Bill C-7 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Aeronautics Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts

Aeronautics Act

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, I, too, am concerned about aircraft safety. It has been a part of my life through my years of living in the north and travelling through very many different conditions. However, that is not what I am focusing on here. I am focusing on what the guiding reasons were behind the development of this bill.

Was it to reduce the government's cost in providing a regulatory oversight to the industry? Was it to reduce the cost to the consumer? Was it to harmonize the Canadian regulations on aircraft safety in the industry across North America so that perhaps in the future we could see that our skies would be open within Canada to competition from foreign carriers?

What were the guiding principles that brought this bill forward at this time?

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I cannot pretend to know what was in the minds of the government members who initiated this bill. However, we have to ask ourselves: What is government for?

Surely one of the key roles of government is to protect its citizens from harm. After the fact, to say that we should have done this or perhaps we should have been responsible for that is cold comfort to people.

I believe that part of the rationale is simply a transition in the public service, a generational change. It will be costly and there is always a strategy that needs to be worked out to do that transition. I believe the government has not planned adequately for that. This is a very cut rate way to get out from under the responsibility of generational change in our inspectors. It is transferring responsibility to the private sector, to the companies themselves, surely something that is one of the fundamental responsibilities of government. It is of great concern to the members of this caucus and, if Canadians knew about it, I think it also would be of great concern to them.

My colleague raised the issue of harmonization with U.S. laws. If that is a rationale, then I would argue that it is a poor one.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I know the member for Parkdale—High Park has a long history and association with the airline industry as someone who was a member of the CAW, who worked for the airlines and then within her union. I think she is someone who is very familiar with this industry right on the ground, not someone at the executive level, but someone who was immersed in the day to day operations.

I think the member has voiced the real concerns that we have heard in the NDP from ordinary workers who work in this industry and who are expressing their concerns about safety. One of the issues that has come up is that they are going to change the way they deal with fatigue and work hours. It is called the fatigue risk management system. I think one of the concerns is that it will sort of take us away from the established practices under the Canada Labour Code, both part II and part III.

I wonder if the member has any concerns that we are setting up some sort of separate program or entity that would take us some distance away from the Canada Labour Code.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the issue of work hours and fatigue are fundamental in the transportation sector and have been an issue of debate and negotiation over the years. There has been a push of late to lengthen the work hours and to reduce the number of personnel, which is a safety concern.

I would remind the members of the House of the Air France fiery crash in Toronto where, due to the quick action of the crew, not one person died. That is the kind of job that airline workers do.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-7, An Act to amend the Aeronautics Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, be read the third time and passed, and of the amendment.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, before I begin my comments on Bill C-7, I want to ask you a question about the statement that was just made, not that we would have objected to it. I did not understand that there was a problem with the timing on the clock.

Was that done as a point of order or was it something that would have required unanimous consent because we were in effect intervening in a debate? We would not have objected, I want to make that clear, but just as a matter of process, could the Speaker advise us? I actually was waiting for a motion to be put so that the member could make his statement.

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

The hon. member has a point. It was my understanding that there was an implied unanimous consent. Next time I will be more prudent.

The hon. member for Vancouver East is recognized to resume debate on Bill C-7, I hope.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

First of all, Mr. Speaker, I appreciate your response and I do want to make it clear to the member that we would not have denied unanimous consent, because obviously making our statements in the House is important to all members. If there is a glitch with the clock, that should be corrected, but maybe next time we will do it through unanimous consent.

I am very pleased to have this opportunity to rise in the House to speak to Bill C-7. As we know, this bill was in the last session of Parliament and was then known as Bill C-6.

I want to say right off that NDP members were very instrumental and worked as a very tight group in the last days of that session to fight the bill and try to keep it from going through the House. It was at third reading then. I am sure that my colleagues will remember that we rose in those last few days and kept the debate going.

