Absolutely always for the better. There is still ongoing changes. There are some fundamentally profound changes even as we speak.
If I remember correctly, just a short time ago both Air Canada and the minister were opposed to the idea of an ombudsman. Now the minister has come back with a very strong ombudsman, a complaints commissioner, which, in my interpretation of it, has teeth. Last week Air Canada announced it was going to have an ombudsman. Two weeks ago it wrote me saying that it was not in favour of that. We can see how this whole process is still changing as we speak and will continue to change as problems develop and challenges arise.
There is no question that we are in a transition period which has caused a lot of problems for consumers and for all of us when we travel. I understand that we are in a transition. I know that the Air Canada and Canadian Airlines merger is faced with problems. I can only imagine the problems Air Canada has to deal with in trying to reorganize and reschedule 2,000 flights a day, negotiate contracts with its unions, negotiate the sale of the Canadian regionals, arrange for all new schedules and accommodate the communities and politicians.
There is no question that Air Canada has underestimated the impact this would have on consumers. I think it is getting that message very clearly, as evidenced by the announcement late last week that it was going to establish an ombudsman in addition to the Canadian Transportation Agency complaints commissioner.
We have all seen and heard about the overbooking, the delays in scheduling, the line-ups and all that sort of thing. We have all experienced them ourselves. I am hopeful that these are transition issues that will soon be resolved. I believe Air Canada has the will to resolve them.
Our job, the minister's job and the department's job, was to come up with legislation to manage this merger even though we could not really tell the shareholders of Air Canada or Canadian Airlines what they had to do. We could not tell them to invest money here. We could not tell them to do certain things, nor could the Department of Transport.
I believe this bill is the best reflection of what we can do. We have all had a crack at making amendments in order to improve or change it. It is not exactly what I wanted but overall it is not a bad compromise. I think we have all had a chance to influence it. Even then, it has to remain flexible because of the ongoing changes and the fact that it is a work in progress that will continue to change.
The Conservative Party's view is that the government's role should be to create an atmosphere that will encourage competition and encourage the incredible entrepreneurial instinct that we saw at committee from so many people who were anxious to get into aviation business and expand it. If there was one thing that surprised me, it was the number of small aviation companies in Canada that wanted to become big ones. Our job was to create an atmosphere where they could develop and grow and not be squashed by the dominant carrier before they even had chance to start. I think we have done that. We have given the appropriate agencies the power to protect those new companies and the existing companies in expanding into new routes and regions.
At the same time as encouraging competition and the entrepreneurs in the industry, we also had to protect consumers. Consumers have no protection if they have no place to go. If the line-up is too long and the dominant carrier does not want to do anything about it, too bad. If there is overbooking and the dominant carrier does not want to do anything about it, too bad. We cannot go to plan B or another airline until some of those smaller airlines are big enough to really present themselves as competitors. So, we have this legislation.
I believe the job of the government—and the committee saw it as a responsibility—is to create protection for consumers. We have done that. A dominant carrier left unleashed could do a lot of damage to consumers, competitors and regional airports if it wanted to. Without the legislation that we have before us today, a lot of the things we have come to take for granted in the aviation industry would be trampled and disappear very quickly.
Even the travel agents who made presentations to our committee made a good case in pointing out how powerful the dominant carrier is. They sell something like 80% of the tickets. If there is only one airline, that airline could determine how it will treat the independent travel agents. We have addressed that in the bill and it is a good way to address it. Their problems and concerns have been met and they will find themselves in a good position to deal with many of their issues. They have to do it but we have given them the infrastructure and the tools to get there.
One concern I had, coming from the Atlantic region, was the future of small regional airports. We have a convergence of two government policies. One is the divestiture process and the other is the merger process of the airlines. They have come together to create some problems for small airports.
Some of the smaller regional airports have an extremely hard time making ends meet simply because they do not have access to alternative revenues. The major airports with hundreds of thousands or millions of passengers travelling through the airports every year can have all kinds of alternative sources for revenue, such as liquor stores, lobster shops, rent-a-cars, you name it. They can have an entire business community and shopping mall with a captive market. The small airports with 200,000 passengers or less do not have the traffic to sustain those shops and businesses that would generate alternative revenue.
Regional airports are already having a hard time making ends meet. What will happen when we merge the airlines and the number of flights are reduced? The smaller airports depend entirely on landing fees and terminal fees for their revenue. They were having a hard time even with revenues from two airlines. When the two airlines merged, the number of flights in some airports were reduced dramatically and their revenue was reduced dramatically.
We have the divestiture process, where the airports were turned over to the communities, and we have the merger process which has made their situation even more difficult. I believe the Department of Transport and the minister at committee acknowledged that smaller airports were having a hard time making ends meet and that this problem would have to be revisited.
