Mr. Speaker, I would like to deal with a couple of little housekeeping items first. Both the Bloc member and the parliamentary secretary mentioned a couple of areas.
Bloc members were concerned that the Quebec transport association was not getting a proper voice. For the record, Mr. Jenner of that organization was offered a seat on the board of directors and turned it down. He acknowledged this right in committee. I am not quite sure where the Bloc is coming from on that. He was offered exactly what they say he should have got and he turned it down.
Also Bloc members talked about ADM. As the parliamentary secretary said, I do not know how that found its way into this discussion. I have one point for clarification. What they are asking for is the Montreal authority be ruled by the federal government.
If Bloc members are saying that rather than having local authorities in Quebec rule on things, they want the federal government to rule on it instead, they had better re-evaluate their entire mandate as separatists. What they want is to come away from the federal government and take control but when they have it, they are saying they want the federal government to take it back. They should clarify why they are really here in the first place.
With regard to the variety of motions in Group No. 2 dealing with information and the process of advertising that information, I talked with the Bloc members on this in committee where it had been brought up by them. I did not support them at the committee level because while they had a good concept, it went too far. It was far too onerous.
I said that they should come down with something simple. They were telling me they wanted better notification for changes in services or deletion of services particularly in northern areas where there may not be good information dissemination. I said I could support that if they could word it in such a way that they did not get into all those other areas. That is still a great concept, to have a better type of advertisement in some of the more remote and hard to reach areas. However instead of simplifying their motion, if anything, they have made it more complex.
The parliamentary secretary correctly pointed out that if a general change were made in the fee structure, which obviously will happen from time to time-God knows I would love it if I were still paying the same for food, a haircut or gasoline that I paid in 1970 but that is not the case. And it is not going to happen with Nav Canada neither. From time to time its fees are going to change. The way it reads for most of the motions is that every time Nav Canada changes its fee structure, as it will do, it must advertise in every newspaper in this country. That is so onerous and makes it absolutely impossible.
It seems ironic that the government, correctly though it may have been, speaking against better dissemination of information mainly because it was too onerous should turn around in another area and try to promote the dissemination of information that probably should not be going out.
At committee we dealt with a motion by Reform which actually added to the bill a requirement that Nav Canada meet the same parameters of the Privacy Act as was done when it was a government organization. It follows exactly the same format the government used for the official languages bill. In fact, it was a subclause to that same section of the bill. This is not something which the privacy commissioner, who has the responsibility for this, spoke against. In fact, he came to committee to see if we would please put it in. Nav Canada did not have any objection and was basically going to do this anyway.
It put in an assurance to the users that it was going to be taken care of and it passed. Reform, who put it in, voted for it. The Bloc, who had a similar amendment, voted for it as did some Liberals.
As the parliamentary secretary is fond of saying, a committee is master of its own destiny. If we ignore what the committee does and overrule it by Liberals only, then why bother even having the committee? If the Liberals are going to pass only the things they like and overrule things that get passed in spite of them, then why do we bother having these committees in the first place? The government might as well write out its four year agenda, pass it and that is the end of it.
I am very shocked and disappointed to see the Liberals trying to take out a clause that their own Liberal dominated committee passed. It is astounding.
Reform will not be supporting the motions brought forward by the Bloc in Group No. 2. The only area we support are some technical motions that are going to be discussed later in Group No. 3 brought forward by the Liberal Party. We do not have a problem with that. Because of what I would have to say is a rather deceitful motion by the government, we will probably also support the Bloc motion to try to put it back in, even though it is by a somewhat convoluted method.
It is a good bill. It is unfortunate that we get into these debates on various types of changes, some of which are political. The bill has been drawn up out of eight possibilities that were looked at early on which were quickly narrowed down to two and soon focused in on one. The users, the employees, the service providers are all working together to provide a not for profit organization so that somebody is not going to try to get rich from this.
Could the bill have been better? I doubt there is a bill that is ever passed that could not perhaps be slightly better. Maybe we will find some improvements to make on it as we watch it unfold. We may find there are some corrections we could make.
On the whole it has the support of the industry, albeit some people are a little nervous because it is new and change is always a little scary for a lot of people. It has the support of the users. It has the support of the people who work in the industry. It will have the support of the Reform Party as well.