Mr. Speaker, as my colleague for Kamouraska-Rivière-du-Loup has said, we agree with privatization in principle, but we have considerable reservations about its key mechanisms, so much so that, should the amendments we will be presenting not be accepted, we will find ourselves forced to vote against this bill.
For the moment, we are talking about the motions in Group No. 1, which address the preamble we wish to see at the beginning of the bill, and which we see as important in expressing the ultimate purpose of the bill.
Nav Canada is a private body, but one that provides a public service. Because of that private status, perhaps the public will not have the guarantees and services it would otherwise, if the body had not been privatized.
The essence of our opposition to certain aspects of the bill therefore lies with that point, that a private body providing a public service must deliver the same quality and quantity of services as would be provided without privatization.
For an overview of our position, I shall digress a little to list the points covered in the motions of Group No. 1.
There are six applications to the principle I have just set out. The first addresses safety. Public safety may be reduced by privatization. I think that this is a perfectly obvious principle, and one that must be set out explicitly in the preamble.
The second point is that Nav Canada's concern for profits must not, either now or later, lead to the reduction of services to northern and isolated regions. In terms of its viability, service in these regions might be considered less profitable, but we feel that this ought not to be a reason for Nav Canada's cutting back on services. We therefore insist that the preamble explicitly include the principle of maintaining services to northern and isolated regions.
This is also the case for the necessity of protecting the interests of the small shippers, whose profit margin is very slim and who
could run into rate problems if their interests were neglected in favour of the large companies which, we feel, were the source of most of the influence on the government around this proposed bill.
These three points I have listed are the ones covered in the motions of Group No. 1. We will have an opportunity very soon-I am stating them here to establish our overall position-in Group No. 2, to talk about the need for sufficient local dissemination of the changes Nav Canada would propose to charges or to the quality or quantity of services.
We will also have to intervene to prevent private clients from having to pay indirectly for services provided to public clients such as organizations designated by National Defence; then, and this is extremely important, we will have-and this concludes the overview of our objections to the bill-to protect the personal information on clients and personnel held by Nav Canada.
Generally speaking, this leads me to say that, when the federal government delegates its power to an organization it has created, services to the public must not be cut.
This sort of delegation must not-and this applies to ADM as well-result in the organization created serving as a screen between the public and the government so that, as the Minister of Transport has just said, the government cannot say: "It is ADM; or, it is Nav Canada. We are innocent of the blood of this just person", in the words of Pontius Pilate.
There is no way we will accept this surreptitious dropping of a hot potato, under the guise of decentralization, with the blame being directed elsewhere: "It is not me, it is Nav Canada; or, it is not me, it is ADM". We totally object to this handy way to fob off responsibilities.
This summarizes my position on these three aspects of block 1. I will no doubt have occasion to rise again on the other aspects I have spoken to briefly.