Bill C-30 (Historical)

Fair Rail for Grain Farmers Act

An Act to amend the Canada Grain Act and the Canada Transportation Act and to provide for other measures

This enactment amends the Canada Grain Act to permit the regulation of contracts relating to grain and the arbitration of disputes respecting the provisions of those contracts. It also amends the Canada Transportation Act with respect to railway transportation in order to, among other things,
(a) require the Canadian National Railway Company and the Canadian Pacific Railway Company to move the minimum amount of grain specified in the Canada Transportation Act or by order of the Governor in Council; and
(b) facilitate the movement of grain by rail.

Admissibility of Amendments in the Fifth Report of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am rising on a point of order.

The point of order concerns the report that was just tabled: the fifth report of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage respecting Bill C-10. I would respectfully submit that several of the amendments contained in that fifth report must be struck out because the committee exceeded its authority.

Last Monday, June 7, the House adopted a time allocation motion limiting committee deliberations to only five further hours. The part of the House's order that is relevant to this point of order says, at pages 104.3 and 104.4 of the Journals:

That, at the expiry of the time provided in this order for the committee stage, any proceedings before the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage on the said bill shall be interrupted, if required for the purpose of this order, and, in turn, every question necessary for the disposal of the said stage of the bill shall be put forthwith and successively, without further debate or amendment.

At the committee's second meeting, on Thursday, June 10, those five hours had expired and the Canadian heritage committee proceeded to the disposal of the committee stage of the bill, in accordance with the House's order.

The chair of the committee, the hon. member for Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, informed the committee that, by the terms of the House's order, the amendments that had been placed on notice could not be moved and therefore could not be voted upon by the committee. The Liberal-Bloc-NDP majority on the committee, however, then overturned the chair's ruling, thereby forcing the committee to consider these amendments without any debate, without any opportunity to question expert witnesses from the department of Canadian Heritage and without any opportunity to hear the wording of the amendment read aloud.

Those events are recorded in the relevant minutes of proceedings for the committee's second meeting on June 10. The amendments subsequently considered by the committee are recorded in those minutes of proceedings, as well, for the committee's meeting on Friday, June 11. Both sets of minutes, as noted in the comment in the fifth report immediately preceding the chair's signature, have been laid upon the table, among others.

House of Commons Procedure and Practice, third edition says, at page 779:

Since a committee may appeal the decision of its Chair and reverse that decision, it may happen that a committee will report a bill with amendments that were initially ruled out of order by the Chair. The admissibility of those amendments, and of any other amendments made by a committee, may therefore be challenged on procedural grounds when the House resumes its consideration of the bill at report stage. The admissibility of the amendments is then determined by the Speaker of the House, whether in response to a point of order or on his or her own initiative.

That is why I am rising today on this point of order. In overturning the committee chair's ruling and forcing amendments that had not been properly moved to be voted upon, I respectfully submit that the committee exceeded its authority by contradicting the House's order, which required that “every question necessary for the disposal of the said stage of the bill shall be put forthwith and successively, without further debate or amendment.”

To be clear, the questions necessary to dispose of the clause by clause consideration of the bill are questions on the clauses themselves, not amendments that have simply been placed on notice.

The Chair has previously considered a similar case, from which I believe in the current circumstances a distinction may be drawn.

On November 29, 2012, Mr. Speaker, one of your predecessors, the hon. member for Regina—Qu'Appelle, made a ruling at page 12,609 of the Debates, concerning the proceedings of the Standing Committee on Finance respecting Bill C-45, the Jobs and Growth Act, 2012. In that case, the committee had adopted a timetabling motion concerning its study of the bill. It contained language that was similar to that which the House adopted last week in its time allocation motion concerning Bill C-10.

In the case of the finance committee, the chair had made a similar ruling to the one made by the hon. member for Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame and, again, the committee overturned that ruling.

Following a point of order in the House concerning the finance committee's report on the former Bill C-45, the former Speaker did not set aside the committee's report on the bill. The distinction between these two cases, I would argue, is that the finance committee was interpreting a motion that the committee itself had adopted. In the current case, seven members of the Canadian heritage committee substituted their own judgment for how an order of this House, voted upon by the entire House, should be interpreted.

We often refer to committees as masters of their own proceedings, but Bosc and Gagnon put that in a very important context at pages 1057 and 1058, which state:

The concept refers to the freedom committees normally have to organize their work as they see fit and the option they have of defining, on their own, certain rules of procedure that facilitate their proceedings.

These freedoms are not, however, total or absolute. First, it is useful to bear in mind that committees are creatures of the House. This means that they have no independent existence and are not permitted to take action unless they have been authorized or empowered to do so by the House.

While the case of former Bill C-45 was of a committee majority preferring its own interpretation of a committee motion, the current case of Bill C-10 is of a committee majority seeking to override the House's instruction. It was, to borrow the words of Bosc and Gagnon, taking an action that it was authorized or empowered by the House to do. Therefore, I would respectfully submit that the amendments made to clauses 8 through 47 of Bill C-10 must be ruled out of order and therefore struck from the fifth report.

I would further ask that the committee's consideration of amendments after the proceedings had been interrupted under the provisions of the time allocation order be disregarded by the Chair for the purposes of applying the note attached to Standing Order 76(1)(5) respecting the criteria considered by the Chair in the selection of motions at the report stage.

I do not make this point of order lightly. In fact, one of those amendments that I refer to was sponsored by my own party and several others were voted for by my colleagues, but that is beside the point. Our rules must be followed. Parliamentary procedure is not a body of play pretend rules that can just be set aside at the first moment of inconvenience. It does not matter whether these flawed decisions were taken by majority vote or even with unanimity because the rules of the House must be followed.

The hon. member for Regina—Qu'Appelle, in a different ruling on May 1, 2014, at page 4787 of the Debates, concerning Bill C-30, the Fair Rail for Grain Farmers Act, found that amendments that were adopted by the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food, without procedural objection and without dissent, had to be struck from the bill because the committee had acted outside of its authority in adopting them, commenting:

The Chair has no difficulty agreeing with the parliamentary secretary that the amendment is relevant to the subject matter of the bill. Indeed, as a fellow Saskatchewan MP who represents a large number of grain producers, I can certainly agree on the importance of this issue. As Speaker, however, not only can I not simply act according to my personal beliefs, I must respect House of Commons precedents which, in the case before us, are only too clear.

The correct place to put forward the amendments to clauses 8 through 47 of Bill C-10, in light of the proper application of a time allocation order, is at the report stage here on the floor of the House.

Additionally, and in the alternative to the matter I have already raised, I would also draw your attention, Mr. Speaker, to the amendment known as amendment LIB-9.1 that was made by the Canadian heritage committee to clause 23. The Chair ruled the particular amendment out of order for exceeding the scope of the bill and that it breached the so-called “parent act” rule, which is explained by Bosc and Gagnon at page 771, by proposing to amend a section of the Broadcasting Act which was not touched by the provisions of Bill C-10. The committee, however, voted to overturn the Chair's ruling in that regard as well.

In that particular case, the Chair may simply have to regard the fifth report and note that the amendment on its face does something which the committee was not permitted to do and therefore should be ruled out of order and struck from the fifth report.

The solution for the government here is, like the case of the former Bill C-30, to propose an amendment at third reading to recommit Bill C-10 to the Canadian heritage committee so it may, once properly instructed and empowered, make Liberal-9.1 amendment in the proper manner.