In the House today, I have heard a number of members raise questions about that. What is the NDP doing? Why is it trying to hold up the bill? Some members are saying that it is a great bill and it had a great hearing in committee, that all those witnesses were heard and the bill has been fixed if there were problems. As we know, the government is obviously supporting the bill.

The Liberals, who first initiated the bill when they were in government, of course are supporting the bill, just as they now support a number of things from the Conservative government, including the Speech from the Throne and the so-called mini-budget. It is no surprise to us that they are supporting the aeronautics bill. The members of the BQ also have been supporting the bill.

However, I do want to put on the record that the reason we wished to hold it up in June, the reason we fought it, is that we think the bill is flawed. We think the bill has not had the scrutiny it deserves. We have had repeated concerns brought to us, particularly by the labour movement, people who work in this industry and who have a tremendous amount of experience and knowledge. They work on the ground, just like the member for Parkdale—High Park said when she spoke about her knowledge of this industry.

I can tell members of the House that we take this very seriously. In our humble opinion, and we are one party in the House, we believe we have a responsibility: if we do not think a bill is good enough, if we think a bill is not right, we should not just roll over and let it go through.

That is why in June we debated the bill and tried to hold it up. In fact, we did hold it up. It would have gone through. Then, as we know, the Prime Minister prorogued the House. It is ironic. We are told by the government that these bills are so critical and they are being held up by the opposition, and, in the case of this bill, by the NDP. Yet it was the government itself and the Prime Minister himself that prorogued the House and in effect killed all of the bills that were before the House of Commons.

That was the tactic the government employed to buy some time, to see out the byelections or the Ontario election, whatever the reasons were. We obviously were not privy to what government members had in their minds, but the government itself decided to prorogue the House, delay the return of Parliament and in effect kill the bill in its former version, which was Bill C-6.

As we know, the bill has now been brought back. It is still at third reading. We in the NDP successfully put forward an amendment, or what is called a hoist motion, to have the bill sent back to the committee. I want to assure members of the House that we did so on the basis of our concerns. We did that on the basis that we really do believe the bill should go back to the committee.

It may well be that other members are satisfied. It may well be that other members think this is a fine bill and that is the end of the story. We do not. We think there are significant concerns that should be addressed. From our point of view, we are doing our job as parliamentarians to debate the legislation, to defend the public interest, to represent the public interest and to represent the interest of public safety, particularly as it relates to airline safety.

On the record, I do want to mention the tremendous work of our former transport critic, the member for Burnaby—New Westminster. He almost single-handedly raised the issues around the bill and alerted people out in the broader community so they could come before the committee. He has gone through the bill with a fine-tooth comb, looking at the changes that are about to take place.

This is where we have a very strong difference with other members in the House. We think the changes proposed in Bill C-7,, the aeronautics bill, are not in the public interest. They will not improve and strengthen safety provisions in the airline industry.

We are extremely concerned that, overall, this is the beginning of a slippery slope. In fact, one might argue that the slippery slope began a long time ago with previous Liberal governments. They began with this massive environment of privatization and deregulation.

We know it is something that the big airline industry has long coveted. We are now in that environment where deregulation and privatization are the victim of the day. However, when it comes to safety, I truly believe that Canadians, whether they live in large urban centres and mostly access airline travel through large airports such as Pearson, Vancouver or Montreal or wherever it might be, or live in smaller communities and rely on regional airports that maybe do not have the same kind of equipment and technology that is available in the larger centres, absolutely rely on us as parliamentarians to go through this kind of legislation. If there is a shadow of a doubt that it does not meet a strong and high standard around safety and protecting the public and the people who work in that industry, I think they expect us to not allow this legislation to pass.

We are attempting to bring those concerns forward. As the member for Parkdale—High Park said, what is the government for? What do we do in this place?

We do many things. We all have issues that we represent in our riding. However, overall we have a responsibility to represent that broader public interest against all kinds of pressures, from big corporations, from offshore interests, from people who have an agenda, the CEOs who have an agenda to only look at the bottom line. Our job is to make those balances and to overall represent the public interest.

