Transport Committee on June 6th, 2024

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

In the interests of ensuring that we can somehow get to our witnesses today and possibly conclude both of these items, I will suspend for five minutes and allow members to talk off-line. We'll see if we can make some progress.

The meeting is suspended.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thanks for your patience, everyone.

I have Mr. Strahl next on my list, so we will turn the floor over to him, followed by Dr. Lewis, Mr. Bachrach and Mr. Bittle.

Mr. Strahl, the floor is yours.

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Hope, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I think we can move to a vote on this. I think we want the original motion to pass, so if we need to have a discussion or a vote on an amendment, we're happy to have this matter dealt with at the committee right now.

Standing Order 108(2), from my reading of it, is not a 106(4). It does not compel this to go to the top of the order; it merely indicates that this is something the committee wishes to study. The chair or the clerk may want to correct me on that, but that is my understanding, so any worries about this suddenly cleaving in half our study on northern rural airports or air access, I think, are unfounded. This will simply be something that the committee has expressed an interest in pursuing further, and I think clearly we have heard that there is an interest in pursuing it further.

We can discuss how that goes, but I think we can dispose of this rather quickly. We're anxious to speak to the witnesses from both panels, so we're happy to have this go to the votes necessary to deal with this matter.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you, Mr. Strahl.

I will turn it over to Dr. Lewis.

[Leslyn Lewis, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

I just wanted to speak briefly to a matter raised by Mr. Barsalou-Duval pertaining to the relevance of the witnesses.

I think, in the motion, the relevance of witness “a”, Andrée-Lise Méthot, is obvious; she's the person with the alleged conflict.

Witness “b”, Jayne Huntley, director of appointments with PCO, obviously had some involvement in appointing the person with the alleged conflict.

Witness “c”, Dominic LeBlanc, was the minister at the time and was in charge of this portfolio when the appointment took place.

I think, as Mr. Barsalou-Duval rightly said, the CEO of the Canada Infrastructure Bank, Mr. Ehren Cory, would be relevant.

I want to remind the committee that we're dealing with the mishandling of $42 million of taxpayer money. This is a very serious matter. SDTC was found in 90 conflicts of interest, yet this individual was appointed to the Canada Infrastructure Bank, and we know that $59 million was dispensed to fund 10 projects that were ineligible.

This is a very serious issue that taxpayers need answers to, and I encourage my colleagues to take it in that vein.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you, Dr. Lewis.

We will go to Mr. Bachrach, who had his hand up next.

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

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

I appreciate Mr. Strahl's remarks about the timing. That was my primary concern, given where we are in the session. If this is simply a matter of getting this in the queue as part of the committee's overall work plan and showing that the committee expresses an interest in the topic, which I think we all agree is an important one, then at the risk of seeming contradictory, I will vote against my amendment. I'm happy to support the motion as moved, provided the shared understanding is that it will go into the work plan and we will have a discussion in the future about when we address it.

It could be that by the time we get to it, some of these questions will have been answered by the other committees that are working on it and in the debate in the House of Commons as we speak.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you, Mr. Bachrach.

Finally, I will turn it over to Mr. Bittle.

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

That's disappointing. The NDP will vote against their own amendment.

Having heard Dr. Lewis's comments, I think it highlights that the study isn't relevant to this committee. I know the Conservatives, with respect to the supply day debate today on this subject and the discussion of the organization in multiple other committees.... I take the point from Dr. Bachrach himself, who said that it was a tenuous link between this study and the actual mandate of this committee.

I tend to come to this committee only when we're discussing infrastructure issues, and it tends to be that there is an interest in the Canada Infrastructure Bank. I think there's ideological opposition to it with respect to all of the opposition parties, for three distinctly different reasons. I know there were some challenges when it first started out, but we're seeing excellent work by the bank in securing almost $32 billion in private capital towards 56 projects that benefit ridings across the country.

I'm happy to have Mr. Cory come and testify. Everyone thinks they'll have a gotcha question. He actually shows and is very good at outlining the work that the committee does, project after project, for infrastructure projects that won't get built.

