Debates of Oct. 31st, 2017

Transportation Modernization Act

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservative government signed CETA with the European Union. Under that agreement, ships registered in an EU member country will be permitted to perform dredging operations, carry goods by container, and reposition empty containers in Canada, while Canadian vessels will not receive reciprocal treatment by EU countries.

In my riding, in my community, and in coastal communities, such as Port Alberni, Tofino, Ucluelet, Hornby Island, Denman Island, French Creek, jobs and local knowledge are really important. Is the member concerned about the impact the opening up the Coasting Trade Act will have on jobs in Canada's marine industry and in his community?

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Mr. Speaker, obviously, the riding of Mégantic—L’Érable is pretty far from the coast, but I do understand the concerns of citizens who live near the coast and who must live with the measures contained in Bill C-49. I am convinced that there are many people in my colleague’s riding who would have liked to testify and who would have liked us to take more time to discuss this situation, which is highly problematic, especially for people who live on the coast and are very concerned about it. Unfortunately, the way in which the Minister of Transport chose to present the measures that will affect the people in my colleague’s riding prevents us from taking the time we need to consider all possible consequences. This will lead to unintended consequences.

[Alupa Clarke, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Mégantic—L’Érable has done a good job of listing all of the unintended consequences of this bill. We cannot be certain these will occur. I think that the hon. member once sat on the Standing Committee on Transport, but I do not know if he still does. If he was on the committee, he may have seen this bill beforehand. I would like him to tell me what exactly happened in committee. I was told that all of the amendments proposed by the opposition, whether the Conservatives or the NDP, were flat-out rejected and that there was no collaboration on this bill.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is an open secret today that very few amendments were accepted by the Liberal government. I was, indeed, a member of the Standing Committee on Transport when it first began discussing Bill C-49. The government wanted it passed as soon as possible. As we have seen, it even brought in a time allocation motion yesterday to speed up the process even more. Worse yet, the time allotted for all of the testimony on Bill C-49 was compressed into a single week, which was clearly too little. We heard testimony all week. People came in to share their comments. Unfortunately, most of the comments heard in committee that week are not included in the version presented by the government here today. The government says that it consults, that work is done in committee, but in the final analysis, whatever is said is ignored. It was therefore a useless exercise aimed solely at passing the bill the way the Liberals wanted it to be passed.

[Alupa Clarke, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by mentioning the 60 or so seniors in my riding who suffered a tragic loss two days ago. There was a major fire in a retirement home in Beauport Sunday evening. The people on Joncas street, who are older than those living in other retirement homes, had to leave in the middle of the night and get on a bus. Incidentally, I would like to thank the city of Quebec for sending buses as quickly as possible. My thoughts are with these seniors and their families in these difficult times. I hope that most of them have family who can take them in. I have visited the home twice since I was elected.

I would now like to express some of my general concerns about this government, which has shown time after time that it is serving special interests, be they Liberal interests or multinational interests. The small and medium-sized business tax hikes it announced this summer are just one example of that. Another is the current crisis concerning the Minister of Finance's conflict of interest, which involves $20 million worth of shares in his family company, Morneau Shepell, that he was supposed to sell off two years ago.

Yesterday, we found out that five more government ministers apparently used the same technique as the Minister of Finance to avoid selling their shares or putting them in a blind trust. I hope we will all keep asking who those ministers are today. I am beginning to have some serious doubts about the behaviour of this government and the Prime Minister. The latter is responsible for ensuring that his government is complying with the law and is not using all kinds of loopholes to circumvent the spirit of the Conflict of Interest Act. I am very concerned about this.

This government is not working for Canadians; it is working for the multinationals. We saw a good example of this this morning in a Radio-Canada article written by Philippe-Vincent Foisy. It says that the government and the Minister of Canadian Heritage met with representatives of Amazon 99 times in the past 12 months. They met 37 times with representatives of Google and 16 times with representatives of Netflix, including 5 meetings with the Minister of Canadian Heritage a few months before she announced her extremely controversial agreement with Netflix.

