Transport Committee on March 25th, 2021

[Chris Bittle, Liberal, St. Catharines, ON]

I can wait for the clerk.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Okay, thank you, Mr. Bittle.

We'll suspend for about a minute.

[The Clerk]

The motion reads:

That, pursuant to Standing Order 108(1)(a), an Order of the Committee do issue for correspondence between Transport Canada, including the Minister of Transport and his staff, and the Canadian Transportation Agency regarding cancelled plane tickets and the right of air passengers to be reimbursed, and that these documents be provided to the Committee Clerk within 15 days following the adoption of this motion.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Mr. Clerk.

It has been so moved by Mr. Barsalou-Duval. The motion is on the table now. Do members of the committee have any questions or comments?

I see one hand up.

Mr. Bittle, you have the floor.

[Chris Bittle, Liberal, St. Catharines, ON]

Mr. Chair, again we're into one of these production motions. It seems the goal is designed to make the department fail to try to produce potentially hundreds, if not thousands, of documents, translate them and bring them back to the committee within 15 days. I think we're dealing with several holidays around that time as well.

I'd like to get an opinion from the opposition. The minister is usually entitled to advice from his exempt staff. I'm concerned that this is getting to areas that Parliament hasn't delved into before in terms of correspondence between.... Maybe it's just a matter of clarification. Maybe Mr. Barsalou-Duval is just looking for correspondence between the Transport Canada minister and his staff with the Canadian Transportation Agency rather than correspondence between the minister and his staff. That clarification is important. I think we need to make sure that's not on the table.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Mr. Bittle.

We're now going to Mr. Rogers, and then Ms. Jaczek and then Mr. Barsalou-Duval.

Mr. Rogers, the floor is yours.

[Churence Rogers, Liberal, Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, NL]

Chair, this is a motion that would require an extensive amount of work to produce these kinds of documents, and besides, aren't these kinds of documents between the staff and the minister supposed to be confidential information that we're requesting? I would certainly not support that kind of motion.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Mr. Rogers.

Ms. Jaczek.

[Helena Jaczek, Liberal, Markham—Stouffville, ON]

Chair, the minister has said over and over again that any assistance package is dependent on the reimbursement of passengers. I'm agreeing with my colleagues on the confidentiality of the correspondence, the toing and froing. Since you posted your motion, we have a result. We know the minister is committed to ensuring reimbursement. I'm wondering what practical effect this will have going forward.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Ms. Jaczek.

Mr. Barsalou-Duval.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Thank you, honourable members, for your questions and clarifications.

I put forward the motion because I wanted the committee to adopt it back in the fall, when I first submitted it. Unfortunately, that was not possible. I believe there was opposition to the 14-day deadline. If members find that deadline too tight, I am amenable to changing it, depending on what members feel is a reasonable deadline. Perhaps 21 days would do the trick.

As for Mr. Bittle's comment about the correspondence, I want to make clear that the correspondence in question is between the Canadian Transportation Agency and Transport Canada, and between the Canadian Transportation Agency, the minister's office and the minister, himself. Obviously, I am not trying to capture correspondence between internal office staff.

I would be shocked if there were thousands of pages of documents. In fact, my feeling is that anywhere close to 20 emails would be a lot. The agency is supposed to be entirely independent, making its own decisions. As far as I can tell, this kind of correspondence exists, given that we saw similar exchanges after receiving documents related to other motions for the production of papers. It may not have been a lot, but it did exist.

Nevertheless, when a member of my staff made an access to information request, we were told that there was no such documentation. That is surprising because the opposite is true. The committee received documents, but there were none according to the response to the access to information request. Something is wrong there, so I think it's important to set things straight.

That is why I am asking the committee to adopt the motion.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Mr. Barsalou-Duval.

Go ahead, Mr. Sidhu.

[Maninder Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton East, ON]

Mr. Chair, I do agree with some of my colleagues here on the timeline, with the sensitivity around this. We do know that the government is working hard and diligently toward an agreement. I've spoken to many of my constituents as well. Part of the agreement...the refund for passengers is part of that.

With the Easter long weekend coming up, we're not going anywhere, but I think the department also deserves to be respected, and we need to be considerate of that as well for the department.

Those are some of my thoughts, but I would also like to hear what our Conservative friends or our friends from the NDP think of this. It would be nice if they were to weigh in as well.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Mr. Sidhu.

Next is Mr. Bittle.

[Chris Bittle, Liberal, St. Catharines, ON]

Mr. Chair, again, I appreciate the update from Mr. Barsalou-Duval, and perhaps we should start working on some of the changes. Perhaps it isn't many.

There's another concern I have if we're dealing with airlines and with refunds and potential correspondence. My concern comes back, and I know we discussed.... I forget what the issue was going back to the fall. Perhaps it was this very motion itself, if we've debated it before. I think we did debate another motion for the production of documents, but it was on the issue of commercial sensitivity.

