Madam Speaker, customarily in budget debates, when ministers responsible for their portfolio come to the House to debate the budget, they usually spend time talking about their portfolios. The Minister of Transport has talked about the Canada space program, employment insurance, everything but transport, and I suspect for good reason. The minister, at a breakfast the day after the budget was delivered, said that he was “very disappointed with the budget”. He should have been disappointed as the transport minister because the transport sector of our economy got absolutely nothing whatsoever with regard to the budget.
The minister staked his reputation as the transport minister on having a sustained freeze on airport rents so that the government would stop viewing our airline industry as a source of revenue and start seeing it as part of Canada's national infrastructure. He failed to deliver for the air industry. He joked at the breakfast that he would like to put the finance minister on a do not fly list, and he said that he was very disappointed with the budget. I suspect he has been taken out to the woodshed, which is why all of a sudden he is now a latter day champion of the budget.
I, Canadians, the air industry and the transport committee, which I have sat on for four years, would like to know this. When we unanimously demanded that the government freeze and reduce airport rents, why did the minister fail to get the job done, and why does the government persistently put the screws to Canada's airport industry and to Canadian travellers?