Transportation Modernization Act

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Mr. Speaker, as a member of that committee, I can certainly vouch for the parliamentary secretary's comments. It was extremely collaborative. Many of the amendments brought forward were wordsmithed and shaped in order to bring this forward.

One of the primary things we tried to do was understand what the previous government had tried to accomplish with Bill C-30. We discovered that the interswitching provision of 150 kilometres, in spite of the difficulties being faced by grain shippers in the season it was brought forward, was never actually used. It did not work.

Although the intention was there to improve the system, our committee focused on ways to take that concept and make it a lot better. I am going to give my hon. friend another opportunity to really underscore the value of the reciprocal penalties as being a far more potent tool for shippers to have, and through the shippers, the producers, in order to get compliance and co-operation from the railways.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Mr. Speaker, we have spent a great deal of time on questions in this debate about the role of Bill C-30 versus the long-haul interswitching included in Bill C-49. Bill C-30 provided a short-term solution to respond to an immediate need, but it did not solve the long-term problem of the transportation of western Canadian grain. It also did not provide any solution for the rest of the country in different industries and different regions.

Although I lived in Alberta for about five years, I am proudly Nova Scotian. I am curious if the hon. member could offer some thoughts on the importance of extending efficiencies in our transportation system to different sectors of the economy and to different regions, to make sure that our transportation system works for everyone and brings the greatest growth to the Canadian economy.

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank our shadow minister for transportation for all the incredible work she has done on what is an ominous and very difficult bill to try to wade through.

She is exactly right. We cannot underestimate the financial impact of inaction on Bill C-49. We went through this in 2013-14 and the impact on the Canadian economy was in excess of $8 billion. That is why we put forward Bill C-30 to ensure we would never have those types of issues again.

We are certainly hearing from our stakeholders that this has not only impacted this year's harvest, but will very likely impact next year's harvest. They have nowhere to store their product. Their bins are full now. Until things start moving, there is not going to be anywhere to store their products.

Nutrien in Saskatchewan has shut down an entire potash mine because it cannot move product. There is no demand for those inputs because farmers are at a loss as to what to plant this year, or if they will be able to plant. They have full bins and road bans are in place. This has caused such stress among our agriculture sector. I really want to highlight the fact that the implication this has had is not simply a matter of frustration. It has really impacted people on the ground and their families.

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is pleasure to rise today and speak to Bill C-49 and the motion put forward by the government.

The message I want to get forward today is really about what brought us here and whether Canadian agriculture had to go through all this pain and suffering when we really did not achieve much at the end. What is disingenuous with the entire process is that over the last several months the Minister of Transport and the Minister of Agriculture were telling our producers, stakeholders, and shippers to hang on and be patient, that once Bill C-49 was passed it was going to resolve all of their problems and we would not have a grain backlog in the future.

I am going to speak more on the agriculture side than I will on some of the other elements of Bill C-49.

The inaction by the ministers and the government on this issue for almost a year has been mind-boggling. Last June my colleague, the shadow minister for transportation, put forward a list of amendments that would have addressed many of these problems we are facing, but they were turned down. Now we have them back on the table from the Senate. They went through the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities and again through the Senate. Now they are here, and the Liberal government is saying it will be supporting a number of those amendments. I am not sure what changed over those 10 months; the Liberals could have supported those amendments last June, but they did not.

It was the start of time after time when the Liberals were given numerous options to get Bill C-49 through the process as quickly as possible, as well as to address many of the problems that our grain farmers across western Canada have been facing. Every time the Liberals were given an option to address the situation, which became a crisis in January and February, they did nothing.

Last summer, we encouraged the government to extend the provisions of Bill C-30, the Fair Rail for Grain Farmers Act, which extended interswitching and mandatory minimum volumes, a process that we had in place in 2013-14 when we went through the previous grain backlog. This addressed many of those problems. Our stakeholders, producers, grain terminals, and shippers were satisfied. They were quite pleased with that process. It gave the rail lines some accountability to ensure that they were able to move grain as well as other products, whether it was lumber, mining, or oil and gas. We want to make sure that all our producers have an opportunity to get their commodities to market.

In the fall, when Bill C-49 was first brought to the House, we saw that it was a massive document and that it was going to be extremely difficult to get any sort of consensus on a bill that dealt with everything from video recorders and locomotives to an air passenger bill of rights to interswitching. How were we possibly going to be able to find some sort of satisfaction among all stakeholders and within all the different points of view in our industries, let alone here in the House of Commons or in the Senate?

At that time we saw that this was going to be an issue. With the size and the scope that Bill C-49 entailed, we knew that getting it through that process with any sort of expediency was going to be nearly impossible. Once again we provided what I thought was a thoughtful resolution to the Liberal government, which was to split Bill C-49 into two bills. We would take many of the aspects of the bill that had to do with grain and grain transportation through the process as quickly as possible. Some of the other contentious issues that had to do with airline rights and other issues would take longer to go through the process, but we knew there was no time crunch or time sensitivity of the kind that there was on the grain side.

Last fall, with a larger-than-average harvest and the challenges CN and CP were facing in terms of meeting the contracts, we saw the rail line numbers dipping with each weekly report that was coming out.

We raised the alarm bells last fall that this was going to be a problem. We encouraged the government to split Bill C-49. I recall being in this House last October making almost the same argument that we were not going to get Bill C-49 through this process in a timely fashion to prevent another grain backlog. Again, it fell on deaf ears.

The result of that inaction last October, before we got to this point, was rail service that put us in a grain crisis. It is a crisis that still exists today. I do not think we can miss that point. Although we are here now, no problem has been resolved. We have road bans across the western provinces. We have more than 30 transport ships off the coast of British Columbia waiting for product. Those demurrage costs of $10,000 a day and up are now being passed on to the producers. Who will pay those additional costs that are now being passed on to our farmers across western Canada?

We have to keep that in mind as we have this discussion and this debate today. The crisis our farmers have been facing since last fall is still there, and it is not going away anytime soon. It is going to impact their fall season. They cannot move grain right now. Many of them are finally in the fields seeding. Road bans are in place in many of the western provinces, inhibiting their ability to actually transport grain to the terminal.

They are watching us today with a lot of focus on the decision we will be making in this House. How are we going to address the problems they are facing? The crisis has become so bad that our most recent report says that almost half a billion dollars' worth of grain is sitting in storage bins across western Canada. That is grain that our producers and our farmers cannot sell. They are unable to sell their product and get it to the terminal and then to the coast.

These same farmers who are unable to sell their product still have bills coming in. There are mortgage payments, lease payments on land, equipment purchases, and input costs as they try to get ready to start seeding. There are programs in place through Farm Credit Canada and the advanced payments program, essential programs that are in place to help in these times of extenuating circumstances.

I know that our producers do not want to have to rely on those assistance programs for a product they work hard all year to plant and harvest and are now trying to sell, but are unable to because of logistics.

As my colleague from Guelph said, we had an emergency meeting of the agriculture committee. I want to commend my colleagues on that committee for agreeing to have that emergency meeting with many of our stakeholders.

One of our witnesses at that meeting was a young farmer from Saskatchewan. I thought he put it quite well. He said, “We have to face so many uncertainties when we are in agriculture: uncertain weather, uncertain input costs, uncertainty when it comes to the commodity prices. The one thing we should be able to rely on is a reliable transportation system, which we do not have right now.”