I want to speak a bit about the specific concerns I have about Bill C-7. I know they are shared by my colleagues in the New Democratic Party. They revolve around really three key questions, one of which is the new safety management system, the SMS as it is being called. The second involves the immunity for prosecutions from airlines that violate safety rules under certain conditions. The third is the heightened secrecy and the fact that there will be less access to information on the safety performance of airlines under this bill than we had previously.

It raises the question as to why. Why would the bill take us in that direction? I am not sure I know the answer to that, other than I know it is a really bad direction and we should not allow it to happen.

It is part of this bigger picture of deregulation. It is part of a bigger picture that the Conservative government has adopted; that it is better to have no rules, that it is better to allow self-regulation by industry, and there may be some instances where that is warranted. By and large that is not a good direction to take, particularly with the airline industry.

I will speak on the first point, the new safety management systems. This is at the heart of the bill we are debating today. We believe it will affect the safety of the travelling public and crew members.

New Democrats are very concerned that the SMS system is supposed to be a management system that has been developed to allow air operators to improve safety levels by building on existing safety regulators. We know Transport Canada, both in committee and elsewhere, has insisted that this new safety management system is not a deregulation, but we think it is. There we begin our entrance onto the slippery slope.

We believe it is part of a deregulation and a significant change for two reasons. First, there will be a new role for the regulator that will increase the level of delegation previously performed by Transport Canada and that role will be delegated to the airlines.

Many members of the NDP have spoken on this issue over the last few days. We are very concerned because it was a function that was carried out by a government department, Transport Canada. Even though there might have been issues and concerns over various situations that arose, overall one has some level of faith in a government agency performing the function of a safety management system.

To now shift it to the airlines and make them, in effect, self-regulating in terms of safety rules and self-monitoring is something we should be very concerned about. We need to ask the question as to where this will lead. If we allow this to happen in this industry, in what other industries or instances will it also happen? This is the direction the previous government was taking and now it appears the Conservative government is also taking that direction.

Related to the question of the safety management system is a transfer of the determination of appropriate risk levels from Transport Canada to the airlines. The NDP would argue that this is again shifting the rules and responsibility from a public government agency, which is accountable to the House of Commons and the people of Canada, to the airlines. The public interest becomes a little less clear . We have to question whether that shift in the safety management system will mean that there is a greater interest in terms of what the interests are of the private shareholders. Those are very serious questions.

I was not in the committee, and I will be the first to say that. The member for Burnaby—New Westminster was. After speaking with him, I know that there were very detailed discussions. Witnesses came forward and expressed their concerns about this function of the safety management system.

I realize there are members in the House who are satisfied with what they heard from the department and what they see in the bill, but the NDP is not. On that ground alone, the safety management system, we are not satisfied that the public interest test has been met.

We are very skeptical about this movement of responsibility from the government to the airlines. We are also very concerned about what the consequences of that might be in the long term for the travelling public, as well as for people working in the airline industry who are all of a sudden in an environment that becomes a self-regulating situation.

It is more preferable to have an outside body that clearly establishes rules, regulations and benchmarks in terms of what the risk and safety levels are for people who work in that industry and who may feel the pressure from their employers to cut a little corner here, cut a little something there. There are those pressures in the workplace, so having the clear mandate of Transport Canada to lay out that level is very important for the workers in the industry. They have something on which they can call. That is our first concern.

The second concern, as I mentioned, has to do with what we understand to be the immunity from prosecution for airlines that violates safety rules under certain conditions. Again, this is something about which the public should be very worried. We need to be very clear that under this proposal, Transport Canada has not granted whistleblower protection to employees who may report that their air operator is not following the law.

I find this very ironic. The government brought in Bill C-2, the Federal Accountability Act. It was its first bill after its election to a minority Parliament, and the NDP supported it. The act was meant to be about setting out broad parameters and very specific provisions and regulations to ensure there was accountability, that there was whistleblower protection, that people could be protected in their workplace.

