Madam Speaker, I want to commend my colleagues from the Alliance and the Bloc for the excellent presentations they gave on the bill. I know that a lot of what each of them said and what I will say will be repetitious.
As a committee, we had to repeat over and over again the seriousness of the lack of mandatory insurance in the bill. We got absolutely nowhere with the governing side of the committee. Therefore, it is only fitting that we should repeat it again. Hopefully this time a good number of Canadians will hear this and will be as equally upset as we are over the government's failure to ensure that there is mandatory liability insurance.
My colleague from the Progressive Conservative Party said the party would be supporting the bill. My initial critic recommendations were pretty much the same as in the previous parliament when we dealt with this bill. Then because of the feelings of the Prime Minister that it was time for an election everything was dropped. However, the bill is back again.
Previously my critic recommendation ended with suggesting we support the bill. There were a lot a good changes. There was a comprehensive view of this bill amalgamating a number of issues that related to marine liability. It was very positive. The number of people involved in the industry were supportive, and there had been co-operation in coming up with the bill. I would have supported it.
However something happened this time around. I guess that is the benefit of having to redo things sometimes. As a committee, we listened to a transport official who told us the insurance industry could not handle putting in place mandatory liability insurance.
Some people do not realize what happens within the passenger carrying industry and a good part of it is the tourism industry in Canada.
I know we are not supposed to point out who is not here, but I was really pleased that the Minister of Industry listened to a lot of this debate. He must be aware that a lot of the passengers are carried within the Canadian marine tourist industry and that there is no liability insurance for those passengers, only if it is a responsible carrier.
I am also glad to see that the Canadian Passenger Vessel Association supports mandatory liability insurance. It is fully aware that until liability insurance is made mandatory, it will not be found throughout the industry. However, if carriers do not have insurance, the tourist industry has a lot at stake.
We register our cars, we get our drivers' licences and we get insurance. A good number of us probably pay approximately $2,000 a year for car insurance. At the most we can probably carry a maximum of five passengers in our vehicles. For $2,000 we can drive every day and probably put thousands of kilometres on our car every year.
Tourist buses have liability insurance. Airplanes have liability insurance. Helicopters have liability insurance. I am sure the bus lines, the little buggies in Churchill, Manitoba that take people out to see the polar bears, probably have to have liability insurance. The rail lines also have liability insurance.
However do boats that tour the Great Lakes in Ontario have to have insurance? No, they do not. Why do they not have to have insurance? Because the Liberal side of the House said that it was not needed. It does not care if there are accidents. The Liberals do not care if the owners of the boats have liability insurance. If someone wants to sue the person can sue. The Liberals will not ensure that shipowners have insurance.
Each and every one of those members of that committee felt it was necessary and that the regulations would come. They thought it was necessary but they did not put it in the bill.
What do we do when we get a piece of legislation and we know there is a problem with it?
It was recognized that there was a problem and that the act respecting marine liability should be fixed. How many years has it been since it was worked on? It has been a long time.
We now have this bill and we recognize that something is still missing. We should be fixing it now. It is before the House. We should not wait for ten years down the road. We should not wait until there is another accident like the one that took place on Georgian Bay in Ontario. There was no liability insurance. The legislation is before the House. Now is the time to fix it, not five or ten years down the road. That is simply bad business. That is doing a bad job at what we are here to do.
It would be different if we did not know about it. I admit the last time around I did not know about it and I was going to accept it. However not this time around. It is a serious mistake that not to include this in the bill.
The people who are at risk are the people who will get on board the tourist boats this summer. Those tourist boats do not have liability insurance nor do other boats that carry people in our inland waterways. Anyone crossing the ocean will be covered. That is not a problem. However in Canada there will no be coverage because the Liberal side of this House said there would be none.
This was one time in that committee where every member of the opposition tried their darndest to make sure it was put in this bill. We do not often agree on a lot of things on this side of the House, but this was one area that we thought was serious enough because the welfare of Canadians could be jeopardized. It would not hurt the industry because there was no real great cost to the industry, as my hon. colleague from the Bloc mentioned. It would cost a 100 to 150 passenger boat less than $2,000. For an 80 passenger boat, it would cost $1,600 a year. That is less than we would pay for car insurance. How is that going to hurt the industry?
The saddest part is we listened to transport officials tell us that the insurance industry could not handle it. That was a bunch of malarkey because the insurance industry could handle it. What is put in question is the information that came from the transport officials who appeared before committee. I will never trust them again. It was just garbage which was supported by that side of the House.
It was extremely disappointing for me to hear member after member on the Liberal side say they know they have to change the legislation and that it will come.
When? When is it going to come? How many pieces of legislation has the Liberal government said it would bring forward to deal with issues in the country? It never does anything about them. It is all promises, promises, and the government never comes up with the legislation or it drags it out time and time again.