One of the key issues with Bill C-49 is that it does not resolve those problems. We have gone through this entire process. As I said earlier, the Liberal government, the Minister of Transport, and the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food, through this entire process, have said that we should be patient, because Bill C-49 would address all the problems. Then just a few weeks ago, we had both ministers admit publicly that Bill C-49, indeed, will not resolve a lot of the problems that have been raised.

The government is asking our producers to suffer through yet another grain backlog, which should never have happened. The government had all the tools in place to address this problem, yet it did nothing. I can understand the frustration of our producers across the western provinces. They are looking at us today to take action to ensure that they never have to face this sort of issue again.

We have had many of our grain, barley, and pulse growers here over the last couple of weeks as they have had their days on the Hill. They have raised some other points that I do not think we have talked enough about as we have gone through this process. Not only is this grain backlog causing them to suffer because they are not able to sell their product, it is tarnishing our reputation as a reliable trading partner around the world. A lot of our producers are not getting a premium price for their product, because for all intents and purposes, Canada does not have a reputation for being able to get their contracts out in a timely fashion. We cannot meet our commitments to other countries. When prices are high in the fall, in October, November, and December, we should be selling our crops. We are not getting them to market, to the terminals, and to the west coast until the spring, sometimes a year later, so we are missing out on those premium prices, because we have an inept logistical system and an inept transportation system, a transportation system that has very little to no accountability.

Earlier today, the Minister of Transport was talking about one of the amendments the Senate had brought forward, which I think is critical. It is on “own motion powers” for the Canadian Transportation Agency. That was an amendment brought forward at the standing committee for transportation. It was an amendment brought forward by many of our stakeholders. They want accountability for the rail lines. If there are issues, and our stakeholders see issues, the Canadian Transportation Agency, once it receives a complaint, or even if it does not receive a complaint, can take action to try to address some of those key issues. It is a key part of Bill C-49.

The Minister of Transport earlier today spoke very highly about this part of the bill when he said that we are giving the CTA its own motion powers, which will make such a critical difference for our producers. In fact, in the amendment the Liberal government has put forward, there are no own motion powers. It states in the amendment that the authorization goes to the Minister of Transport. He will be the one who decides if the CTA can take action and put forward some guidelines, a template, on what action can be taken.

Let us put that into a perspective that I think all of us in the House today can understand. That is like my parents saying, “You know what, son? You can do whatever you want with your life, as long as it's okay with mum and dad.” That is what the Liberal government's own motion powers are in Bill C-49. Who is going to give that any credence? There is supposed to be some accountability in Bill C-49 for our shippers. However, this only comes into effect if it is okay with the Minister of Transport. It is okay for people to make their own decisions, but they have to ask the minister first. That has nothing to do with own motion powers. It is really quite hollow hearing that this is going to be a critical part of the bill, because it is taking the arms of the CTA and tying them behind its back.

As we have gone through this process, every step of the way we have offered the Liberal government a solution. My colleague, the shadow minister for transportation, has offered another solution today. She has brought forward an amendment that will concurred the Senate amendments to get this bill passed as quickly as possible.

We are not saying that we agree with every aspect of Bill C-49. In fact, I think we have heard in the debate today that there are still some significant issues with the bill. We also listened to our stakeholders. They need something that will give them some piece of mind that there is going to be some sort of legislation in place to help them address some of the problems they are facing.

We have had stakeholders like the CFA. They represent 200,000 farm families. The Grain Growers represent 50,000 active producers, and they are asking for no further delays on Bill C-49. They want it passed immediately. That is what my colleague's motion today will do.

We want to ensure that we can get this bill passed as quickly as possible. Again, every time we have offered an option or a solution to get this bill through the process, the Liberals have put in yet another step and delay.

They are saying today that if they do not support our motion, and they want our support to pass their amendments and the minister's motion, this all of a sudden will be a quick process. That is simply not the case. If the Liberals do not accept our motion and they pass theirs, Bill C-49 will go back to the Senate, and the Senate will have to agree to the Liberals' amendments. It is yet another obstacle to keep Bill C-49 from passing. This is going to be a ping-pong ball that will go back and forth, or maybe not. Maybe the Senate will agree to the Liberal amendments, but we do not have any assurance of that.

There are amendments they could have passed almost a year ago. There have been opportunities put forward to pass Bill C-49, or, what preferably would have been the case last fall, to extend Bill C-30, and we would never have faced any of these issues.

I am really encouraging our colleagues across the floor to support our motion today, pass the Senate amendments, go right to royal assent, and give our stakeholders the assurances they are looking for to ensure that they can get their job done. What this comes down to is our stakeholders' inability to get their products to market. We have a great deal of concern that this will spill into the fall as farmers get ready for next year's harvest. That has been the disconcerting part of it all.

I think my colleague across the way can understand the comments we heard at our emergency meeting last month on the grain backlog. Many of those witnesses came forward and said that they have given up on it this year. They know that they are not going to get their grain to market and are hoping that this does not impact next year's harvest and next year's shipping season.

I want to highlight that this bill is certainly not perfect. There are lots of concerns about what is in Bill C-49. I want to read some comments from the Premier of Saskatchewan, who has been extremely vocal in his concern about Bill C-49 and the problems it has caused in Saskatchewan. We have seen that Nutrien has just announced that it has laid off or is laying off more than 600 employees, which is going to impact maybe up to 1,300 employees in rural Saskatchewan. The Saskatchewan Premier said, “This is a direct result of the federal government not taking action where there is a huge problem, and they have the clear authority to fix it.”

What have the Liberals done in response to that? They have done nothing. Once again, they want to put this bill back to the Senate, which would delay this process even further.

We have to highlight the financial impact these delays have had. Again, $500 million in grain is sitting in storage bins across western Canada, not getting to market. We have now seen the job layoffs in Saskatchewan at Nutrien, and that is just one company, one potash company. Certainly there will be others that will be facing similar problems.

This is having implications for rural communities. If farmers cannot sell their grain, and they cannot get it to market, it means they do not have money in their pockets to spend in our small communities. That is grocery stores, gas stations, and little movie theatres. That is charities, ball teams, and fundraisers. Those are the things that are suffering because our farmers do not have money in their pockets. They cannot get their grain to market, and that is a direct result of the inaction of the Liberal government when it comes to this grain backlog.

The Liberals could have stopped it a year ago. They could have stopped it in the fall. They could have taken action with an order in council in January or February. Every single time, they have stuck up for the rail duopoly.

With Bill C-49, there is no accountability. Why have the Liberals made our grain farmers suffer through yet another grain backlog? When it comes down to it, they have really done nothing.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer—Mountain View, AB]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to take part today in the debate for Bill C-49, the transportation modernization act. This Liberal omnibus bill would substantially amend 13 different acts and have a profound effect on three major modes of transportation: rail, air, and water.

These are big changes, and it does not look as if the Liberals would be changing the rules for the better. Bill C-49 is the first legislative response to the 2016 Canada Transportation Act review. While we welcome the commitment to a modernized and safer transportation strategy, we are concerned that the proposed changes would have costly unintended consequences.

While I would like to discuss all the complicated sets of changes from Bill C-49, such an undertaking would be impossible, given the time constraints of this debate. Today, I would like to particularly talk about the changes to rail transportation and what this means for our Canadian farmers and producers.

Our biggest concern on the changes to rail transportation has to do with the changes to the long-haul interswitching that this bill would make, in replacing the provisions introduced by the previous Conservative government with Bill C-30. Bill C- 30, or the Fair Rail for Grain Farmers Act, extended interswitching distances to 160 kilometres. Those provisions expired on August 1.