Therefore, it seems to me rather ironic that now under Bill C-7 we have a number of provisions that will provide immunity from prosecution. It does not have whistleblower protection, so that really creates a very uncertain environment for people who may be in the know. They may have information they think is important. They may feel they have an individual obligation to report violations or situations that are not safe. Yet they will not be protected.

We think this is another serious issue and flaw in the bill. This is another reason for it be sent back to committee.

The third issue has to do with the fact that there will be less access to information on the safety performance of airlines.

From time to time, we read about serious incidents that take place in air travel. It is something that alarms people.

Like other members of the House, I travel a lot. I mostly travel between Vancouver and Ottawa, and I do not particularly like using air travel. I do it however because I am from Vancouver and it is the way I get to work and get home. We have this faith that the pilots, the flight attendants and the ground crews know what they are doing, and I do. I have a lot of confidence in those people.

In fact, I was on a flight the other day, leaving from Pearson to go to Vancouver. We were zooming down the runway and about to take off. Just before takeoff, the pilot slammed on the brakes and it became clear we would not be taking off. Everyone was wondering what was happening. Over the public announcement system, the pilot said that there was something wrong. He did not know what it was so he aborted the takeoff. The 300 people on the plane were hugely relieved he had made that decision.

We went back to the gate. We sat around for an hour, which nobody really minded, because they were checking out safety provisions. In the end, the aircraft was grounded. We all had to scramble around for other flights. However, I was glad because I sure as heck did not want to fly in a plane that might be unsafe.

People worry about this. They rely on those professionals to make the right decisions, even at the last minute, even at the last second.

With this bill, we believe there will be less security on those issues. There will be less access to information to find out what is going on. For example, there are seven sections of the Aeronautics Act that will be added to schedule II of the Access to Information Act to ensure that there is no access to information. Why is that? Why would there be this shift?

I do have other issues to raise but those are some of the concerns that I put forward from my party and the reason we believe the bill should be sent back to committee and given a thorough review.

[Merv Tweed, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I have sat here patiently all day listening to the NDP filibuster on this bill.

The member's comments at the end of her speech actually speak volumes in support of the bill. The very fact that the pilot had the authority to stop the plane before it took off is exactly what safety management systems are all about. They empower every person within the system to shut down a plane if it is not safe. That is what the people of Canada want. That is what Canadian travellers want. That is what travellers want all over the world. They want the people who work every day in the system to have the authority and some control over the safety issues regarding flying in Canada.

Would the member please advise her caucus to stop the filibuster, support this bill and move it through? Canadians demand and want the safety that it provides.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is unfortunate that the member would see this as a filibuster. In actual fact the rules have changed so much that members actually cannot filibuster in this place any more. We are actually debating in a regular way, during a regular, routine legislative process, third reading, a motion that was legitimately moved by the NDP because of the concerns we have.

WIth respect to the idea that we are holding up the bill, or filibustering, first of all filibustering itself is a time honoured process that has been used by all parties in this House. It was actually the former government that clamped down on it and changed the rules so that it is almost impossible to do. Even on that principal point alone as to what filibustering is about, filibustering is very much a part of the parliamentary process, very much a part of the tradition of democracy, but that is not what we are doing here.

I would like to throw a question back to member, why is the government so intent on rushing through legislation that requires a proper review by committee and by the House? That is our right to do that here. I respect the member's view that he thinks the bill is terrific. I respect his conclusion on that, but he should respect our conclusion that we do not think that the bill is right.

In terms of the issue of safety, the situation I outlined is under the existing process and yes, captains do have control to make that decision, but what we are talking about in the bill is going to be a very dramatic shift in terms of the way these rules work. We will be relying more on the airlines themselves to do the regulatory inspections and safety checks and mechanisms that are now in place through Transport Canada.

