Bill C-49 (Historical)

Transportation Modernization Act

An Act to amend the Canada Transportation Act and other Acts respecting transportation and to make related and consequential amendments to other Acts

This enactment amends the Canada Transportation Act in respect of air transportation and railway transportation.
With respect to air transportation, it amends the Canada Transportation Act to require the Canadian Transportation Agency to make regulations establishing a new air passenger rights regime and to authorize the Governor in Council to make regulations requiring air carriers and other persons providing services in relation to air transportation to report on different aspects of their performance with respect to passenger experience or quality of service. It amends the definition of Canadian in that Act in order to raise the threshold of voting interests in an air carrier that may be owned and controlled by non-Canadians while retaining its Canadian status, while also establishing specific limits related to such interests. It also amends that Act to create a new process for the review and authorization of arrangements involving two or more transportation undertakings providing air services to take into account considerations respecting competition and broader considerations respecting public interest.
With respect to railway transportation, it amends the Act to, among other things,
(a) provide that the Canadian Transportation Agency will offer information and informal dispute resolution services;
(b) expand the Governor in Council’s powers to make regulations requiring major railway companies to provide to the Minister of Transport and the Agency information relating to rates, service and performance;
(c) repeal provisions of the Act dealing with insolvent railway companies in order to allow the laws of general application respecting bankruptcy and insolvency to apply to those companies;
(d) clarify the factors that must be applied in determining whether railway companies are fulfilling their service obligations;
(e) shorten the period within which a level of service complaint is to be adjudicated by the Agency;
(f) enable shippers to obtain terms in their contracts dealing with amounts to be paid in relation to a failure to comply with conditions related to railway companies’ service obligations;
(g) require the Agency to set the interswitching rate annually;
(h) create a new remedy for shippers who have access to the lines of only one railway company at the point of origin or destination of the movement of traffic in circumstances where interswitching is not available;
(i) change the process for the transfer and discontinuance of railway lines to, among other things, require railway companies to make certain information available to the Minister and the public and establish a remedy for non-compliance with the process;
(j) change provisions respecting the maximum revenue entitlement for the movement of Western grain and require certain railway companies to provide to the Minister and the public information respecting the movement of grain; and
(k) change provisions respecting the final offer arbitration process by, among other things, increasing the maximum amount for the summary process to $2 million and by making a decision of an arbitrator applicable for a period requested by the shipper of up to two years.
It amends the CN Commercialization Act to increase the maximum proportion of voting shares of the Canadian National Railway Company that can be held by any one person to 25%.
It amends the Railway Safety Act to prohibit a railway company from operating railway equipment and a local railway company from operating railway equipment on a railway unless the equipment is fitted with the prescribed recording instruments and the company, in the prescribed manner and circumstances, records the prescribed information using those instruments, collects the information that it records and preserves the information that it collects. This enactment also specifies the circumstances in which the prescribed information that is recorded can be used and communicated by companies, the Minister of Transport and railway safety inspectors.
It amends the Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation and Safety Board Act to allow the use or communication of an on-board recording, as defined in subsection 28(1) of that Act, if that use or communication is expressly authorized under the Aeronautics Act, the National Energy Board Act, the Railway Safety Act or the Canada Shipping Act, 2001.
It amends the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority Act to authorize the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority to enter into agreements for the delivery of screening services on a cost-recovery basis.
It amends the Coasting Trade Act to enable repositioning of empty containers by ships registered in any register. These amendments are conditional on Bill C-30, introduced in the 1st session of the 42nd Parliament and entitled the Canada–European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement Implementation Act, receiving royal assent and sections 91 to 94 of that Act coming into force.
It amends the Canada Marine Act to permit port authorities and their wholly-owned subsidiaries to receive loans and loan guarantees from the Canada Infrastructure Bank. These amendments are conditional on Bill C-44, introduced in the 1st session of the 42nd Parliament and entitled the Budget Implementation Act, 2017, No. 1, receiving royal assent.
Finally, it makes related and consequential amendments to the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act, the Competition Act, the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act, the Air Canada Public Participation Act, the Budget Implementation Act, 2009 and the Fair Rail for Grain Farmers Act.