While new interswitching provisions were anticipated, this bill is far from meeting its objective of improving shipper and producer options with the new 1,200-kilometre interswitching tool. The system introduced through Bill C-30 was popular with shippers. It provided the certainty of a regulated rate up to 160 kilometres, and it is key that they dealt with the regulated rate for that full 160 kilometres.

With Bill C-49, the Liberals are putting forward a new long-haul interswitching tool on hauls of up to 1,200 kilometres, or up to 50% of the length of the entire haul. Shippers would be charged the regulated interswitching rate for the first 30 kilometres of the haul, and then the rate determined by the Canada Transportation Agency, which is determined on a case-by-case basis based on similar pricing hauls. That goes for the remainder of the distance to the interswitch point.

Shippers would only be able to interswitch at the first available interswitch point. The nearest interswitching location for many shippers and producers in northern Alberta and British Colombia would be in the Kamloops–Vancouver corridor, and the other exclusionary zone is from Quebec City to Windsor. lnterswitching is not allowed beyond 30 kilometres in these areas. For captive shippers, the new interswitching provisions would do nothing to encourage more competitive rates or improve competition.

This is a serious problem. It is important to remember that railways in Canada operate in a near monopoly situation. Captive shippers and producers have no choice but to use one company, to which they are effectively held hostage. This situation could put shippers and producers at a real disadvantage.

While there are provisions in Bill C-49 that would allow shippers to request a contract from a railway with reciprocal penalties, the penalty needs to be designed to acknowledge that the railways have much greater economic power than the shippers. We can also see that Bill C-49 is intended to encourage the efficient movement of shippers' traffic while creating a system that is fairly balanced between the shipper and the railway, but this original intention is eclipsed by the many uncertainties of Bill C-49, which are also present on this issue. To achieve the intended outcome, the government must improve and clarify its provisions for both issues of interswitching and penalties.

Bill C-49 also proposes changing the 30-kilometre interswitching rate so that the interswitching rate over 30 kilometres would be decided by the CTA on an ad hoc basis, as I mentioned earlier. This 30-kilometre interswitching rate would be set each year. It purports to take into account the railway's infrastructure needs across the entire network, which could increase the rate paid by shippers.

The rate-setting regime this bill introduces needs to be designed to ensure shippers always have access to competitive rates. As it stands, the rate would be derived from comparable traffic that is subject to captivity. This system needs to concentrate on a concrete review mechanism to ensure it is actually working for shippers.

However, the Liberals cannot just design this system and leave it to simply administer itself. It is not a budget. Without a sunset clause or predesigned review dates in two to three years, there are absolutely no guarantees for shippers and producers that they will benefit from it.

To remain competitive, shippers and producers rely on clear provisions to ensure efficient access to competing railways. The Liberals are failing to provide clarity and assurances for our Canadian shippers.

In addition, the new long-haul interswitching rates would be more difficult for shippers to use and will not serve as a useful tool in negotiations with the railroads. The proposed slew of changes to the long-haul interswitching rate present very vague outcomes. The sheer number of the regulatory changes and the administrative cost will put Canadian carriers at a disadvantage, especially against U.S. carriers.

Some argue that implementing these changes will increase U.S. railroad access to Canadian traffic at regulated rates without reciprocity. The government has expressed a desire to increase agricultural exports exponentially in the coming years, but has come up short with policies that would help achieve this. If we want to help the agricultural sector increase production and expand its global market share, we need to do more to increase its competitiveness in the global market, not restrict it. One of the ways to do that is to make sure they have efficient and reliable ways of moving their products.

Transportation needs to work much better and the bill must strive to improve rail transportation, because increasing the amount of produce that our amazing farmers produce will be useless if getting it to market becomes a substantial business cost for our producers. Canadians need and expect great rail service. We need an efficient system that ensures the cars show up and grain gets shipped on time.

An article in the Manitoba Cooperative states:

Western Canada’s bigger-than-expected crop is moving to export slower than at last crop year’s record pace, and while grain companies aren’t panicking, Keystone Agricultural Producers’ (KAP) president Dan Mazier says it’s costing farmers....

For most of the current crop year, which began Aug. 1, Mazier said CN Rail hasn’t delivered as many cars as it did a year ago, based on data published by the Ag Transport Coalition (ATC). It reports weekly on the number of cars most grain companies order and the number the railways deliver.

I have the Ag Transport Coalition numbers here for week 12 from October 15 to 21, showing that CN supplied 51% of the hopper cars that were ordered for shippers for that week, which resulted in an unfilled shipper demand of 2,614 hopper cars; and CP supplied 94% of the hopper cars ordered by shippers for grain in week 12, resulting in unfulfilled shipper demand of 281 hopper cars, with nearly 3,000 in total not making it in week 12.

In addition to that, speaking of competitiveness, we are also aware of the ongoing NAFTA negotiations. It is therefore remarkable that the government would allow the new 1,200 kilometre interswitching distance to increase U.S. rail access to Canada at regulated rates, allowing the U.S. to access this Canadian traffic without reciprocity. It seems like weak negotiating on the part of the government to give up this leverage before the NAFTA negotiations are concluded. It is another head scratching idea by the Liberal government to propose such changes even as NAFTA is being renegotiated. No wonder people think that the Prime Minister is napping on NAFTA, because Canadian competitiveness seems to be at the bottom of his priority list. Policies like this directly hurt our competitiveness and are yet another hurdle for producers and shippers to clear.

As it stands, there is simply too much uncertainty about the impact of the newly redesigned interswitching provisions. They need to be reviewable and timely.

Unfortunately, all of this uncertainty and unintended consequences stem from the Liberals' inability to actually consult and listen to industry experts and Canadians. The Liberals are quick to spend taxpayer money to travel around the country to consult and take selfies with Canadians, but when it comes down to it, the Liberals only listen to themselves.

Members from this side of the House have spoken to many stakeholders and experts. Many of these experts believe that what the Liberals are proposing is a convoluted remedy with unknown consequences.

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Madam Speaker, actually, many shippers feel that the new approach to long-haul interswitching to be created by Bill C-49 will merely be a renamed version of the current and hardly used competitive line rates. There must be reasons that system is hardly used. This new long-haul interswitching rate would be more difficult for shippers to use and would also not serve as a useful tool in negotiations with the railroads, which Bill C-30 did. That bill was greatly appreciated by our farmers, to the point where they said to the government that they did not want to see it changed. They wanted to see that good policy continue.

There is another issue with this long-haul interswitching remedy. It will increase U.S. railroad access to Canadian traffic at regulated rates without reciprocity. When NAFTA is being renegotiated, it is unwise for Canada to be making this concession before those negotiations have gotten to where they need to be on this issue.

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Mr. Speaker, in the fall of 2016 of the Liberal mandate, the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities undertook a study of Bill C-30 and held a number of meetings on the merits of these measures and whether they should be allowed to sunset. The vast majority of the testimony heard was supportive of maintaining the 160-kilometre regulated interswitching limit. That is why the committee's first recommendation was the following:

That the Canadian Transportation Agency retain the flexibility provided under the Canada Transportation Act by the Fair Rail For Grain Farmers Act to set interswitching distances up to 160 km, in order to maintain a more competitive operating environment for rail shippers with direct access to only one railway company.