If we're going to go forward with this.... I know we agreed to that before in terms of how it's something that, hopefully, we can agree to. Hopefully, we can ensure, because we don't want to put the airlines in a negative position.... I shouldn't say “negative position”, as I'm not too worried about putting the airlines in a negative position in terms of having to answer questions of Parliament and parliamentarians, but it's in terms of having commercially sensitive information released in a public setting that may have been shared with the minister's office or the Canadian Transportation Agency.

Those are the further concerns that I have.

I see that a couple of hands are up. I would like to hear from Mr. Bachrach what he has to say on the issue.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Mr. Bittle.

Mr. Bachrach.

You're on mute, Taylor.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

That was my best material, Mr. Chair.

Thanks, Mr. Bittle, for asking what my thoughts are on what I see as being a very reasonable motion.

We too would be very interested to see the tone and content of any conversations that took place between the minister's office and Transport Canada and the CTA. Before and after the statement on vouchers, what was the tone of those conversations? How much coordination was there between the arm’s-length CTA and Transport Canada and the minister? Maybe there was very little, in which case it would set our minds at ease. However, with so many questions about how things transpired and why thousands of passengers have not yet received the money they're owed, I think it would really benefit this committee's work to have that information.

It seems entirely appropriate to me, so I'll be supporting the motion.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Mr. Bachrach.

Ms. Kusie, go ahead.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

I want to thank Mr. Barsalou-Duval for his motion.

The Conservatives are always for transparency, so we will vote in favour of the motion.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Ms. Kusie.

Mr. Sidhu.

[Maninder Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton East, ON]

I was just going to add here that many companies share information with the government and they consider it to be confidential. I just want to throw that out there.

I also think we could be discussing rail safety here. It's very important to many of the members here, but here we are discussing another subject.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

I do want to be clear that one of the reasons I thought this motion was already dealt with at a previous meeting is that it was on the table and we had shut it down, basically. Now we're just resuming debate on the same motion.

With that, I will move to Mr. Bittle.

[Chris Bittle, Liberal, St. Catharines, ON]

Again, we're in the same boat. I hear the opposition and the desire to move this forward. I think Monsieur Barsalou-Duval did state that the timeline may be open for some movement. With Easter and Passover coming this week and with restrictions potentially increasing in Ontario.... I hear things are doing much better in Quebec, but unfortunately they're not doing much better in Ontario, and that is a real challenge, as we know. I think there's only one member sitting in the committee room today. As much as we would like to keep things open and keep our workplaces going, the virus is in charge and the virus controls these things. I don't want to put us in a position where, despite the good faith efforts....

I guess I'm a little disappointed, because we really could have asked the officials. The people who will be in charge of this process are sitting here with their cameras off, waiting to carry on and talk to us about fundamental issues like safety and like COVID-19 and the impact on the sector. It could have been a good opportunity to ask them.

I guess what I'd like to do, as I'm rambling on a bit here, in terms of simplification.... I know it's a political statement and I don't want to get into the issue in terms of the right of air passengers to be reimbursed. I don't know if that adds a level of complexity, and that's not the hill that I necessarily want to die on today. I know that no one believes this, but as lawyers we like to keep things as simple as possible, despite many of the things you've seen from your own lawyers.

Just as an issue of clarification to remove that line.... Hopefully, these can be friendly amendments, but to remove that line just for clarification.... Perhaps we could also simplify—it may just be a translation issue from French to English—and maybe just tighten up the language in terms of the “correspondence between Transport Canada, including the Minister of Transport” and his office. Get rid of that and the “staff” portion and “the Canadian Transportation Agency” and increase the time to 30 days.

Again, Mr. Bachrach could be right. It could be a few documents. It could be hundreds of documents. We don't know.

I don't know, but given COVID-19, given the inability to necessarily freely go into the office and the right of parliamentarians to have documents in both official languages, those are my thoughts for clarification purposes. We would be fine to move forward on that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

That said, MP Bittle, are you making that as an amendment?

[Chris Bittle, Liberal, St. Catharines, ON]

I didn't put anything very specific in there. My apologies to the clerk. I don't know if he can piece together an amendment from my ramblings. If we even just said “do issue for correspondence between Transport Canada and the Canadian Transportation Agency”, and again, this is just for clarification, not to try to avoid the minister's office having to comply with this. The minister's office is part of Transport Canada.

It's just to clarify that line, because that's the line that worries me, so to clarify: “That, pursuant to Standing Order 108(1)(a), an order of the committee do issue for correspondence between Transport Canada and the Canadian Transportation Agency regarding cancelled plane tickets, and that these documents be provided to the committee clerk within 30 days of the adoption of this motion.”