Bill C-10 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Air Canada Public Participation Act and to provide for certain other measures

This enactment amends the Air Canada Public Participation Act to provide that Air Canada’s articles of continuance contain a requirement that it carry out aircraft maintenance activities in Ontario, Quebec and Manitoba and to provide for certain other measures related to that obligation.

Air Canada Public Participation Act

[David Sweet, Conservative, Flamborough—Glanbrook, ON]

Mr. Speaker, in one point of principle I agree with my colleague from Montreal in regard to Canadian workers absolutely having the capability to be competitive, but this legislation, based on the decision the Liberal Party made before, imposes an unfair playing field on other airlines, such as Porter Airlines, which does not have the capability of buying the Bombardier airplanes because it cannot have its runway lengthened in order to be able to land those planes there.

I would ask my colleague about the aspect of this legislation that puts other Canadian companies on an unfair playing field as well.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

Mr. Speaker, as many members know, we debated that very issue not so long ago when it came to the government's decision to interfere with the process of consultation on allowing Porter Airlines to lengthen its runway so that it could purchase the Bombardier C Series.

Again, the bill will affect jobs in Canada. It will affect up to 3,000 Canadian maintenance workers. There are, as I said, a number of options available to the government that would make Air Canada and other carriers more competitive without contributing to job losses or costing taxpayers.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I will start by making a few comments.

Air Canada is a private corporation. Everyone in this House acknowledges that, but it is a unique company in that it was privatized in 1989, and it is in the unique position of having inherited many assets that were paid for by the taxpayer. Part of the deal was that the government would give Air Canada the assets that had been funded by the taxpayer, but Air Canada had to keep maintenance jobs in Canada.

Sometimes governments have made deals with corporations based on a handshake, saying “We will give you a tax break here and we will change the laws, but the deal is that you keep jobs in Canada.” Those agreements have not always been honoured, and the difference with Air Canada is that we have a law to make sure Air Canada follows the agreement.

Right now we are hearing that the Liberals will change that law. I have heard Liberal members saying this is a Canadian bill for Canadian jobs, and do we not trust in the ingenuity of workers? Yes, we trust in the ingenuity of workers, but I do not trust Air Canada's word on this matter.

My question to the hon. member is this: is the Liberal government placing too much trust in Air Canada's word?

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I would not presume to know what the government is thinking or what it may be doing with this piece of legislation. We are questioning the intent of it and also the timing, but we do know, as the hon. member pointed out, that the original intent of the Air Canada Public Participation Act when it was introduced in 1988 was to put in place clear conditions to ensure that all of the support Air Canada has received over the years from the Government of Canada and the taxpayers to turn it into a profitable crown corporation would not be lost.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Before I give the member for Beloeil—Chambly the floor, I must inform him that we have about 12 minutes left before member statements.

The hon. member for Beloeil—Chambly.

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

Before I begin, I would like to thank some of my colleagues who worked on this file. This was a team effort, after all.

I would like to thank, of course, my colleague the member for Edmonton Strathcona, who is our transport critic, and my colleague the member for Windsor West, who is our innovation, science, and economic development critic. Both those colleagues have worked very hard on this issue as well.

I also want to thank my colleague from Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie. As an MP from Montreal, he represents a good number of the workers who will be affected by this change. I want to thank my colleague from Elmwood—Transcona as well. Since he represents a riding in the Winnipeg area, he is also seeing first-hand the impact of the decisions made here.

This issue also affects me. I say that with a bit of a smile, since my colleague from Louis-Saint-Laurent and I have often talked about the importance of Quebec's aerospace industry, specifically. I am from a suburb in the greater Montreal area, where there are workers and machinists in various industries who work hard, particularly at Air Canada. This bill will therefore have a major impact in my region. That is why I am very pleased to share the NDP's position on this with the House.

First of all, we must condemn the government's lack of rigour on any issues related to the aerospace industry. This government has been improvising ever since it was sworn in back in November. Since the Liberals say they recognize the importance of the aerospace industry in Canada, and particularly in Quebec, I think that they should have a plan. That goes without saying. During the election campaign, the Liberals kept saying over and over again that they had a plan, but they do not seem to have one for that industry, as we can see from the many problems that have arisen.

First of all, regarding Bombardier, we asked the minister on the day that he was sworn in what he planned to do about this file. Of course, I did not expect an answer the day that he was sworn in. However, it has been several months now, and the Liberals just keep saying that the situation is being evaluated and that they presented a budget. We have yet to hear anything about this, and they tell us to simply trust them. Instead of saying “just watch me” like his father, the Prime Minister keeps saying “just trust me”. The problem is that we do not find him trustworthy so far.

