Mr. Speaker, a few months ago I asked the minister a question regarding the major improvements the Obama administration made in terms of air passenger rights. In November it imposed the first tarmac delay penalties in North America. Basically after a three-hour tarmac delay, the airline has to pay $27,500 per passenger in fines. Pretty much out of the gate, Southwest Airlines was fined $200,000 for overbooking flights.
I asked when the Canadian government would catch up with Europe and the United States and start protecting air passenger rights. The minister's response was simply that he had a meeting with me in the next hour and that was it.
Coming out of the meeting the minister did ask if I had any information about how many flights actually were stuck on the tarmac for more than three hours. I pointed out to him at the time that in fact he does not have that information in Canada because Canada does not keep information like that. The United States actually does. We can make reference to numbers of flights that have kept people on the tarmac in the United States for considerable periods of time.
For the information of the minister and parliamentary secretary, up to October 2009 there were evidently 864 flights that held people on the tarmac for three hours or more, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. Using 2007-08 data, there was an average of 1,500 domestic flights per year carrying 114,000 passengers that were delayed more than three hours.
The fact of the matter is that these new rules that were announced last Christmas and that came into force around April 1 have already shown terrific results, results that should compel the government to take similar action. For example, in May and June of this year, tarmac delays exceeding three hours numbered a total of eight times compared with 302 occurrences during the same two months in 2009. This is the first evidence we have that President Obama's directive to transportation secretary Ray LaHood last December is actually having an effect.
I would ask the parliamentary secretary to take that under advisement and recognize that the United States has leaped way ahead of Canada. From being behind Canada, it has leaped way ahead by imposing fines on airlines that keep people imprisoned on airplanes for more than three hours.
Having said that, I still like the approach that we have taken here with my air passenger bill of rights that would allow for compensation directly to the passengers. In the United States the airlines are fined and the money goes to the government. In Canada we should have an approach where the money goes to the people who are inconvenienced, the passengers on those planes.
I would like the minister to respond to these points.