Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that. Is there anyone else who wants to interrupt me? I do not want to miss anybody.
Mr. Speaker, I will continue on and I will be brief. Our main concern with this whole bill is the fact that regional ports were not allowed to make presentations at committee. They are going to be the ones that are most impacted by these decisions and most of them have no idea of what is going to happen. I hope that we, as members, will help them through this process.
It is going to have a profound effect on many of these ports. I mentioned Shelburne. The hon. parliamentary secretary has agreed to meet with me and officials from Shelburne and also the member for South Shore to discuss Shelburne and to make sure they can take advantage of any programs available through that transition. I make that offer to any port, any community that will be impacted by this legislation to contact us and we will help them with it.
Several problems we see with the bill have been mentioned by previous speakers. One is that ports police have been eliminated. It is not so much that they have been eliminated but there has been no strategic plan to replace them and no strategic plan to look after the people who are involved. Again, these are people.
My colleague from Saint John who spoke very eloquently on this issue on behalf of the ports police and defended their position is not here today. I would like to recognize her efforts on that because she is an untiring spokesperson for people who have a problem no matter what it is. The ports police were going through a tough time and she did everything she could to help.
On the piloting regulations, it is, as I heard other speaker say earlier, a closed shop. There is not competition. It is very tightly controlled. It completely contradicts the rest of the bill which is to make the process more efficient, more commercialized, free it up, local decisions, but still the pilotage problem exists. It is a very closed shop and there is no competition.
Another issue is superannuation for the employees who are affected. Under these legislation we put an amendment forth, as other members did, asking for superannuation to be extended to employees who lost their jobs and who had always had superannuation benefits.
The government made a commitment to provide that extension in some kind of bridge process. However, when the amendment was presented, it was only for the viable ports people who were going to Canada ports authorities. Again, the regional ports people have no superannuation benefits. We will still be pushing for that and hope the hon. members, the hon. minister and parliamentary secretary will help us with that.
Another amendment we had put in was to put the port of Hamilton back on the same playing field with every other port in Canada. Although our amendment was retracted, another amendment came right back in again from the government side and addressed the issue.
For the third time I say that our biggest concern is the impact on regional ports which by definition are not viable. The government has said, “These ports are not viable any more, therefore we do not want to have anything to do with them any more. We will turn them over to the user groups. We will turn them over to the municipalities or to the provinces”. It will have a big impact on small ports.
In closing, we are going to support the Canada Marine Act. I am pleased to do so.
I would like to compliment the staff of Transport Canada who have done a fantastic job in negotiating the agreements that have already been negotiated with the ports. I am truly awed by their ability. They have made profound changes in communities. They have been able to work with communities, work with the governments and the local people and have done a great job at having transferred these over.
Our part as a Conservative caucus will be to help those regional ports change. Of those ports that I contacted, some knew nothing about this legislation. They knew nothing about what was happening to them. Some misunderstood the process completely. Some had it in reverse. Some were resigned to the change, but did not know they could access assistance programs from the government to help them over.
On behalf of the Conservative Party members I would like to extend an invitation to any port that has a problem, that does not understand the process, that does not understand the details or how to access programs, to contact us. We will be glad to help them through the system.