Mr. Speaker, I rise to draw to the attention of all members of the House the Transportation Safety Board's report on the crash of an Air Manitoba flight at Sandy Lake on November 10, 1993.
The report finds that previous to the crash Transport Canada's audit and surveillance of Air Manitoba "did not uncover serious maintenance discrepancies that were present". In general it finds serious "shortcomings" in Transport Canada's "regulatory overview process of air carriers". It makes a number of recommendations to improve the audit.
Families of the victims of the crash are also concerned that when safety infractions are found by Transport Canada they are not then made public, depriving crew and the travelling public of information they need to make decisions.
This incident has raised serious questions about the effectiveness of Transport Canada's monitoring of safety regulations in the airline industry and thereby of the safety of airline crews and the travelling public.
I call on the Minister of Transport to address these problems with the greatest of urgency.