to collect sufficient information necessary for the monitoring of the grain handling and transportation system.
However, before the passage of Bill C-34, the government did not have the authority to use the information collected under section 50 of the Canada Transportation Act for monitoring. Bill C-34 changed how the information collected under the authority of section 50 of the act could be used by adding section 50(1)(e.1), monitoring the grain transportation and handling system.
It should be noted that the regulations passed pursuant to section 50 of the act cover all parts of section 50 of the act and not individual parts.
The reporting requirements outlined in section 50(3.2) of the act, as inserted by Bill C-34, were triggered when the carriers and transportation and grain handling undertakings information regulations were used to collect information from carriers and grain handling enterprises and this information was communicated to Quorum Corporation to carry out monitoring of the grain, as anticipated in the new sections inserted into the CTA by Bill C-34.
These two necessary conditions have clearly been met. I will quote from the press release issued by the Ministers of Transport, Agriculture and Agri-Food, and the Canadian Wheat Board of June 19, 2001:
The Minister of Transport, the Minister of Natural Resources and Minister responsible for the Canadian Wheat Board, and the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food, today announced that Quorum Corporation has been hired to monitor and assess the overall efficiency of Canada's grain handling and transportation system.
The June 19 press release further states:
Quorum Corporation will collect and analyze data from railways, grain companies.
This information is collected under the authority of section 50 of the Canada Transportation Act.
Parliament clearly intended that when the Minister of Transport undertook formal monitoring of the grain handling and transportation system, the minister would report the results of this monitoring effort to parliament at least once per year. The minister is engaging in formal monitoring of the system and is using his authority under section 50 of the act to collect information from grain handlers and rail carriers. The minister is getting quarterly and annual reports, again his own press release states “Quorum Corporation will provide quarterly and annual reports” from Quorum Corporation and yet is refusing to abide by the will of parliament and table a report. Again, I view this as contempt.
The government is correct, the regulations in question were brought into effect on July 1, 1996. However, the specific purpose of “monitoring the grain handling and transportation system” could not have been part of the purpose of the regulations because these provisions did not exist in the act until June 2001.
The government claims that the regulations required to trigger the reporting requirement have not been met. In order for this argument to hold, he must answer two basic questions, which I suggest he cannot do.
First, if the Minister of Transport is not supplying Quorum Corporation with information obtained under the authority granted by section 50 of the Canada Transportation Act, how is Quorum obtaining the information necessary to carry out its contractual mandate of monitoring the grain handling and transportation system?
Second, if Quorum Corporation is obtaining information through the authority granted to the minister in section 50 of the act but is not obtaining the information under section 50(1)(e.1), by what authority is it using this information to monitor the grain handling and transportation system given the fact that this purpose for the collection of the information was not anticipated before section 50(1)(e.1) was inserted into the act with the passing of Bill C-34 in June 2000?