The House resumed from October 25 consideration of Bill C-49, An Act to amend the Canada Transportation Act and other Acts respecting transportation and to make related and consequential amendments to other Acts, as reported (with amendment) from the committee, and of the motions in Group No. 1.

Bill C-49—Time Allocation Motion

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Mr. Speaker, while I am not deeply familiar with all the text of Bill C-49, having been in the aviation industry for a long time, and for economic development purposes for small communities, I know that the aviation industry is very much a user-pay system, so any additional costs are downloaded to the passengers.

While on one hand, the minister is saying that foreign ownership should lower costs because of competition coming into Canada, and I would tend to agree, we know that there are other areas that could be downloaded onto smaller airports, which may or may not be able to compete in terms of some of the costs.

In terms of delays, we know that very often at this time of year we start to see weather delays that extend beyond three hours. I believe, and it is not mentioned here, that this could have a detrimental effect on small communities, more so than others, that are prone to weather IROPs, or irregular operations.

I would like to know whether our hon. colleague addressed weather delays and what types of delays are mentioned in Bill C-49 in terms of air passenger rights.

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount, QC]

Mr. Speaker, again, I have to point out that 90% of what is in Bill C-49 are amendments, changes, to one act, the Canada Transportation Act. If one looks at the legislative agenda, it is virtually impossible, whenever legislation is passed, not to have an effect on certain other pieces of legislation. However, it is a small number of changes, about 10%, that will affect other existing legislation. The vast majority of the changes are focused on one act, the Canada Transportation Act.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Speaker, in his remarks, the minister pointed to the fact that this legislation, Bill C-49, addresses a number of pieces of transport legislation. It deals with trade, rail, privacy, competition, and passenger rights.

However, he somehow says that that is not an omnibus bill and wants to somehow distinguish the government's performance from that of the Harper government, where time allocation was brought forward over 100 times, with that member and his party standing with us to rail against the improper use of time allocation.

Can the member tell us what has changed?

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

Mr. Speaker, does the minister realize that Bill C-49 removes the power of the Commissioner of Competition to challenge mergers of airline operations? Is he aware that by eliminating the commissioner's power, the same minister can approve an arrangement that could quite possibly increase the costs of airline tickets? How on earth is that of any benefit? Why on earth would the Liberals limit the amount of time we have in the House to debate, discuss, and hopefully amend this ill-conceived legislation?

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Mr. Speaker, one correct thing the minister said is that the Liberals have an agenda and they are going to ram it down our throats, as well as the throats of Canadians, regardless of whether they like it or not. We are debating another time allocation motion on a bill that will have far-reaching impacts on trade, on small communities' air services, on our rail industry, and on privacy with respect to our engineers and our rail systems. We have had everyone from unions to passenger rights advocacy groups, to carriers, to airports, to shippers all over Canada asking why we are rushing this bill. They say that we are not getting it right. They have deep concerns. The Privacy Commissioner sent a letter to the committee chair, dated September 12, 2017, raising concerns about Bill C-49 and the handling of data from locomotive voice recognition and recording devices and privacy issues arising from sharing of that information.

Why the rush? If this is such a fundamental piece of legislation, why are the Liberals rushing it through?

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, of course I do have comments on and concerns about Bill C-49, but this is a debate on time allocation. I want to put a proposition to the hon. minister. The more the Liberals use time allocation, the more we normalize a practice that was offensive to this place under the Harper administration. Avoiding time allocation, treating bills thoroughly, and organizing the schedule of this place is the job of the House leaders. My concern is that by having time allocation time and again on many bills that proper management of the House calendar would have avoided means there are now very few opportunities to speak to bills in debate because the speaking rosters are shrunk to accommodate time allocation.

