Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Huron—Bruce.
I am really impressed that the Liberals have been able to bring the debate about Bombardier and government intervention to the House in a bill that does not mention Bombardier at all.
My colleague, the opposition critic for transport, outlined what the bill is all about. In her speech last week, she outlined the curious timing of various announcements around Air Canada's order for the Bombardier C Series aircraft. The same day Air Canada made its announcement to purchase these airplanes, the Minister of Transport announced that he would lessen Air Canada's obligation under the Air Canada Public Participation Act. Then the minister put the bill we are debating on the Notice Paper, and on March 14, Air Canada made an announcement, and so on and so forth.
Let us just call a spade a spade. What we are talking about here is that the bill is quid pro quo for Air Canada buying the C Series aircraft.
I wish we were just having a simple debate about what the government is going to do, if anything, for Bombardier, because since the dawn of time, this has been an issue that is essentially about robbing Peter to pay Paul, with Peter being western Canada and Paul being Bombardier.
I have a few questions with respect to this bill.
There was a report that was completed in, I believe it was the middle of 2015, around the transportation industry. Air Canada put forward a series of recommendations on different legislation or requirements that could be put in place to make its industry more competitive internationally. It is quite a thick document, over 95 pages long. It put forward, actually I counted 66 recommendations to do just that. What is in this bill is a very small component of that.
My big concern is that I do not understand the impact this would have on western Canada, specifically Winnipeg's aerospace sector. There has been so much effort put into building up Winnipeg's aerospace sector by various different levels of government. It is arguably a success. What would this bill do for that? That is my concern.
This bill would actually remove the requirement for Air Canada to have its maintenance jobs located in the places that it does right now. However, for the purposes of my speech, I am going to talk about Winnipeg.
Manitoba, I believe, dropped its litigation against Air Canada in return for the building of a centre of excellence, as many of my Liberal colleagues have talked about today. However, what would happen, when the bill passes, if Air Canada decided to, let us say in five years, close down the centre of excellence, or what if it did not exactly comply with how many jobs it is touting? Frankly, we have not even heard what type of jobs are going to be created through this centre of excellence.
For me, this is a terrible example of government intervention run amok, because by trying to use this quid pro quo bill to bolster Bombardier, it is going to have a huge unintended consequence on the aerospace sector in Winnipeg, and this is in an academic exercise. If we talk to the employees of Aveos, I think that they would probably have something to say about this. There is a really good article that I got from CJOB. As a former Winnipegger, I have to give a shout-out to one of my favourite radio stations. Employees were saying that they do not understand why a centre of excellence is needed for aircraft maintenance, that they already are a centre of excellence for aircraft maintenance.
I really like this quote:
We know that, for people that lost their jobs, they’re not entirely happy because they lost good, well paying jobs. But right now we don’t have any of those jobs. Now we’re getting 150 back, and we think we can grow that starting in 2017 to a higher number of jobs.
The article talks about how many of these jobs moved to El Salvador when Aveos closed:
Quebec was suing the airline after the closure of Aveos Fleet Performance in 2012, which led to 2600 employees in three provinces lose their jobs, including more than 400 Manitobans. Those jobs went to El Salvador.
Why would the Liberals not bring forward the issue of Bombardier to study? They voted down a study at industry committee to have Bombardier executives come and talk about their needs. I have read things like one of Bombardier's vice presidents saying that they do not need a backup plan because what is secured is already more than they require.
As a legislator who is responsible for voting on public policy that impacts the jobs of people', these things would be good to know. My suggestion for the Liberals is this. Rather than simply tabling the bill and ignoring the fact that many jobs are on the line in western Canada, which always gets the short end of the stick when we talk about Bombardier, they should be bringing that forward for us to discuss. This is not the right option at this point in time.
Since we are talking about Bombardier, what I do not understand is that the government is bringing forward legislation essentially to prop up Bombardier, when over 100,000 people are out of work in Alberta right now. The Liberals are going out of their way to ensure that there is quid pro quo for a company that is going to receive orders for an aircraft. They are changing legislation to ensure there cannot be countersuits for Air Canada offshoring some of its jobs, as there has been in the past. They are doing all of this, but have we heard one thing about them making the regulatory environment better for the energy sector? No, we have heard the opposite.
We heard they would change the regulatory environment for the energy sector such that it would become a lot less clearer for investors looking at new projects. What else did they say? They said that they would look at a carbon tax and put more burden on investment in that area. They went out of their way to say even that if a major energy infrastructure project like energy east went through the review process and got a green light, they did not know if cabinet would approve it.
Also relevant to the bill, the Liberals have not talked about retaining skilled labour. In western Canada, one of its key determinants to economic growth is the retention and attraction of skilled labour. It does not matter what industry we talk about. In fact, Economic Development Winnipeg in its brief about the aerospace sector talks about the skilled labour workforce, a very specialized workforce. What happens if these jobs disappear? How does that impact other companies in the area?
It is the same thing with the energy sector. The Liberals have not talked at all about how they will ensure that people in Alberta stay in Alberta. If there is an opportunity to see new projects in the future, investors will see that all the people with expertise with this awesome, world-class infrastructure of talent have moved away and maybe think they should not build there.
The bill is so short-sighted. It shows the Liberal approach to dealing with economic issues. First, look at a squeaky wheel company in Montreal. I am not saying it is not important to the Canadian economy, but we should have a debate if we are to talk about legislative measures on how we support it. Let us talk about Bombardier. The second component is where is the discussion on western Canadian jobs both in the aerospace sector and energy sector? We are not seeing that.
It is incumbent upon the Liberals to look at what they are doing here. The bill should be called the “quid quo pro bill”. We should be voting on it as such. There is no guarantee that these jobs will stay in Winnipeg and we have no information on what this would do for the aerospace sector as a whole. They should also talk about why they have not raised this for the over 100,000 people who are out of work in my province. This is crazy and I really hope the Liberals reconsider their priorities in future legislation.