The Air Canada Public Participation Act that we are discussing today is very much intertwined with the Bombardier situation. The Minister of Transport is using the Bombardier case and Air Canada's promise to buy Bombardier aircraft as an excuse to change the legislation, saying that it is a good agreement and giving them carte blanche to decide how they are going to protect jobs here in Canada.

As my colleague put it so well, the problem is that the bill changes the current legislation and asks us to trust Air Canada to meet its obligations. For now, those are legal obligations, but if the bill is passed, that will no longer be the case.

We seriously wonder whether we are seeing a favour being returned. The Minister of Transport seems to want to thank Air Canada for buying Bombardier aircraft, thereby helping the government to off-load this hot potato. This gives the minister some good news to announce during question period, when he is asked about Aveos or Bombardier. He can go on about how nice it was to sit in one of those planes and he also gets to avoid having to defend his colleague, the Minister of Innovation, who remains unable to tell us when a decision will be made in the Bombardier case.

I do not pretend to know what the government members are thinking, but the facts are not reassuring, neither about the government, nor about the future of Air Canada maintenance jobs, which are supposed to be protected by law.

Before I go on, it is important for me to put things into context to better understand how we got to this point.

My colleagues will remember that Aveos announced that it was filing for bankruptcy in 2012. Naturally, the unions representing the machinists and the Government of Quebec sued Air Canada, accusing it of failing to meets its legal obligations. In fact, almost 3,000 jobs were lost after the news broke.

At the time, we asked the Conservative government a number of questions. Unfortunately, we never got an answer. We wanted to know what the Conservatives were going to do to enforce the law. As usual, we were given all kinds of excuses about market realities, even though there was a law. There were legal obligations. The government was not able to give us an explanation.

We now have a new government. What is important and what we are interested in today are the questions posed by the Liberals at the time. They were so indignant that the current Prime Minister, who is an MP from Montreal, protested alongside the workers in Montreal. As my colleague from Elmwood—Transcona said so well yesterday, he wasn't embarrassed to sing Kumbaya, to chant “So-so-so-solidarity” and shout out all kinds of slogans along with the protesters.

After all, people often said that the Conservatives came to change Ottawa and Ottawa changed them. Now, the same thing is happening with the Liberals. They came to change Ottawa and Ottawa changed them. In fact, I would even go so far as to say that the Liberals have not changed. These are the same Liberals that we knew before. When they were in the opposition, they tried to tell us one thing, they were going to protest with workers, but now they are flouting the law by changing it to legalize things that are illegal today, that will be illegal tomorrow, and that will be illegal until the bill is passed. It is completely shameful. It is disgraceful and unbecoming. It is particularly unbecoming because they promised to do things differently. Unfortunately, that is not what we are seeing today.

I would like to continue providing more context. After 2012, the situation changed. With the purchase of the Bombardier C Series, or at least the promise to buy since it is not yet a done deal, the Government of Quebec put an end to the dispute. It was only natural to do so until an agreement could be reached. Meanwhile, the government once again took advantage of the circumstances to make changes.

At the time, the Minister of Transport provided a justification. I said “at the time”, as though it were a long time ago, because time flies when promises are being broken. A few months ago, the Minister of Transport explained that this was to allow for more flexibility. This sounds as though Air Canada is being given an opportunity to flout the law, but no one is actually saying so. Air Canada is simply being given an opportunity to legally flout the law. It is being given permission to do things it is not allowed to do now.

I want to raise an important point here. I heard a number of Liberal colleagues say the same thing. I even heard a Liberal member question our trust in Canadian workers and Canada's industrial capacity. I would like to give him some figures that are relevant here. The first figure has to do with the export of supply chains to the Asia-Pacific region. From 2003 to 2013, exports of supply chains grew rapidly by 190%. We lost jobs here in Canada. These jobs are going elsewhere. Supply chain exports to the Asia-Pacific region account for nearly 20% of the overall growth in value of exports.

We can see that more and more aerospace companies are outsourcing to Asia and other countries. Jobs here in Canada in these industries have become unstable. That is why we need a law to protect those jobs. We are not questioning the workers' skills or the quality of our industry. We are questioning whether the current market will protect those jobs. After all, they are high-quality jobs with good working conditions, pensions, and guaranteed income. It is so easy for large corporations to outsource jobs like that to places where labour costs less. That is being done to the detriment of the people we represent. That is exactly why the law was passed at the time, because, to put it bluntly, Air Canada benefited from the money of these same taxpayers who are now going to lose their jobs.