In my role as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities, I meet not only with members of Parliament, members of the opposition. I meet with mayors, representatives and indigenous leaders across the country. The number-one item—including from the members who are looking at me, hoping that I'll stop talking, and including the witnesses who testified today—is that we need more infrastructure. We need better infrastructure with respect to airports, but also with respect to all items across the board. What better way to do that than to help leverage private capital?

The Conservatives were onside when it was the Harper government. “Public-private partnerships” are fine. We call it a different thing. Maybe if it's just the name, we can change the name of the Canada Infrastructure Bank and the Conservatives will be onside. We'll go back to calling it whatever Stephen Harper called it, and they will be onside.

We even had Lisa Raitt publicly compliment one of the projects from the Canada Infrastructure Bank that the Conservatives are most furious about. The former...I believe she was deputy leader of the Conservative Party, understands, in her role now with CIBC, the importance of that work.

We can keep coming back to this time after time, but let's look at what INDU has done. The study was a recent investigation and report on sustainable development technology in Canada. They had an hour with Andrée-Lise Méthot. She appeared on November 28. There was one and a half hours on December 5. There was a meeting on December 11. There was another meeting on December 12 and another meeting on December 14, which brought us to the Christmas break. Then there was a one-hour meeting on January 31 and another meeting on June 5.

With respect to the ethics committee, they also did a study on “Allegations Related to Governance and Management of Contributions by Sustainable Development Technology Canada”. Maybe we in Parliament should become better at creating our study names—it's a little dry, but it's a very important topic. At ethics, there were two meetings, and at public accounts, on June 6, they spent two hours on “Report 6: Sustainable Development Technology Canada”.

I think Monsieur Barsalou-Duval called it a witch hunt. Maybe it's more of a fishing expedition and we should report this to the fisheries committee for their study.

That's what we have. I appreciate the vigour of the opposition in trying to keep pulling at the threads, but we've been there before.

I'm hoping that we can come back to the original amendment, but I'm hoping maybe.... Perhaps just throw it at the wall and see if it works, Mr. Chair, and perhaps we could suspend again for a few minutes. If not, I'm happy to keep going, but perhaps we could suspend for a few minutes and see what we can do.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Okay.

What I'm going to do this time is that I'm going to put a timer on for two minutes. If we cannot hammer something out in two minutes, my proposal, colleagues, is that we resume, vote and get to our witnesses. I'm going to propose, with everybody's agreement, that we bring in all the witnesses and we spend the remaining hour asking questions to whomever we choose. Do I have agreement for that?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Okay. We'll suspend for two minutes and come back and, hopefully, have consensus.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Resuming the meeting.

Mr. Schetagne, I will give you the floor in a moment so you can make your presentation and tell us your views. After that, unfortunately, we will have to continue our discussion on the motion that has been made.

[Sylvain Schetagne, Senior Researcher, Canadian Union of Public Employees]

That's fine.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

I believe we have unanimous consent to deviate from the discussion we were having on Dr. Lewis's motion, as well as the amendment forwarded by Mr. Bachrach, in order to provide five minutes each to our three witnesses, whom we have not heard from today, to provide their opening remarks.

Do I have unanimous consent?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Okay. With that, colleagues, I'd like to introduce Ms. Gina Bento, founding chief executive officer of Arctic Aviation, as well as Canadian Union of Public Employees representative Sylvain Schetagne, senior researcher, who is joining us by video conference.

Welcome.

Also, from Keewatin Air LP, we have David White, chief executive officer, joining us by video conference.

Ms. Bento, we will turn the floor over to you to get things started for five-minute opening remarks.

The floor is yours.

[Gina Bento, Founding Chief Executive Officer, Arctic Aviation, As an Individual]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Members of Parliament, fellow Canadians and participants in today's proceedings, good afternoon. I will do my best to keep this to five minutes.

First, Mr. Chair, to you and to all members of Parliament, thank you for your dedicated service to our country. It is much appreciated. It is an honour to be invited to speak with you this afternoon. Thank you.

