Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Leeds-Grenville.
I am pleased to rise today to participate in the opposition day debate on federal transportation policies. The government clearly outlined the role of the federal government through the 1994 national airports policy and set itself to ensure provision of a safe, efficient, accountable and locally sensitive airport network.
The first objective of the national airports policy is to maintain the existing high levels of safety at Canadian airports. The first order of business of anybody concerned with the air transportation industry is safety. The government is accomplishing this by focusing on the careful certification of all airports and the development of regulations after thorough consultation with the industry and by establishing the airports capital assistance program to ensure the provision of some capital at the local communities that might not otherwise have been able to provide the necessary safety infrastructure.
The second objective is to ensure the efficiency of the airport network across the country. The ability of Canadian business to get to market, the need for Canadians to travel the country and the accessibility of the transportation network to tourism interests all call for an efficient network of airports.
The government has accomplished this goal by ensuring the operation of the country's larger airports, the national airport system, through the operation of Canadian airport authorities; by recognizing that the location of smaller airports is more of a regional nature and more of a regional matter; and by recognizing local and regional governments are better able to make appropriate decisions concerning regional and local airports.
The federal government is phasing out its operation and subsidy of such airports over five years to ensure an orderly transfer of responsibility. It has ensured efficiency by establishing annual cost reduction targets for every Transport Canada airport for as long as they were operated by Transport Canada.
Efficiency improvements were required and the national airports policy implementation is well along to achieving its goal of at least $100 million in annual savings by the year 2000. In addition,
airport charges are based on local site specific forecasts bringing the discipline of user pay user say to the operation of Transport Canada operated airports. This has been done over a four-year period in a time phased fashion to ensure time for adjustment.
The third objective is to get the authorities responsible for managing airports to be as accountable as possible for their activities. There is some degree of competition between airports, whether within Canada or for transborder traffic with the U.S., but we all acknowledge that the airports may have a considerable monopoly.
In Canada, we have chosen not to regulate airport charges, but to ensure that the communities are aware of what is being done, via organizations with jurisdiction over this, and via good administration.
My hon. colleague, the Minister of Transport, has adopted a broader range of stringent principles of accountability for Canadian airport authorities, in order to ensure the transparency of decisions taken via appointments to committees, public meetings, operational audits and financial reports.
These changes will be included in current leases when they are modified: to ensure that the local authorities responsible have the opportunity, first of all, to assume ownership and operation of their regional, local or small airport; to support the continuation of airport operating committees made up of airport users, as was the case with airports operated by Transport Canada in order to ensure that local decision makers receive concrete feedback from users.
The fourth objective is to improve the sensitivity of airport management to local needs. Decisions made in Ottawa, however well intentioned, cannot take the full range of local conditions into account. Any responsible government has to look at an airport from a transportation perspective. Local communities can incorporate tourism objectives or other local priorities. Local communities will decide in conjunction with airport users what level of service best suits that community.
In addition, the federal government has undertaken to ensure a provision of airport services to remote communities where the federal government has an existing involvement and there are no alternative forms of access.
We are doing more for airports and the Canadian air transportation industry to implement a successful national airports policy. Canadian airports will benefit from the new Open Skies agreement. Results to date have been as follows.
The number of services and the total seat capacity in the trans-border market are up substantially. Competition has increased and Canadian and U.S. airlines are participating almost equally in the growth. Seat capacity has increased faster than traffic but this was to be expected in the early development of markets.
Business, tourism and trade interests of Canada and the U.S. are far better served than they ever were before and the greater activity permits more economic development in and around Canadian airports. Traffic improvements are not all due to the Open Skies with the U.S. Canada's airlines and airports are also benefiting from a number of recent successes in the renegotiation of international bilateral agreements, that is to say new or amended agreements between Canada and Japan, the Philippines, Malaysia, Korea and China.
Canadians' degree of confidence in the new methods of airport administration set out in our national airport policy can be gauged by the rate at which communities are taking over administration of their airports.
The figures speak for themselves. Today, more than 80 per cent of Canadian air passengers use airports that have been turned over to the community. By the end of 1996, the current government had turned over, or was nearly finished the process of turning over, 52 airports, including the national airports in Toronto, Winnipeg and Ottawa, 26 regional and local ones, 12 small ones and 11 Arctic airports.
By next March, the total will be 75, which represents a vote of confidence by numerous Canadian communities. I am sure that the process will continue and communities will continue to take over administration of their airports.
The government prefers that our largest airports be operated by not for profit organizations. This approach has proven its worth in Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton and Montreal. These airports are pursuing their commercial potential by using innovative financing for capital works.
The new Vancouver international terminal and runway, the improvements to Calgary and its successful management of a high rate of growth, the focusing of Edmonton's scheduled traffic at the international airport and the improvements to the airports in Montreal, all attest to the success of the airport authority model in the management of major airports.
As the member for Halifax West, I look forward to that kind of success once the Halifax international airport has completed its negotiations to move to a national airport authority.
The national airports policy is a success story of the federal government. I am advised as we approach the end of fiscal year 1996-97 that we are ahead of the track set in 1994 to achieve the goal of at least $100 million in annual savings by the year 2000. This national airport system continues to play a vital role in the growth and development of Canada.