Once again, as one of my colleagues put it so well in one of his questions, over the past few years, in cases where the tax rate was lowered for large corporations, for example, companies often promised to return the favour and keep jobs here in Canada. Unfortunately, that did not happen.

I have some other things to say, but it is almost time for question period, so I will pick this up again later.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

The hon. member for Beloeil—Chambly will have 10 minutes left to finish his speech when the House resumes debate.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-10, An Act to amend the Air Canada Public Participation Act and to provide for certain other measures, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

The hon. member for Beloeil—Chambly has 10 minutes to finish his speech.

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

Madam Speaker, I will pick up my speech where I left off. I was saying that this bill is a betrayal of workers since it seeks to amend the law that ensures that their jobs remain in the locations indicated in that law.

However, this is not just about job losses. Although the job losses that will occur as a result of this bill are very worrisome, the instability of the jobs in this sector is also a cause for concern. That is perhaps an unintended consequence, and it makes us wonder how much the government really thought about the consequences of its bill. Let me explain.

According to the bill, it would be deemed appropriate to outsource these jobs if that allowed Air Canada to maintain its competitive advantage. After the bill is passed, jobs may stay in Montreal, Winnipeg, and Mississauga. However, we do not know how long that situation will last and we will have to deal with the fact that these jobs will become unstable. Air Canada may justify outsourcing jobs by saying that it wants to avoid raising prices for consumers. That is a problem.

As I said before question period, we have high-quality, well-paying jobs here. It will be counter-productive if those jobs become unstable. We are not just talking about job losses, but about job quality as well.

Since this debate began, Liberal government members have been arguing that Air Canada has to remain competitive in an ever-changing industry. The problem is that we not only have to stand up for the workers affected by this bill, but we also have to think about the precedent that this bill sets.

Imagine a world where every time something like this comes up, the government claims that the company's legal requirements prevent it from remaining competitive and will cause rates to increase and all kinds of problems.

If, every time, the government decides to change the law and make legal something that used to be illegal, namely the loss of good-quality jobs, what will prevent the government from doing the same thing again for another company that has similar legal obligations, under the pretext that the industry is competitive?

How many jobs would be in jeopardy and would become precarious? How many jobs are we prepared to outsource to keep our companies competitive? That is not what a free market is. By intervening to favour a company on a legal level, the government is going against the idea of a free market. This is not the role of a responsible government.

A government, especially this one, which was elected on its claim of wanting to stand up for the middle class, is responsible for standing up for the workers who are protected by law.

I want to reiterate that this is a betrayal. During the last Parliament, in 2012, the Liberal Party was outraged about the Conservative government's refusal to step up and enforce the law. However, the Liberals are now saying that they will absolutely enforce the law, because they are going to change it.

Changing the law makes the Liberals even worse than the Conservatives. The Conservatives did not enforce the law, but the Liberals have simply decided to change the law at the expense of workers.

I am thinking about all those members from Montreal.

The same goes for members from Winnipeg or Mississauga, members who are from cities that have workers who rely on these jobs which are protected by Air Canada's legal obligations. Today we see a betrayal of those workers, those workers who now are now seeing the Liberal government change the law after saying that the previous Conservative government should apply the law. The changes to that law are not only creating a situation where those workers will lose their jobs, but those who manage to hang on to their jobs will no longer be guaranteed the same high-quality long-term jobs and the long-term guarantees which the law affords them today.

Therefore, Canadians should remember this the next time the Liberals tell them how they set bar so much higher than the previous Conservative government. It is rare that I will take the side of the Conservatives in an argument. The Liberals are doing worse than what the Conservatives did. They propose to change the law, and that is a slap in the face for the workers who are protected by the legislation.

We also need to consider the situation at Bombardier. I will have to say more about that later because I did not have enough time to delve into the subject as much as I wanted to during my initial remarks on this subject. We need to consider the fact that Bombardier is going through a tough time across Canada, but especially in Quebec. That has major repercussions on the entire aerospace and aeronautics sector. The problem today is that people are trying to take shortcuts.

I will admit this is speculation, but we have the right to ask certain questions in this debate, and we have to ask them. This bill was introduced before an announcement about the decision on whether to provide, or not provide, assistance to Bombardier.

The answer is clear to the NDP: yes, we should help Bombardier, but there should be strings attached. We should have a solid agreement with provisions to ensure utmost respect for taxpayer dollars throughout the process. We certainly do not want to give Bombardier a blank cheque.