If the member is right in his assertion, then why do we have the bill before us? It is clearly because there are significant changes taking place. We believe that those changes are not in the right direction and that there would be consequences for both the industry and the public. Therefore, we uphold our right to debate in the House what those changes are about and the fact that we do not agree with them. We will do that. It is not filibustering. We will do that at third reading as we did in June and we hope that the bill will be sent back to committee.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague and chair of the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities was brilliant.

As for the example my NDP colleague gave earlier concerning what happened at Pearson airport, that is precisely what we hope to avoid. I would like the NDP to understand something. The safety management system is currently operational. In the case referred to by my colleague, if someone had decided to sue the major airline, one of the employees—the one who decided to stop the aircraft and keep it on the ground because there was a safety problem—might not have been protected. That is precisely what the bill aims to prevent, because safety management systems are already in operation. However, the employees who use this system must be properly protected. That is the goal of this bill.

I also have a very hard time understanding why the NDP blocked the passage of this bill, which has been improved by the opposition and would truly protect the system, and especially the employees, who would be able to make voluntary reports, as in the example she mentioned earlier.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I think the member and I share some of the same concerns about the protection of workers and their ability to carry out their jobs without reprisal. Maybe we have come to a different conclusion on the bill. My understanding is that members of the Bloc are satisfied with the bill. They think it contains enough provisions to address their concerns. We have not yet come to that conclusion.

If I might add to what the member said, in addition to the concerns that I put forward about the safety management system, the immunity from prosecution and the deletion of seven sections from access to information, there is another area that we are concerned about and that is the fatigue risk management system, which deals with employees who work long hours and have very onerous and serious responsibilities.

We are concerned that rather than sticking to part II and part III of the Canada Labour Code, this new system will be a differentiation. The Canada Labour Code protects federally regulated workers, which would include the airline industry. There are issues with the code. The Arthurs report, which was two years in the making and was sitting on the minister's desk, deals with issues about employment standards and occupational health and safety. There are issues within the Canada Labour Code that need to be improved and the Arthurs report is one demonstration of that.

Nevertheless, we do have concerns about the introduction of the fatigue risk management system. It will be a departure from what has been established as overall procedures, regulations and policies that protect workers on the basis of safety, on the basis of reporting information, on the basis of their work hours, fatigue, overtime, those kinds of issues. This bill is creating a different kind of entity. This is another concern that we have with the bill.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Mr. Speaker, after what happened in my city of London, Ontario, it seems to me that infrastructure and the things that keep people safe are very much in trouble. Last Wednesday there was a $190 billion cut to the government's capacity to make sure that safety elements were in place.

I wonder if the member could comment on the fact that this $190 billion funding cut could seriously impact on the government's capacity to ensure airline safety.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I understand there is a big hole in the middle of London which the member is dealing with, which certainly is very symbolic of the massive gap in terms of federal funding for infrastructure that affects local communities.

I have to agree with her that the mini-budget that we saw a few days ago and the huge loss of fiscal capacity from the federal government is going to have a massive impact on our local communities. Her community of London is a glaring example of that. It has a huge impact in my riding of Vancouver East where we are facing infrastructure issues. It also will impact on the operation of government and the ability to provide a full measure of safety.

There have been cutbacks in the federal civil service in various departments. This diminishes the capacity of the government to represent that public interest, to protect the public, to ensure that safety standards are being fully met.

On the one hand, there is this bill which looks as though it is going to go through at some point that will be a huge shift in how safety is conducted. On the other hand, there is a greatly diminished federal capacity through a conscious decision to give massive corporate tax breaks that will affect the very operation of government itself.

It seems to me that is very bad news for Canadians.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-7 because I come from a northern environment where air traffic is essential to the very nature of the communities.

As well, I grew up on an airport. My father was an airport manager and worked for the Department of Transportation for 30 years. I think right now he would be very annoyed with me if I did not stand up and speak out on the issues surrounding air safety.

