Madam Speaker, I rise on behalf of the constituents of Surrey Central to participate in the debate on Bill C-27.
Before I begin, let me compliment the hard work done by our senior transportation critic on this issue in highlighting the problems related to this bill. Also, we will have a wonderful speech from the hon. member for Blackstrap with whom I will be sharing my time.
Bill C-27 is an act respecting airport authorities and other airport operators and amending the Canada Airports Act. Let me state that it is a combination of missed opportunities and attempts to solve problems that do not even 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 chose this time to introduce this legislation dealing with airports.
If we compare Canadian airports, both large and small, with similarly sized airports in other countries, the Canadian airports stand up rather well. At least there is no urgency or emergency to fix them. If something is not broken, why fix it? The real problem facing Canada's airline sector is not the way airports are run, but the way airport rent is charged by the federal government and passed on to the airlines.
This issue was raised and dealt with in the transportation committee hearings over the past few weeks. As a result, in an April 11 report this year the committee unanimously recommended that:
The federal government suspend rental payments by airports for a two-year period and the airports shall pass the rental savings to air carriers.
Further study is not needed. It is time to act. No one will find any discussion of airport rents in the Canada Airports Act.
In fact the Standing Committee on Transport made another unanimous recommendation to eliminate the air travellers security charge. This was connected to transferring responsibility for airport security to multi-modal agency that would be fully publicly funded. Here again an understanding of the nature of threats and security at small airports is helpful. Large airports have better security than smaller airports. The problem of course is that if the security is reduced at small airports but connecting passengers are allowed to proceed directly into the sterile or secure areas at big airports, the security of those large airports is compromised.
In Europe passengers arriving at places like Frankfurt, Paris or London from smaller centres are screened just like folks coming in off the street. They have to be screened before they enter the secure area of the airport to catch connecting flights. There is absolutely no mention of this idea in Bill C-27, even though it would offer better security at lower cost.
We are considering an airports act that applies to places as small as Gander with just 86,000 passengers and would also apply to any airport that has over 200,000 passengers annually. For most managers of small airports, the biggest single issue facing them is something call CARs 308. This is a recently imposed five minute emergency response time at smaller airports that has dramatically increased their operating costs. The federal government has not offered a dime in operating assistance and this unfunded federal government requirement is the biggest single issue facing many small airports.
The Regional Community Airports Coalition of Canada is calling on Transport Canada to suspend the introduction of CARs 308 indefinitely or to agree to pay for this regulation in its entirety to avoid the airports having to pass these increased operating costs on to the airlines. The coalition points out that these increased costs, applied in the form of a regulatory recovery fee, could increase airline fees at affected airports by up to 30% or higher. This will again affect the competitiveness and viability of the regional and community airports and therefore the communities they serve.
Other than the air security tax, the CARs 308 is the most important airport related issue missing in Bill C-27.
Part 6 of the Canada airports act deals with the issue of airport improvement fees. Essentially it subjects AIF to the same kind of accountability and appeal procedures that currently apply to Nav Canada fees. For airports just reaching the 200,000 passenger threshold, this will be a new level of bureaucracy, but I think that Canadians deserve to know how such fees are being spent.
If we held the Liberal government to the same standard, taxes like 1.5ยข per litre fuel tax that was aimed at cutting the deficit or the $24 air security tax would have to be much more accurately tailored to reasonable expenses, rather than a need to finance future Liberal spending or even the wasting of the money.
However even if one agrees with the general philosophy of the AIFs, the headlines that are dealing with this issue are not focusing on accountability but on the fact that the Air Canada restructuring has left many airport authorities in the red.
It seems that for many airports the AIF is included in the airline ticket prices and collected by the airlines and then handed over to the airport authority. Air Canada's financial problems are affecting many airports that trusted Air Canada to collect the AIF on their behalf. As of April 4, Canada's largest airports were owed a total $80 million in unpaid landing fees and airport improvement charges by Air Canada and that money is now tied up in the CCRA hearings.
However the air travellers security charge is not similarly affected, because Bill C-49 from last session required airlines to hold this money in trust. It does not require airlines, that collect the AIFs on behalf of many airports, to hold that money in trust as is done with the air travellers security charge.
Part 6, devoted to the question of AIF, we would think that the idea of any airline holding AIF money in trust so that airports would be paid even if the airline has a financial problem as in the case of Air Canada would have been included in Bill C-27, but it is not. This is another opportunity missed by this weak, arrogant Liberal government.
When we look at a list of priority airport issues facing the aviation industry, Bill C-27 misses virtually every opportunity to solve an existing problem. The government is trying to solve the problems that do not exist but it is not solving the problems that exist in the industry.
Bill C-27 is an attempt to codify the status quo in Canada's airline industry. This approach has two big problems.
The first is that there is no one out there calling for the status quo to be codified. No airline, airport authority or stakeholder is calling for legislation that would write down in one place the way Canada's various airports are run. It is an attempt to solve the problem that does not exist. Most of the language contained in Bill C-27 already exists in most of the leases that NAS airports have with Transport Canada. In many ways Bill C-27 is a complete waste of time.
The second big problem is that Bill C-27 would treat different airports similarly and similar airports differently causing true discrimination and causing far more problems than any codification of the status quo could potentially solve.
Since my time is almost over, let me conclude that a one size fits all solution, regardless of size and location, will not work.
Bill C-27 also fails to address major issues confronting airports, the CARs 308 issue, as I mentioned, the airport rental policy, the question of overly opulent terminals, the need for air industry representation and the need for the minister to get an arrogant airport authority to live within its mandate.
Bill C-27 is also introduced by the Minister of Transport who has repeatedly turned his back on unanimous recommendations by the committee to adopt the committee's recommendations as the department's priorities. The House should reject the legislation especially when, in cases such as this, it created more problems than it solves.