In contrast, the minister met only once with representatives of ADISQ, whose gala I attended as a representative of the Conservative Party of Canada on Sunday evening. The minister met only twice with representatives of the Association québécoise de la production médiatique, and did not even meet once with representatives of ACTRA. This really gives the impression that the government is giving priority to the multinationals and that it has no time for organizations and Canadians.

Since we began debating Bill C-49, the government has boasted that it wants to focus on railway, aviation, and maritime safety. I, too, believe that railway safety is important, but 90% of this bill has nothing to do with railway safety.

Here is what I have done about railway safety since I was elected. First, I met with authorities at CN, since there is a railway serving Limoilou, in particular the port facilities in my riding, the port of Quebec and the Quebec railway station. I had a great meeting with a CN police officer. The CN has dozens of police officers that ensure railway safety. The police officer answered all the questions and concerns raised by citizens in my riding. My constituents wanted to know why trains often stayed at the two railway yards for several days, and they were also concerned about the trains' speed. It is very important.

If railway, aviation and maritime safety is so important, why was discussion in committee constantly stifled, and why were the amendments proposed by the official opposition rejected out of hand?

Most of the amendments proposed focused on the improvement of certain aspects of safety and competition.

The omnibus bill includes amendments to 13 different acts affecting the three main modes of transportation in Canada and the rest of the world. As I said, most of the content of this bill has nothing to do with safety, despite the fact that the parliamentary secretary’s speech was all about transportation safety. It is unfortunate.

Last night before I fell asleep, I happened to be reading the Canadian Parliamentary Review, a very interesting review of everything happening in all provincial and federal legislative assemblies across Canada. An academic wrote that he had conducted a study of the past 30 years and that, over the past two decades, there was a pattern of using, more often than not, time allocation for bills, in particular omnibus bills.

His study shows that efficiency and a need to act quickly are often cited as the reason to use omnibus bills. Parliament needs to be more efficient, since Canadians expect the House to act efficiently. In reality, in the past 30 years, the use of omnibus bills has not increased the number of bills passed in the House, regardless of the government in power. The academic goes so far as to say that we should let Parliament follow its natural course and allow members to thoroughly debate each bill. Thus, Bill C-49 should have been split into several bills so that we could get a more detailed understanding of every change the government is trying to make, as the hon. member for Mégantic—L’Érable so eloquently argued.

This being said, there are five aspects of the bill that caught my attention and that I would like to mention. First, with respect to allowing airlines to form international joint ventures, the bill will enhance the role of the Minister of Transport. How? Consider Delta Airlines and Air Canada, for example, each of which offers flights between Toronto and Atlanta. For the purposes of productivity, operations or efficiency, these companies could decide to merge the Toronto-Atlanta route in order to provide better service.

Normally, when two companies decide for form an international joint venture on a given route, they must obtain the approval of the Competition Bureau. With this bill, the Minister of Transport will have far more influence, because, at the end of the day, he will decide for the commissioner of competition whether the two companies can move forward with the international joint venture. The minister will act in the public interest. So far, neither the Liberal members or the parliamentary secretaries have been able to define the public interest in the context of the minister’s analysis.

The second issue I am interested in are the new security fees. The Minister of Transport has often mentioned the problem at Pierre-Elliott-Trudeau International Airport, where there are very long lines because there are not enough gates to ensure the safety of passengers as they embark on their flight. He said he wanted to make sure that there were more security checkpoints to make the lines shorter, but he will allow airports to charge additional fees. It is an open secret that the customers will end up paying these additional fees.

This specific clause of the bill shows us right away that Canadian consumers will have to pay more for their plane tickets when this bill comes into force. That is interesting because, every time the Liberals want to solve a problem, in this case wait times at airport security, they solve it by making Canadians pay more. The Liberals wanted to address the problem of climate change, so they created the carbon tax. They wanted to reduce their huge structural deficit by $20 billion, so they cut tax credits for Canadians, including tax credits for public transit, school supplies, sports, and arts.

Third, they want to change the act to give international shipping companies access to coastal trade thereby creating competition for Canadian shipowners between Halifax and Montreal. This will create an enormous amount of unfair competition for our shipowners because Canadian employees receive decent wages while other foreign companies do not pay their workers very well at all. This will create a lot of unfair competition for our shipowners.