Therefore, time allocation really does limit democratic debate in this place. It really is normalizing what Harper did, which the hon. minister and I railed against when he was with me on this side of the House. I urge the current government not to decide to set the bar no higher than the previous government did, but to go back a few prime ministers to see how often time allocation was used in those administrations and then to shoot at doing better than that.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very disappointed to see this happening again today. We are sitting here with Bill C-49, another omnibus bill that would amend 13 acts. We are not being given the time to discuss it. There are many proposals being put forward and still no concrete support for the government to move forward in a way that Canadians expect.

I appreciate my former colleague's comments about the passenger bill of rights. Again, it is very weak and really an example of the government downloading responsibilities again. In my riding of North Island—Powell River, there are a lot of concerns about regional airports and the direct impacts this bill would have on economic development and their keeping connected to the rest of the world. Here we are, not able to have the substantive discussion that we need to have. We are being closed down again.

Why does the minister think this is an appropriate movement forward when so many Canadians expect so much more?

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Minister of Transport]

Mr. Speaker, the point that I made at the time of the previous closure motion about the opposition only talking about the carbon tax must have had a profound effect. I am very glad that the committee that studied this matter returned to Parliament four days early this fall and heard a large of number of witnesses on all of the issues surrounding this bill. As a result, I think we have ended up with a very good bill at this point, and I can talk more about that as we go along.

With respect to the passenger rights bill, we took the deliberate approach of mandating that that Canadian Transportation Agency produce the regulations that would govern this passenger bill of rights. We feel that a regulatory approach is a superior approach to enshrining it in the legislation of Bill C-49, because it will give us more flexibility to make changes later on.

[Bardish Chagger, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister of Small Business and Tourism]

moved:

That in relation to Bill C-49, An Act to amend the Canada Transportation Act and other Acts respecting transportation and to make related and consequential amendments to other Acts, not more than one further sitting day shall be allotted to the consideration of the report stage and one sitting day shall be allotted to the third reading stage of the said bill; and

That fifteen minutes before the expiry of the time provided for Government Orders on the day allotted to the consideration of the report stage and on the day allotted to the third reading stage of the said bill, any proceedings before the House shall be interrupted, if required for the purpose of this Order, and in turn every question necessary for the disposal of the stage of the bill then under consideration shall be put forthwith and successively without further debate or amendment.

Bill C-49—Notice of time allocation motion

[Bardish Chagger, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister of Small Business and Tourism]

Madam Speaker, I would like to advise that agreement could not be reached under the provisions of Standing Orders 78(1) or 78(2) with respect to the report stage and third reading stage of Bill C-49, an act to amend the Canada Transportation Act and other Acts respecting transportation and to make related and consequential amendments to other Acts.

Under the provisions of Standing Order 78(3), I give notice that a minister of the crown will propose at the next sitting a motion to allot a specific number of days or hours for the consideration and disposal of proceedings of the said stage.

Business of the House

[Bardish Chagger, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister of Small Business and Tourism]

Mr. Speaker, in a few minutes, we will begin examining Bill C-17 on the Yukon. Tomorrow, we will begin debate at third reading of Bill C-46 on impaired driving.

On Monday and Tuesday, we will continue debating Bill C-49.

On Wednesday, we will commence report stage of Bill C-45, the cannabis act.

Finally, on Thursday, we will start second reading debate of our second budget implementation bill. We intend to allot four days of second reading debate for this bill. We look forward to that debate as well as the discussions at committee.

Motions in amendment

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Moose Jaw—Lake Centre—Lanigan, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I want to say at the outset that I think that Bill C-49 is a very poorly written bill. There is a host of things wrong with it. There is a lack of detail and a lack of specificity in many areas, which I will get into in just a few moments. I will only have a chance to address perhaps two or three of the elements of this bill that are poorly crafted.

