Transport Committee on March 27th, 2012

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

All the information that comes out of the hearings will be public. The minister can take direct note from the contents of those hearings.

The step of going through the House of Commons, which would inevitably delay the final transmission of the committee's findings to the minister, does not add anything to the process.

This is a way to get an efficient, quick result from our hearings directly to the minister and also to do what is most important, and that is to find out from Air Canada, which has the obligation under the act, what it plans to do to meet its obligations.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Mr. Sullivan, and then Mr. Holder.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

I have to agree with Mr. Watson. Of course we want the minister to act and to enforce the law. Maybe the law and order agenda of the Conservatives only applies in certain circumstances, and there's no mandatory minimum for the executives of Air Canada who apparently are violating the law.

But yesterday the minister very clearly said outside the House and in the House that this matter was now going to be before this committee. This committee needs to be able to report back to the House of Commons. To take that role away makes this a complete mockery of what the minister said was going to happen.

Yes, we would rather the minister had just acted, as the Minister of Labour did when Air Canada, a private corporation, had a situation whereby there might have been a lockout. We have immediate and rapid action with private corporations when it suits the government, but when it doesn't suit the government it's referred to a committee.

Now the government side of this committee is trying to tell us that when it suits them this committee will not be able to report back to the House. And that is.... Yes, perhaps procedurally there wasn't a motion from the House referring it to this committee, because the House wanted the minister to act. The minister made it very clear that he was not going to act until he had a report from this committee. If he's not going to get a report from this committee into the House of Commons, that will render this committee's deliberations completely useless, in my opinion.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Mr. Holder, and then Mr. Nicholls.

[Ed Holder, Conservative, London West, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm not going to belabour the aspect of this motion, but I want to come back to you. I feel as if this meeting has been hijacked. And I want to say it in clear terms. My friend Mr. Coderre knew very clearly that the whole issue of committee business where we were going to entertain this motion was the 15 minutes toward the end.

We have significant officials here, senior officials, and we wanted to hear from them about the estimates, but instead we get mired in not an unimportant issue but one that was scheduled here. We've allowed this meeting to be hijacked, when we were here to hear officials talk about the estimates.

I'm quite disappointed this was the action taken for the purpose of what I can only feel is politics, when it was scheduled in this. And do you know what? At some point we have to take control of our own world this way, folks. It's really critical that we do that. Frankly, I hope we can spend the few minutes remaining talking to these officials and hearing what they have to say.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Before I recognize Mr. Coderre on a point of order, I think it's important for all committee members to know that once a motion has been tabled, it can be brought forward to committee at any time during that committee or any committee into the future.

Mr. Coderre.

[Denis Coderre, Liberal, Bourassa, QC]

That not only was my point of order, but if everybody feels that we should do something about it, instead of taking the floor three times, Mr. Holder, we should have just voted and it would have been okay.

Let's all save the time, and let's all vote—

[Ed Holder, Conservative, London West, ON]

Is that procedure, Mr. Coderre?

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Now I'm going to go to Mr. Nicholls, and that's the last person I have on the agenda, unless there is more comment.

[Jamie Nicholls, NDP, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

I would just like to add something quickly.

We want the report to be submitted to the House because it does not only involve the Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities, but also the Minister of Labour, the Minister of Industry and the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development. So it is not just the Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities and the Minister of Finance; it involves several ministers and they have to be aware of what we have been working on here, at the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Seeing no further comments, Ms. Chow has requested a recorded vote, and it will be on Mr. Poilievre's subamendment, which would basically eliminate the request that it be reported to the House. It's a recorded vote.

(Amendment agreed to: yeas 6; nays 5 )

The subamendment by Mr. Poilievre has been accepted, and we can now vote on Ms. Chow's amended subamendment.

Ms. Chow, do you want a recorded vote as well?

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Sure, why not? They tend to make it faster.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

A recorded vote, please.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

We'll just get on with life.

(Amendment agreed to: yeas 12 ; nays 0)

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Everybody has agreed, so now we will move to the motion by Mr. Coderre as amended by the committee.

Mr. Holder.

[Ed Holder, Conservative, London West, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. That was my point of clarification, that the motion we're voting on from Mr. Coderre includes my amendment.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Yes, it does.

[Denis Coderre, Liberal, Bourassa, QC]

I'd like a recorded vote.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Mr. Coderre has requested a recorded vote.

(Motion as amended agreed to: yeas 11; nays 1 [See Minutes of Proceedings])

Now, without further ado, we have our guests here. I know that they have lots of information to share with us.

I am going to start with Ms. Chow or Mr. Nicholls to open the questioning, or someone else, perhaps Ms. Morin?

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Are they going to do a presentation?

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Let me ask the deputy minister.

Do you have a comment?

[Yaprak Baltacioglu]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. It is such a great honour for me to be here.

Mr. Lebel has already introduced our team, but I wanted to introduce Natasha Rascanin, the new Assistant Deputy Minister for the Program Operations Branch at Infrastructure Canada, and Mr. McDonald, Ms. Burr and Helena Borges, assistant deputy ministers at the Department of Transport.

Thank you very much. We are now ready to answer your questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Ms. Chow, five minutes.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Thank you.

I see there are substantial cuts in aviation safety, marine safety. It's $17 million on aviation safety and marine safety is $10 million. Road safety is $639,000. Rail safety is $550,000. That's a total 7% cut, at $29 million.

I know on the rail side they need some funding to put into voice recorders, or eventually the positive train control system. I believe Amtrak, in the United States, is installing those positive force controls.

In terms of safety, do we not want to see more money on safety, rather than less?

That's the first part of my question, and the second one is VIA Rail. I know they had some funding to start the capital projects. I believe it's $152 million that is being decreased from overall funding. That's 33%. That's a substantial amount of money taken out of VIA Rail. They have finished some of their projects, but there are many more that they could do.

I took VIA Rail recently, and it's a beautiful ride, but looking at that train, it could use some work. We want more people taking VIA Rail, not less.

So on those areas, both VIA Rail, with a cut of 33%, and the safety cuts of 7% from the entire overall program, can you give us some justification on that, please?

[Yaprak Baltacioglu]

Sure. Thank you very much for the question.

Let me go through them one at a time. In terms of minor cuts to road safety and to rail, there is a new organization that was created in the federal government: Shared Services Canada. Basically all of our IT, our computer activities, went to that organization. As part of the creation of the organization, every department that had IT resources within their staff had to transfer—