The problem is that there was no mention whatsoever of Bombardier, and no mention of the entire aeronautics and aerospace industry in this budget. Today we are debating Bill C-10, which will have a serious impact on the aeronautics and aerospace industry and on all related decisions, even though we have no idea what direction the government plans to take.

This is quite problematic because, as I said at the beginning of my remarks, it really seems like this is about returning a favour, after Air Canada committed to purchasing the C Series planes from Bombardier. Every time we ask the minister any questions about this file, he simply gets up and says that it does not matter, that we have good news from Air Canada. Of course we have some concerns about this. We will continue to stand up for workers.

That is why we will be voting against this bill and why I am pleased to move, seconded by my colleague from Nanaimo—Ladysmith, the following amendment:

That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word “That” and substituting the following:

the House decline to give second reading to Bill C-10, An Act to amend the Air Canada Public Participation Act and to provide for certain other measures, because it:

(a) threatens the livelihoods of thousands of Canadian workers in the aerospace industry by failing to protect the long-term stability of the Canadian aerospace sector from seeing jobs outsourced to foreign markets;

(b) forces Canadian manufacturers to accept greater risks and to incur greater upfront costs in conducting their business;

(c) provides no guarantee that the terms and conditions of employment in the Canadian aeronautics sector will not deteriorate under increased and unfettered competition; and

(d) does not fulfill the commitments made by the Prime Minister when he attended demonstrations alongside workers in the past.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

The amendment is in order.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, I have a question in terms of where the NDP might stand in relation to the Provinces of Quebec and Manitoba.

I was around when these decisions were being made back in 2010 and 2011. I was very much involved here in the House of Commons. There was a great deal of concern expressed by both the Province of Manitoba and the Province of Quebec, which ultimately led to a substantial court case against Air Canada. It would now appear that the Province of Quebec has recognized that this is in fact in the best interests of the province, from what I understand in terms of this settlement.

Can the member provide any information whatsoever related to the provincial government of Quebec and what it might be telling the member?

My understanding is that this is something that the Province of Quebec, along with Air Canada and other stakeholders, sees as a possible way out. Would the member not agree that the Province of Quebec's thoughts should be respected?

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

Madam Speaker, as far as Quebec is concerned, the lawsuit was dropped until an agreement could be reached between the parties.

However, the workers are also part of the lawsuit.

To the member coming from Winnipeg who stands up and asks who we are standing with, we are standing with the workers who are going to lose their jobs because the Liberal government has decided to make legal what is now illegal.

I have a hard time wondering how that members goes back to his home city in Winnipeg and tells the workers in that city that their jobs that were guaranteed by the law are no longer guaranteed. Not only that, even if they do manage to hang onto their jobs, there is no guarantee there anymore because of the bill drafted by the government.

To the NDP, it is very clear. We are not standing up to pit one region against another, but to protect the workers whose jobs are protected by law.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Madam Speaker, I think the crux of the matter is that we have an attempt here to go retroactively back and affect workers' rights, collective agreements, and all of those things that were set in place by legislation, which was clear at that time.

At that time as well, these companies received the benefits of corporate tax reductions. They received the benefits of R and D SR and ED credits. They received a lot of public investment with regard to their operations. That was the deal that was set going into this situation here, so why would the government give this extended benefit and give them a holiday from protecting workers?

By the way, in Canada, those workers have invested their family income to be trained, whether through university, college, or other types of training programs, and so has the government. However, that is cast to the wind for political expediency.

What we are trying to do, including the industry committee, is protect value-added jobs for Canadians, which is the essence of building a stronger Canada.

I would like my colleague to talk about those things.

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for the question and the work he does on this file.

At the end of the day, that is precisely the problem. This is a situation where we have a Prime Minister who was not shy about demonstrating with the Aveos workers in 2012. What is more, the re-elected Liberal members, including the hon. member who asked me the question, expressed their indignation during the previous Parliament. This is a betrayal that is absolutely unacceptable to us. We have legislation to protect these jobs.

To get back to what my colleague was saying, I would say that in changing the law, we might assume that some of the workers we are trying to defend will manage to hang on to their jobs. However, the problem with the way the bill is drafted is that we are creating uncertainty. We are allowing Air Canada to provide no guarantees, to outsource these jobs, and to create completely unacceptable instability. Furthermore, we will be creating problems for the aerospace and aeronautics sectors in Quebec and Canada. We are going to end up losing our expertise because these jobs are unstable and they could potentially be lost, although with this bill, I should probably say they will inevitably be lost. It will be very difficult to regain this expertise and rebuild our industry in Quebec and Canada. The government may not have thought about these consequences. That is why we are rising today to oppose this bill.