I will start with the airline passenger bill of rights component of the bill, but before I get into those comments, I have to say that every time I hear someone speaking on an airline passenger bill of rights, it brings a smile to my face. I recall an exchange several years ago in this place, and many of my learned colleagues who have been around this place for a while may remember the exchange I am referring to. It happened between an NDP member of Parliament—I believe his name was Jim Maloway—and a minister of the government at the time, Mr. John Baird. It was on a Friday morning. Sittings on Friday mornings, as most members know, are usually not that well attended. Many times, subject material comes out of left field. We were in government at the time this exchange took place. We never really knew what questions would be coming from members on the opposition benches. Because so few members attended, it meant that many members who had never had an opportunity to ask a question before could get up to ask something that was of local concern to their constituency. As a result, many of our members did not have direct answers for the questions. In this particular case, Mr. Maloway got up and indicated that he had introduced a private member's bill for an airline passengers bill of rights. In his question to former Minister Baird, the member pointed out that reports had indicated that in Europe a number of airline authorities were thinking, as a cost-saving measure, of charging airline passengers a fee to go to the washroom. Mr. Maloway asked Mr. Baird whether he thought it was right that airlines would be able to charge passengers to go to the bathroom. Mr. Baird, without a moment's hesitation, responded, “Depends”. Members may have to think about that for a moment, but it was one of the cleverest quips and retorts I have heard in my time, and one that I will never forget.

Let us talk about this bill and its suggestions for an airline passenger bill of rights. Once again, there is a lack of specificity and a lack of detail. The bill is suggesting that any passengers who feel aggrieved by an airline or who wish to file a grievance against an airline for a host of different reasons would potentially be able to receive monetary compensation from the government. That means that if a passenger had a poor flight and the airline lost that person's baggage or if passengers were stuck on a runway or the tarmac for several hours for whatever reason, or if passengers felt aggrieved in a number of different areas, they would be able to go after the airline for monetary compensation. This bill suggests that the minister responsible would then have the ability to set a monetary compensation level, but it is completely open-ended. It does not set down any clarity or any rules surrounding this compensation, such as what would prompt it, what would curtail it. The bill merely states that a minister would have the ability to arbitrarily set a monetary level of compensation for a passenger who felt his or her rights had been violated. On that basis alone, I do not think most members in this place could support the bill, because it is too vague. There is no detail illuminating exactly what the responsibilities of the airlines would be and what the responsibilities of the passengers should be. It is poorly written and I would encourage all members to at least go back to their own caucuses, talk to the minister and suggest that he look to at least amend or rewrite that portion of the bill, because it is poorly written.

Also, in a section in the bill dealing with air transportation and screening, in particular, whether or not airports would be able to avail themselves of additional screening devices. On the surface, it appears that might be a legitimate consideration for airports if their traffic were increasing and they felt they needed more screening devices to be able to properly screen passengers. It is something that most members here would think is a legitimate consideration. However, the bill also suggests that if an airport avails itself of a new screening apparatus, then the airline might end up paying for that screening device and passing along the additional cost to the passenger. In other words, rather than the airport authority paying for a screening device, it may pass that cost along to the airline.

The airline would want to recover that cost and would then pass the additional cost on to the passenger. What is that? It is a tax. There is no other way I can define it. It is simply a tax. Canadians are being taxed enough right now. The government, of course, wants to tax them even more, but that is perhaps a debate for another day. However, this provision is poorly thought out, poorly designed, and might end up, as an unintended consequence, taxing airline passengers even more than they are taxed today. It is another example of how the bill is not only poorly thought out, but poorly designed and poorly worded.

I will talk for a moment about another provision in the proposed act, the suggestion that locomotive railways would be able to put in voice and video recorders so that if an accident, God forbid, ever happened, the investigators would be able to determine, through examination of the voice and video recorders, what happened. The government is framing this as a preventative matter and and safety matter. However, I do not agree that it really is. While it may be of some benefit in the case of a major disaster, a major train derailment, for example, it really is not, in my view, a safety-related matter as much as things like brake inspections are. What it would do is open the door to the potential for abuse by railway investigators, who may take that voice and video recorder and use it for other purposes, perhaps for disciplinary action against locomotive, engineers, or union members who happen to be on that railway.