For my hon. colleagues in the Conservative Party who seem to think that a voice in the House of Parliament is something that is not important, that someone showing a side of Canada that perhaps is not fully represented here is somehow degrading to the House, is an unfortunate turn of words. I am here to represent my constituents as best as possible on a matter of serious significance to them.

When we think of aircraft safety, we think of maintenance safety, and when we look at those issues we can look at anecdotal examples. I can think of what happened last week in Sweden where corrosion on a part of the landing gear on one of our Canadian built planes resulted in the plane collapsing on the runway. Luckily there were no civilian deaths but it was a situation that happened because of maintenance schedules that obviously were not adequate for the situation the plane was in.

When we talk about maintenance schedules on aircraft, we have a great concern with that process.

I will give another example. I was at the Edmonton airport last year in the winter waiting to go north on a scheduled aircraft carrier. We all trooped aboard the plane and then we sat and waited. The pilot finally did an inspection and found a football sized dent in the rear aileron. This, obviously, was missed by the maintenance staff even though they did have a maintenance schedule in place. The plane was emptied and on we went.

I, as well as everyone else on that flight, would like to understand why that happened. With the absence of the proper ability to access that information we will not have those answers. Without careful attention to a regulatory and inspection process that can guarantee that we have high standards of maintenance, we can see this sort of thing occurring all the way down the line.

I will take a step backward and speak to the aircraft industry as a whole. In the north especially we are being impacted by changing climate conditions. This fall alone we have seen major problems in airport shutdowns in Norman Wells and in Inuvik for a whole four days. Our diamond mines lost four days of production.

We see these problems all over because of the changing climatic conditions and yet the past government reduced the federal government's role in maintaining aviation weather reporting. Many of our airports across the north do not have adequate weather equipment or observers on the ground providing information on a regular basis even though these conditions are changing. The travelling public is at risk.

Last year I flew out of Inuvik on a plane when the weather had changed. There is enormous pressure to fly in the north because people are trying to meet schedules, industrial activity is ramping up and everything is going much faster.

When the plane left Inuvik we flew 50 miles and never went more than 200 feet off the ground. I was not too concerned because I was flying over the delta where there are no hills higher than 200 feet. Although I knew it probably was not legal, we went along with it.

When we returned to the airport in Inuvik, I found the same weather system had resulted in a tremendous tragedy for that airline company about 200 miles away. One of its airplanes flew into a hill in the same weather system and under the same kinds of pressures to deliver passengers when the weather conditions were so difficult.

What we did with eight aircraft and weather safety as a cost cutting measure with Transport Canada when its policy impacted on us for many years is something that is an object lesson that we should apply to aircraft maintenance as well. We need to have a strong system in this country that is run by the government and one that guarantees aircraft maintenance is carried out in a proper fashion.

Of the 27 public airports in the Northwest Territories, only 6 have paved runways, the other 21 have gravel runways and 23 airdromes are certified. The others are registered airdromes.

The Northern Air Transport Association called on the government to increase the length of northern runways and to improve the instrument landing systems available everywhere. We may talk about northern sovereignty but most of our military planes cannot land anywhere in the north because the runways are too short. The instrument landing systems are not adequate. It is the federal government's responsibility to maintain a standard for all Canadians across this country. We have privatized airports. We have caused these issues by our relentless concern over the bottom line.

The Prime Minister is proposing a deep seaport at Nanisivik. He should consider that the airport at Nanisivik has difficulty with fog conditions many times during the year. Once again, the condition of aviation in the north has deteriorated with the changing climate. We need a different response other than the government saying that it is getting out of inspecting the maintenance conditions of aircraft.

In 2004, a total of 93,000 aircraft arrived and departed N.W.T. airports. That figure is up almost 15% from the year before and 25% from the year before that. We are seeing an enormous increase in traffic in the north and yet we have small carriers that rely on maintenance staff that are transient in nature. If we had a strong Canada-wide system, the transient maintenance system may not be that bad, but when we start breaking down maintenance systems by individual aircraft companies, when we start setting standards in a fashion where the technicians and mechanics who service these planes will need to re-learn every time they join a new company, these are difficult issues for aircraft maintenance and safety. Bill C-7 would create these difficulties.

