Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak to these amendments.
The NDP, as my colleague already stated, is not content to have a powerless complaints commissioner and a vague promise to look at pricing in the future. The time to protect what we have is right now.
I will give an example of pricing. The price of a regular ticket to fly down east from the Yukon is $4,000. The minister mentioned that there are ticket sales. Everyone I know does book in advance, as do I over the summer, in order to get the cheapest flights available, but that was when we had some choices.
Canadian Airlines has always had a monopoly in the Yukon. From time to time, other carriers have come in during the summer months to address the tourist season. Right now everyone is facing less choices, less chance of a flight, less room on the flight and less flights.
Canadian Airlines will not be putting its third flight in over the summer. However, many people have accumulated points. A lot of people in the north do that because it is a way to get themselves and their families out of the north for a holiday. Since they are down at the very bottom of the pecking order, it gets more and more difficult to get a flight out of the Yukon on points.
A lot of people come to me when there is a death or an illness in the family and they have to get back east. They are looking at $4,000 for a ticket and have to pay that up front.
The north also has to deal with the Medivacs that fly to treatment centres in Vancouver or Edmonton. There is generally an escort, depending upon the seriousness of the condition. If a nurse is required, then the nurse travels with the person who is ill and a family member cannot go. Sometimes there are allowances. If the illness is not serious, a family member can go with the person and stay with him or her at the hospital. This is really critical for elders and seniors who become very disoriented and cannot make their way around. If they have to go out for cancer treatment and stay for a long time, they have to make their way back and forth from the hotel and deal with all the consequences of the illness. Most family members cannot afford to fly to and be with that person. Even a bargain ticket costs anywhere between $600 to $1000. A regular ticket from Whitehorse to Vancouver is $1600.
I know of a young woman who needs dialysis treatment every second or third day. She is living in Vancouver completely isolated from her community of Haines Junction. No one can afford to fly out to see her. There is no dialysis treatment in the Yukon. These stories go on and on. Since I have been MP in the Yukon, the prices of flights have gone up by at least $800. People cannot count on the transportation system to get them out in an emergency or during a family crisis.
If one is fortunate enough to plan his or her travel months in advance sometimes it will work out. I was talking to an elderly woman who tried to arrange a flight three or four months in advance. Some flights no longer exist today which means a delay of three to four days for her to get back to the Yukon. Flights into remote communities are limited by time.
The Canadian Alliance has said that the government should not be involved at all in any business. We are talking about transportation over a huge country. It is absolutely critical for the government to be involved and for the Canadian people to have a say in the transportation policy through their government and through their elected members of parliament.
If we do not have the ability to travel from one end of this country to the other, there is no sense thinking we are a part of this country. It is a three day drive to get out of the Yukon. If we need to get out of the Yukon because of illness, an emergency or even to take a holiday to Vancouver or Edmonton, it is at least a three-day drive. It would take a week to 10 days to drive across the country to visit family on the east coast. Transportation is critical to all areas of our lives.
The minister said that a duopoly was unhealthy in this country. I happen to agree but at least we had some choice. Even as a member of parliament, I had some choice on which flights I could connect with to get back home or get down here. I have to travel a day in either direction to be at work. If a duopoly was unhealthy, how healthy can a monopoly be? I have no idea what we will be facing when it comes to price changes. It is nothing that I look forward to.
I think the Canada Transportation Agency should have the power to review fare increases on its own without waiting for action on some other front. It should have the permanent ability to act on pricing. The minister did hint that if he was still minister he would extend it. I do not think as a government or as a people we should be depending on perhaps a promise to think about it. Before we go any further, we should have concrete guidelines and rules set out that people can actually count on and know what they are facing as much as we can know when heading into this next century.