There are privacy laws in this country for a reason, and I am afraid that this particular provision, which may intend to address a safety issue, may have unintended consequences and end up violating Canadians' basic privacy rights. For that reason alone, together with the fact that I think the bill is poorly written, it should be defeated.

I can assure the House that members on the official opposition side will certainly be voting against Bill C-49.

[Jim Eglinski, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House again to speak on Bill C-49, the transportation modernization act. As we know, this omnibus bill would substantially amend 13 different acts and have consequential impacts on three modes of transportation: rail, air, and water. It should have been broken up, yet the Liberals across voted against the member for Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek when she made recommendations in committee to break this up and study each one in greater detail in order to cover some of the problems we have in Canada.

This bill is in response to the Canada Transportation Act review, which was tabled in 2016 by the Liberals, but was initiated by previous Conservative minister Emerson in 2014. The review Emerson did was looking ahead 20 years to 30 years to identify priorities and potential actions in transportation that would support Canada's long-term economic well-being. We recognized that transportation and the economy were changing, and had to make sure the legislation was up to date. The Emerson report was submitted to the minister almost 18 months ago, and provided the government with 60 recommendations to address a range of changing conditions and challenges across Canada's transportation sector. Unfortunately, the Liberals decided to launch another consultation process and are only just tabling the legislation this year.

I am not going to say there are no good parts to this bill. There are good parts and there are bad parts. They missed the mark in a few areas, and I would like to address some of those. I am going to address the good ones too.

I will deal first with railroad. In going through Bill C-49, the creation on new long-haul interswitching regulation has a lot of good facts. That followed suit from the Fair Rail for Grain Farmers Act that was brought in by the Conservative government. I am not going to go into too much detail, but there are good parts of it and there are some bad parts. I know it has been debated a lot in committee, and I think they worked pretty well on that.

One area I would like to comment on, which I think was positive, is that the Canadian Transportation Agency would gain the power to order a railroad to compensate any shipper that would be adversely affected for a railway's failure to fulfill the service level obligations under the new definition. It would also allow the Canadian Transportation Agency to try to inform these settled disputes between railways and shippers, and would mandate 90-day rulings by the CTA.

I was very glad to see this. CN runs through my riding of Yellowhead, and is a major east-west corridor for it. Over the last three or four years, I have received many complaints from major companies in forestry, coal mining, gravel hauling, fracking sand hauling, grain hauling, etc. about the railroad company committing to have a train at a specific location or facility at a certain time. These companies would have a crew of 10 people ready to load that train, yet no train would show up, and sometimes would not show up for a day or two. They are paying these crews, have shipment orders that might be going to the west coast or need to connect with a ship to get to an overseas port, and yet the railway did not consider that in good faith. This portion of the act is excellent to see, and hopefully it will resolve those types of issues.

Another concern I have that was not addressed in this omnibus bill is the length of trains that are now running in Canada and the lack of proper crews on those trains. Trains are running that are probably two to three times larger today than they were 10 or 15 years ago. It puts a lot of stress on the train crews and on communities. I am going to give an example, but before I do, I want to read a section of the Grade Crossing Regulations. Section 97(2) states:

It is prohibited for railway equipment to be left standing on a crossing surface, or for switching operations to be conducted, in a manner that obstructs a public grade crossing—including by the activation of the gate of a warning system—for more than five minutes when vehicular or pedestrian traffic is waiting to cross it.

It went on to say in section 98 that if there is a repeated issue with trains blocking a crossing, it should be resolved through collaboration between the rail company, local road authorities, etc. If that does not work, the local authority can send a letter to the minister to request a resolution.

Rail crossings have been brought up a number of times and the government and the committee failed to address those concerns. I am going to give an example.

The town I live in is Edson, located in the centre of Yellowhead riding. Our town is divided by the railroad tracks. We have two-mile trains that come in and stop, whether it is for crew changes, whether it is for checking brakes, or whatever. I could stack on my desk the number of complaints that the train is stopped for 15 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour. When it does that, people from the other side of that track cannot get into town. We have had ambulances stranded and emergency situations. We keep bringing this up with CN, but we do not see changes.

