Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to this bill. I want to begin with a brief citation from an article that appeared in the Toronto Star about a year ago:
Jetsgo, which offered tickets as low as $1, had repeated mechanical breakdowns, shoddy maintenance practices, inexperienced pilots and midair mishaps. Transport Canada, which is mandated to keep Canada's skies safe, knew of the problems, but for 2 1/2 years dismissed the troubles as the growing pains of a start-up operator. Only after a near-crash in Calgary in January 2005 did it take tough action, but even after a special inspection the next month revealed serious trouble, the regulator continued to publicly tout the airline as "safe."
I raise this because the bill we are dealing with today, Bill C-6, is about health and safety. It is about the health and safety of the public in the airline sector. It is about the safety of people who work in this sector. Bill C-6 would not address the situation the article describes with Jetsgo, which subsequently did go bankrupt, but it would make this situation worse.
We have seen, certainly for more than the last two decades, a period of deregulation and privatization, increasing transfer over to the private sector of oversight and enforcement of various rules. I do remember the pre-deregulation period in the transportation sector. The public was assured and the airline industry was assured that there would be no compromise on safety, that public safety was paramount and that even though companies were to be privatized and there was to be deregulation in terms of fares and routes, there would not be deregulation of the public good when it came to safety, that that would never happen.
Today we have Bill C-6 which would do just that. I want to review what it is that Bill C-6 will do. It will enshrine what is called safety management systems and it will enshrine them so that the companies themselves in effect will be supervising their own safety compliance. It transfers increasing responsibility over to the industry itself to set and enforce its own standards. It is designed not to enhance the public safety or security in the airline industry. What it will do is help Transport Canada deal with limited declining resources and projected declining numbers of airline safety inspectors due to retirements.
Certainly the Canadian public wants to be assured that their safety is paramount and is not compromised in dealing with administrative concerns about lack of resources or demographic changes among the inspectors because of retirements. Canadians have a great deal to be concerned about with this legislation. Self-enforcement when it comes to public safety in the airline sector is simply unacceptable.
It began in the U.S., but it has expanded to Canada and to many other countries. We have seen with deregulation absolutely cutthroat competition in the airline sector. I have worked in this sector. I have seen the changes that have taken place over the last several years.
The kind of service that has been offered to the travelling public has changed dramatically. Certainly no one would want to see their safety treated as the change in meal service has been treated on the airlines. No one wants to go from a full breakfast on Air Canada to peanuts and have their safety treated in a similar fashion. However, we are finding this incredible cutthroat competition in the airline sector.
When it comes to food, bringing one's own lunch, breakfast or dinner is not a big deal and people are doing it. However, when it comes to public safety and security, we do not want public safety and security to be subject to cutthroat competition.
Competition has been exacerbated by high fuel prices which have squeezed the airline industry even further. With the high prices of fuel combined with cutthroat competition, airlines are being driven into the ground. The industry has been littered with bankrupt airlines going back a number of years.
There is one area in which we do not want airlines to compete. In that incredibly fierce competitive environment, the one area we want completely protected from cutthroat competition surely is public safety.
We know there have been a number of close calls over the years, but generally, I think the travelling public feels fairly confident in the airlines when it comes to public safety. This goes back to the reassurance that Canadians had prior to airline deregulation and privatization that whatever happened, public safety would be paramount.
The issue we are raising around Bill C-6 is the concern that public safety will no longer be paramount. That bedrock confidence Canadians have in the safety and security of their airlines can no longer be resting on absolutely firm ground as it has been in the past.
I do want to commend my colleague from Burnaby—New Westminster for the tremendous work he has done in the transport committee in trying to amend what is a very bad bill. He has been successful in making a number of positive changes that have tightened this bill to some degree, but not to the point where the public can have assurance that their safety is going to be completely uncompromised. For that reason, I am rising to oppose this bill. I think it is not in the best interests of Canadians.
We are a vast country that was built on effective transportation. Certainly the railway from sea to sea and airlines in the 20th and 21st centuries have allowed Canadians to stay connected with one another. For our country more than any other country in the world to compromise public safety with a bill like this by transferring responsibility for safety enforcement to the very companies that are in this cutthroat competition in a deregulated environment, I believe is wrong.