Mr. Speaker, I will start my comments with regard to Group No. 1 on the issue of parliamentary democracy. In the last few weeks the government has run roughshod over that concept. We saw it at the environment committee regarding the endangered species legislation. We saw it at the finance committee with the way it manipulated the election of the chairman. Now we are seeing it in the bill and the motion with regard to representation from the labour community on the airport authority that will be established should the bill go ahead as proposed.
From the sequence of events, it is clear that the parliamentary committee that reviewed this issue felt very strongly about who should be represented on the agency. It indicated that and passed the information in its proper format on to the minister. Either the minister or, more likely the Prime Minister's Office decided to heck with parliamentary democracy and the knowledgeable work the committee did, and the recommendations which came from all parties on the committee were ignored.
I also want to address the importance of labour representation on the authority. A number of major issues which directly affect workers in the airline industry will come up in front of the agency, for example, decisions on health and safety matters, general work standards and training which will require input. Labour representatives will bring their experience to the table. Based on what we have heard from the minister, he has deemed that as not important enough to have them sitting at the table.
Originally the committee recommended to the minister that there should be two members on the authority from the labour community. What we got initially was floundering by the government which argued for maybe one and now it is an absolute no, that labour does not deserve to be at the table.
One other issue which I want to raise is right in line to be affected by the authority once it is established. That is the whole issue of who will be responsible for the workers in the industry and providing security at the airports.
As it stands, various unions represent the workers. Depending on what decisions are made by the authority, that representation could be completely wiped out. The issue of successor rights, should the responsibility for these workers be transferred from where it is now, is very important to the unions and bargaining units that represent those workers at present. It is another reason that they should be represented on the authority once it has been established.
Another issue with regard to Group No. 1 of Bill C-49 is the $24 fee which of course is a tax in everything but name.
Looking specifically at the airport in my city of Windsor, that airport is marginal. It is doing okay right now. It is actively promoting itself to be used more extensively. We lost Canadian, but several smaller airlines are currently looking at providing service which is badly needed not just to Toronto where we are really confined to now, but to and from a number of areas around the country.
I have been speaking to a number of officials at the airport in the last few days in anticipation of speaking to Group No. 1. They have raised serious concerns about the impact the $24 fee will have on the short runs.
These are the areas at which the new small airlines are specifically looking. Because they work within very close margins, the concern is whether the fee will be enough to dissuade them from further exploring coming into the Windsor airport. They have done an excellent job promoting the airport and now they are being confronted with this fee or tax which is a much more severe burden on the people who are travelling than on the general public.
Everyone recognizes that sufficient security has not been provided at our airports in the past. I have had many conversations with the workers over the years. They would probably be the first ones to tell us that they are not paid or trained well enough and are not provided with enough equipment, and any equipment they have is out of date.
We know it is going to cost money. That is not the issue and everyone accepts that. However, in order to bolster security, should the individual passenger have to bear the full brunt of that?
Security is not just an airline issue. The tragedies in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania showed that all sorts of other people were affected, a great many of whom lost their lives as we well know.
In doing the tax planning to deal with the social issue of security, the issue then becomes, from where does the government derive the revenue? The issue should be one of fairness, obviously, as in all cases of taxation. How do we spread the cost of the security fairly across the whole of society?
The obvious answer is it is not done by putting the entire burden on the travelling public. One can accept that some of it should be borne by them, almost on a user fee basis, but not the entire amount as is proposed in the bill. It is unfair to the travelling public. Society as a whole should bear more of the burden from general tax revenues.
With regard to the Windsor airport, it is expected that a number of new flights also may not proceed from Air Canada and Air Ontario as we have them now. Not only are we dealing with a situation where the new airlines may not proceed with new flights, but we may lose more of our flights. We recently have lost some. Rather than having any increase, we may lose more short hauls. The biggest number of flights out of Windsor go to Pearson in Toronto. There is some risk that we may lose those as the cost of flying goes up.
Going back to the parliamentary democracy issue, this is a flagrant example of the government running roughshod over it. There is great reason to have proper representation on the agency. There cannot be proper representation unless the labour movement and the workers in the industry are represented at that level.