CN is monitoring the crossings, but we still continue to see blockages. This is a problem. CN says if we phone it in, that CN will break a train. Try to break a train two miles long at a crossing. It is virtually impossible. If a person has a heart attack on the other side of that train and needs an ambulance, that person's life can be in jeopardy. That is the situation we are facing in our community and other communities throughout our riding.

CN says people can talk to the railroad company, then go to the minister and look for results. I did that as the member of Parliament. I called a meeting of CN and Transport Canada. The Transport Canada officials said, “We have really long trains. Disregard the five minutes, it is not a big problem. Ten or 15 minutes, so what?” We have big trains and Transport Canada is not interested in looking after it. That is a failing in the new regulations. It should have been addressed.

Creation of air passenger rights regime is right. We all know that over the last few years we have seen a lot of bad things happening in airlines and we see a lot of bad things happening in Canada: delays, lots of times the airlines say they do not have a crew, people cannot go to a smaller community, or the flight is cancelled.

One thing that was not addressed and is very important to Canadians is the cost of air travel. As an example, I go back and forth to my riding almost every weekend. It costs me four times as much to go to my riding than to go from New York to Los Angeles, which is 1,000 kilometres shorter. We need to look at the costs incurred by Canadian air travellers.

We are looking at parts of the new air regulations allowing CATSA to be increased at certain airports to improve the flow of people going through and security measures. I do not disagree with that. I spend a lot of time going through Ottawa and Edmonton airports, but that cost should not be deferred to the air traveller. I believe it should be incurred by the Government of Canada, which is requiring the security recommendations.

I want to quickly deal with marine ports and the ability for them to borrow money from the new infrastructure bank. I believe that is totally wrong. The infrastructure bank would say it would lend $100 million or more, but what about the small communities like Edson, the city of Fort St. John, small cities across this country that are looking for infrastructure money to assist them in their infrastructure needs? We are going to take that money and squander it in the large centres and large seaports, which is not the right way to do it.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Trois-Rivières, who did an excellent job for us.

People need to understand how large this omnibus bill is. What is an omnibus bill? “They don't build those in Canada anymore”, is one of the things that comes to mind. However, the reality is that there are several pieces of legislation crammed into this one piece of legislation. What usually ends up happening as a result is that we do a lot of things, usually rather poorly. That is where we are headed today with regard to the very serious measures in this transportation act. These include rail safety issues, on which there are lessons that we should have learned from Lac-Mégantic and other places where derailments are still taking place. Rail safety issues continue to come up daily in Canada. We recently had another derailment.

We also have other things that could become quite problematic with respect to consumer rights. An airline passenger bill of rights is included in the legislation by name, and name only. It is a good example of what the government is proposing, namely, doing things by regulation, with no enforcement, no real law and, at the end of the day, nothing for consumers.

I will follow up a little on the people that consumers should contact about those types of situations in the future. If consumers have a problem with their airline and any type of compensation or problem related to it, they should contact the Liberals. The Liberals will own all of these problems directly, because they are willfully passing this on to the regulator. They will be the voice in the future to address any particular problems to that consumers face.

It is clever, because they are avoiding the responsibility of a real passenger bill of rights, which should have been done in a separate piece of legislation, with a rules-based system that is very clear and legislated. By doing it this way they are thinking they can say it is just a matter for the regulators and that they have nothing to do with it. However, the public could become quite educated about this process when they have a problem with the regulation in force. They would just need to see their Liberal member or to call another Liberal member somewhere else to get that direct input, because the Liberals are going to pass this piece of legislation with that knowledge. That will be the only real route to have input on anything, ranging from being delayed to not having one's rights observed, to being stuck on the tarmac for unlimited time, and so forth. All of those things, in terms of regulation, will basically be set through the minister. That is going to be a curse that the Liberals brought upon themselves once members of the public become a little more educated about how to actually respond to their particular situations.