We can say that we have kept some inspectors, and I understand that is the case, but if we degrade the inspection system in Canada by reducing the personnel, we will not have the same quality of system at the end of the day.

Yes, I stand up and ask questions about Bill C-7, absolutely. I support the work of our previous transport critic, the member for Burnaby—New Westminster. In his discussions with me, he indicated that the bill was moving in the right direction. However, he felt that the work they had done in bringing the amendments forward at the last moment had changed. He felt that all the good words and all the goodwill that was on that committee evaporated at the end.

That was the problem last June. Our former transport critic asked us to stand up and talk about this bill because many of the issues that we had assumed would be included and taken care of through amendments were just not happening.

The level of air safety achieved in commercial aviation is, in no small part, the result of adding levels of responsibility. The delegation or devolution proposals of Bill C-7 go directly against this principle of redundancy. By removing regulatory oversight, we effectively remove a fallback position. However, that does not seem to be of concern to some members of Parliament, to the two larger parties that have such a strong principle of laissez-faire business in this country.

By reducing the inspection level and eliminating the ongoing development of a federally controlled and regulated air transport system, the government is going in a direction that we in the NDP do not consider appropriate. I am sure most Canadians would support us if they were to look at what the bill would create and the direction in which it would move us, just as we have seen in the rest of the deregulation of the aircraft industry across this country.

Transport Canada's own documents admit that the level of air safety has not substantially improved during the past 10 years. This is a reversal of the past history of commercial aviation where safety records were constantly improving. What is happening, why is it happening and how would this bill change that?

The bill is going to change it for the worse. It is going to continue the process that is going on now, where, through the deregulation of the industry, more and more of the decisions are being taken by people on the ground in situations where cost becomes a factor. How can we support this bill? How can we be assured that what we are doing is in the best interest of Canadians?

Studies have shown that the European community has an enviable aviation safety record and yet Europe has not and is not delegating or devolving its safety responsibilities to private designated organizations. The United States, which was the first to engage in economic deregulation, is not deregulating safety.

After Enron, Hollinger and WorldCom, governments are strengthening their regulation and enforcement of corporate governance. If we cannot rely on corporate directors and their audit committees to regulate financial activities with shareholders' money rather than when public lives are at stake, how can we count on the boards of directors of private aviation concerns, whose legal duties are to shareholders, to take full accountability for previously regulated areas of passenger safety? These are questions that the bill skirts. These are questions that Canadians do not want ignored.

There can be only one goal in aviation safety. It is not to understand how we can nickel and dime the system in order to provide a lower cost to compete with other carriers. The only goal should be the highest possible level of safety, which is what we are after and why we are standing up one after another speaking to the bill. It is not because we have any other interests at heart at all. It is not because we have the interests of large businesses or of large unions. It is because we have the interest of public safety in our minds.

Euphemisms, such as risk management, best practicable level of safety and commensurate with cost effectiveness, are not the kinds of words that we use. They are not the kinds of words that work for northerners.

We northerners have a difficult enough time travelling throughout the north. We do not want it made more difficult. We do not want our airline companies to be pushed to the limit even more through competition, through larger companies coming in, where they are taking risks that they know are risks and where they are taking risks that perhaps they do not know are risks.

This bill does not answer the questions for me. This bill does not answer the questions for northerners.

When we stand up here, we stand up for a good reason. We stand up for a purpose. We will continue to stand up on this. For all those who are flying in airplanes across this country and who may be listening to this debate, I urge them to speak to their MPs and ask their MPs to tell them whether this bill is going to increase their safety in the air. If those MPs can give them a good answer, then those MPs should be saying it here in the House of Commons.