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.

Transportation Modernization Act

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

Mr. Speaker, there have been discussions among the parties and I believe if you seek it you will find consent for the following.

That notwithstanding any Standing Order or usual practice, at the conclusion of today's debate on 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, all questions necessary to dispose of the third reading stage of the said Bill be deemed put and a recorded division deemed requested and deferred until Wednesday, November 1, 2017, at the expiry of the time provided for Government Orders.

That being said, Happy Halloween.

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.

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

Mr. Speaker, this afternoon, we will continue the debate we began this morning on the Conservative Party's opposition motion.

Tomorrow, we will begin debate at report stage of Bill C-46 on impaired driving.

Next Monday shall be an allotted day. For the remainder of next week, we will resume debate on Bill C-46 and also commence debate at report stage of Bill C-49, transportation modernization.

Transport, Infrastructure and Communities

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, Humber River—Black Creek, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the 15th report of the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities 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. The committee has studied the bill, and we had great co-operation from all members of the committee from all sides of the House. It was an example of how to deal with legislation in a proper and effective way in the House. We have decided to report the bill back to the House with amendments.

Bill C-48--Time Allocation Motion

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

Mr. Speaker, I am glad that my colleague brought up the fact, as I did beforehand, that Bill C-49 passed yesterday through clause-by-clause study. It is certainly my hope that Bill C-48 will go through a similar collegial process. There will be that opportunity.

I totally respect the independence of the committee as our government has done from the very beginning, unlike the previous government. I am sure when it does arrive at committee, there will be a similar opportunity to hear witnesses to argue for and against, and eventually go to clause-by-clause study. I hope to do all this in a collegial manner.