Madam Speaker, I want to bring to the attention of the Minister of Transport again the Kelowna air traffic control tower which was deemed unsafe in 1984.
I would like to quote from the Department of Transport report: “Due to the location and/or the height of the control tower, portions of the runway and taxiways are not visible. Air traffic controllers are supposed to control the traffic on the runways that they cannot see”. The inspector went on to say: “A runway encouraging going unnoticed is now a major safety concern. The margin of safety has been jeopardized and restricted line of sight visibility is a major safety concern”. His manager said “The line of sight difficulties have been recognized as a problem at Kelowna and the problem must be addressed”. This is dated November 4, 1987.
Then we move to another Department of Transport report dated October 4, 1989. The Department of Transport then notified the manager of the Kelowna air traffic control tower that they were only allowed to operate on a temporary permit and that the waiver was conditional on tower replacement documentation being formulated.
Then, on September 21, 1989, another report was sent from the Department of Transport in Ottawa to the regional office in Vancouver, which brought up again the line of sight waiver at Kelowna airport and stated that it must be emphasized that clear lines of sight are of prime importance to the provision of safe air traffic control services and that this decision was being taken with much reluctance.
The Department of Transport was saying that it was allowing the airport to continue operation with much reluctance. It was saying that the waiver was conditional upon immediate action being taken to produce approval documentation for an appropriate tower replacement.
That was 11 years ago and still the tower has not been upgraded, addressed, repaired or replaced. Since then new buildings have been built. New hangars have been built surrounding it, blocking the runways even more, and traffic has increased dramatically. Not only has air traffic increased, but the planes are larger, creating more difficulties. If it was not safe 11 years ago and nothing has changed, it cannot possibly be safe now.
The minister has proposed a video system such as that used by the Los Angeles airport. This is the second time they will try this. The first time they tried a video camera they put it in and it failed, so they took it out. Now, because of the initiative of bringing up this old report, they are going to try it again.
I respect the effort to try to resolve the issue, but part of the reasoning they used in justifying the video cameras was that they are used at the Los Angeles international airport. They have said this over and over again. However, I talked to the air traffic controllers in Los Angeles and they do not use video cameras to see the runways. They do have them, but they are for reference only. At all times air traffic controllers at the Los Angeles airport can see the runways. They cannot in Kelowna. They are two completely different situations. The video cameras are for reference only and for parking on aprons in Los Angeles. In Kelowna they propose to use them for actual traffic control on the runways. It is not the same thing and it is not safe.
Considering the fact that video cameras have failed before, and considering that they are not used in Los Angeles for air traffic control, will the minister now commit that if the experiment with the video cameras does not work and the situation is not safe, as it has been deemed in these three reports, that a new tower will be constructed and the minister will take action to tell Nav Canada to stop the delays and to stop fooling around? This is a safety issue. Will he tell Nav Canada to put safety first and instruct it to build a new tower?