Transport Committee on Nov. 23rd, 2010

[Joseph Galimberti]

Do you mean on a Canadian aircraft, a security incident? No, there's nothing related to that.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

So we don't really have any risk assessment to go with this. But curiously enough, through Canadian airspace just a year ago we did have an incident in which an overflight of Canada had the underwear bomber on it. Is that correct?

[Joseph Galimberti]

Yes.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

So our government hasn't chosen to think that there's a problem with checking information on flights overflying Canada, even though we've had an incident. Yet the United States, with no incidents of overflight, wants security information that we haven't shared in the past and haven't had any problem with.

So what we have here, I think, quite clearly, is that we're all around this table wondering what the U.S. is doing, and we're going to comply with them. We have an illogical situation occurring, and we're willing to comply with it. As good Canadians, we want to keep our businesses going, and we want to ensure that our people get to Mexico and the Caribbean. That's a good idea. So we have to come up with a solution that doesn't reward illogical behaviour and that can give us some redress in the future.

The U.S., in their final note on the Secure Flight, has the ability to completely exempt Canada from sharing information based on comparable systems. We have a situation where the U.S. government won't accept our system as comparable in security with theirs. I think what we have is a situation of time. We need time with this legislation.

The Conservative government chose to deal with it in this fashion. This has caused us all considerable grief. They brought it forward at the last moment in June, and then they brought if forward again without giving us enough time for a decision. So we're now stuck with the options that would appear to be there to amend the bill so that our legacy from working on this bill is something that will not impair Canadians forever.

That's my statement on it. I didn't want to draw any conclusions. I was following Mr. Jean's line, where he laid out what's going on here. I appreciate the parliamentary secretary's efforts as well.

So here we go. We would appreciate any suggestions you have about this bill and how it can be amended so that we can ensure that we're not moving in the wrong direction. We don't want to move in a direction that will permanently impair Canadians' privacy.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Thank you. If you have any recommendations, I suggest that you submit them and any accompanying documents to the chair or the clerk.

Ms. Brown.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Thanks for all that you've said here. I think it's been most helpful in shedding some light on this. We know that the United States has sovereignty in its own airspace. This is a decision that they've made. If we want to fly over their airspace, this is their decision, not ours.

But I want to come back to something, Mr. Goldstein, that you talked about earlier. When I look at my role as a parliamentarian, I believe that part of my role is to be a forward-looking person. I try to avoid situations in which I am forced to react, but often by the time it comes to legislation we are reacting to something that's gone on in society.

You made a comment earlier about the need to move toward greater harmonization of security measures, and you talked about the perimeter they have in the EU. What would it look like for Canada and the United States to have a secure perimeter? Any thoughts on that? What does it look like in Europe? You said Germans don't feel any less German, or the French any less French. What have they done that we should be looking at as legislators to be forward-looking people and not always reactive?

[David Goldstein]

I don't want to say it's utopic, but it's something where unfortunately we missed some steps in the wake of 9/11 that probably could have been taken to ensure a different course for the security perimeter of North America.

Without delving into too much history, it's clear in public statements of our ministers around the table at the time that there was a healthy debate around the cabinet table in those days of how we were going to deal in the immediate wake after 9/11. Having lost that initial time, we are going to have to figure out how....

You know, if a multitude of countries in the EU can figure out multilateral agreements in order to make this work.... Considering it's an area of the world that has had physical conflict as late as 10, 15 years ago, in the Balkans, you can still get on a train from Kosovo and go to London without papers. It's unbelievable to me what I have to go through just to take a trip to Washington for the day.

In a sense, there are many who consider the Americans to have an upper hand, but at the same time, my colleagues in Washington have the same concerns. The U.S. Travel Association has the same concerns over those border issues as we do. I think over time we're going to have to figure out how we get into bilateral discussions with Congress, and frankly successive administrations, to try to ameliorate the situation. Otherwise, we're putting a bottleneck on our own trade and commerce. Tourism is an export industry, and effectively by requiring documentation, by requiring difficult widening borders, you're effectively putting a trade restraint on yourself, as we are with our biggest trading country.

