I am going to try to be respectful to my colleagues in the NDP. I have introduced amendments that express the intention we have of providing complete protection for passengers by legislation. The aim was not to try to introduce a bill and avoid it by adding interminable amendments. Trying to please will not make it better.
A little earlier I said that the longer the debate went on the more likely we would reach the foreseeable outcome. To produce a bill that protects passengers' rights we have to have all the players at the table, and that was not done in the case of the bill introduced by the NDP, with all due respect to Mr. Maloway.
This is fine. A member decided to introduce a bill. He probably wanted to make some political hay. But we can't do that on the backs of the airlines and at the expense of passengers. Ultimately, maybe 15% of events will be covered, the rest won't be, and there will be no one held responsible.
I think that when we do have to tackle this issue, all the players will have to be at the table. Obviously, it changed the meaning, and I am sorry about that. I would have liked to be able to do it, and we worked to accomplish that. The evidence is that if you read the amendments, you will see that they have tried to hold the airline company responsible and it could have got reimbursed, but that is not easy.
From the outset, the sponsor of this bill should have understood that it was doomed to fail. I'm sorry that he has had a wake-up call today, that he finds this hard and that he is not happy. That will pass, is all.