House of Commons Hansard #121 of the 36th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was agreed.

Topics

Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation And Safety Board ActGovernment Orders

10:10 a.m.

Some hon. members

Agreed.

Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation And Safety Board ActGovernment Orders

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An hon. member

On division.

(Clause 24 agreed to)

Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation And Safety Board ActGovernment Orders

10:10 a.m.

The Assistant Deputy Chairman

Shall clause 25 carry?

Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation And Safety Board ActGovernment Orders

10:10 a.m.

Some hon. members

Agreed.

Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation And Safety Board ActGovernment Orders

10:10 a.m.

An hon. member

On division.

(Clause 25 agreed to)

Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation And Safety Board ActGovernment Orders

10:10 a.m.

The Assistant Deputy Chairman

Shall clause 26 carry?

Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation And Safety Board ActGovernment Orders

10:10 a.m.

Some hon. members

Agreed.

Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation And Safety Board ActGovernment Orders

10:10 a.m.

An hon. member

On division.

(Clause 26 agreed to)

Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation And Safety Board ActGovernment Orders

10:10 a.m.

The Assistant Deputy Chairman

Shall clause 27 carry?

Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation And Safety Board ActGovernment Orders

10:10 a.m.

Some hon. members

Agreed.

Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation And Safety Board ActGovernment Orders

10:10 a.m.

An hon. member

On division.

(Clause 27 agreed to)

Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation And Safety Board ActGovernment Orders

10:10 a.m.

The Assistant Deputy Chairman

Shall clause 28 carry?

Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation And Safety Board ActGovernment Orders

10:10 a.m.

Some hon. members

Agreed.

Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation And Safety Board ActGovernment Orders

10:10 a.m.

An hon. member

On division.

(Clause 28 agreed to)

Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation And Safety Board ActGovernment Orders

10:10 a.m.

The Assistant Deputy Chairman

Shall clause 29 carry?

Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation And Safety Board ActGovernment Orders

10:10 a.m.

Some hon. members

Agreed.

Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation And Safety Board ActGovernment Orders

10:10 a.m.

An hon. member

On division.

(Clause 29 agreed to)

Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation And Safety Board ActGovernment Orders

10:10 a.m.

The Assistant Deputy Chairman

Shall the title carry?

Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation And Safety Board ActGovernment Orders

10:10 a.m.

Some hon. members

Agreed.

Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation And Safety Board ActGovernment Orders

10:10 a.m.

An hon. member

On division.

(Title agreed to)

(Bill reported)

Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation And Safety Board ActGovernment Orders

10:15 a.m.

Don Valley East Ontario

Liberal

David Collenette Liberalfor the President of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada and Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs

moved that the bill, as amended, be concurred in.

(Motion agreed to)

Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation And Safety Board ActGovernment Orders

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The Acting Speaker (Ms. Thibeault)

When shall the bill be read the third time? By leave, now?

Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation And Safety Board ActGovernment Orders

10:15 a.m.

Some hon. members

Agreed.

Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation And Safety Board ActGovernment Orders

10:15 a.m.

Don Valley East Ontario

Liberal

David Collenette Liberalfor the President of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada and Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs

moved that the bill be now read the third time and passed.

Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation And Safety Board ActGovernment Orders

10:15 a.m.

Reform

Lee Morrison Reform Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK

Madam Speaker, on November 4, 1997 the deputy chairman of the Senate committee on transport and communications made a rather remarkable statement with respect to Bill S-2: “We will be making history this afternoon in that this is the first bill we will be dealing with ab initio since this is a Senate bill. We will then pass it along to you in whatever form that may be”.

What a satire of parliamentary democracy. The unelected, unaccountable troughers in the other place are initiating important bills and sending them off to us, in whatever form that may be.

I admit that Bill S-2 does not differ to any great extent from its previous incarnation as Bill C-86 in the 35th parliament. But in theory the senators could have done anything they wanted with this bill and sent it off to us here. That is wrong. I fondly hope we will not see in this parliament any further bills with the letter S prefixing them.

The Senate should be limited to its function of providing sober second thought, and even in that role it is illegitimate because of the manner in which its members are chosen. Only yesterday the Prime Minister had the effrontery to appoint five more, thumbing his nose at public opinion. However, Bill S-2 is a housekeeping bill and it is basically sound. It does have a couple of failures which I would like to bring to the attention of the House.

In section 4 which specifies the terms of employment for board members and establishes that there shall be no more than five, of whom three shall be full time members, there is no provision for a transparent merit based system of appointment. Members will continue to be chosen at the discretion of the minister, just as they are for a plethora of other boards and agencies.

This one in common with, for example, the National Parole Board and the Immigration and Refugee Board, has the capacity to do harm if the wrong patronage choices are made. There has to be a better way.

The second fault is that this board will continue to have the discretion to not investigate fatal accidents if it feels that such an investigation would be unlikely to lead to a reduction in risk to persons, property or the environment. But if no investigation is made how can such presumptions be reasonably made? Of course to investigate more accidents the TSB would need more money. It would need more investigators. Its current investigative staff is only 135 and its budget for 1998-99 is only $22 million.

One has to question the priorities of a government which has hundreds of millions of dollars for grants and forgivable loans to corporations that build aircraft but only a pittance to determine why aircraft crash. Bear in mind that although air crashes are spectacular, the TSB also must put together the puzzles of fragmented trains, ships and pipelines.

Those 135 investigators are stretched too thinly. I urge this government to remedy the situation.

Bill S-2 does not address the intrinsic problems of the board but its defects that I have drawn to the attention of this House are defects of omission rather than of commission. Reform members will therefore support it as a housekeeping exercise.