The current government ignored the committee's main recommendation. Basically, what the government is proposing with this new legislation is to replace 160-kilometre extended interswitching with the creation of a new long-haul interswitching on hauls of up to 1200 kilometres or up to 50% of the length of the entire haul. Shippers would be charged the regulated interswitching rate for the first 30 kilometres of the haul and then a rate determined by the Canada Transportation Agency, which would be determined on a case-by-case basis based on the price of a similar haul for the remainder of the distance to the interswitch point. Shippers would only be able to interswitch at the first available interswitch point within the zone. What the government has done is effectively taken a little-used existing remedy called a competitive line rate and renamed it long-haul interswitching.

When Bill C-30 was first introduced, there was universal support among shippers for the extended interswitching. The recommendation from stakeholders was to retain the interswitching distances up to 160 kilometres in order to maintain a more competitive operating environment for rail shippers with direct access to only one rail company. Again, the Liberals went through the motions of appearing to consult, and once again deaf ears prevailed.

To make up lost time and opportunity, the transport committee began special hearings on Bill C-49 in the week prior to the House's return from its summer recess. A total of 44 hours of testimony from dozens of stakeholders and expert witnesses was heard in each of the sectors touched by Bill C-49. Also on record are briefs and letters consisting of thousands of pages of data with more than 100 suggested technical amendments from those whose lives and livelihoods would be affected by this bill. From these incredible witnesses, there was unanimous agreement that Bill C-49 was a good start and that, if their suggested amendments were made, the bill would actually accomplish its stated objectives.

After only giving two weeks to review this mountain of information, the Liberal members of the transport committee defeated more than two dozen reasonable technical amendments. Again, these amendments were suggested by a wide range of stakeholders and experts and were written to make the act a workable solution for all involved.

Once again, the Liberals have a skewed definition of consultation—in other words, they pretend to listen and then blah blah blah—and prove again that it is only a buzzword that they used to get elected. With the introduction of long-haul interswitching, the Liberals sought to create their own solution to a problem that had already been addressed with a reasonable Conservative solution. In the Fair Rail for Grain Farmers Act, the previous Conservative government created a regime of extended interswitching that worked so well in the prairie provinces that shippers of all kinds from across Canada requested that it be extended to the entire country. Instead, the Liberals are committed to their complicated, inefficient long-haul interswitching regime that has such poor conception and so many exceptions that it would be basically useless to many shippers.

For example, a minor technical amendment proposed by both Conservative and NDP members of the committee would have changed the wording of the provision to allow the first interchange point to be in the reasonable direction of the shippers' destination. Under the legislation as it is, shippers may have to send their products potentially hundreds of kilometres in the wrong direction to reach the nearest interchange point, increasing their costs.

What happened to this very reasonable amendment? The Liberals defeated it. They ignored the advice and recommendations of even the the most competent, experienced, and concerned Canadians in regard to extended shipping lines.

Canadians have been ignored by this Liberal government. The laudable and credible efforts of Canadians to contribute in meaningful ways to improving the weaknesses of the Liberal legislation have again fallen on the deaf ears of the government.

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today and speak to Bill C-49, the transportation modernization act. This bill would amend a number of different bills, I believe 13 in fact, with many significant changes being more than just technical in nature. My focus will be on the issues around grain transportation as this portion of the bill is of great concern to those who farm in my riding of Yorkton—Melville and ship their products from Saskatchewan to multiple destinations by rail.

I look at this omnibus bill and wonder what the rationale was for creating such complex legislation. It could have been more effective on many levels to split Bill C-49 into rail shipping, rail safety, air, and marine to target consultation to expedite the best legislation for each. My colleague, representing Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek and the transport shadow minister, put forward such a motion in response to the Liberal member for Niagara Centre, who raised the idea of expediting the passage of this bill in order to provide grain farmers a greater amount of certainty as they negotiate contracts for future shipping seasons. It is telling that the member did not have the support of his Liberal transport minister or his colleagues, as the Liberal vote was unanimously against splitting the bill.

The Minister of Transport's silence and inaction on critical and time-sensitive transport issues over the past two years, especially on rail transport, has fuelled uncertainty with both shippers and the railroads as they negotiate shipping rates for the coming season. The previous Conservative government introduced Bill C-30, which gave the Canadian Transport Agency the power to allow shippers access to regulated interswitching up to 160 kilometres, mandated that CN and CP both haul at least 500 tonnes of grain per week, and introduced a new definition for adequate and suitable service levels. With this extension, the number of primary grain elevators with access to more than one railroad with the extended interswitching limits increased from 48 to 261. These measures were met with universal support from the shipping community because, even if shippers did not use interswitching, they could use it as a tool to increase their negotiating position with the railways, as the shippers knew exactly how much the interswitch portion of the haul would cost them. At the same time, the former Conservative government had announced that the Canada Transport Act statutory review would be expedited. It began a year early in order to provide long-term solutions to the grain backlog of the 2013-14 shipping season and other problems in the transport sector within Canada.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise and offer some comment on Bill C-49, an act to amend the Canada Transportation Act.

I had the pleasure of sitting through an inordinate amount of witness testimony as we went through this important bill, which really is the first step in implementing the minister's transportation 2030 strategy to make transportation more efficient in Canada.

I will start by offering a few comments on the importance of transportation to our country.

In the 21st century, we know that Canada is a trading nation. We know that in order to maximize our economic output, we depend heavily on global markets. When we are trying to maximize the economy in Canada, it does not take long to realize, with our skilled workforce and natural resources, that we have the capacity to produce more than we have the ability to consume domestically. As such, getting our goods to the world market is of extraordinary importance if we are going to succeed and thrive in a 21st century global economy. This is where Bill C-49 comes in. We recognize that to get our products to market in a timely way, we depend on the efficiency of the transportation system. We know that customers around the world are waiting anxiously for their products, and if they cannot find a reliable supplier, then they are going to go elsewhere.

The Canadian transportation system has a number of different important links along the way, and Bill C-49 addresses a few of them. Specifically, it deals with certain measures in the rail sector, air sector, and the marine sector, which has been the subject of little debate thus far, but it really does enhance efficiency of getting products to market or improve the experience of Canadian or international travel for Canadian travellers.

I will start first with the rail transportation in Bill C-49.

The importance of the rail sector in Canada cannot be overstated. Of course, before Confederation, north-south trade was of extraordinary importance, but as I mentioned at the outset of my remarks, getting products to global markets is becoming increasingly important. Of course, the rail corridor from east to west is of extraordinary importance as well.

The key part of the measures dealing with rail transport really has to do with the concept of long-haul interswitching. When I looked at the rules we had embedded in law before Bill C-49, they were not sufficient to deal with getting products from different industries and different regions to market in Canada. What we did have, and we heard this in a number of questions from members opposite, was Bill C-30, which dealt with the transportation of western Canadian grain to market.

Bill C-30 came in 2013, when there was a unique set of circumstances. We dealt with one of the worst winters in modern memory, and at the same time dealt with an unimaginable grain overproduction at the time, which really put our producers and shippers in a bind. If something were not done to get the product to market in a timely way, the economic output would have been significantly lessened. To the credit of the government at the time, it took some action to deal with that and implemented a system that simulated competition where there was none.

