Mr. Speaker, one of the concepts that was brought forward, and this I believe happened at committee in testimony, was the balance between what the industry was calling for, which was some sort of notion of streamlining and some cost effectiveness measures. To most Canadians, if we were able to propose to them, if this bill were to pass, that there would be some marginal savings on an airline tickets, most Canadians would say that should be considered but the cost of that small savings would be in some order of safety, some magnitude of Canadians' safety in getting on the airplane.
What is safety worth to people? What is safety worth to parliamentarians when we are deciding what bills should go forward and what bills should not and which concepts should go forward and which ones should not? Clearly, it is very difficult.
We had people from the health department in front of us at the environment committee some time ago and I did not know this but the government uses a formula to decide the value of a Canadian life. Apparently, in Health Canada anyway, it is $5 million. That is what the life of a Canadian is worth when the government is trying to estimate how many lives are lost or saved. This was in the area of pollution prevention.
It would be fascinating if some of the Conservatives would stand and defend their position.
We have a government advocating for some measure which, I suspect, is an ideology toward a deregulated form of business where there is little or no oversight for regulations and restrictions are made up by the industry themselves, some laissez-faire free hand, the invisible hand of the marketplace stepping into an issue like health and safety, to passenger safety.
This seems so ridiculous, particularly when it is presented in the light of the day. My colleague from Burnaby—New Westminster has been working diligently to ascertain the qualities of any of the motions that are being considered within the bill, to improve them and to try to work with other members of Parliament on the committee, within government and within the opposition parties and has found few partnerships that were willing.
The member from Eglinton—Lawrence, I believe, has some further and future ambitions and can only see in his starry eyes the executives within the biggest corporations that run our airline industry but cannot see for a moment that the trade-off between the security of individual people, who I suppose he represents, cannot be seen for this other ambition.
Clearly, we need to rebalance the scales and design a bill that we can all be proud of, not one that plays to some selected audiences.