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 Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Okay, we've had enough discussion on that one, and I think we all know what the intent was.

Oh, wait a minute. Mr. Rayes is the last person to comment before we move to our Bill C-49discussion.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

We're going to have that in the next discussion, once we close off the discussion on this one, which I think we have now talked about enough. August 1 was the suggested date, but we'll go into Bill C-49 and see what the committee suggests.

At the moment that's what we have decided, so we can get any of the suggested witnesses in by June 14, so that the clerk has them when the time allows for us to move into that particular study.

Mr. Badawey.

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

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I'm finding it interesting that we are going into such detail about a study that we don't have on the calendar yet. I'm thinking it probably won't get on the calendar until sometime in late September or early October given that we don't know if we're going to get through our aviation study by the end of this session, and given that we have a schedule before us that's going to see us sitting for four days before the session even starts, for a total of 20-some hours, on Bill C-49. We're then going to have to report that back to the House, and yet we're going into great detail about a study that we don't even have on the calendar yet. I recognize that you've asked for witnesses by June 14. When do you want the witnesses for Bill C-49 in?

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

I mentioned the other day that we need to get our witness list for this study on smart cities by June 14, so we will have it by the time we get to this.

Okay, Ms. Block, I have a list here. Hold on.

Then we need to move on to Bill C-49.

Mr. Badawey.

[Vance Badawey, Liberal, Niagara Centre, ON]

When the minister comes out, is your expectation that he will talk about Bill C-49?

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

To signal our interest and extend a formal invitation to the minister, I move that the committee formally invite the minister to appear in order to discuss Bill C-49.

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

We definitely do have time to deal with the aviation study in the three meetings that would follow a meeting with the minister and his departmental officials. Again, for the purposes of having something on the schedule, not knowing whether or not we're going to be able to deal with the report on Tuesday, I think this makes the most sense given the sense of urgency that I know we are feeling based on what we are hearing back from our producers and other stakeholders with regard to Bill C-49—at least with regard to those measures that are due to sunset in August.

I can't stress enough how much I really do think we should go ahead with that initial meeting with the minister and his departmental officials on Tuesday and look at spending the rest of this session closing the loop on the aviation study until we rise on the 23rd.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Right now, no one is more torn than I am over these two proposals.

There is absolutely no question that we have to hear from the minister on Bill C-49. It seems to me that it will be a lot more complicated to get him here in September, given that the House will not be back yet and he'll likely be travelling all over the country.

I'd like to know whether my Conservative colleagues want the full two hours on Tuesday or prefer to spend an hour with the minister and meet with department officials in September.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

But being realistic, which I always am, once we get into Bill C-49 in the fall, we will be tied up with that for a while. Then we're going to have to go back, and if we don't do some substantial work on the body of the report and the recommendations on the aviation study, we will be going back to the aviation study sometime in the fall. That's a long time since when we heard the testimony, and so on.

If the minister were to come, he probably would only be here for an hour, so that would leave us one hour—

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

Madam Chair, I think the proposal by my colleague was that we plan for the minister to come on Tuesday, given the uncertainty about the report. At least then we will know that we've got something scheduled for Tuesday. If he can't come and all things align and we end up dealing with the report, that's fine, but I think in an effort to have something planned for Tuesday, given the uncertainty, we are proposing that we move ahead with the invitation to the minister for Tuesday, knowing that we'll get that part of the initial study on Bill C-49 done, and then we move to the aviation study report on Thursday, and perhaps into the following week and the next, until we rise.

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

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I support inviting the minister to come on Tuesday. That would build in the flexibility we're looking for, given the timing of the report we're about to receive. It would perhaps address the sense of urgency that I know my colleague across the way was responding to when he suggested we meet prior to the start of the fall session, and perhaps what I believe to be a very heavy schedule for a week in terms of the testimony we want to hear and given that we need to get names of witnesses in by Wednesday next week. It may be a demonstration to our grain farmers and those folks who have deep concerns about the measures due to sunset on August 1 if we were to bring in the minister to talk about Bill C-49.

We would do that anyway. I'm sure we would kick off a study on Bill C-49 by bringing in the minister and departmental officials, if that could happen before the House rises. Perhaps we could even focus on those measures due to sunset and get testimony from him on that. That could be a good way of addressing both the study being proposed for that time in September and the need to build in the flexibility that we're looking for on the aviation study report.

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

I think we could invite the minister to the prestudy of Bill C-49. We could address some of the issues to the minister that we heard from our constituents and all the stakeholders on that file. We will have to argue about this little part of Bill C-49 really fast, and we know we will not have time to discuss all of C-49 in September. Let's start on this bill next week. That's why it's important to talk about this on Tuesday.

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

—because I want to suggest that we invite the minister next week to talk about Bill C-49 in a prestudy because of the railway thing, the farmers' grain thing. Maybe if the minister can be here on Tuesday, that will let us—

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

I'd like to finalize the aviation study direction first, and then we're going to Bill C-49.

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

Madam Chair, what I have to say may help us figure this out. The subcommittee wasn't able to meet to plan out the days and weeks ahead or specifically discuss the motion on the committee's study of Bill C-49, expected in September. Your assistant sent me a proposed schedule for the study of the bill. As we've seen, the stakeholders, namely grain producers out west and railway representatives, are anxious to know what the approach is going to be.

In terms of this study, before discussing the proposed schedule for September—