Bill C-9 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Transportation of Dangerous Goods Act, 1992

This enactment amends the Transportation of Dangerous Goods Act, 1992, in order to enhance public safety — the safety of human life and health and of property and the environment.
The main amendments fall into two categories: new security requirements and safety amendments. These amendments include the following:
(a) requirements for security plans and security training;
(b) a requirement that prescribed persons must hold transportation security clearances to transport dangerous goods, and the establishment of regulatory authority in relation to appeals and reviews of any decision in respect of those clearances;
(c) the creation of a choice of instruments — regulations, security measures and interim orders — to govern security in relation to dangerous goods;
(d) the use of industry emergency response assistance plans approved by Transport Canada to respond to an actual or apprehended release of dangerous goods during their transportation;
(e) the establishment of regulatory authority to require that dangerous goods be tracked during transport or reported if lost or stolen;
(f) clarification of the Act to ensure that it is applicable uniformly throughout Canada, including to local works and undertakings;
(g) reinforcement and strengthening of the Emergency Response Assistance Plan Program; and
(h) authority for inspectors to inspect any place in which standardized means of containment are being manufactured, repaired or tested.

Transportation of Dangerous Goods Act, 1992

[Candice Bergen, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Madam Speaker, I am very happy to have the opportunity to ask my hon. colleague a few questions, because it seemed that he was speaking about a completely different bill from the one we have been working on in committee. He mentioned safety management systems several times, which actually has nothing to do with Bill C-9. I was wondering if my hon. colleague was aware of that.

We have worked extremely hard with the stakeholders concerning this bill. We have talked to the trucking industry. We have talked to the Teamsters. We have talked to farmers, who actually will not be penalized with this bill.

It is important for us to protect Canadians. I am wondering why my hon. colleague seems so opposed to protecting Canadians and making sure that dangerous goods are transported in a safe way by people who have the proper licence to transport these goods.

Why is that such a problem for the member? Why is the NDP opposing everything that we are trying to do for the good of Canadians?

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Madam Speaker, the reason I referenced SMS is that very clearly everything the Conservatives are doing is not in the interests of Canadians. The Conservatives have admitted it themselves by pulling the bill on SMS. If the NDP had not stopped that bill, it would have been law and Canadians might have died as a result of that completely irresponsible approach to diminish safety. That is the principle behind why we scrutinize government bills so carefully.

The Liberals are not going to do it. As the member well knows, the Liberals rubber-stamp anything the Conservatives do. The Conservatives could come in with any type of bad bill and we know the Liberals would rubber-stamp it. That is their role. With 63 confidence votes and hundreds of other votes, whatever the Conservatives bring in, the Liberals just rubber-stamp it. We do not rubber-stamp. We scrutinize.

The Canadian Association of Agri-Retailers and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union are opposed to this bill. They have raised very legitimate objections.

My point is that, given these serious objections, I would hope the member for Portage—Lisgar would endeavour to talk to her minister and to other members on the Conservative side so that the bill can actually do what the Conservatives want it to do, which is, hopefully, to protect Canadians in the transportation of dangerous goods as part of a broader strategy that actually makes Canadians more secure. I would hope that she would do that.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, safety management systems are very important to this bill. The deregulation of the railroad industry has allowed safety management systems to be implemented. A recent rail traffic study talked about the culture of intimidation and fear that was felt by railroad workers who are supposed to report to the system. Deregulation is very important to this aspect because the components connect together.

The Conservatives are arguing that they are doing this for public safety on one side, but let me give a specific example of what they are doing with deregulation on the other side and the consequences.

CP Rail has filed to fire and move 25 safety inspector officers in Windsor. They will be relocated elsewhere. There will not be an evaluation of rail transportation support from Chicago to Toronto and to Montreal. In between will be left vacant. The minister has yet to respond to this issue to protect those jobs. There has been a refiling request from CP Rail. The reality is that in the upcoming weeks, there could be the potential withdrawal of these workers.

How can we be saying to the United States that we want to do this and at the same time take away inspection for all of southern Ontario?