I stand before you as an aviation professional working on restoring aviation to the Arctic. I'm the president of the Arctic Aviation revitalization. Up until a short while ago, I was the national civil aviation adviser for the U.S. embassy in Canada, a role I played for over 14 years. I also come from a long line of aviation professionals, from airlines to defence.

I would like to also express my honour to the aboriginal people of Canada. I hope to contribute to their well-being.

What we're facing today is a dire situation in the Arctic. Over numerous decades, aviation to the Arctic has evolved out of necessity. The Arctic represents about 40% of Canada's territory. During various consultations with northern community leaders, they have stated that they consider aviation as their Trans-Canada Highway. However, if we're to continue using this analogy going forward, the situation before us is not one about merely fixing potholes. Rather, it's one where entire stretches of this highway have now been severely compromised and need immediate attention.

Aviation is a necessary tool enabling Arctic communities to connect to one another and the rest of Canada and the world and to receive the goods they need, not just for their survival but also for their proper functioning. Until recently, the Boeing 737-200 was the main aircraft used to carry goods in the Arctic. However, in 2014 Boeing announced to industry and governments worldwide that they will no longer be providing gravel kits for the aircraft. Furthermore, Boeing is restricting all newer aircraft from landing on gravel.

In our north, Mr. Chair, there are 117 remote airports, of which only seven are paved. As a result, airlines are now resorting to using turboprops. However, this situation is untenable, as these aircraft can carry only about 30% of the cargo and less than half of the passengers. These planes also have less range, are less fuel-efficient and are noisy.

Climate change is further aggravating the state of aviation in the Arctic. The melting of the permafrost is causing grave soil destabilization. The further north you go, the worse it is. Our Arctic airports are in a precarious situation. Our asphalts are cracking at unprecedented levels. Iqaluit Airport alone had over 300 million dollars' worth of damage done to it, despite it being a very new airport.

Thus, the combination of modern jet aircraft needs along with a climate change-induced permafrost melting situation is creating a huge problem for aviation in the Arctic. The populations in the north are suffering. The situation is dire in an environment already facing water and housing crises. People living in the Arctic today face worse living conditions than they did just a few years ago. The data is staggering. For example, over 46% of people in Nunavut live in households facing food insecurity. For the first time ever, a group of Canadians is faring worse than their previous generations and much worse than the rest of Canada.

The impetus to act is upon us. I am not advocating that we should not take the time to carefully analyze the entire situation of aviation to the Arctic and to do this community by community. This is needed. I am, however, saying that we're facing a humanitarian crisis and also a well-known defence issue. We all know that China and Russia keep flexing their muscles in the region. Thus, we cannot afford to wait. It is incumbent upon us to look at what we know today and what we have on hand to bring some form of relief. We need to take some concrete action. The entire region needs to be stabilized.

My ask is for your support to address this situation on hand while we look into formulating a longer-term game plan for bettering aviation to the Arctic. In addition to asphalt, there does exist another runway surface that has been used for decades—aluminum. In fact, aluminum has been used by the U.S. military and other militaries worldwide since the seventies. I could provide more details on this. They have done this very successfully worldwide.

I have been speaking to senior advisers of the Minister of Transportation, the Minister of National Defence and the Minister of Northern Affairs concerning this issue. It is my belief that if we can equip communities that have lost access to Boeing jet aircraft service with this same technology in the short term, we can reap huge gains and lift the entire Arctic region out of the present critical situation that it is facing.

We cannot afford to wait any longer. If the differences in cargo and passengers were less than 10% to 15%, I would say we could wait, but we're looking at differences of over 70%.

I look forward to your questions. Thank you for your time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Ms. Bento. You were only 11 seconds over time, and we appreciate that very much. Thank you so much.

Next we will go to Monsieur Schetagne.

Mr. Schetagne, the floor is yours for five minutes.