With regard to report stage, the bill went back to committee and several pieces of legislation were dealt with in separate sections, which are important for Canadians to understand. One of them was the arrangements between airlines that would be allowed. We had amendments on that to challenge what would take place, because we will see less accountability in regard to airline mergers and ownership, and there will be no oversight to ensure that passengers and/or competition thrive. In fact, this bill would be a disincentive to competition, because it would take away that accountability and review by the tribunal.

The bill would strip away powers from an independent body that ensures competition in the airline industry, a body that would at least examine those issues and bring them to the minister, who would basically have the final say. That is problematic because when we look at the fact that the government has to deal with issues related to competition in the industry, not only domestically but internationally, with this bill we would be taking away an opportunity for increased competition in Canada. Indeed, we would potentially see some greater mergers take place, with less competition, and probably less routing. We have seen some development in medium-sized markets. There would be a disincentive to doing that now. It is important to note that we would be taking away what is currently being done, that lens of review for consumers. We are abandoning it.

The Railway Safety Act would also be affected by this legislation by adding video and voice recorders, but there is very little description on how that will take place, how they will be used, and what they are for. I think they are going to be used to reduce these positions while potentially increasing the hours for conductors and engineers as we have seen in this industry in the past.

We know from past independent reports that employees face a culture of fear and intimidation. These are the independent tribunal commission's own words as they relate to the safety management system.

With respect to the safety management system, people are expected to report problems in the workplace without any repercussions. Imagine doing something important at work for customers and realize there is a safety issue that could affect workers or customers, and that safety issue is brought to the attention of the person in charge. There is no accountability with respect to what happens to that information. We have seen the same thing federally. Whistleblowers have been fired and maligned in the public, because they have brought forth a number of cases relating to consumers. Imagine the intimidation.

We can even look more recently at some of the stuff that is happening with TD Bank. They are not necessarily life and death matters, but rather matters of privacy violations. A whistleblower spoke of privacy violations taking place in the bank, and that whistleblower is concerned about it.

The safety management systems that are in our rail systems right now are not conducive to good environments. It has been proven by an independent panel that workers are often blamed for bringing forward their safety concerns, and they face repercussions for doing so. That is the reality we are faced with today.

The Canada Marine Act would also be changed by this proposed legislation. It is important to note that ports are going to receive more autonomy, and have access to funds in the infrastructure bank, funds put there by taxpayers. Ports are fiefdoms onto themselves. They can often override municipal acts, or not follow them at all, in terms of environmental, and other planning practises that are necessary to ensure there is cohesiveness between the port, the municipality, and the areas around it.

They have the luxury of this type of environment that really creates quite a bit of conflict or animosity, because of the fact that individuals who sit on boards of various ports are political appointments. Ports are patronage bastions left from the dark ages of democracy. We only need go to the website, locate a person's name, and we will find the amount of the donation. We can see which riding association he or she belongs to, provincial or federal. It is quite interesting. I hope some thesis student is listening to this who would like to do a project on political appointments. This is low-hanging fruit which is easily accessible. In my experience, I have found some good rewards.

The Coasting Trade Act is also challenged in Bill C-49. Foreign registered ships would be allowed to have more freedom in Canadian waters. These are unaccounted ships. There is a problem with that. International ships are allowed to change flags for convenience to avoid human rights and worker rights issues on their ships and vessels, but also the way they can get oversight done with flags of convenience in particular. We had a case with former finance minister Paul Martin, who liked the Bahamas and Bermuda for flagging Canada Steamship Lines to gain tax advantages. This is no different than the current finance minister's use of those offshore avenues as well. This is very concerning because environmental issues and worker issues are at the forefront of that.

I will conclude by saying this is a missed opportunity. It is a dog's breakfast of legislation on so many serious issues. It is unfortunate, because it is an economic loss for us in terms of the operating systems we could put in place that would make us more competitive as a country.