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Mr. Speaker, that is the key issue. It is the difference between appearance and reality. The Conservative government is very good at spin. It tries to use the title of the bill to say that we must be for the transportation of dangerous goods because we are opposed to the bill, rather than looking into the details and seeing what the implications are. The implications about where the government is moving in other areas obviously show that the government has not been very responsible when it comes to safety issues.

Coming back to the previous question that was asked by the member for Portage—Lisgar, the whole issue of how farmers are impacted by this bill is a wide open question, because any regulations that are put into place can be changed by the minister. The bill that the government is looking to have adopted is a blank cheque that allows essentially the minister to do whatever he or she pleases regardless of the consequences.

That is why the NDP is saying that this needs to be reworked. If the government is sincere, rather than its ideological drive, on handling dangerous goods, there is a wide variety of things that needs to be brought into play, including investments. We would certainly support the government in that and we would certainly support a reworking of this bill.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to be speaking to this bill at third reading.

I want to comment at the outset that the member for Portage—Lisgar asked a question a few minutes ago and I want to assure her that she should not be personally affronted by comments made on this side of the House. We want to assure her and all members opposite that we are very serious in trying to make this legislation good legislation. We want to do it right, and we want to do it right the first time. There is no advantage to the government in having legislation that will be attacked in the courts or that may not be workable in the long run.

We are doing our job. We were elected as opposition members. If our constituents had wanted us to come here and rubber-stamp everything the government wanted to do, they would have elected Conservatives or, as my colleague said, Liberals, but they would not have elected NDP members. However, they did elect NDP members and have done so for years. They will continue to do so in the future.

It is our job to point out mistakes that the government is possibly making, to try to make improvements before bad legislation gets on the books, or gets on the books and is knocked down or thrown out by the courts.

The member from Vancouver had mentioned a very gaping area of security in the fact that 99% of containers coming into this country are not inspected. News organizations have done investigations in the past in Canada and in the United States and they have found a lot of illegal substances coming in in containers. It is very easy to load drugs into containers and get them through the borders. If the government wants to look at very serious breaches of security, that is certainly one area it should be looking at. We would encourage the Conservatives to do that.

We also think there are some improvements that can be made. We have made amendments at second reading and at committee, and so far, the government has chosen to ignore them, although there are signs, and the parliamentary secretary was telling us recently that he would be willing to talk about an amendment that needed to be made. I think that if we were to give ourselves a little bit more time here, we could possibly get this resolved to the betterment of the bill and a better situation for Canadians.

Therefore, I move:

That the motion be amended by deleting all the words following “That”, and replacing them with “Bill C-9, An Act to amend the Transportation of Dangerous Goods Act, 1992, be not now read a third time, but be referred back to the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities for the purpose of reviewing clause 5.2 with a view to reviewing the procedures on security clearances”.

[The Acting Speaker, Barry Devolin]

The amendment is in order.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for moving the amendment. I will have a chance to speak to it a little bit later. In the meantime, I want to ask him a question.

Perhaps he could describe some of the conversations we have had on this particular bill. Perhaps that would explain why we feel it is appropriate to move this amendment at this time.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the member has made an important observation. I am quite familiar with the ability in some jurisdictions of ministers to be a little bit independent in their actions and their thoughts and to make good amendments and even cooperate with the members of the opposition to arrive at a successful conclusion.

The parliamentary secretary seems to be a little bit different from some of the members opposite in that regard. I think there is potential here. I believe he has expressed some interest and concern that perhaps one or two of the NDP amendments could be worked upon at the third reading stage. Perhaps we could come up with a compromise that the member for Western Arctic could support and the NDP caucus could support in support of this bill in an effort to get it through.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I commend the member for moving the amendment and trying to reach a consensus on this issue. We all want to improve rail safety.

I think it is important to provide a couple of examples to make sure that people understand the context of what could happen. On the border in my region, with 40% of Canada's daily trade, often there are people who are caught within legislation with unintended consequences. I do worry about the powers of the minister with regard to the screening process. Even now we are seeing some extreme behaviour by current ministers who are denying a British MP entry into Canada and other types of behaviour that have not really been effective in terms of the original intent of their discretionary power.