[Sylvain Schetagne]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for having me here, even if remotely. I am sorry. Family obligations—

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Excuse me for interrupting you, Mr. Schetagne. Mr. Barsalou‑Duval has a point of order.

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

I can't hear what Mr. Schetagne is saying on the French channel. There is no sound on that channel, but there is on the others. We also did not hear the interpretation of the previous testimony.

I wanted to let you know about the situation, because it seems not to be normal.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

We're going to do a quick test to make sure the translation is working. They've asked me to speak in French for a couple of sentences to make sure that everything is working fine. Do we have translation in French? Is the English coming through? I see a head shaking in disagreement by Mr. Barsalou-Duval.

We're going to suspend for two minutes to get this rectified.

Thank you, Mr. Schetagne.

Thank you, Mr. White, for your patience on this. We will hear from you. We just want to make sure that we can hear from you in both official languages.

The meeting is suspended for two minutes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

I call this meeting back to order. I believe that the audiovisual issues have been rectified, and we do now have translation.

Mr. Schetagne, the floor is yours for five minutes.

[Sylvain Schetagne]

Members of the committee, thank you for extending the invitation to the Canadian Union of Public Employees to speak to you today on the Competition Act and air travel in northern, rural and remote communities in Canada.

CUPE is Canada's largest union, representing 740,000 workers, including more than 18,500 flight attendants among other workers in air transportation in Canada.

Canada's air transportation strategy and system have been built around two major market-oriented ideas. First is the need to increase competition between airlines, with the expectation that it will create more air travel options and put downward pressures on the price paid by travellers. Second is that the cost for air travelling should be absorbed by the users of air transportation.

After more than 35 years of this market-oriented experiment, evidence shows that the race to the bottom between airlines did not deliver the expected outcomes for air travellers and communities or for workers in airlines in Canada.

Airlines are businesses. They are going to fly where the money is, and they will do all they can to maximize profit, including cutting costs and services. Their goal is not to increase competition in air travel; it is to make profit. This race for more profits via low- and extra-low-fare carriers has major impacts on services across Canada. Airlines, small and big, are merging to continue to grow and increase their control over some markets. For instance, airlines in the north, like First Air and Canadian North, merged to maintain services, while others are leaving or decreasing services in northern, rural and remote areas for more profitable domestic or international flights from or to large urban areas.

Furthermore, airlines are continuing to force their employees to work unpaid hours to make more profit, and the federal government is complicit in it. Meanwhile, the existing competitive laws or policies will not appropriately investigate the impact of all this turbulence in air travel on airline workers, especially when mergers occur.

To deal with all this turbulence we see in air travel in Canada, some will call for more competition and more deregulation. They will call for more of the same approach that has left us where we are today, as if the call for across-the-board reductions of taxes and fees and across-the-board abolition of existing barriers to competition would be the magic solution to increasing access to air transportation in the north and in rural and remote areas. More needs to be done.

CUPE believes that access to air transportation in these areas is not a luxury. It is essential for the economic development of all parts of Canada, for the tourism industry as well as for the health of many people living in Canada who are forced to travel south or to larger communities to get specialized health care.

What we need is not more deregulation. We need to move toward a demarketization of air transportation, especially in the north and in rural and remote communities across Canada.

CUPE recommends three propositions to make air transportation more accessible, more affordable and more frequent in those areas.

The first is mandatory and price-controlled services to remote areas as a means to maintain an air carrier licence in Canada, a solution somewhat in line with what has been recommended by this committee in the past.

The second is maintaining and expanding public and/or not-for-profit ownership of airlines and airports and/or subsidizing airports to reduce costs to passengers if needed.

Third is directly subsidizing travellers using not-for-profits and publicly-owned airlines going to those areas as a means to compensate for the high costs and high user fees paid by travellers and airlines in these areas.

Strategies to de-marketize may vary based on locations and needs, but they all have in common more government interventions when market-oriented strategies are failing. Across the board, deregulation and cuts in fees and taxes would only limit different levels of governments' ability to intervene in these areas to broaden access to air travel in those parts of the country.

Thank you.