All the niceties of tourism aside, if we start to look at it in those terms, it's easier to get a box of cherries from California here than it is somebody from California, and that's a problem for the Canadian economy.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

So in your estimation, is this a first step toward correcting some of the problems that were created? And is this a move for future discussion in helping to mitigate some of the things we're facing right now?

[David Goldstein]

Any step, however small, that creates cooperation between the two jurisdictions to allow free passage of people, and not just goods, across the border and internationally is important to our sector economically, and probably to our safety as passengers.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Thank you.

It's interesting that you make that comment, and yet there are jurisdictions in North America where they're talking about building walls around themselves, which is very unfortunate.

We're going to recess for two minutes.

I'll thank our guests for being here today. We appreciate your input, and hopefully you'll see some results from your input here today.

For the committee, I would like all the committee members to stay. We're going to have a brief 10- or 15-minute committee meeting to make some plans for the after-hour committee meetings that have been asked for by other members.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Thank you, and welcome back, everyone.

In the last meeting we talked about hosting extra meetings in regard to some of the outstanding issues we have. I'm seeking some direction from the committee.

I would ask that all committee members review their schedules and submit to Bonnie what evenings they would be available over the next two weeks. Once we do that we'll try to build enough meetings so that when we have quorum, or enough people are committed, we will call the meeting and do the issues. We do need to know that by Thursday. If we're going to start booking witnesses, we need to be able to give them confirmed times.

The budget on Bill C-42 has been circulated to all members. Everybody has a copy of it. This is basically the cost of either bringing individuals in or setting up video conferences.

I would need a motion for that.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

I so move.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

The seconder is Mr. Mayes.

Thank you.

(Motion agreed to [See Minutes of Proceedings])

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Okay. That is taken care of.

I did want to ask the committee about Bill C-511, which is outstanding and sitting waiting to come to committee, just for advice.

Mr. Guimond.

[Michel Guimond, Bloc, Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, QC]

Mr. Chairman, before we go on to the other bill, I would like to raise two points. With regard to the schedule for the study we're doing on noise, I was wondering whether colleagues would state when they are available. I'm not just talking about evenings. It could also be from 3:30 p.m., after question period. I repeat: I have no objection to it being in the evenings. However, if we were at times available from 3:30, that would be enough.

Furthermore, it may be too early to address this question, but I was wondering whether we could consider having the committee, in whole or in part, making a same-day round trip journey to Washington to meet some of our American counterparts and to ask them some questions. I see that two of the witnesses are from Washington. Are they agents of the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Transport or other departments?

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

The witnesses who have been invited are the Liberty Coalition and the U.S. administration. I think that's something the committee could discuss. We could also set up a video conference with them, if we are looking at the time push we're up against in December.

I think your suggestion of 3:30, if that...and the reason I made the request to find out what people's schedules are. So 3:30 would be another number we could look at.

Mr. McCallum.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

I have two specific suggestions.

One is that I'm getting a bit concerned that we keep putting off appearances of municipal people on the subject of the deadline. I was going to suggest that we might have a special meeting on, for example, Wednesday, December 1, to deal with that. That's one proposal.

The second issue is that I think it might be a good idea to hear the minister on the subject of the estimates at some point.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Thank you. That would have to take place by the 7th of December. We have to report them on the 7th, so it would have to take place either on a regular working day, the 2nd, or a meeting outside of that. Certainly in discussion with the committee we can make that decision.

I want to ask the committee about this. Obviously there's infrastructure, and we had infrastructure and signage. We have the situation of noise at airports. We have the Air Canada cargo issue that's been brought forward. What I need to know from the committee is what priority we would want to put on these. If we're trying to book these, who would we ask first?

Mr. Guimond.

