Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to rise today and speak on this bill, one that certainly affects an airport in my riding in the city of Grande Prairie.
I believe that the bill is actually a bill of missed opportunities and attempts to solve problems that do not really exist. When one looks at the state of Canada's airline industry and realizes that the Standing Committee on Transport is looking into the continued viability of the airline industry, one has to wonder why the government is choosing this time to introduce legislation dealing with airports, and specifically this type of legislation.
Based upon e-mails, phone calls and letters that my office receives, there is no real sense of urgency to fix the airport situation except for three specific areas that I am going to discuss today and which really are not addressed in this bill at all. In fact, most Canadians are reasonably happy with the status quo. When we compare Canadian airports, both large and small, with similarly sized airports in other countries, Canada's airports stand up rather well. So the question is, if the system is not broken, why are we trying to fix it?
What I believe is happening is that this really is about a missed opportunity to fix three specific problems that are not addressed in the bill. The real problem facing Canada's airline sector is not the way airports are run, because they largely have been turned over to airport authorities and down to a level of community involvement that I think is much better than it was before. The real question is about the way rents are charged by the federal government to these airport authorities and how that cost is passed on to the airlines.
This issue was raised and dealt with in the transport committee hearings over the past few weeks. As a result, on April 11, in its report, the committee recommended unanimously that “the federal government suspend rental payments by airports for a two year period” and that “the airports shall pass these rental savings on to air carriers”. We know that air carriers are experiencing some difficulty during this time. Further study is not needed. It is time to act.
However, we will not find any discussion of airport rents in the Canada airports act, Bill C-27. In fact, the Standing Committee on Transport made another unanimous recommendation: to eliminate the air travellers security charge. This was connected to transferring responsibility from airport security to a multi-modal agency that would be fully publicly funded.
The airport security issue is an important one, but we do not charge other people in our society for the cost of security, specifically those sectors. If we look to the model of why this was put in to begin with, on September 11 in the United States there were more people killed on the ground than there were in airplanes and specifically in airports. Security is a huge issue but it should be one that is taken out of general revenue.
Here again, understanding the nature of security at small airports is helpful. Just as a bank has a better security system than a Kool-Aid stand, large airports have better security than smaller airports. In fact, I was in New Zealand just recently and people who travel within the country of New Zealand have no screening at all. Only if they have connections to international flights are they subject to screening. Some cities like Winnipeg have been trying that model, and I think it is a model that would help save some money here in Canada.
The reason I am here today to speak to this bill is that I have a vested interest. I have to confess that quite frankly. My vested interest is that I have an airport in my riding. The airport is in Grande Prairie, Alberta and it is very concerned about the cost the federal government is imposing upon it through what is commonly known as CARs.
This is a situation whereby the federal government is now imposing on smaller airports a five minute emergency response time. One might ask what is wrong with that, but the fact of the matter is that about five or six years ago, when the federal government decided it wanted to offload the airports onto the municipalities and airport authorities, it told those same airports that they would not need to have firefighting units at the airports themselves. They could have them within about a 7 minute to 10 minute timeframe in a nearby city such as Grande Prairie. The airport is almost a suburb of the city of Grande Prairie. So the firefighting department at the airport was closed down. There were considerable savings, which were transferred to the city when it agreed to take over the airport authority as a result of that. That was one of the enticing factors that the federal government used with small airports, quite frankly, to convince the airport authorities to start managing them themselves.
Why has it decided to go back into this business of having these firefighting units right at the airport? Because there was an incident, I think it was in Moncton, a few years ago. Quite frankly I do not believe that even a firefighting unit at that airport would have resolved that problem. However because there was some negative publicity, all of a sudden the federal government reneged on its promises to the airport authorities and told them that they had to go back to this. All the savings that were realized, that were part of the deal that the government offered to take over this airport, now had to be paid for themselves.
I do not think that is fair to small airports such as Fort St. John, Grande Prairie and Fort McMurray. I think a number of airport managers are coming to Ottawa shortly to make this case themselves to the transport minister. If the Minister of Transport wants that kind of response time at the airport and if they are going to have to put in these capital expenditures again after it was all dismantled as a result of the minister convincing these small airport authorities to do just that, then I suggest he and the Government of Canada better pay those costs.
I personally do not believe a five minute response time is necessary in a city like Grande Prairie where the airport is located just on the outskirts of the city. The response time there for firefighting is about a seven minute but that is not good enough for the federal government. There is a huge cost of roughly $500,000 a year which that airport authority will have to incur.
There is an issue of fairness here. This is the government that convinced these people, like the airport authority of the city of Grande Prairie, that it should take over the airport. It was downloaded from the Minister of Transport because government was trying to save some money at a time when there was a cost cutting necessity. I have no objection to that but do not impose rules that change the conditions of that transaction which happened only a very short time ago. That is not fair. That changes the rules and puts airports in a position where they cannot operate effectively. If they have to put this capital expenditure in, companies like WestJet will be charged additional fees.
WestJet flies to Edmonton. It is about a half an hour flight by jet. It is a four hour drive. All of a sudden the cost starts to go up. Airport improvement fees, the security tax that the federal government is still imposing on airlines, now there is the added cost of CARs and pretty soon it does not become economical for companies like WestJet to fly to Grande Prairie. What happens is a substantial sector of the economy that makes it very attractive for business people to come to Grande Prairie by jet is killed. Business people will have to charter a plane or a scheduled flight that does not utilize jet traffic because these companies will have been priced out of business.
The government charges such as the airport security tax, airport improvement fees and all the other taxes represent a higher cost than the actual cost of the ticket itself from a company like WestJet. That is not acceptable, particularly when it was this government that told the airport authorities that if they took over the airports, they would not have to have these five minute firefighting response times with facilities right at the airport. They were told they could have it in the city, a short distance away. Now it is changing the rules and that is not fair.
This should be rejected. I know the Canadian Alliance will vote against it and I personally urge other members in the House to do just that because this issue is really an issue of fairness and the government is not living up to its responsibilities.