This is an area that should not be dragged out. There is absolutely no excuse for not including mandatory liability insurance in the legislation. My hon. colleague from the Alliance Party put forth an amendment saying we would give the government time and it could put in the bill that this would be put in place by 2003. That is reasonable. All the Liberal members said it will be coming. The parliamentary secretary sat there and said it will be coming because the government knows it is necessary and it will come.
Therefore, the Alliance Party put the amendment saying to give the industry until 2003. Committee witnesses said the insurance industry could already handle it, that it would not be a problem. However, what happened last night in the House? The Liberal side of the House voted it down and said no, the government would not give that to us by 2003.
The New Democratic Party put forth an amendment, saying that if we will not have mandatory liability insurance, carriers should at least post a notice because passengers have a right to know. What happened last night in the House? The Liberal side of the House voted it down, saying in effect that there will be no liability insurance and that the government will not be telling Canadians there is no liability insurance. There are very few Canadians who realize that carriers do not have liability insurance. They expect that carriers do. They think carriers do. They expect that because that is good legislation and good business. Based on that expectation, they are jeopardizing their welfare because they trust us to do the job we should be doing.
From this moment on, with this not in the legislation, I will go out of my way to make sure the message gets out throughout the country so that people know they do not necessarily have liability insurance. The Liberals had an opportunity to correct the mistake and they have blown it. They did not fix it. As a result I think there is an onus on each and every one of us to make sure that each and every Canadian knows there may be no liability insurance on a passenger carrier.
There are good passenger carriers out there. I would say that a majority of them carry insurance. However, it is like anything. Those that do not are the problem. More than likely they are the ones that are not necessarily the safest carriers. That is why it is an issue. We know that good, responsible businesses carry liability insurance. However, what did the Liberal government say about those who do not? It said that they do not have to post a waiver or let anyone know.
There is an onus on each and every one of us to let people know. Not only will it affect Canadians but anyone else who has come to our country and who is travelling on a boat when something happens. Sure they could go through a civil liability suit, but I wish them luck. If a boat with 80 passengers went down, how many of us think that owner would have enough personal insurance to cover anything? How many houses or cars would he or she have to sell off? There would not be enough to cover it.
For the sake of $1,600 or $2,000 a year the Liberal government is willing to jeopardize an industry, because it will have an impact on the entire industry once the message gets out that there is no insurance. It is a serious problem.
I especially want the people in Ontario to hear this, because that is where the majority of those members on that side of the House come from. I will wager that the greatest amount of passenger lake travel takes place in Ontario. Those members are in the group that has said to people in Ontario that they do not need liability insurance.
First, I would like to encourage all the carriers out there to do the good and honest thing, to do the right thing morally, and make sure they carry liability insurance. Second, all those who do carry it should let their passengers know they do so that then they can question the next carrier, which may not have it.
We will have to do whatever we can in a roundabout way to let people know, simply because the government did not do its job. It had an opportunity to put in good legislation. It had an opportunity to fix bad legislation. Each and every member on that side had an opportunity to vote against the bill and let their government know that they did not like it because something was missing, but they chose not to.
They chose to do exactly what the parliamentary secretary did at the transport committee. He got his little ducks in a row and said we cannot do this, we cannot put it in there, guys—sorry, but it was all guys—and everybody did exactly what he said. What happened last night? All the little ducks got in a row again and did not even think about it.
There should have been at least a thought. When there is an Alliance motion and an NDP motion looking for the same thing, it has to be a big enough issue. It has to be important enough to the opposition parties if they are trying to address the same problem. At least that should have flagged for the Liberal members that they had better pay more attention to it.
I was extremely pleased today to hear the strong comments of my colleague from the Bloc. He mentioned a lot of other areas that are of concern. From my perspective those issues did not come into the discussion when we dealt with it the last time. I recognize, the member being from Quebec, that his concern over the seaway is great and rightfully so. The Alliance member spoke very strongly on this as well.
I have to admit I was disappointed in the Conservative member, who had said his party would support it. Actually I had the impression that he may have thought there was liability insurance just down the road. Maybe he did not realize that last night the government voted no and that even by 2003 we will not see it.
I say to the members in the House that this was one of those times when they needed to pay attention to that legislation. For those from Ontario, I absolutely hope that they are not in a situation where they are chewing on this legislation later on, because somewhere down the road somebody will not have insurance and be passengers will be affected.
I would encourage those members and say to them that the government can, under regulation, put this in place. It can make sure there is mandatory insurance. I would hope that members on this side will put pressure on so that it does come out in regulation. I would also hope that the Liberals on that side take a good look at it and push for that regulation, because there is no question that those who will be at the greatest risk will probably be people of the province of Ontario because of the inland waterways and the numbers of passengers. Certainly it will affect all provinces without question.
In regard to the people of Ontario, I listened to the transport minister make a comment one time that had something to do with the toll roads, that people voted in Liberals so they would get toll roads. It was a comment like that, indicating that people voted for the Liberals and if the Liberals think this is the way it should go this is the way it will go. I guess that is it: if we vote in Liberals we get bad legislation. That is what we have here.