Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for Burnaby—New Westminster for his tireless work on behalf of the safety of Canadians who use our air services and certainly the workers in the industry as well.
Too many times in this House we have seen legislation pass that we later had regrets about or legislation that had unintended consequences. Similar to Bill C-7, there is another piece of legislation that had some drastic unintended consequences and no government to date, either Conservative or Liberal, has seen fit to bring forward the changes that are required. I am talking specifically about Bill C-31 in 1985, a bill that attempted to recognize discrimination against first nations women in this country who married non-first nations men and lost their status and reinstate their status. That bill, in effect, has a second generation cutoff. This means that many first nations children, male and female, will lose their status. In fact, we are seeing grave inequities in families where some grandchildren have status and some do not.
There is a reserve in Canada where the last status first nation person has been born. That is a bill with unintended consequences. I cannot believe that in 1985 the legislators of the day actually developed a bill that ensured that first nations would lose their status after a couple of generations.
That is why it is extremely important for the House to consider all of the ramifications of Bill C-7. We are talking about a piece of legislation that will have far-reaching consequences. My understanding is that it will set the future of safety practices in this country, until another government sees fit to change the legislation.
Part of this bill specifically deals with the fact that we are, in effect, going to hand over safety oversight to the industry itself. That is similar to putting the fox in charge of the chicken coop.
It is extremely important that the federal government maintain its responsibility to Canadians so that Canadians have confidence in the safety of this industry. The federal government has a responsibility in terms of federal oversight.
The member for Burnaby—New Westminster mentioned that a number of expert witnesses have raised this issue. I want to refer to some of the very good words that he stated earlier this week in the House.
He said that despite the fact that the NDP brought forward very clear objections in this House, the Conservatives decided to push the bill through. He went on to talk about the fact that at the committee stage, major concerns and worries were brought forward by people who know the business better than anyone else.
Justice Virgil Moshansky, who ran the Dryden crash inquiry, brought forward major concerns with this bill. The inspectors from the Canadian Federal Pilots Association attended. Who knows safety better than the inspectors themselves? They talked about the attrition and downgrading of the key inspectors' roles in Canadian aviation.
One thing we know that can affect an outcome, even though one may not be forthcoming about that outcome, is to starve the system. When one does not invest in the human resources component of a government department and one does not have recruitment, training and retention strategies, one ensures there is a shortage. One of the arguments has been that because there is attrition among the inspectors, we need to offload inspection to the industry itself. That is a very shortsighted policy.
We have seen policy with unintended consequences in other government departments and in other areas where the government has a responsibility. A number of years ago, in the early 1990s I believe, there was a report that talked about the number of physicians who were graduating from universities. Half of that report was implemented, which has had some link to the serious shortage of physicians in today's world in health care, but the other half of the report, which talked about some of the other practices that were in place, was not implemented.
With respect to the aviation industry, the government has been starving the department in terms of investing in its human resources. We see this in fisheries as well. In my riding of Nanaimo—Cowichan, this year we have had historically the lowest return of chinook salmon ever, some 600 chinook, in the Cowichan River. Part of this is because of lack of investment in on the ground resources, in scientific and technical resources. It is an example of another department where the government is shirking its responsibility around federal oversight. We are seeing very direct effects in our community.
Aviation safety is not something that should be taken lightly. It is a life and death situation. Surely with any legislation that came forward that could impact on the safety of Canadians who are flying or on the workers, we would want to ensure that the appropriate resources were put in place so that the federal government could perform its responsibility in terms of federal oversight.
We are talking about transportation and the rail industry is another example of the consequences where the federal government is not involved in the way it should be. In British Columbia we have seen a number of derailments. There was a derailment about two kilometres from Golden in Kicking Horse Canyon where five cars went off the rail and spilled hydrochloric acid. My understanding is that one of the others cars contained sodium hydroxide. It was such a serious situation that one of the nearby schools had to be closed as a precautionary measure.
That is just one example in a long line of problems with railway safety in Canada. Part of that problem is directly related to the bill before us, in that the railway system has been self-managed. So we have an example in the transportation sector where we have abandoned our federal responsibility to a large extent and we are seeing the impact of self-management.
There has been a cutback in the very important role the public sector plays in watching over the transportation sector, a role which Canadians expect their government to play. When they fly or when they travel on the railway or live in a community where a rail line passes through, they expect that they and their community will be safe.
The member for Burnaby—New Westminster said in a speech:
In 2005 we saw the highest number of railway accidents in nearly a decade, much higher than the 10 year rolling average that existed before.
We have seen an increase in railway accidents. We have seen, tragically, deaths in the Fraser Canyon this summer. We have seen environmental damage such as the Cheakamus Lake in the Squamish Estuary and Lake Wabamun in Alberta. We have seen consistently a greater number of railway accidents over the last few years. This is a matter of some concern.
The New Democratic Party pushed hard for the release of the CN safety audit. It is important that Canadians have access to those kinds of audits so that there is transparency and accountability, particularly when oversight has been offloaded to the industry.
Canadians value their railway system and their aviation system and they want to make sure that those systems are safe. They do not want to see the kinds of situations we have seen in British Columbia. There have been spills that have killed the fish in the rivers in British Columbia. Certainly from coast to coast we value the health of our rivers. I just talked about fish and those kinds of spills impact on a valuable natural resource.
Another thing we talked about was shipbuilding, where we are again seeing the erosion of another piece of the transportation sector in this country.
We just saw a mini-budget update that threw around tax cuts. When we talk about small and medium sized businesses, those tax cuts are valuable, but when we are talking about investment in infrastructure and about the health, safety and viability of our transportation sector, we are not seeing the kinds of investments that would ensure those transportation sectors remain safe and viable and continue to move toward meeting the needs of the 21st century and our economy.
On Vancouver Island, we have a very good example of a railway that the federal government is ignoring. We have tried, on a number of occasions, to get the transport minister to take a look at the E&N Railway and at how it can impact on our community, but to date we have had very little success. Once again, we in British Columbia, on Vancouver Island in particular, feel that we do not seem to count in this federation.
I again applaud the member for Burnaby—New Westminster for raising these important issues in the House. He has suggested an amendment that would ensure that the aviation management system will meet the needs of all Canadians. He has made some suggestions around amendments. He has done a tremendous amount of work in bringing amendments forward to the committee. I would suggest that if we do not want to have those unintended consequences, we should go forward with those amendments as suggested.