Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak today to the bill.
At the outset, the member for Eglinton—Lawrence made a spectacular speech on the subject. It was 100% accurate all around. However, I have to observe that there appears to be two Conservative parties in the House, particularly on this issue. We have the member of the Bloc writing the script for the Conservatives in the committee.
I am quite surprised, for a Conservative government that normally wants to follow the United States. The United States has rocketed ahead of Canada just since January in the following areas. For example, in terms of tarmac delays, Mr. Ray LaHood, the secretary of transportation, is now penalizing the airlines $17,500 per passenger for tarmac delays longer than three hours. If that does not smarten the airlines up, I do not know what will. I spoke to him on February 20 when I was in Washington. I tried to get an explanation as to why it would be such a huge amount.
The members of the government are complaining about the figure that we had in the bill, which was $500 and we were prepared to take it down to $100. In fact, we were even prepared to amend the bill, as the member for Eglinton—Lawrence said, to make it a requirement that the penalty would not exceed the price of the ticket.
Just two days ago, and members are probably not aware of this yet, a new ruling came out on overbookings in the United States. On Tuesday of this week, Southwest Airlines was fined $200,000 for overbooking passengers. This has all come about in the United States, while we have been sleeping for the last year.
The rules in the United States and the aggressiveness of the authorities is right up there with the EU.
Let us deal with the EU for a moment. The European Union has been mentioned a few times. Its legislation started originally in 1991. It was expanded to include charters five years ago.
We are dealing with a number of countries. We are dealing with England, Germany, France and Portugal. They have tremendous experience and we have simply taken their model. In fact, if we read their legislation and we read our legislation, it is word for word in many areas. Therefore, there is experience with this.
Therefore, why do we have these apologists for Air Transat's operating in the legislative environment. I do not understand this, how lobbyists can get to elected politicians so easily and some how convince them that black is white and white is black.
We even went back to our legal team to get an opinion on the issue brought forward by the Bloc that this was not enforceable. We presented the legal argument from the lawyer saying that this was totally constitutional. These bills are drafted by lawyers. They will not waste their time drafting bills that are not constitutional. We have an opinion from the lawyer, which says that there is nothing wrong with this wording.
I specifically sent it to the lawyer on the basis that I wanted his opinion on the Cubana Flight 170, 172, about which the member is concerned. For those who do not know, that was the flight of March 12 when several hundred people were held captive for 12 hours on a plane in Ottawa with no food, no water, overflowing toilets. They were saved by somebody after 12 hours, realizing that they should phone the RCMP. That is how they got off the plane. Otherwise they might still be there.
It was on that basis that we sent this to the lawyer. We told him the Bloc's objections and asked how Bill C-310 would help the Cubana passengers. The lawyer came back and said that was exactly what the bill would do. It would have helped those passengers because the airline would compensate the passengers, as they do in Europe, and then the airline would have every right of subrogation against who it saw would be the guilty party.
When Air Canada was dealing with snowstorms in Vancouver two years ago, and it did not take care of its passengers then either, it sure moved against the airport quickly. It had lawyers chasing the airport for wages that it paid because of the storms and because the airport ploughed the wrong runway. That is always there.
In insurance principles, if a car hits our fence, we get our cheque from Wawanesa Insurance, but then Wawanesa turns around and goes after the automobile insurance company. That is its business. We are the passengers and we want to be dealt with by the airline. If the airline can recover from CATSA or from an airport for shared responsibility, then that is its business.
The member for Eglinton—Lawrence pointed out that we had an extraordinary circumstances exclusion in the bill, which hard-core consumers would say is way too broad. It would allow those airlines in Europe to use extraordinary circumstances, and some of the airlines are totally irresponsible and use it for everything. To them, everything is extraordinary circumstances. It is up to the passenger to go to small claims court. In Europe a company called EUclaim, based out of Holland, has been very successful in getting claims settled for people. However, it is no picnic in Europe. The airlines are fighting this tooth and nail.
Air Transat has been paying compensation. Do not let Air Transat lie to us. It has been paying compensation. We asked Air Canada several times now how much it had paid in the last five years in compensation to its flights in Europe. It has not stopped flying to Europe. It is flying as many flights as it was five years ago. Air Canada will not tell us that. Nor will Air Transat. They are prepared to ill treat their customers in Canada but treat them a lot better in Europe.
The member for the Bloc says that he does not know what is going on with the ash situation over in Europe. He thinks maybe Air Transat and Air Canada are treating the passengers the way they are supposed, paying for the hotels and the meals. That is what they are supposed to do, under the EU regulations. He is wrong.
I get complaints constantly. I can tell members that it did not take very long to hear from a passenger who was flying on Air Transact, although we had complaints emanating out of Air Canada, as well. Jason Keats, who was from Toronto, contacted my office on April 20, not long ago. He told us about how he had bought tickets for him, his wife and children to London, England. He was going to fly to Paris in two weeks and then was going to fly home from Paris.
Guess what the responsible airline did in the crisis? Not only did it not pay for any hotels, it did not pay for any meals and it stiffed the guy for his return tickets from Paris. The airline would not give him his money back.
He had to buy regular priced tickets back from London for he and his kids when the ash cleared. Meanwhile, he missed his Paris flight because he could not get there. Air Transat would not give him his money back. The two seats were vacant all the way home and people were stranded in Paris, looking for seats. It did not even sell the seats to somebody else, which a responsible carrier should do.
Do not tell me that somehow these airlines are responsible. They are not responsible at all. They may smile at us when they are lobbying. However, when they get out there in the market, they only pay what they have to under the rules. The sooner we recognize that, the better.
This is not the only example. There was the swine flu incident in Mexico last year and the airlines would not give people back their money.