To offer some background on the subject, Bill C-11—some of you might know it as the act to amend the Canada Transportation Act and the Railway Safety Act—contained some provisions that required air carriers to include all fees and taxes in the advertised prices. Clause 27 also included the provision allowing the agency to make conditional and restricted regulations, to be enacted as Section 86.2.
With the exception of clause 27, the bill was brought into force on June 22, 2007. Madam Chow is quite right in her chronology. The reason that the Senate standing committee on transport infrastructure added that clause to the bill was to provide the airfare advertising clause some time to come into force, in order to reflect the transition that would be necessary for it to happen without harming competition.
Since 2007, the European Union has introduced regulations to the same effect. The United States did the same, and it has now come into effect on January 24, 2012. Clause 27 of the original bill is expected to be brought into force in the reasonably near future, and that will trigger the regulation. It was actually brought into effect already, in December last year—quite recently—but that just triggers the Canadian Transportation Agency to now develop the regulations, and that's exactly what the CTA is doing as we speak.
The government is committed to competition and to enhancing consumer protection with full-cost ticket advertising. That being said, we do need to ensure that the regulations are drafted properly, and that they are not harmful to an industry that employs people across this country. The agency has commenced the process of drafting regulations. Consultations with stakeholders are part of that drafting process, and it is expected to take approximately one year.
I do appreciate the urgency with which Ms. Chow wants to treat this matter. She has been passionate about the subject for a very long time, and I credit her with that. At the same time, I think she will agree that it is important that the agency is meticulous and precise in the way it applies these regulations and that the industry is able to transition towards them.
I think it's important to keep in mind a couple of things. This is an international business. This is not the kind of business where you're transporting someone down the street; you're transporting people across borders and across continental divides. There are countries in this world that don't have this regulation. When Canadians go online and try to find, for example, a connecting flight from Paris to Dubai, they'll have a whole series of options. If that same flight is advertised by Air Canada and the price is, let's say, $1,500—but that's an all-in price—and then they see that Emirates offers the flight for $600, but that's not all-in, the consumer could be tricked into believing they're getting a vastly better deal by buying from a foreign carrier.
As a result, that puts Canada's airlines at a potential competitive disadvantage. The problem I just identified is mitigated by the fact that the EU and the United States have now gone toward this regulation, but it is not completely eliminated as a problem. We believe the best way to move forward with full-price ticket advertising is to provide a window of transition, so that industry can find ways to confront the challenges that this new rule will bring in and to prepare ways to communicate to customers, who might be looking at a flight like the one I just described and do not understand the variance in regulations between the rules that apply to domestic Canadian carriers and foreign carriers that are in competition on some international routes.
That's the approach we're taking, and we are moving as quickly as it is responsible to do. So our members will have to oppose this particular motion, while acknowledging its worthy intent and the good work that the honourable member who moved it has done on the file.