Mr. Speaker, first I will give a brief description of the bill and then I will outline the Bloc's position.
Bill C-44 implements the federal government's new national marine policy. Three hundred and twenty-four Transport Canada ports are equipped for commercial traffic. Ninety per cent of marine traffic goes through 45 ports. This bill mainly affects three major marine issues, namely ports, pilotage and the seaway.
As far as ports are concerned, 324 of them come under the jurisdiction of Transport Canada, which shows the scope of this bill. The bill calls for the creation of Canada port authorities or CPAs, which will be private not for profit organizations operating in accordance with market discipline. The Canada Ports Corporation is being dismantled but the federal government still owns the federal lands on which CPAs are located.
As for the seaway, the government intends to continue to commercialize operations, as the bill allows the federal government to reach an agreement on management and operations with the private sector.
Finally, pilotage authorities will no longer have access to public funds.
Here is our party's position on these provisions. First of all, we must emphasize that we have always supported the port divestment and commercialization policy, as we pointed out in our May 1995 report on Canada's marine strategy. Therefore we support the bill in principle; however, we have four reservations about it.
First, some neglected ports must be rehabilitated. The new managers and owners should not be penalized by the federal government's failure to properly maintain many federally-owned harbours and ports in recent years. They must have access to facilities that are in reasonable shape. In this regard, officials tried to reassure us by saying that $125 million has been set aside for this purpose, but this amount seems woefully inadequate.
Second, during the divestment process, the federal government will have to take into account the differences between the various port facilities. Some profitable ports will sell easily, but other will need more assistance from public officials and the local community. We, in the Bloc Quebecois, want to emphasize this important point and we will be watching the federal government to ensure it takes regional disparities into account.
Third, even though the federal government wants to withdraw financially from the area of shipping, paradoxically, it wants to impose government representation on the boards of directors. This is just one more of many areas in which the federal government has tried to retain full power while withdrawing financially since the Liberals have been back in power. The government is decentralizing its deficit but trying to maintain control over shipping.
Our fourth and last reservation is with the federal government wanting to divest itself within six years of ports that do not meet the requirements to become part of the ports system: traffic diversity, connections with other transport modes, and financial autonomy. At the end of these six years, it will decide what should happen to those ports that did not sell. This deadline may well cause insecurity in many communities, in Canada and Quebec.
The Bloc Quebecois is for the commercialization of the St. Lawrence Seaway. We are also for government support for the building of ships suited for seaway navigation, which we feel is essential to the continued operation of the seaway and to shipyards in Quebec and Canada. Because of the reservations I have just listed, however, the Bloc cannot support Bill C-44 as it stands. Following the consultations scheduled to start on Monday, my party will propose amendments and, depending on how well these amendments are received, will vote accordingly.
To conclude, Bill C-44 clearly shows how miserably the federal marine policy has failed these past twenty years. The federal government just realized, although a bit late, that its involvement over the years has resulted in costly and cumbersome bureaucratization as well as ineffective management. The St. Lawrence Seaway is a good example of this.
More than $7 billion, in 1996 dollars, has been spent by the federal government on the seaway. But the seaway only generates $70 million per year in revenue, a 1 per cent return on the investment. Add to this the fact that shipping has declined by half since 1970. These figures show how effective federal policies are in shipping as in many other areas.