In Windsor often it is the issue of someone having a marijuana charge from back in the person's teens. There are people who drive trucks for just-in-time delivery for the auto industry who 25 or 30 years ago committed an offence that prohibits them from having access to different programs and screening. Not only that, it depends upon the interpretation and discretionary power of the people they encounter at the U.S. border.

I will give a particular example of a worker who worked at a major auto company for 25 years and had an outstanding employment record. The worker, who as a teenager had one charge of having a marijuana cigarette, was detained every time at the border for two to four hours. We had to work that through to stop that from happening. I commend the member for making sure that these types of situations could be resolved before they create a drag on the economy.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, that is certainly a very good observation. We have an economic slowdown at the moment. We are looking at putting a lot more restrictions on workers when all they are trying to do is their jobs.

We have a government which for a number of years now has been attempting to repeal the long-gun registry on the basis that it is going to make criminals out of farmers and duck hunters. The argument it makes is that the criminals are still going to get the guns.

I see a parallel here, because the same government that is trying to eliminate the gun registry is now attempting to put in regulations that possibly could put big restrictions on people. We just had a letter given to us by the Canadian Association of Agri-Retailers, who are very concerned that their compliance costs with this legislation are going to be very high. They are going to have a lot of difficulty with this type of legislation. We should be listening to these people and trying to work around the problems rather than trying to ram this bill through.

[Candice Bergen, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the committee worked very hard on this bill. In the short time I have been on the committee, I have seen members from every side of the House work together. We brought in a variety of witnesses and all the stakeholders. I believe that the work we did at committee has brought this bill to the place it is and the consensus that has been built on this bill. The amendment as it stands is something on which I do not think we need to move forward.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I would encourage the member for Portage—Lisgar to reconsider those comments. This legislation not only has to make it through third reading in this House but also has to go to the Senate to be dealt with before it becomes a law of the country. I have already mentioned that if we develop legislation that is simply going to be challenged by the courts and end up being ruled out of order at the end of the day anyway, we have not really accomplished much.

As the member said, we have spent a lot of time on this bill. However, the fact of the matter is that we are just asking for a little bit more consideration here. That is why we moved the amendment at third reading.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Mr. Speaker, this is what I find a little incomprehensible. The Conservatives did not get the job done. They did not put together a bill that did not have huge flaws in it. They did not listen the first time around when the member for Western Arctic brought forward those amendments. They did not listen to the testimony and the letters from organizations that raised real concerns about the impact on farmers and longshore workers.

We have a government that did not want to do the job right, and now it is being confronted with an amendment that says sorry, but this House requests that it gets the job done and that the government does it right. Yet, there are Conservative members who seem to object.

My question for the member for Elmwood—Transcona is quite simple. Why would the Conservatives object to getting the bill right? Why did they not choose to get the bill right in the first place and actually listen to what people were saying about it?

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, those are very good comments as well. In many respects, the Conservatives in some ways do not realize they do not have a majority government. They think they do, but they do not. They have to deal with all the parties in the House and on a proper basis.

We have had a third reading procedure in Parliament for many years now. An hon. member who is new here, as I am, will recognize at some point that the bill must get through all the stages. One does not get it to second reading and demand that a vote be taken because one sat on a committee for a few days and heard a bunch of presenters.

There are numerous people across the country who do not know about this bill at all. As a matter of fact, we have dealt with another bill dealing with charities and 90% of the charities do not even know this bill exists. It has now gone through at least three parliaments in six or seven years.

For the hon. member to think that somehow the Canadian Association of Agri-Retailers and its members know about this bill, I think she is sadly mistaken. I am sure they do not and there are many others who are going to wake up one day and find out this bill is in effect and they were not even aware of it. There is no harm in taking a little more time to hear more people's concerns and do more study on this bill.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as the member knows, the Olympics are coming. The Olympics are very important to all Canadians from coast to coast to coast who are preparing for them.

One of the reasons this bill is very important is that Canadians expect the government will take care of them. That is what this bill does. This bill ensures that Canadians will be protected and that people who come to visit the Olympics will be protected.

I find it amazing that the hon. member has voted against security at the border and the military. When he has had the option to make sure that Canadians are protected, he has constantly voted against it. Now we have another opportunity to protect Canadians and the hon. member is trying to delay it yet again. Could the hon. member comment on that?