Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the work the member for Parkdale—High Park has done on infrastructure, pressing for urban transit and a new deal for cities, as well as the work she has been doing on behalf of her constituents and for consumers. This is very much a consumer issue. Essentially, we have the Conservatives pushing forward with this bad bill, unparalleled bad choice of policy.
There was a report in the Hamilton Spectator this morning by Fred Vallance-Jones, who is one of the foremost journalists in the country looking into air safety issues. Part of the article quotes Richard Balnis, who is a senior research officer with the Canadian Union of Public Employees. He says:
This is an incredible deal that has been struck with the airlines that Transport Canada is saying, 'We cannot oversee you anymore, so we're going to trust you to do it yourself, and the quid pro quo is we are not going to enforce against you, but more importantly, we're going to put a secrecy cone over the both of us”.
This article goes on to reiterate the investigation of air safety by the Hamilton Spectator, the Toronto Star and The Record of the Waterloo region. It says:
—gave publicity to the government's plans for SMS, many groups appeared before the Commons transport committee to warn Canada could be heading for an aviation catastrophe. The newspapers' investigation found more than 80,000 passengers were put at risk over a five- year period from 2001 to 2005 when planes came dangerously close to each other in Canadian skies. It also found rising numbers of mechanical defects and lax safety regulations.
We have the appalling record that Transport Canada has, only through luck, avoided a catastrophe certainly in the last few years. Essentially we have this excellent investigation done by The Toronto Star, the Hamilton Spectator and the Kitchener Waterloo The Record. We have a case by case examination of the number of passengers that came close to tragedy.
Why would the Conservatives proceed with a plan like this when they know that Canadian families are absolutely opposed to putting their loved ones in danger and when all the evidence shows that we have less and less security in our air space, less and less enforcement of safety regulations and fewer and fewer flight inspectors? We have 100 vacant positions the Conservatives refuse to fill.
In all that dynamic, why would the Conservatives push forward with what is exactly contrary to the public interest and to what Canadians want and need?