Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to talk about this airport issue. As a former transport critic I was involved with the divestiture process at one time. Now it seems to be snapping back to haunt us a little and it is a pleasure for me to talk about it.
I want to give an Atlantic perspective to this if I can. I was reading in Hansard the remarks made last night by the hon. member for Saint John. She was complaining about the service from Saint John, New Brunswick. The minister apparently said that she should go to Moncton and then fly from Moncton because there are better connections there. I used to fly to Moncton, but now I drive to Halifax because Moncton does not have direct flights to Ottawa either. The service has definitely declined after the divestiture and after all the changes that the government has made to transportation in the aircraft industry. Certainly, that was not very effective advice for the member for Saint John by the minister.
Let us look at the Maritimes. In St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, we had airport workers on strike for seven weeks. It created chaos there. We have added to the burden of the strike with all the other security issues and security fees, and the SARS issue which has created more difficulty for this airport. It costs more money. It costs delays in time because of the strikes and the chaos.
The member for New Brunswick Southwest was standing a few minutes ago talking about his discussion with the CEO of the Saint John airport, John Buchanan, who said that the airport was only one crisis away from a disaster. Since the hon. member had that discussion with the CEO of the Saint John airport, we have experienced the gulf war and SARS.
Right now many airports are having a difficult time making ends meet because they do not have the revenue that they need to have to pay their bills and allow for capital expenditures in the future. Meanwhile, the government is bleeding them dry with high rentals. They all say that if the government wants to help, Bill C-27 should just say it will reduce the rental fees on the airport facilities to the communities that use them.
We must understand that the airport authorities get their money from two basic sources. They get it from the airplanes that come in and pay landing and tarmac fees, but they also get it from rentals for rent-a-cars, restaurants, Tim Hortons coffee shops and things like that. Therefore, there are two sources of revenue: one is directly airplane related and the other is non-airplane related, parking lots and so forth. However, as the traffic declines these airports cannot sustain these small businesses within their airports so they lose that rent. It just exacerbates and gets worse, especially for the small airports with a limited amount revenue.
Bill C-27, in their view, would impose tremendous restrictions on them in their ability to generate revenue. The government is denying them the revenue by changes in its policies which have reduced the numbers of flights and the types of airplanes and the fees that can be charged there. It is making it more difficult for airports to generate the alternative income.
In a recent discussion with some other airport officials in airports like Halifax, which is the biggest airport in Atlantic Canada, the members of these airport authorities all said that these changes were unnecessary. As one of them said, it is an attempt to interfere with the system. It is an attempt to regain power that the government used to have over the airport system while at the same time not wanting to share the burden. The government wants to recapture its power but does not want to share the burden and the cost. The bill is a way for the government to regain power, revenue and control but not share the responsibility.
Every airport administrator I talk to tells me that the outrageous rental fees are the biggest problem right now. This is the problem that is keeping the airports from surviving, prospering, and being able to provide a service at a level that used to be there before divestiture. The other thing is the security tax. As one of them said, “No one minds paying the security tax as long as the money goes for security”.
However, as far as the airport authorities can tell, the actual cost of security tax is triple what is needed to provide the security that is being provided now. What the government is trying to do is gouge the public and it is using the excuse of September 11 to impose a tax on security which is triple the amount required so that it can just raise more revenue.
It is somewhat the same or at least there is a parallel with employment insurance, where the premiums are so high. The government is raising hundreds of millions of dollars on the backs of the employees who pay employment insurance when in fact the money is never going to go to employment insurance benefits. This security tax is never ever going to go to provide security at the present level. The people who I talk to in the business say that the tax is three times what is necessary.
We would like the government to go back and review this whole issue again, have the committee discuss it and listen to the airport authorities because they are the ones on the front lines. They know the difficulties in providing the service that they used to provide.
The Government of Canada used to pay to provide airports to the communities. Now it charges exorbitant rents so that the Government of Canada is getting hundreds of millions of dollars in rent every year when it used to pay out to provide these airports. It is now time for the Government of Canada to come back and participate in the cost of running the airports, but not try to interfere and micro-manage what the airport authorities are doing.
They are doing a good job. They are providing the services that are appropriate for the communities in which they serve. Nobody is better able to do that. No one is more qualified to provide those services and know what services are needed than the airport authorities because they represent the communities they are in. Let us let them do their job. Let us get off their back.
Let us reduce the security tax to what it should be and to what the actual cost is. Let us reduce the rents to a point where the airports can survive. Those airports that do not have very much traffic cannot support the alternative sources of revenue, the parking lots, the stores, the tax free stores an so on. They do not have access to that revenue so they should be given a special category and given a special deal on rents.
Those are our thoughts as we follow this and as we see it move forward. We will be watching it closely, but essentially the government should not try to interfere with these authorities. It should give them the freedom to operate, get off their backs, and stop overtaxing on rent and overtaxing on security.