Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today at the report stage of Bill C-6. After first reading and the debate at second reading, the Bloc Québécois was opposed to the bill. We had a lot of concerns about comprehensive safety management systems, which came with no guarantees that the detailed inspections by federal check pilots could continue. At the same time, there were many signs that the number of check pilots would be reduced in the future.
My colleague from Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel and I studied the bill carefully. The committee held 11 meetings to hear witnesses from all the stakeholder groups—pilots, federal officials, lobby groups—and six special meetings to examine the bill clause by clause. After studying all the clauses, we wrote a report, which was recently tabled in the House and proposed 20 amendments to the bill.
The Bloc's concerns have to do with the safety management system and the designated organizations, because we did not have a clear idea of what responsibilities they would have in the overall system.
We heard the different parties, including Justice Moshansky, an aviation expert who even conducted an inquiry into a plane crash. He said that the clause on designated organizations should be kept, but with provision for oversight. This is what we did, as it was clear to us that, in light of all the positive comments we had heard, this safety management system could give good results.
However, we made sure government inspections would continue, in particular by means of the Bloc amendment, which stated:
The Minister shall maintain a program for the oversight and surveillance of aviation safety in order to achieve the highest level of safety established by the Minister.
We proposed this amendment, which was included in our committee report, because we wanted to ensure that the inspections that are already part of the air transportation system would continue, despite the more general implementation of safety management systems.
In this way, we made sure that Transport Canada would not just have audits of the systems themselves done and not carry out its own visual and technical inspections of aircraft. By doing this, we are bringing about what the minister and the department were talking about—a dual safety system—and not just replacing inspections with a safety system. Continuing with the inspections and implementing the systems across the board ensures that, as a basic principle, all companies will be governed by a safety management system. We can at least rest assured, thanks to the continuing inspections, that the system itself will improve safety overall within companies.
However, I am particularly disappointed that 16 last-minute amendments are being introduced at this stage. Of these, 10 or 12 have been moved by the NDP. One amendment asks for the elimination of clause 12. We studied designated organizations together at length and now, all of a sudden, we are told that all that will be eliminated, at the last minute, even though these views were not accepted when the bill was studied in committee.
The most surprising is the government's amendment No. 2, which seeks to eliminate everything pertaining to safety systems. The NDP, the Bloc and the Liberals worked together to come up with a good definition, which was not in the legislation. It is a matter of regulations, establishing regulations for safety management systems.
We went to the trouble of spelling out the definition of these systems. Suddenly, at the last minute, just before the vote, the government wants to eliminate this definition—which is very binding for the government, it is true—that allows us to give our full support to this bill.
My colleague read it earlier, but I think it is important to read it again:
(c.1) safety management systems and programs that provide for
(i) the appointment of an executive
(A) responsible for operations and activities authorized under a certificate issued pursuant to a regulation made under this Act, and
(B) accountable for the extent to which the requirements of the applicable safety management system or program have been met,
(ii) the implementation, as a result of any risk management analysis, of the remedial action required to maintain the highest level of safety,
(iii) continuous monitoring and regular assessment of the level of safety achieved, and
(iv) the involvement of employees and their bargaining agents in the development, implementation and ongoing operation of the applicable safety management system or program;
This is a set of obligations for companies and their staff to ensure real involvement in this safety management program.
We also looked at railway safety, where safety management systems were implemented roughly five years ago.
We heard from a number of witnesses during consideration of safety. Most of the witnesses said they had never heard of a safety management system in their company.
With this legislation, we want employees and bargaining agents to be involved and play an active role in the safety management system. We do not just want to have a nice system that comes from management and is in the company's files, but does filter down to the core to ensure full involvement of the entire company.
Today, the government is proposing to eliminate this entire nice definition that we worked on together. It is not very reassuring as far as any wish they might have to implement a good safety management system, which we subscribed to only after examining it and hearing from all the witnesses.
I noticed earlier that the representatives of the official opposition will not support such an amendment. They took part in this, just as we did. We do not want this amendment to be adopted. They put forward three or four other admissible amendments that simply make corrections to the text.
I hope this amendment will not be adopted. I also hope that after the bill has been considered by the other place, there will not be any surprises, like the ones we had with Bill C-11.