Madam Speaker, I will probably speak not only to Group No. 1 but also to Groups Nos. 2 and 3 so I do not take up the House's time later on.
I am not surprised that the New Democratic Party has come up with an attempt at report stage to reregulate the industry. Those attempts were made during the committee hearings. With all due respect, the committee did not support it on that.
I would like to congratulate the committee of which I was part. It did a super job of reviewing the legislation, at times under some stressful situations. It did a good job in looking at the legislation and bringing forth some amendments through the committee process which, as the minister said, have dealt with a number of issues that have identified themselves since the merger began in the spring.
I would like to address the amendments proposed by the New Democratic Party on the Air Canada public participation act.
I have great difficulty with government at any time interfering with the private entrepreneurial spirit of an individual. I do not think the government has the right to limit how many voting shares a Canadian can have in a Canadian company. Again I am not surprised the New Democratic Party has put forward an amendment to try to take that back a step rather than move forward in taking government out of the operations of and interference in a Canadian company. It will certainly not get support from us to do so.
I am a little disappointed the government also was not prepared to take the big step and remove itself from interfering in a Canadian company and the operations of such. I do not think it is the role of government to determine what kind of ownership a Canadian has in a Canadian company.
I was not surprised that the New Democratic Party challenged the foreign ownership and wanted to get rid of any suggestion that Air Canada might at some time have the foreign ownership component raised. It wanted to limit it to the 25%. It is somewhat ironic and a little hypocritical that the New Democratic Party is totally supportive of the automobile industry which is 100% owned for foreigners. It does not seem to have the same problem with the automobile industry that it does with the airline industry. It is curious that what is good for the automobile industry, the NDP does not consider to be good enough for the airline industry.
I have problems with the proposed amendments in that they want to penalize people for withdrawing a service that has proved to be uneconomical. They are putting extra burden on a company that may decide to try a new route in a smaller community. Looking down the road, that company may have some serious financial penalties addressed to it if it chooses not to continue that service because it is uneconomical. We are not going to encourage competition by laying the heavy hand on business people who are willing to take a risk and try a new route. We certainly cannot support the intentions of those amendments which the member has brought forward.
The minister mentioned the amendments to the legislation which offer the teeth to control the monopoly of Air Canada. We would suggest that the teeth which the government has put in the legislation are enough. I do not think we want to interfere any more than we have. We have given cease and desist powers to the competition commissioner, powers which are quite extreme in the entrepreneurial world.
The competition commissioner has also been given a broader predatory behaviour designation, which gives him some flexibility. That is a good move because we are not always able to identify when we are dealing with legislation what might happen in the future which is predatory in nature. We support the government in that.
We believe that more controls to re-regulate the industry certainly will not move us forward into the 21st century, but will move us backward. Therefore, the Canadian Alliance will not be supporting the amendments put before the House by the New Democratic Party, which is no surprise to my colleague. We believe that the government has a role to play only in trying to get a monopoly to understand that it has a responsibility to the travelling public. We feel that the teeth in the legislation are enough to hold that company accountable.
We look forward to the legislation passing and to controls being put on Air Canada to help it through this transitional period. There are protections to the travelling public in this legislation. The ability of the new commissioner in his position in the Canadian Transportation Agency to act as ombudsman for complaints will be an added factor. We are somewhat disappointed that there is no means for that individual to actually resolve the problems, but at least he can identify where the problems exist and through the other means that the government has can see that resolutions are fulfilled.
As I mentioned before, we will not be supporting the amendments to this legislation and we look forward to the report stage going quickly so we can get on to the third reading of the bill.