This bill should not have been introduced as an omnibus bill. We should be given the opportunity to carefully examine each measure, which is something that we cannot do today. That is shameful.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I know we have had a couple of members from the opposition talk about the size of the legislation and how relevant it is. I would have to say that I adamantly disagree. I was in opposition for many years, am very much familiar with what omnibus bills look like, and this is not one of those bills.

This is a bill that deals with our transportation industry. Canadians understand and appreciate just how important that industry is, whether it is the shipping of cargo through our ports or the shipping of cargo and passengers on our rail system or in our airlines. In fact, with this legislation, yet another campaign commitment, the commitment to provide an air passenger bill of rights dealing with the issue in respect of passengers on airlines, is in fact being dealt with.

My question for the member is this. Would he not at the very least acknowledge that, whether it is in the legislation or regulation, at least now, for the first time, we are actually moving forward on protecting airline passengers?

[Alupa Clarke, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I do not agree.

There has been this kind of pattern with the Liberals for 40 years. It is a paradigm of always increasing the rights of people by creating and enhancing a judicial relation between individuals and companies, between individuals and the state. I think we should let the market regulate problems between citizens and companies. If people are not satisfied with the services given by a company, we can certainly count on them to stop using the services.

Again, the Liberal government wants to implement this kind of relationship of judicial protectionism. Will the Liberals introduce protection for bilingualism respecting Air Canada in this bill of rights for consumers?

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his remarks. It is fitting that we are talking about Bill C-49 today, on Halloween, because it is a real Liberal horror show.

It is a horror story, not only because of the rudely imposed time allocation, which the Liberals opposed so passionately in their days as the third party in this House, not only because it is a monster of an omnibus bill, but because the contents of the omnibus bill have nothing in common, piece by piece, except for the fact that they involve, one way or another, the word “transport”.

The Liberal government has made much of the fact that there are six amendments proposed by the opposition. I would like to ask my colleague whether six amendments on a bill this large represent anything of significance.

[Alupa Clarke, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is significant because it is an amendment coming from the official opposition. That is for sure. At committee, as well as in debate at the House of Commons, if the bill had been separated, because it touches on very large, different sectors of activity in Canada, probably we would have had 30 amendments. Probably the Liberal government in opposition did not want to see us, in this great House of Commons, opposing, debating, and introducing dozens of amendments. We would have been able in committee to analyze the details of each component of this bill. It is very sad.

Members on this side have never had any issue with this kind of omnibus bill. We assume it. However, the Liberals said during the election campaign that they would never go to this kind of practice. This does not change much, actually, in hastening the process of the House or increasing the number of bills going forward.

Also, why do they give us only four or five days to debate such an important bill, when we spent the past three days overseeing Bill C-24 to change a minister of state's title to that of a minister? It is a ridiculous bill that does not give anything more to Canadians, which is what we should be doing: giving something more to Canadians. Rather, Bill C-24 gives more to ministers and the government benches. That is ridiculous. We should spend more days in debate on serious bills and stop joking around in the House, which they do.

[Dan Vandal, Liberal, Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise in the House today to speak to this important bill, Bill C-49, the transportation modernization act, on behalf of my constituents in Saint Boniface—Saint Vital.

In his mandate letter to the Minister of Transport, the Prime Minister stated that his overarching goal is to ensure that Canada's transportation system supports the government's agenda for economic growth and job creation. To carry out that mandate, it is essential to look ahead, and today, I would like to reflect on that by focusing on some of the key amendments in Bill C-49, the transportation modernization act, that would help ensure that our transportation system can continue to help build this country for future generations.

In particular, it is essential that our transportation system be fluid in its operation and responsive in meeting the needs of our society and economy. To meet these goals, we need to lay the groundwork for a transportation system that will be safe and secure, innovative and green, adaptable to changing trade flows, and sensitive to the needs of travellers. Following a comprehensive consultation process with Canadians, industry stakeholders, provinces, territories, and indigenous groups, we have established a foundation to realize these goals through transportation 2030, the government's strategic plan for the future of transportation in Canada.

For this government, the transport portfolio is critical to economic growth. Transportation in Canada must continue to be a single interconnected system that drives the Canadian economy. In February of last year, the Minister of Transport tabled the report of the review of the Canada Transportation Act, also known as the CTA review, which was led by the hon. David Emerson. It had been 15 years since the last such review. The review report looked ahead to position our transportation system to continue to support Canada's international competitiveness, trade, and prosperity. As Mr. Emerson noted, our transportation system is the connective tissue that binds us together as a nation, that enables us to participate in the global economy, and that helps us ensure our economic and social well-being.

The review pointed toward many of the goals to which we need to aspire in building the transportation system of the future. We, as a country, must take the long view. We must develop a long-term vision of Canada's transportation system that is focused on the future, on the outcomes of what we want to achieve: better growth, more competition, and better service. When we mention economic potential, we must remember that we can have the best-quality products in the world, but it will not matter if we lack in efficient ways to get those goods to international markets.

Improving our trade corridors is a key requirement in building our future transportation system. That is why Bill C-49 focuses on promoting transparency, system efficiency, and fairness. The bill proposes legislative amendments that would better meet the needs and service expectations of Canadian travellers and shippers, while creating a safer and more innovative transportation system that would position Canada to capitalize on global opportunities and thrive on a higher-performing economy.

In particular, Bill C-49 recognizes that a reliable freight rail network is critical to Canada's success as a trading nation. Many of our commodities, from minerals to forest products to grain, depend on rail to move to markets, both in Canada and abroad. Canada already enjoys a very efficient rail system with the world's lowest rates. Bill C-49 would sustain this by addressing pressures in the system so that it can continue to meet the needs of users and the economy over the long term.

There is no clearer example of the importance of our freight and rail network than the prairie provinces. Each year, over $280 billion worth of goods move through our freight rail system throughout Canada. It is the backbone of our export trade, allowing goods to move efficiently throughout the country and to our export markets.

Bill C-49 builds on our already strong freight rail system by safeguarding its continued reliability and efficiency. Bill C-49 seeks to create a more competitive environment for shippers and producers by introducing long-haul interswitching, a new mechanism that would be available to all captive shippers in Canada across all sectors. Long-haul interswitching would allow shippers access to competing railways at rates and at service terms set by the Canadian Transportation Agency. This measure would allow better service options while improving system efficiency. It would ensure that shippers across industries would be able to bring their products to market.

There has been much discussion of the plan's sunsetting of an extension of the interswitching mechanism created in 2014 with the passing of the Fair Rail For Grain Farmers Act. This system only applied to captive grain shippers within the prairie provinces. In the year prior to the act's implementation, there was a record prairie grain crop, which was immediately followed by a devastating winter. This act was introduced to address this unique situation and the conditions in the grain handling and transportation system at the time. These no longer exist. It is important to emphasize the temporary nature of the previous legislation. Bill C-49 would replace this temporary legislation with a stronger and permanent mechanism that would apply across various sectors, including the grain sector in various regions in Canada. It would apply to a much longer distance of 1,200 kilometres or more, far greater than the 160 kilometres in the previous act. It is critical that this new mechanism apply to all commodities over a much longer distance throughout this great country. At committee, changes were adopted to the exclusion zones, opening the interswitching mechanism to captive shippers in northern Quebec, British Columbia, and Alberta, which will have a favourable impact on the mining and forestry industries in those regions. By extending the interswitching system, we would strengthen multiple industries while still supporting the grain industry.

It is also important to note the stronger benefits and protections that Bill C-49 would provide to prairie grain shippers and farmers. These include the ability of shippers to seek reciprocal financial penalties in their service agreements with railways. These include a better definition of what adequate and suitable rail service means, and improved access to final-offer arbitration. Bill C-49 better defines adequate and suitable rail service. Previously within the Canada Transportation Act, the terms “adequate and suitable” were not defined and had been the subject of various definitions over time. By better defining the term and providing better clarity to both shippers and rail companies, we reduce the potential for service disputes that can be both costly and disruptive to both parties.

It is also important to balance the shipper's service entitlements while taking into consideration the railway's broader obligations across the network. The act strongly affirms that railways must provide shippers with the highest level of service they reasonably can provide within the circumstances. Factors for the Canadian Transportation Agency to use in assessing what is reasonable will also be identified. These would include the service that the shipper requires, the railway's obligations under the Canada Transportation Act, and the operational requirements of both the railway and the shipper, among others.

The act also addresses penalties for delays, which currently are one-sided. While railways currently can impose penalties on shippers for delays, shippers are not able to impose penalties on the railways unless the railway agrees to these as part of a confidential contract. This causes an inequity between the rail lines and the shippers. Reciprocal penalties would ensure that the responsibility for efficient and timely movement of goods would be shared between the shippers and the rail companies.

With Bill C-49, shippers will be able to pursue reciprocal financial penalties through the service level agreement process under the CTA. The process will allow a shipper to obtain an agreement on service through CTA arbitration when negotiations with the rail company fail. The CTA arbitrator will ensure that the penalties both balance the interests of the shipper and the railway and encourage efficient movement of goods. This is of vital importance to grain farmers on the Prairies and was one of the big asks of stakeholders in the period leading to the tabling of the bill.

The bill would also increase transparency by increasing the amount of publicly available information on the performance of the rail transportation supply chain. Of note is that Bill C-49 requires railways to provide a report assessing their ability to meet their grain movement obligations prior to the start of a crop year. The state of the year's crop and forecast for the upcoming winter will be reviewed annually. This will ensure that should a similar scenario occur like the one seen in 2013-14, a contingency plan can be put in place by the railways to ensure the movement of grains.

In addition, railways will need to report service, performance, and rate metrics publicly. The bill will require railways to provide service and performance information on a weekly basis to the Canadian Transportation Agency, which in turn will make this information public by publishing it on its website.

Rate data will be required from the railways as well for Transport Canada. The rate data will be used by the agency to help calculate long-haul interswitching rates. It is important that this information be available in a timely manner to ensure the efficiency of the supply chain.

Bill C-49 would encourage the long-term growth of the freight rail system by encouraging investments. It would change the provisions of the maximum revenue entitlement regime by making adjustments to intensify hopper car investments and reform the MRE methodology. These reforms will better reflect individual railway investments and encourage investments by all supply chain partners.

One only has to think of Lac-Mégantic, where people are still recovering from the tragedy that took the lives of 47 residents in 2013. This and other events like the derailment at Gogama remind me that the most crucial thing the Minister of Transport can do is to keep the people who use our transportation system safe. Nothing else is as important.

Bill C-49, the transportation modernization act, would further this goal. It would do this by implementing in-cab video and voice recorders, commonly referred to as LVVR, as recommended by the CTA review panel and the Transportation Safety Board. These recorders would further strengthen rail safety by providing objective data about the true actions taken leading up to and during a rail accident. This technology would also provide companies with an additional safety tool for analyzing trends identified through their safety management system.

Finally, the transportation system of the future needs to better meet the needs of travellers who seek greater choice and convenience at a reasonable cost. For example, passenger traffic at Toronto Pearson airport has almost doubled in the past three decades and the airport marked its 40 millionth passenger in 2015. Just cast our minds ahead to 2030 when Toronto Pearson forecasts that it will serve some 66 million passengers per year. That is a lot of people to manage, and our airports need to be up to the task.

Along with connections, we must also consider the air traveller experience and the need for new tools to assist consumers. The traveller needs to know how decisions are made when flights do not go as planned and what recourse they have. That is the very reason that Bill C-49 proposes the creation of new regulations to enhance Canada's air passenger rights, ensuring that they are clear, consistent, and fair to both travellers and air carriers.

The Canadian Transportation Agency would be mandated to develop, in consultation with Transport Canada, these new regulations, and would consult Canadians and stakeholders should royal assent be given. The overriding objective of this new approach is to ensure that Canadians and anyone travelling to, from, or within Canada understands their rights as air travellers without having a negative impact on access to air services and the cost of air travel for Canadians.

The simple fact we must address for all travellers is this: Canadians are spending more on transportation in all forms. In the past 30 years, household spending on transportation has more than tripled, up to 16% of expenditures, second only to shelter. Our government's vision for the Canadian traveller experience is one in which we have more integrated and seamless connections between air, rail, and transit to reduce the overwhelming reliance on the automobile.

These are some big issues, and sorting through the implications of what I have just talked about is a tall order that requires many conversations with Canadians.

The CTA review started this engagement. The report is a comprehensive source of independent advice to government. As I said earlier, I see transportation as essential to driving this country's economic growth and future prosperity for all Canadians. We must also design and manage the transportation system so that we continue to protect passengers, communities, and our environment.

I challenge all of us to think about how we can achieve all of these goals so that we can develop a transportation system that is even more safe, efficient, and green, and which supports both our economy and our country.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

Mr. Speaker, in my remarks last week at report stage, I addressed an amendment proposed by numerous stakeholders during testimony at committee. It was supported by both Conservative and NDP members of the committee. It would have allowed the first interchange point the shipper is required to use to access long-haul interswitching, LHI, to be in the reasonable direction of the shipper's destination. The amendment would have brought some practicality to this new regime the Liberal government has introduced, and, if passed, would have meant that shippers would not have to send their product potentially hundreds of kilometres in the wrong direction to reach the nearest interchange point.

Could the member comment on that and why he believes his colleagues at committee did not want to support this very practical amendment?

[Dan Vandal, Liberal, Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, MB]

Mr. Speaker, unfortunately, I do not sit on that committee, but I do know that the Conservatives were able to move nine amendments. Not all of them were adopted, but I understand that six of the nine were approved by both parties. I do not have precise information as to why that amendment was not supported.

Amendments are judged on the merits of the arguments that are made, and I believe there was a good, rational, logical reason not to approve it. However, six of nine amendments were approved. They cannot all be approved.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I think we all agree that we need clear measures to discourage airlines from overbooking and forceably removing passengers from aircraft.

The NDP introduced a bill in the last Parliament that clearly set out the steps needed to establish a passenger bill of rights to do just that. We put forward amendments with concrete proposals in the bill so airlines would have to offer passengers the choice between a full refund and rerouting under comparable conditions when a flight was cancelled. If the airline did not comply with this, it would have to pay $1,000 in compensation to every passenger in addition to the refund. Also, if an aircraft were on the ground for more than an hour, the airline would have to provide passengers with adequate food, drinking water, and other refreshments. For each additional hour that the airline failed to comply with this, it would have to pay each passenger $100 in compensation. It seems very reasonable.

Canadians have concerns. We have looked at Europe, which has good regulations. It has a cancellation rate of 0.4%, which is four times lower than flights are subject to in Canada. The government has turned a blind eye to testimony heard and findings of studies on this issue. In fact, the government has ignored the call to study these issues.

Why is the government choosing not to study these concerns and not support the requests of Canadians to back travellers in the air industry so we can be more competitive and treat Canadians with respect, like they do in Europe?

[Dan Vandal, Liberal, Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the minister has been quite clear that we are committed to a passenger bill of rights. This is going to happen; the discussions will occur.

I believe the key to this whole bill is achieving a balance between the passengers, airlines, and carriers, although there is some flexibility built into it. Our minister has been crystal clear, on every occasion I have heard him speak on this, that we will move forward on a balanced, responsible, and fair passenger bill of rights.

[Bob Bratina, Liberal, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I was very interested to hear my colleague's intervention because so much comment has been made about various aspects of the bill. I want to ask about the larger aspect of the bill with regard to my friend's comments.

In the Toronto area, one could probably have endless discussions about the air traffic at Pearson or, in my case, about one of the busiest rail junctions in North America, known as the Bayview Junction. With regard to interswitching and so on, the bill also addresses issues that affect vast areas of our country, even smaller regions.

Could my friend add a little more discussion to the notion that the bill addresses serious problems in less populated areas of the country, which are also in dire need of good transportation legislation?

[Dan Vandal, Liberal, