Mr. Speaker, the motions in Group No. 2 deal with clauses 15, 18, 21, 36, 37 and 40. We put forward 18 motions on these six clauses, which goes to show how important this group of motions are.
The main objective of these motions-which is also why they were grouped together-is to ensure broader distribution of the notices Nav Canada has to give in some instances stipulated in the act. The main instances where Nav Canada has to give such notices to the regions and the organizations concerned are the following. It has to do with the notices Nav Canada has to give when it wants to increase or reduce the services it provides.
Another specific clause deals with the instances where Nav Canada wants to increase, reduce or modify designated northern or remote services.
Lastly, Nav Canada must give notices when it wants to establish a new charge or revise an existing charge or review the organizations that have to pay those charges.
Those are the three instances where Nav Canada must give notices. In these three cases, the current legislation provides for notices to be given to the organizations concerned. However, the problem we have with this, and which deserves our attention, is that the list of organizations that may be concerned is too vague, as are the means to be used to reach these organizations.
All our motions propose, in the three cases I just mentioned-changes in services, changes in northern or remote services, changes in user charges-that advance notice be served first to all local daily newspapers. Obviously people must be advised of such important changes as those to the services provided by Nav Canada.
We also think that, if need be, the band council or councils concerned should be informed. Generally, theses notices should be sent as much as possible not only by mail but also by E-mail.
We also want the large and small organizations representing the users to be advised of changes to the user charges and services. Finally, since individuals should not be forgotten, anyone who has expressed an interest in the previous ten days should be informed. This, then, covers the cases in which we want notices to be sent and the type of notices to be sent.
We do not think these provisions are useless. We just want to specify the means that must be used. Let us not forget that, since Nav Canada necessarily has a commercial purpose, we, as legislators, must protect ourselves and protect users against the tendency Nav Canada could have, for financial reasons, not to announce widely the measures it intends to take, or to save money in the way it makes these announcements.
We want to avoid anything arbitrary in the way Nav Canada provides information concerning the measures it intends to take. Again, these amendments are based on the general principle that even though Ottawa delegates some of its powers to a private organization that has to provide a public service, it does not mean that this service must be reduced in terms of quality and quantity. In this second group of motions, this service is the provision of information.
Since we are talking about information, I will take this opportunity to draw a parallel between this and another creation of the federal government, namely Aéroports de Montréal. ADM is another example of the government's unfortunate tendency to delegate responsibilities to an organization in a way that allows it to use this organization to avoid providing services that it had an obligation to provide before this delegation of responsibilities took place.
The parallel being drawn here, with respect to information, is justified by the fact that ADM has just taken a decision that is extremely important for the region and even, I would say, for Quebec and for Canada, because it involves international airports. With respect to the measure taken by ADM, my office asked for copies of the studies on which ADM is basing its decision. If you can believe it, we were told that ADM is subject to the requirements of the Access to Information Act and that therefore they do
not have to provide us with the studies on which they are basing their decision. We therefore have here another federal creature, which, thanks to the delegation of authority, may decline to justify in a manner satisfactory to the public the decisions it wants to take.
We therefore see that there is a risk that the federal government will create agencies in order not to have to provide the public with the information it has a responsibility to provide and which it must provide when there is no delegation of authority to an intermediate agency, which, under the label of private service, may decline to give out information that, in this case, one is entitled to expect from an agency providing a service to the public.
The point is that the ADM precedent is an indication that we should be very wary that Nav Canada does not become a convenient screen that the government can use to shirk certain of its obligations. In this case, the obligations that we want to be sure Nav Canada assumes concern the distribution of notices in the cases provided for in the bill in the manner and according to the terms regarding the media that we have mentioned.