[Michel Guimond, Bloc, Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, QC]

Remember that, when we prepared the business agenda in the steering committee, we talked about keeping certain operations at Air Canada's maintenance centres, about compliance with the Air Canada Public Participation Act, about Aveos, and about keeping the maintenance centres in Mississauga, Montreal and Winnipeg. Time should be scheduled in order to start that study.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

I guess that would be on the list. I just need to know what would be the priority of the committee. Obviously, we're pushing up against a December 16 deadline.

Mr. Jean, then Mr. Dhaliwal.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

As I've said in the committee before, and Monsieur Guimond has agreed, my number one issue is that we continue on with committee business, legislation specifically, because we have three bills. Other than that, I'm prepared to sit whenever anybody wants. I think 3:30 p.m. is a great suggestion.

I am getting concerned about the infrastructure issue being a priority only because we have three pieces of legislation in front of us waiting to happen: Bill C-511, which is of course Mr. Volpe's PEDAL act, which the government has said it's open to look at; Bill C-42, which is before us now and for which we are under a time constraint; and Bill C-33, a railway review coming forward, which a lot of user groups I think are going to be rattling our doors very heavily on.

Originally, when we agreed to have the infrastructure motion and to have that study, it was suggested to have two meetings. Then I think it was a government amendment that said have up to four. We've had three or four already. If we're going to go into those meetings, I would prefer them not being a priority, and just doing them outside of regular meetings, certainly whenever you want to do so.

I think Mr. Guimond is correct in relation to the public participation act. I think we have to study that. That's an issue that's coming forward, and we might have to deal with it as a committee or as a government immediately, so it would be a good idea to get input on that.

As far as I'm concerned, as long as the regular committee meetings are the legislation and we continue with the legislation as we're doing, I'm open to whichever priorities the opposition parties want to study.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

I think, just for the record, Mr. McCallum suggested Wednesday, December 1, which is not a committee day.

Again, I need input from everyone to agree to that. If that's what we agree to, then we'll try right now to establish the witnesses for December 1.

Monsieur Guimond.

[Michel Guimond, Bloc, Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

In the wake of what Mr. Jean just suggested, as parliamentary secretary, perhaps he could send a request to departmental officials. We could schedule a one-hour meeting or a briefing by Transport Canada officials to get their interpretation of the Air Canada Public Participation Act.

Air Canada clearly has an opinion that, in any case, in our view, is not consistent with the act. That's why I would like officials to come and tell us what they think about it. Then, if the officials prove us right, we'll ask the minister to make submissions to Air Canada.

This isn't a minor matter. We're talking about more than 4,500 jobs in the three provinces concerned, well paid direct employment. None of those people works for minimum wage. With the indirect jobs that generates, subcontractors and other workers, we're talking about 23,000 jobs in Canada.

That could be transferred to El Salvador and there are also equivalents in Costa Rica. Don't think I'm being racist toward Salvadoreans, but I believe the jobs we have in Quebec and Canada should stay here.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Just before I recognize Mr. Bevington, can I ask that members advise Bonnie by late today or tomorrow noon for sure, and we would schedule December 1 at 3:30 or 5:30 p.m. or whatever time, if that works.

As I said before, if not all members can attend, and I regret that not all can, but if we have quorum, I think I would call the meeting so that we could start the process. Please keep that in mind.

Mr. Bevington.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

December 1 at 3:30 p.m. would work for me, but definitely not the evening. Thursdays are going to be tough for anyone to swallow here. Thursday evenings, I suppose, are out of consideration, but if they are...I think the Thursday evening is a good time. I'd recommend that it take place.

I agree with Monsieur Guimond; we talked about this and we wanted to bring in the airlines on this issue. I sense that we need to also look at how many witnesses we have with Bill C-42 and see whether we can achieve our ends there in a reasonable time.

I know that probably makes Mr. Jean happy, but I'm not averse to doing that on occasion.