Mr. Speaker, it is with mixed feelings that I rise today to speak to this bill. I say that because we should not have to deal with this kind of inferior legislation, particularly when we are looking at the safety of our citizens, our constituents.
We are entrusted with the responsibility to make public policy and to make legislation that takes into account many different aspects and facets when we look at the bills that have been in front of us recently, be it on trade bills or on voting bills. One of the most important facets in the area of transportation is safety. Protecting the safety of Canadians is one of the key issues that we are here to deal with in this bill.
The reason the NDP has put forward so many amendments and the reason we are standing today to speak to the bill is that if the bill were to go ahead without any changes or amendments it would be a colossal disaster.
It is incumbent upon all of us to foresee, and perhaps it is the unintended consequences of the government, but we need to foresee the consequences of any legislation that passes in this place. On Bill C-6, we need to look at the consequences for air safety.
An issue that has been important in my riding is the integrity of being able to support those men and women who work in our public service to come forward and be protected when they see wrongdoing happening. We know it in the popular term as whistleblowing.
I was proud to work with my colleague from Winnipeg Centre and other colleagues in this place on the committee dealing with the accountability act, Bill C-2, to strengthen whistleblower legislation. We believed it should have gone further but we made some important and positive changes.
When I see this bill, one of the things that stands out that will shock and should appall many Canadians is what the bill does. It takes away that whistleblower protection. We are not talking about maintenance of bicycles, as important as that is. We are talking here about aviation safety. We are talking about very complex mechanisms that most of us would not have the slightest idea of how to get around, whereas with bicycle repair we might.
We need to ensure that those men and women who see wrongdoing are protected. That is a value and a principle that I thought the government believed in. If we listen to the rhetoric, it suggests that it does but then we look at this legislation and we see that it does not seem to be the case.
It was already mentioned by my friend from Hamilton that many people have spoken out. They are not lay people. They are experts in the field. They are telling us that Bill C-6 does not get the job done. They are saying that Bill C-6 opens up, not only the safety of Canadians but the reputation that our country has on the world stage.
My understanding of the bill is that not even our friends to the south, who perhaps have more of a laissez-faire view of things like air safety, would contemplate going this far. It really begs the question as to why we would believe that, in the area of air safety and this idea of changing things to this extent, we would be better off going with less control and oversight than our friends to the south and in other jurisdictions. It really does beg the question of what we believe we know better than others.
I certainly would not submit to the House that we should do things our own way. Our party suggests that the Canadian way is often the better way of going about things. However, when we are talking about aeronautics and aeronautic safety and we look at this industry, and the fact that it is global in proportion and needs to be carefully viewed, we have to look at this bill and ask, “What is it that the government believes it is helping Canadians with?”
Again, I go back to experts in the field and, if I may, cite an article that I believe has already been referenced but is one that I think bears repeating. The headline says it all: “Judge calls for review of 'sliding' air safety”. I think that says a lot about where we are going here.
We know that the 1989 report on the Dryden crash in which 24 people were killed led to many improvements in air safety. We had fears, and I remember that instance very well, that we were in fact backsliding, that we needed to strengthen air safety. We heard from one of the authors of the report who looked at air safety, and the quote is pretty straightforward:
I believe the government is moving away from more vigorous inspection and enforcement strictly as a cost-cutting measure, much as was done in the mid- and late-1980s preceding the Dryden crash.
If that is not a call for oversight and to review more thoroughly this file, I do not what is. What the good judge was saying, and he was given an Order of Canada for his work in this area, was to not repeat the mistakes of the past. When we allow things to be deregulated without the proper oversight, without protection, for instance, as already mentioned for whistleblowers, we are essentially saying that it is okay to allow for further crashes, for further mishaps.
I point to what we have seen in the rail industry as of late. Since we have given over rail maintenance, and it is not regulated to the extent it should have been, we have seen, and we just have to turn on the radio or read the paper, more crashes and derailments, be it passenger or cargo trains.
I want members to think about this because I think it is important. There is a connection between what has happened with rail safety and what is contemplated with aeronautic safety in Bill C-6. It is the following proposition. When we had the tools and the oversight, and we had the regulation involved in rail safety, we were able to be more nimble, to be stronger in our response when we had instances where rail safety was failing. We had citizens and people, be it in unions or in management, et cetera, who were able to cite problems in rail safety, be it at crossings or, and we see this presently, with cargo trains that have too many cars on their load.
We need to do something about it. It used to be that we had the public sector there to respond. Unfortunately, what we did is we gave that up. We gave away the tools to properly respond vis-à-vis rail safety.
What has been the consequence of that? As I said, just turn on the radio, read the paper, and look at the evening news, the consequence is cargo and passenger derailments. There is a lack of confidence. At the very time we need to be more reliant on our rail system, we now have problems with rail safety.
In fact, many of my friends who would like to see our government go further in building the capacity for more rail as a form of transportation see that we have problems because of lack of oversight. So, let us take that lesson from the problems with rail safety and oversight, and the fact we gave that up and gave it away, and let us take a look at—