Mr. Speaker, although people may have some doubts about this, I want to tell them that in our department we were planning to create a passenger bill of rights before the issue became very visible. Many will recall the passenger who was dragged off the United aircraft flight, which brought this issue to the fore. Then it seemed not a week would go by without some other incident coming forward.
We had planned this for a long time because we felt it was necessary. It had not been passed by the previous government. We decided the best approach to take was to enshrine passenger rights in regulations. It would provide the greatest flexibility. Changing legislation is always a difficult process. The best way to do that would be to give it to the organization most responsible for passenger rights, the Canadian Transportation Agency. This bill mandates the agency to create a passenger bill of rights. Afterwards, it will come to me for approval before it is promulgated in 2018. We feel that is the most sensible approach.