In Canada, it does not take long to realize that when we are dealing with rail transport, we are dealing with many captive shippers. There is essentially a duopoly in Canada with two major class I railways. However, for many shippers, there is only one option. If one is living in the northern prairie provinces, one does not always have access to competition, which can drive rates up. Therefore, measures in the previous legislation stated that within 160 kilometres of an interchange point, one would be allowed to essentially treat the monopoly holder as though it were competing, and one could create a bargaining circumstance around the table when there was none. It was not used all that frequently, but we did hear testimony from witnesses that it had made a difference at the time.

However, there is a key problem with that short-term fix, which was needed at the time. It did not consider that the Canadian economy depends on more than western Canadian grain. Bill C-30 did some good things for that industry in that region, but it did nothing for forestry or mining, and it did nothing for provinces such as Ontario and Quebec. Of course, the province I am from, Nova Scotia, does not necessarily have the same problem, with not having the class I railways present.

My point is that long-haul interswitching has come in to solve this problem because it provides opportunities for captive shippers who might not be within 160 kilometres of an interchange who might be in the industry of producing natural resources outside of grain in western Canada. This would provide an opportunity to simulate a competition around the table for so many different producers and this is a very important thing.

In addition to this significant change in the way that products can be transported on Canadian railways, we see a number of measures that were implemented in Bill C-49 to recognize that shippers sometimes have a tough time getting their products to market. We see reciprocal penalties. Previously, there was no remedy necessarily for a shipper whose service obligations were not being met by the railway. In this instance, we can imagine the brand recognition that it does and the cost of having goods waiting to get to market and having no way to transport them. Now the penalty is cut both ways and it encourages everyone to meet his or her obligations to ensure that goods get to market.

We also see a definition of adequate and suitable service. We are seeing enhanced data disclosure. We are seeing that the maximum revenue entitlement has been retained. We are seeing efficiencies embedded into the arbitration process, which creates the equivalent of a small claims process for disputes of less than $2 million. We are seeing agency authority to regulate service-level agreements going forward.

Quite a big focus of our testimony over the course of our committee study on this issue went to the rail sector. However, I do not want to ignore the other important sectors that really do make a difference in the communities that I represent as well.

When we look at marine transport, some of the nonsensical features that we had embedded into Canadian law previously included that international shippers did not have the ability to move empty containers within the Canadian ports system. This might put people who are shipping from Europe to a port in Montreal, for example, in a place where they are not able to take that container from Montreal and move it to the port of Halifax to help local exporters in the province I represent get their products to Europe. When we put it to them to say, “Is this a big Canadian industry right now? Are we going to be interfering with local jobs?”, we heard that in fact this is not being done right now. However, to protect the economic interests of Canadian workers, Bill C-49 would only allow this kind of practice to go forward on a non-revenue basis. Essentially, if I am a European shipper, for example, and I want to move my own empty containers between Canadian ports to make the transportation system for Canadian exporters more efficient, I would be able to do that under Bill C-49.

Of course, one of the key parts of Bill C-49 was the air passenger bill of rights. There are a number of substantive rights that were built into the framework, although a lot more of the details and specifics are going to be embedded in regulation that follows. One of the reasons that this has gotten a bit of uptake in the media is that so many of us, when we see those viral videos of passengers being hauled off planes, become frustrated because we have experienced the ordinary frustrations of air travel ourselves. I have personally experienced having my luggage be damaged and come off one size-16 shoe at a time on the carousel. We know what it is like to see that someone is going to be charged more to sit next to his or her infant. When people are travelling with a musical instrument, if it is not handled properly there can be severe damage and that damages some musicians' livelihoods. A number of these problems are being addressed in Bill C-49 and we are going to require that airlines make it known to the public how they can seek recourse when an airline falls below the standard expected for travellers who paid for quality service on their flight.

In addition, there is a key part of air travel that I wanted to hit on as well. We have changed the foreign ownership limits from 25% to 49%. This is going to encourage more investment by international companies in the Canadian air sector and potentially drive the cost of air travel down. We have already seen two discount airlines, when they qualified for this kind of an exemption under the previous rules, announce that they were going to be making investments in Canada to service secondary markets and offer cheaper service.

To wrap up in the little time that I have left, Bill C-49 is the foundation of the minister's strategy to enhance the efficiency of the Canadian transportation sector. It would see products move in different industries in different regions of our country to get to global markets more effectively. It would protect the rights of passengers who are travelling in the air sector. It would, important from my perspective, make shipping a more efficient part of the international transportation system. It would help exporters in places like Nova Scotia get their goods to market in a cost-effective and efficient way. This is a good bill and I hope the entire House supports it.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the ideology of the long haul is one thing, and I would not be against that, but the number of exclusions in this bill are such that no one can take advantage of them. It used to be, under a previous bill of the Conservative government, that the concerns of western grain farmers were addressed; I believe it was Bill C-30 at the time. That was allowed to sunset by the current government. Then, inadequate measures are put in this bill that are vague and, as I said, include so many exclusions that people cannot take advantage of them. The execution was not acceptable.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Mr. Speaker, one of the themes I keep trying to hit on, being from the eastern part of our country, is that Bill C-49 has changed the rules around transportation on freight rail in a fairly dramatic way. Under a different iteration of legislation that dealt with the transportation on freight, Bill C-30 previously, it dealt only with the ability for shippers of western Canadian grain to move product up to 160 kilometres That was in response to some unique circumstances that arose in 2013. One of the things we see in Bill C-49, by contrast, is a shift towards long-haul interswitching. This would see the ability of shippers in different industries in different parts of the country take advantage of a new regime that stimulates competition around the negotiating table and gives a remedy to captive shippers to make sure they can get a market price.

Does the hon. member support the expansion toward long-haul interswitching, which serves different provinces and different industries, including Ontario?

Motions in amendment

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I have had the pleasure of sitting on the committee during the hearings on Bill C-49 and enjoyed the company of the hon. member for Bow River.

I took some of the member's comments to suggest that perhaps the bill would not go far enough to protect the interests of shippers. I cannot help but point out that the bill includes a number of pro-shipper measures, such as reciprocal penalties, adequacy of service, protecting the maximum revenue entitlement, enhancing data disclosure, improving the arbitration process, and a number of other things.

The member raised the measures included in Bill C-30, suggesting that they were preferred, according to the witnesses he heard. When I listened to the witnesses over the course of the entire study, many of them suggested that having remedies only for one industry and only for one region of the country was not the best approach and that the long-haul interswitching would open up a more efficient transportation system across sectors and across geography. Does the member support measures that would extend this improved service to new parts of the country and to different sectors?

Transportation Modernization Act

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it is my privilege to rise today to speak to Bill C-49, the so-called transportation modernization act.

Before I go any further, I would like to say that I will be sharing my time with the member for Saskatoon—University. I look forward to his presentation on this as well. He comes from a neighbouring province to the west, and he also has a great knowledge of what is required in this field.

It is a privilege to put on the record again, as I had the opportunity to do with our opposition day motion on Monday this week, how important the movement of grain is to western Canadian farmers, as my colleague just said. However, it is not just important to the farmers but to the whole industry and economy of western Canada, which affects us all. We are one of the largest exporters of grain in the world with regard to the percentage that we grow.

I think the changes that have come forward in the bill would be somewhat detrimental, although there are a few that will work very well on the grain side.

Bill C-30 was brought in by my colleagues when we were in government due to the conditions that took place in the Prairies in the winter-fall of 2013 and the spring of 2014. I will never forget that because that is when I was elected as a member. Having farmed in western Canada all my life prior to getting into politics, I certainly know the importance of making sure that we have a reliable system of moving grain and exporting it, not just for the farm community but for the logistics of the rail companies and the port authorities and facilities on the west coast, east coast, and in Thunder Bay. At that time, there was also some grain movement through the Port of Churchill.