Our challenge was to arrive at a balance between regulation or re-regulation and private enterprise and protecting consumers. I think we have done that with a minimum of re-regulation and a maximum of flexibility in the system.
The Canadian Transportation Agency, the minister and the department have put some flexibility into the situation so that we can address the work in progress as it unfolds and as we get more surprises, which we will continue to get. I believe we have the right balance and I am well pleased with it.
As new issues come up, these departments have to be able to address them. By locking them in too tightly and not knowing what the future holds would be a mistake at this time because we are all still learning and it is an evolving situation.
I am also quite excited about competition. From my view I see a lot of exciting competition in the business. I do not think Air Canada will have a cakewalk. I think it will face competition faster than it thinks, faster from the chartered airlines, the WestJets, the CanJets that will be starting up and the smaller airlines that are already in the planning stages. There may be start-ups that we do not even know about it yet.
I believe there will be competition, especially on the main lines. The challenge will be on the regional routes and the feeder routes. Even on those, I believe competition will filter down and Air Canada will have more competition than it has bargained for. Eventually I do not think it will have the monopoly that it thought it would have or that some of us thought in the beginning it would have.
I sense a tremendous entrepreneurial spirit out there that is anxious to get into the business, to take a crack at this and to provide service to the regions and the main lines. This looks very promising to me.
One of the controls the dominant carrier will have is access, access to airports, access to slots, access to counters and things like that. That had to be addressed because it is definitely a problem which already has raised its ugly head since the airline merger. Some new airlines have been stalled, delayed or redirected because the dominant carrier perhaps used more powers than it should have. We have put protection for that into the legislation. We have also put into the legislation new powers for the Competition Bureau and the Canadian Transportation Agency. All of these issues can be dealt with on an ongoing basis.
Recently Air Canada lowered its rates; as soon as WestJet started flying from Moncton to Hamilton, Air Canada reduced its rates from Moncton to Toronto. Right away the process was put in place to object to that. Hopefully that will be resolved in a satisfactory way for everybody. We could not outline every single possible permutation and combination in the initial legislation. The flexibility is there to adapt as things change.
We have come up with many avenues for consumers to file complaints. I do not recall the exact number but the Canadian Transportation Agency had something like 70 or 80 complaints last year. My office has received 70 or 80 complaints in the last month, so there is something wrong with the access people have to complain about airline service.
If the minister's complaint commissioner under the CTA is well publicized and if people are made aware of the process, that will be the answer. People need access to a complaint system and a conflict resolution system and that will be the complaints commissioner.
Also Air Canada has committed to establishing an ombudsman and working with members and the public to make sure it deals with the complaints as fast as it can. In my experience, when there is a complaint at the senior level at least, it is dealt with and the problem is solved in a sincere manner. However, when there is a 1-800 line with 10 recordings and people have to push two for this and four for that, they get so frustrated they do not file a complaint. I am confident that will be resolved and people will have a way to make sure their complaints are filed.
Consumers have the CTA. The transport department will deal with certain issues. There is the complaints commissioner, the Air Canada ombudsman and the Competition Bureau. Among those avenues surely consumer complaints will be dealt with in a timely fashion. If not, we can bring this back to committee and take another crack at it. I do believe consumers now will have the tools they need to work with.
As far as ownership rules go, I agree with the legislation. In the former legislation the maximum amount of Air Canada that could be held was 10%. The committee recommended 20%. I recommended 15% and the minister went with my recommendation, for which I am honoured and flattered. He did go with 15% which is a good compromise and a balance that satisfies most everybody.
The foreign ownership limit is to remain at 25%. Again, flexibility is built into the system. If things change and evolve and if change is necessary, there is flexibility for the minister and the government to change the 25% maximum foreign ownership. That is appropriate. It should not be locked in at any amount. The flexibility should be there and as things change, it can be addressed.
In all, the Conservative Party will be supporting the bill. We are grateful for the opportunity to participate in it actually. It has been a very interesting experience for me. I very much appreciate the opportunities I have had to meet the people involved and hear the problems and issues.
I believe we have come up with a balance for consumer protection and incentives for competition to provide the entrepreneurial instinct with lots of nourishment. Certainly things will continue to evolve and we will continue to have to adapt but all in all, it is a fair resolution considering we do not have all the tools. The minister and the department probably do not have all the tools they would like to have to control this.
The bill provides a guideline for the companies involved to follow. It also provides penalties if they do not follow the rules. It provides lots of rules which the airline industry has to follow to protect consumers.
I appreciated being at the committee on this issue. It was extremely interesting, very industrious, serious and focused. We will be voting in favour of this bill as it stands.