To answer Mr. Bevington, I will repeat that if we are adopting a bill of rights but we add a list of exceptions, so that only one segment of passengers are compensated, that is a very bad message.
I understand what he said because the more he analyzes his bill in depth, the more he will reach the same conclusion as I have: that we must not lead passengers to believe that we are going to solve their problems. This is not the way to solve them. The more witnesses who appeared, the more convinced I became of this. Even if we add 30 more days of debate and call witnesses pro and con the idea, my position will not change.
Certainly it will be possible to introduce other bills, private members' bills, and adjust them accordingly. I have no problem with that, but this one, the way it is drafted... Mr. Maloway's contribution has merit, but we have to examine the problem in depth and take into account how the air transportation system works in Canada. There are independent airport authorities. NAV CANADA is completely independent of the government. These players have to be at the table, if we ever want to discuss passengers' rights.
In my opinion, the best solution is to report to the House of Commons. What we must not do is send a false message. If we do not adopt what I have proposed, we will be giving people the impression that airlines are the only "bad guys". We have to make them understand that the airlines are not the only players in this industry. They should not be the only ones who have to contribute to the solution, some day, when the time comes.
I think this bill does not propose the solution we would like to adopt. When the time comes, all these players have to sit down at the same table to work it out. I made this addition so that people would not think, once again, that the airlines are lobbying us. As I said last time, I didn't need lobbying to understand that the objective of the bill had merit, but when we got to the bottom of things it became clear that the result was not what was expected.
I urge you to support this motion.