Mr. Speaker, I rise today to give my views on Bill S-2.
We have been provided with a book on this bill which we have reviewed as best we could. We have contacted as many people as we could, including officials of the transportation safety board to find out their views on it. As far as we could tell there seemed to be consensus for the passing of this bill.
However, the government wants to move it through the system and avoid the transport committee. It will require unanimous consent on that. I am going to withhold my consent on that because this is the second major transportation bill to go through the government. As members of the transportation committee we have been denied access to witnesses.
In the case of Bill C-9, a much more profound bill with more impact, I moved a motion to have witnesses heard but I was overruled by the committee so we never heard witnesses opposed to Bill C-9. There is the same effort with Bill S-2 to avoid allowing witnesses to make presentations. We are only allowed to hear the people in support of the bill while we are not allowed to hear the people opposed to it.
When Bill C-9 went to Senate after we passed it in the House, the senators had witnesses in their senate committee, and many people opposed it. We were denied access to those presentations. I feel very strongly that we were sent here to serve the people. We were put on the transport committee to help make decisions and proper amendments. If we are not allowed to hear both sides of the story but are only allowed to hear the government side, we are not equipped or able to make intelligent decisions. I will be opposing unanimous consent on this.
I am really sorry with Bill C-9 that I did not push harder for witnesses to be heard. I did make the motion and I was overruled but I feel now that I should have done more. I am not going to make that mistake again. I want to hear both sides of the story, not just one.
In that effort we contacted officials of the transportation safety board. They are supportive of this bill. We asked them several months ago and then asked them again yesterday. They feel there are some positive changes here which they want to see go ahead. However, we have not heard the other side of the story from the people affected, and a lot of people will be affected by this bill.
Another reason to send it to committee and to call witnesses is that the government strangely enough moved an amendment in the bill that was passed but it now wants to withdraw that amendment. I do not have a satisfactory explanation of what that was all about. Why did the government move the amendment in the first place? Who was affected by it? I think air traffic controllers, perhaps pilots and a lot of people would be affected by that amendment. Now the government wants the amendment withdrawn with no explanation, no hearings and no witnesses. That is another reason to make this bill go to committee and to hear all sides of the story.
If it is a good bill it will pass committee. I pledge my total support to see that it goes through as quickly as possible but I do want it to go to committee. If we allow this bill to go through without first going through committee and hearing witnesses, it will be the second transport bill this happens to. It will be the same as Bill C-9 where we were not allowed to hear from witnesses.
Bill C-9 was a much more profound bill with more impact. A lot of people were against it and we were not allowed to hear from any of them. The only people we heard from are those we reached out to and contacted ourselves. We did not have an open committee or testimony from people who were affected. That same thing will happen with Bill S-2 if we allow it go through via the speedy process which is going through the House without going to committee. We will be voting against unanimous approval to expedite this bill through the system.