Bill C-49 (Historical)

An Act respecting the effective date of the representation order of 2003

Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act

[Don Boudria, Liberal, Minister of State and Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-49, an act respecting the effective date of the representation order of 2003.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

Canada Airports Act

[Gurmant Grewal, Canadian Alliance, Surrey Central, BC]

Madam Speaker, I rise on behalf of the constituents of Surrey Central to participate in the debate on Bill C-27.

Before I begin, let me compliment the hard work done by our senior transportation critic on this issue in highlighting the problems related to this bill. Also, we will have a wonderful speech from the hon. member for Blackstrap with whom I will be sharing my time.

Bill C-27 is an act respecting airport authorities and other airport operators and amending the Canada Airports Act. Let me state that it is a combination of missed opportunities and attempts to solve problems that do not even exist.

When one looks at the state of Canada's airline industry and realizes that the Standing Committee on Transport is looking into the continued viability of the airline industry, one has to wonder why the government chose this time to introduce this legislation dealing with airports.

If we compare Canadian airports, both large and small, with similarly sized airports in other countries, the Canadian airports stand up rather well. At least there is no urgency or emergency to fix them. If something is not broken, why fix it? The real problem facing Canada's airline sector is not the way airports are run, but the way airport rent is charged by the federal government and passed on to the airlines.

This issue was raised and dealt with in the transportation committee hearings over the past few weeks. As a result, in an April 11 report this year the committee unanimously recommended that:

The federal government suspend rental payments by airports for a two-year period and the airports shall pass the rental savings to air carriers.

Further study is not needed. It is time to act. No one will find any discussion of airport rents in the Canada Airports Act.

In fact the Standing Committee on Transport made another unanimous recommendation to eliminate the air travellers security charge. This was connected to transferring responsibility for airport security to multi-modal agency that would be fully publicly funded. Here again an understanding of the nature of threats and security at small airports is helpful. Large airports have better security than smaller airports. The problem of course is that if the security is reduced at small airports but connecting passengers are allowed to proceed directly into the sterile or secure areas at big airports, the security of those large airports is compromised.

In Europe passengers arriving at places like Frankfurt, Paris or London from smaller centres are screened just like folks coming in off the street. They have to be screened before they enter the secure area of the airport to catch connecting flights. There is absolutely no mention of this idea in Bill C-27, even though it would offer better security at lower cost.

We are considering an airports act that applies to places as small as Gander with just 86,000 passengers and would also apply to any airport that has over 200,000 passengers annually. For most managers of small airports, the biggest single issue facing them is something call CARs 308. This is a recently imposed five minute emergency response time at smaller airports that has dramatically increased their operating costs. The federal government has not offered a dime in operating assistance and this unfunded federal government requirement is the biggest single issue facing many small airports.

The Regional Community Airports Coalition of Canada is calling on Transport Canada to suspend the introduction of CARs 308 indefinitely or to agree to pay for this regulation in its entirety to avoid the airports having to pass these increased operating costs on to the airlines. The coalition points out that these increased costs, applied in the form of a regulatory recovery fee, could increase airline fees at affected airports by up to 30% or higher. This will again affect the competitiveness and viability of the regional and community airports and therefore the communities they serve.

Other than the air security tax, the CARs 308 is the most important airport related issue missing in Bill C-27.

Part 6 of the Canada airports act deals with the issue of airport improvement fees. Essentially it subjects AIF to the same kind of accountability and appeal procedures that currently apply to Nav Canada fees. For airports just reaching the 200,000 passenger threshold, this will be a new level of bureaucracy, but I think that Canadians deserve to know how such fees are being spent.

If we held the Liberal government to the same standard, taxes like 1.5¢ per litre fuel tax that was aimed at cutting the deficit or the $24 air security tax would have to be much more accurately tailored to reasonable expenses, rather than a need to finance future Liberal spending or even the wasting of the money.

However even if one agrees with the general philosophy of the AIFs, the headlines that are dealing with this issue are not focusing on accountability but on the fact that the Air Canada restructuring has left many airport authorities in the red.

It seems that for many airports the AIF is included in the airline ticket prices and collected by the airlines and then handed over to the airport authority. Air Canada's financial problems are affecting many airports that trusted Air Canada to collect the AIF on their behalf. As of April 4, Canada's largest airports were owed a total $80 million in unpaid landing fees and airport improvement charges by Air Canada and that money is now tied up in the CCRA hearings.

However the air travellers security charge is not similarly affected, because Bill C-49 from last session required airlines to hold this money in trust. It does not require airlines, that collect the AIFs on behalf of many airports, to hold that money in trust as is done with the air travellers security charge.

Part 6, devoted to the question of AIF, we would think that the idea of any airline holding AIF money in trust so that airports would be paid even if the airline has a financial problem as in the case of Air Canada would have been included in Bill C-27, but it is not. This is another opportunity missed by this weak, arrogant Liberal government.

When we look at a list of priority airport issues facing the aviation industry, Bill C-27 misses virtually every opportunity to solve an existing problem. The government is trying to solve the problems that do not exist but it is not solving the problems that exist in the industry.

