Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to address this legislation. I want to compliment the government for attempting to tackle some of the problems with the airline industry. That will be the extent of my compliments today because first we need to address an attitudinal problem.
We are here as opposition members bringing forward ideas on how to improve legislation to make life better for Canadians. There is this constant attitude by the government of resistance to that. We have some ideas. We have worked on these things. We have consulted our constituents. What we would like to see is a little openness from the government. We do not expect it to have 100% perfection every time it brings forward legislation. That is not the anticipated process. The process is to get input from a variety of members of Parliament and see a much improved bill. I wish the government would cease to resist this reflexively and be a little more open. After all, opposition MPs are not from the government but we are here to help. We would like to see an attitude change.
The bill itself has some serious flaws. Clause 12 gives the minister the power to make directions in such a way that these directions would be final and not subject to appeal or review.
Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with my colleague from Grand Prairie who will also add some detail and some innovative ideas of his own on this.
It is dangerous to allow a minister that kind of discretionary power to make directions that are not subject to appeal or review. If there are some security matters that should be so above question, then tell us what those are so that we can see why a minister would possibly want this sweeping power to make decisions that are not subject to appeal or review.
In the area of governance itself, the bill in terms of suggesting how airport authorities and their directors should look and how those boards should be comprised, it is fascinating that the government is not requiring that there be somebody from the airline industry on those boards. This particular piece of governance gives to the authority the power to impose airport fees, the power to seize aircraft, the power to do all kinds of things related to passenger fees yet to not have a representative from the industry on a board like that is virtually unheard of. Anywhere this type of governance structure is required there are always representatives of the industry or the professions and occupations on the board. Workers compensation boards in every province have a set number of representatives from labour, from industry and from the public at large. The bill is deficient in not having that. Nav Canada is certainly required to have that. It should also be in this bill.
There is also an approach to airports themselves and even airlines, but specifically to airports which suggests a one size fits all approach by the government. That is a very serious flaw. All airports are not of the same order of magnitude.
In the Okanagan—Coquihalla region the Penticton airport handles something in the area of 45,000 flights a year and over 80,000 passengers. We can compare that with Toronto which serves over 28 million travellers in a year. That is 80,000 in Penticton and 28 million in Toronto. The approach should not be the same.
I am not talking about varying safety regulations. Certainly those should all meet the standards. I can assure people who are thinking about flying into Okanagan—Coquihalla that the Penticton airport has a wonderful safety record and a wonderful record of service I might add. However the one size fits all approach is not going to deal with some of the unique problems in certain areas.
The bill also misses the opportunity to fix some problems. There is a policy where Ottawa will often increase the rents on airports as the airport operators seek to improve their services or in fact to improve their facilities. An airport and its board or managers that decide to improve the airport should not be punished simply by being hit with a higher tax just because they want to have an improved facility. The bill misses the opportunity to deal with that punitive approach to improvements.
On the flip side of that, on the rental increase if they want to improve their facility, there are certain requirements for airports that are often imposed which have nothing to do with safety, nothing to do with service and have more to do with opulence in the view of some people than to do with serviceability.
Therefore, in many cases smaller airports are forced to integrate into their designs some things that have nothing to do with safety or service. They do that at some cost and then are taxed at a higher rate because these things are called improvements. This is an area that needs to be fixed in the bill.
Again, directly related to the Penticton airport, it is the airport in the interior of British Columbia that is closest to the United States border. It serves as a critical transportation component of the visitor and convention business, economic development and community events. It is a very vital air link into the Okanagan--Coquihalla region from the United States and other destinations.
Immediately following September 11, Canada customs clearance at the airport was temporarily withdrawn. We were told that it was for security reasons and I think there was a level of understanding about that. Those services were not resumed until February 22, 2002, after many people, including me, had intervened and asked for those services to be resumed.
However, in the resumption of services they were put in place from only 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday to Friday. Weekends are not covered, holidays are not covered and extended hours into the evenings are not covered as they were before. We appealed that and Canada customs came back and said that the after hours service would be put back but at a charge of $30,000 per quarter. That is a considerable burden for an airport of this size. We feel that it is unjustified.
I am asking the minister, either through the process of this bill or just to get his attention while he is here today, hopefully, to look at this and put back that Canada customs service as it was before, without implementing that very burdensome charge. For the airport to have to consider taking on that charge has a real impact on people flying in on weekends and in the evening. We would like that to be looked at and reconsidered and in fact have the extra charge removed.
That brings me to the point about the security personnel at the Penticton Regional Airport. They are professional people and they are diligent and expeditious. However, Mr. Speaker, when you come to visit in Okanagan--Coquihalla, as I know you want to, and as I know Canadians around the nation want to come to the Okanagan to see what a beautiful place it is, in regard to going through the security clearance, without the electronic equipment there bags have to be checked individually and it slows things down. The personnel doing this are very considerate and it is not offensive, but it does slow things down considerably. We are asking that an x-ray machine be put in there.
The x-ray machine we are asking for and these extra security provisions are some things that we are paying for anyway. Let me illustrate this. Here is where there was an opportunity for the bill to address the area of extra charges that air travellers pay. Just as an example, I will talk about the airport in Kelowna. A regular flight with WestJet from Kelowna to Calgary is about $77; these figures can be rounded off up or down a dollar as I go through them. It costs $77 to fly from Kelowna to Calgary. Within that $77, a passenger will pay $6 in GST and approximately $22 for an airport security fee, which a passenger also has to pay in Penticton but none of which is being used, and could be, for the extra security equipment required in Penticton. As well within that $77, there is an airport improvement fee of $12 in Calgary and a Nav Canada fee of $5 on top of that. That is roughly $45 on a $77 flight. Let us just think of the costs. We know that there are going to be some costs and some charges, but if we took them away it would be $32 to fly from Kelowna to Calgary.
The bill misses the opportunity to address some of these charges in a vigorous way. It also seems to reflect a built-in bias, a bias against smaller communities and a bias against entrepreneurial operations. WestJet, as an example, is an exciting company. It is very entrepreneurial in nature, meeting all the safety, service and hospitality requirements of the industry, and yet it appears that the government, through its legislation and through allowing competing airlines to have predatory pricing policies on different routes, is biased against those who would invest, those who would be entrepreneurial in nature in terms of delivering a service to Canadians.
Therefore, I am asking that the specifics of the bill be addressed. Also, when I talk about one airline over another, WestJet vis-à-vis Air Canada, for instance, I am not talking about the employees themselves, the staff. Employees at both airlines and in fact in most of the travel and tourist industry in Canada, and especially in the Okanagan, are very service oriented and people oriented.
These are some of the areas that need to be corrected in the bill. They could be if the government had a mind to do so. We would ask the government to give them fair consideration.