Before I get into too much of that, I would like to say that what we need to do in the Prairies with regard to the evolution of the transportation system, as we move forward, is to make sure that we look at processing more of these grains on the Prairies than we have in the past. I was in the room with the minister from Regina—Wascana, which I believe was his constituency at the time, in 1995, when the Crow benefit changed and was taken away. I lobbied to make sure that happened. I did that because my farm was located halfway between Vancouver and Montreal at the time, and we would have been faced with the highest freight rates on the Prairies, right in my kitchen.

We did that so that our future family members, our children, in western Canada would have a job locally by processing more of that grain. That is one of the key reasons for a lot of the lobbying that went on in those days to make changes not just to the rail system but to the way grain was marketed. My colleagues in the House have also brought forward the opportunity to allow farmers to sell their own grain and do their own marketing, which is key to the future development of more processing plants and those types of facilities in the Prairies.

The processing of grain is an example of how important this can be. We have rail lines that begin in Winnipeg and pretty well run parallel out to Portage la Prairie, and then branch off to Calgary and Edmonton through the west. That is why the interswitching that my colleague has brought in, and extending it from 30 kilometres to 160 kilometres, was a great advantage for farmers and competitive rates in the Prairies. It did not only work for them but also for the grain companies. It gave them the ability to have a bit more competition.

The types of things that we gained from the 160-kilometre range of interswitching would be taken away in this new bill, Bill C-49, which I think is a detriment to the longevity of the competitiveness we could have. One example is that we can only do it at a point where that interswitching is available. If one's grain is in northern Alberta or the Peace River areas of northern B.C., the first point of interswitching is Kamloops.

Of course, then one cannot really have much competition for all of that grain in northern Alberta and the Peace River area, if one cannot get access to a competitive rate until it gets to Kamloops. I worked there in the early seventies. I know the city well. It is a great place. I know my colleague from Kamloops agrees with me. This would not allow the type of rate competitiveness that we could have seen in the Prairies.

Bill C-30 also mandated the rail companies to carry half a million tonnes each of grain per week to catch up on some of the backlog that was there at that time. This bill just allows them to continue to talk. It does not mandate a level of grain shipments. That was for a period of time until that backlog got taken care of, which happened later on that summer. We hope we do not see those kinds of conditions, but we do have cold weather on a regular basis in western Canada in wintertime and there was a lot more at stake than just the cold weather in forcing that grain back on to the Prairie farms at that time.

There may be some opportunities here. We cannot haul all of the grain in the Prairies by truck. It has to get onto a rail system at some point. Now that there are more opportunities for farmers to move their own grain, I have young farmers coming to me every day talking about the movement of their grain north-south by truck. Some of that is entering into the United States.

We also purchase a lot of grain in feed form, and that sort of thing, from the U.S., and we need to look at continuing to expand our processing. We need to make sure we continue to have that mechanism to move the grain and also to import from the United States.

We also need to make sure that we are continuing to process even more of the product we have on the Prairies. That is being done in many places in Saskatchewan and Alberta. Some of it is being done with the expansion of our livestock industries, because they consume an awful lot of feed grains in western Canada, which then gets moved in another form. Most of it ends up being slaughtered in some of the largest processing plants in the world in Alberta, in Brooks and High River. We know there is an opportunity there to continue to move that product.

It is being done in Manitoba with the largest pea processing plant in the world, coming to Portage la Prairie. It is a $400-million investment by a French company. The Manitoba government is putting very little infrastructure money into this, other than connecting the hydro lines and natural gas.

These are the kinds of investments we need. I know Bill C-49 will not be as good as Bill C-30 was, as far as that goes. It also speaks to other areas though, such as the air industry and marine industry as well. We need to make sure that while there are changes taking place, they are not detrimental to the future of those industries as well, because we do rely quite heavily on our export ports, particularly on the marine side, to be able to export and move this grain.

Bill C-49 eliminates some of the things that were good parts of Bill C-30, particularly in regard to ordering the railways to compensate any person for expenses caused by the railway's failure to fulfill service obligations.

I will end there and see if anyone has questions before my colleague, the member for Saskatoon—University, takes over.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise and add my remarks to the debate on Bill C-49.

Before I begin, I would like to take a second to acknowledge a very poignant moment today in the House. I was here when the Clerk, Marc Bosc, arrived for his last shift here in the House of Commons as Acting Clerk of the House, as we have heard from a number of sources.

Mr. Bosc was the person who welcomed the members who had been newly elected in 2015 to the House. It was a very emotional time for us. To us, Mr. Bosc is the Clerk of the House, because he is the only one we have ever known. Mr. Bosc has always been there for us and has always shown the utmost professionalism. He was respected by all, at least by everyone on this side of the House. Mr. Bosc has always served with enormous professionalism, and we have always respected him.

For me, Mr. Speaker, it was a very poignant moment to see him enter the chamber this morning and take his place before us, to begin his final sitting day in the House of Commons. I trust that Mr. Bosc will always hold a place of honour here in Parliament.

In closing, we found out about this rather suddenly. I would have liked the opposition parties to be consulted more on the process to replace the Clerk. No offence to the incoming Clerk, but I just wanted to take a few moments on behalf of my colleagues, myself, and my family, who shared in all the emotion that we experience when we first arrive here, to acknowledge Mr. Bosc's excellent work.

Mr. Bosc has been here much longer than I have, but like me, he has seen his share of governments and their different approaches to ensuring that their bills get passed.

Bill C-49 is another example of the government using closure to prevent giving the opposition opportunities to speak to this bill or criticize it. By the minister's own admission, this bill is quite complex, and it will make significant changes to Canada's transportation industry. Even so, we will have just a few of hours of debate to discuss it and raise what I think are some very important points.

Why is this especially troubling in the case of Bill C-49? It is because this bill does not amend just one or two sections or one or two acts. It amends 13 pieces of legislation.

For the past two days, I have been listening to the arguments given by the Minister of Transport who says that the opposition is overreacting, since 80% of the changes proposed in Bill C-49 will amend just one law, and therefore the opposition has no reason to protest so loudly. What? How is that an argument? It is as though one section of an act were more important than another. If the 20% of Bill C-49's clauses that amend 12 other laws are not all that important, why bother including them? Why are we talking about them? If they are not that important, if everything is focused on just one law and the opposition is outraged, why keep the other 20% of the amendments? Why not remove them and create another bill with those amendments and consider it separately? It does not matter, because everything is in the same bill.

Clearly, this argument simply does not hold water. It is particularly troubling. As members know, I have been a member of the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities since I arrived in this place. Obviously, transportation affects all Canadians in every field. Transportation has an impact on the daily lives of all Canadians, whether we are talking about the transportation of goods or people.

They say this is a complex bill, that they will not give the opposition much time to talk, and that, since 80% of it is specific to one act, there is no need for us to protest so loudly. I think the minister should go back to the drawing board, take another look at what is in his bill, and think carefully about the repercussions that each amendment in Bill C-49 will have on the day-to-day lives of all Canadians.

Here is the lowdown on Bill C-49. The Liberals' omnibus transportation bill will establish a new air passenger rights regime; liberalize international ownership restrictions for Canadian air carriers; enable the Minister of Transport to consider and approve joint ventures by two or more airlines; update the Canadian freight system; require railways to install audio-video recorders in locomotives; expand the Governor in Council's powers to require major railway companies to provide rate, service, and performance data; and amend the Canada Marine Act to allow port authorities to access Canada infrastructure bank loans.