Bill C-27 is an attempt to codify the status quo in Canada's airline industry. This approach has two big problems.

The first is that there is no one out there calling for the status quo to be codified. No airline, airport authority or stakeholder is calling for legislation that would write down in one place the way Canada's various airports are run. It is an attempt to solve the problem that does not exist. Most of the language contained in Bill C-27 already exists in most of the leases that NAS airports have with Transport Canada. In many ways Bill C-27 is a complete waste of time.

The second big problem is that Bill C-27 would treat different airports similarly and similar airports differently causing true discrimination and causing far more problems than any codification of the status quo could potentially solve.

Since my time is almost over, let me conclude that a one size fits all solution, regardless of size and location, will not work.

Bill C-27 also fails to address major issues confronting airports, the CARs 308 issue, as I mentioned, the airport rental policy, the question of overly opulent terminals, the need for air industry representation and the need for the minister to get an arrogant airport authority to live within its mandate.

Bill C-27 is also introduced by the Minister of Transport who has repeatedly turned his back on unanimous recommendations by the committee to adopt the committee's recommendations as the department's priorities. The House should reject the legislation especially when, in cases such as this, it created more problems than it solves.

Solicitation Laws

[Svend Robinson, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Madam Speaker, I will be brief because I hope there is a disposition in the House this afternoon to agree that this very important subject should in fact be studied at the earliest possible time by the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. I commend my colleague from Winnipeg Centre for his motion to that effect.

I also want to pay tribute to my colleague, the member for Vancouver East, for the leadership and the courage that she has shown in speaking out on this issue so tirelessly and so effectively on behalf not just of her constituents in the downtown east side, but on behalf of all those who are affected by this motion. I know that the hon. member has been working on this issue from the days that she was a member of Vancouver city council many years ago and has continued tirelessly to advocate changes in this area of the law.

I too agree that the law must be changed. In fact I think the current law is steeped in hypocrisy.

As John Lowman, a respected criminologist at Simon Fraser University in my constituency has noted in a major paper that he published in 1998 on prostitution and law reform in Canada, the Criminal Code is currently very hypocritical. It tolerates off-street prostitution--and all we have to do is go to the phone book to see that with pages and pages of ads for escort agencies--but when it comes to street prostitution, there is still a glaring double standard.

Too many women are in unsafe conditions and are not treated with dignity and respect. The criminalization in this area has caused all sorts of tragedies, not the least of which was the disappearance of over 50 women from the downtown east side of Vancouver.

I am probably the only member in the House this afternoon who was in the House in the mid-1980s when the law was toughened. It was called Bill C-49. I fought against those changes at that time and said then that I believed that they would lead to a terrible injustice and I believe that again today.

Therefore I am pleased to support the hon. member's motion. In the couple of minutes that remain, I want also to ask the committee to consider, if it is possible to do so, another element of the law in this area. That is Canada's bawdy house laws in the same area of the Criminal Code.

These are laws which are archaic, which are outdated and are too often open to serious abuse. We have seen that recently in the case of the Goliath's raid by the Calgary police. I would hope that it would be recognized that these bawdy house laws too have no place on the law books of Canada. I urge the committee to study this area as well.

I call on all members of the committee to join with the member for Vancouver East in sending this very important subject to the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights for the serious study that it deserves and hopefully to recommend that these laws be fundamentally changed, be decriminalized once and for all.

Canadian Coast Guard

[André Harvey, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Transport]

Mr. Chairman, I always appreciate comments from my opposition colleagues. I would like to try to clarify things for the Bloc Quebecois members, in particular the member who just spoke. If there were not already such a thing as negativity, the Bloc Quebecois members would have invented it. Allow me to illustrate this quickly.

They make all sorts of demands: wharf repairs, highway construction and tonight they are calling for more money for the Coast Guard. I ask them, with all the humility I can muster, if they might not be a bit more consistent when, for example, the government comes up with tools to carry out major infrastructure projects.

This was the case a few weeks ago. Bill C-49 created a program specifically for strategic infrastructure projects. Nothing is more strategic than highways, wharves and major projects.

They voted against the bill. It was not even a general budget, where it is always possible to find some grounds for voting against it. They voted against a strategic infrastructure program. Can the members of the Bloc Quebecois, who, incidentally, campaign against me year round—which I quite like, I quite like them during election campaigns, and they will be in the riding of Lac-Saint-Jean—tell me why they voted against these specific measures? Then, they come to the House asking for money. When we carry out projects, they say, “it is thanks to us”.

Let me give another example. I know that you are very tolerant, Mr. Chairman. It is nice this evening—

Highway Infrastructure

[André Harvey, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Transport]

Mr. Speaker, the Canadian government is already participating in major projects in New Brunswick, and most notably with respect to the highway between Quebec City and Chicoutimi.

In the future, I wish Bloc Quebecois members would vote in favour of bills like Bill C-49, which will provide us with the money to achieve what they are asking for.