Madam Speaker, when Canada 3000 ceased operation suddenly last November a number of people were caught off guard and quite honestly I think the transport minister was one of them.
When Canada 3000's financial problems became common knowledge two months earlier, the minister attempted to maintain a level of confidence in that airline, including the $75 million loan guarantee. I do not think the minister was wrong to offer the loan guarantee to Canada 3000, nor was he wrong to encourage Canadians to keep flying on Canada 3000.
However, the minister kept telling Canadians that everything was okay until 12 hours before the airline shut down. The government must accept some of the responsibility for the losses that some Canadians incurred and suffered from. When a company goes bankrupt there is a legislative pecking order in which creditors have access to the company's assets. The government and the banks are at the top of that pecking order and consumers and customers are on the bottom.
When I asked this question back in November, the minister said that most consumers were protected, including people who had booked with travel agents or who had used credit cards, because travel agents in most of the provinces offered some protection to those individuals, particularly those who did use credit cards.
The minister did acknowledge at that time that there would be some individuals who might be out of pocket, but not too many. I think the minister misunderstood or underestimated the number of Canadians who would be affected by the loss of the value of their tickets and who ended up out of pocket for the money they had spent for the travel. This is especially true of thousands of individuals who ended up travelling and flew Canada 3000 on the outbound portion of the ticket but ended up stranded and had to find other means to get home.
In order to assist those individuals who found themselves unable to recoup any of their losses, I asked the minister if the government would reimburse those individuals for the taxes and fees that were included on the tickets for which they never received any of the services. It is one thing to have a private company go bankrupt without being able to recoup losses. It is quite another not to be reimbursed by the government for the taxes and fees that were part of the ticket when the customer not provided with the service. When I asked this question in November the Minister of Transport did not address the issue of reimbursing federal taxes and fees to those individuals who received no other compensation.
I ask the parliamentary secretary to address this issue. Will the government reimburse the federal taxes and fees for those passengers who were left holding worthless Canada 3000 tickets?