However, there is nothing there. According to the Minister of Transport, a few hours of discussion are enough to address all of these issues, since he did not think that the opposition had anything relevant to say during the first hours of this debate. Why would the government want to continue listening to opposition members provide supposedly irrelevant information when it can simply expedite the process by muzzling them? At least, that is what the minister seems to think.

Since when are opinions that differ from the government's irrelevant? The big problem with the Liberals is that, when we do not agree with them, on this or any other issue, they feel threatened and under attack. They think that anyone who does not share their opinion and does not think like they do is irrelevant, and so they have no reason to take any interest in what those people have to say in the House. That explains a lot.

It explains a lot, such as Motion No. 6 and the many time allocation motions that have been imposed on us since the beginning of this session. It explains the infamous discussion document that the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons tabled to supposedly improve the way the House operates. When we read that document carefully, we learned that the Liberals' intention was once again to avoid hearing what the opposition parties had to say.

It is not complicated. When things do not sit well with the government, it decides to muzzle dissenting voices that cast grey clouds over Liberal sunny ways. Well, I have news for the Liberal government. The official opposition and all the other opposition parties, I am sure, have no intention of staying quiet. We have no intention of letting changes slip through. We have no intention of completely agreeing with everything the Liberals put in front of us. We have no intention of being the people who enable the Liberal Party to push through their entire election platform. That is not our role here. Our role is to present criticisms.

As an aside, let us talk about the Liberal platform. It did not take long for the Liberals to realize that much of what they wanted to do is simply impossible. They promised big spending and small deficits. They kept only one of those promises. They are spending big, but they have come to realize that this requires huge deficits. That is something the government does not want the opposition to criticize. They would like us to keep quiet and just watch them and applaud them because they really like applause. That is not what we are going to do. That is not our role.

Let us come back to Bill C-49 because it seems like we are off topic, that we just keep providing an overview, and that we keep talking about everything but Bill C-49. Let us talk about Bill C-49 and what it amends. As I was saying, it significantly amends 13 different laws and has repercussions on three modes of transportation. This legislative measure will weaken legislative protections for shippers and western Canadian farmers.

We want to concentrate on proactive measures to make travel less expensive and more convenient for all travellers. This would include abolishing the carbon tax, instead of the Liberals’ plan to establish reactive compensation that will benefit only a small segment of the population.

This bill provides very little detail about the proposed air passengers’ bill of rights, and it does not have the support, in its current form, of many passengers’ rights advocates. Also, port authorities and their wholly owned subsidiaries will have access to loans and loan guarantees from the Canada infrastructure bank. There is an inconsistency here. That does not make any sense to me, since this bank does not exist yet. It remains a proposal for now, and it is held up in another house, for very good reasons.

Like us, the senators think that the infrastructure bank warrants its own bill, given the impact it will have and the $15 billion that the government intends to provide to it. That is $15 billion from Canadian taxpayers to be given to a board of directions to manage on our behalf without any accountability to Parliament.

These points alone justify our opposition to the passage of Bill C-44, which is currently being studied on the other side in its current form and includes all these budget measures as well as creating the infrastructure bank. I hope that people will get the message.

In Bill C-49, they already assume the outcome. Port authorities are being given approval to access loans from the non-existent infrastructure bank. What I do not understand is that the government, ever since it began telling us about the infrastructure bank, keeps saying that it will be an independent bank. As an aside, the process to find the president for this non-existent bank has already started.

Therefore, the infrastructure bank, which does not exist, will be made up of a so-called independent board of directors who will manage the money given to them by the Liberal government. At the same time, these supposedly independents will be told that they have to invest $1.3 billion in Montreal’s Réseau électrique métropolitain and provide loans to port authorities. To sum up, here is an independent infrastructure bank that will not be independent and does not yet exist. However, we are being asked to approve a clause of the bill that will allow port authorities to secure loans from this infrastructure bank that will be created in the near future.

It is clear that something is not working, that they are improvising, and that the minister wants to move quickly. We do not understand why he insists on moving so quickly. Some will tell us that it is because they want to settle the matter of Bill C-30 before it expires on July 31 in order to protect western grain producers in their rate negotiations with the railways. That could be the case, but that is not what is going to happen, since even if Bill C-49 is rushed through today or Monday and is referred to committee, the committee meetings are scheduled for September.

The committee was prepared to meet in July if the government agreed to hive off all the measures concerning Bill C-30. That would have allowed us to study them quickly in order to avoid having a legal vacuum for western grain producers. These meetings could have been held before August 1. The committee was prepared to meet in the middle of summer, during vacation—at least, the opposition members of the committee were. That would have been a major sacrifice for some of us to show up and study a bill to help western grain producers.

Why was the official opposition prepared to do that? Because we get that this is important. Right now, grain producers are concerned about what is going to happen this fall if there is a legal vacuum. We do not know exactly how the market will react. These people are negotiating right now.

We see another problem here. I myself am not a grain producer. However, several of my House of Commons colleagues represent western Canadian ridings, and they know a lot about grain production. From what I understand, grain producers usually harvest their crops in the fall. What time of year is busiest for grain producers? The fall, when they are bringing in the harvest.

The government is going to ask grain producers to testify on Bill C-49, which will have a major impact on their future, in the fall. The government is going to ask them to leave their machinery and their fields so they can come testify in Ottawa in September. That is when they should be in their fields doing their work, doing what we support them doing, and making their contribution to Canada's economy by producing and working. This makes no sense.

That is why the opposition was prepared to agree to move quickly on that part of the bill. We were prepared to let many things slide in order to move quickly. Why? Canada's grain producers are far more important to us than adding another number to our legislative record. The farmers need us to come to Ottawa to protect them, stand up for them, and help them succeed. That is our role.

If we are not taking extraordinary measures to get Bill C-30 passed before the deadline, then there is no urgency to justify speeding up the process and muzzling the opposition. The government probably does not want to let the opposition speak because it does not want to hear arguments like mine in defence of western grain producers.

I want to talk about another initiative that was very well received by the public, I admit. This was the main point in the message from the Minister of Transport. Indeed, he wants to create an air passengers' bill of rights. This is urgent. Like all of us, all Canadians who have flown over the past few months have seen the coverage of some of the dramatic incidents that have taken place in the U.S. Since the bill announced the creation of an air passengers' bill of rights, we thought we would get some information. We thought we might be told what to expect, but no, all the minister did was mandate the Canadian Transportation Agency to begin consultations that will eventually lead to regulations and, at some point, the air passengers' bill of rights.

Do we really need a bill to ask the Canadian Transportation Agency to begin consultations on a bill of rights? It makes no sense. There is no need for urgency when it comes to Bill C-49, apart from the legislation protecting western Canadian grain farmers; on that, we agree.

We believe that the only way to go and the only explanation or justification to make this measure acceptable, to make this gag order acceptable, would have been to split the bill and immediately pass the measures in Bill C-30, in order to make certain temporary measures permanent. We were ready to go ahead with that, but everything else could have waited; there is no need to panic. The only emergency here for this government is to silence the opposition. The government is not ready. It is improvising and presenting measures that just do not make sense.

For all these reasons, and despite a few good measures in the bill, the official opposition cannot support Bill C-49.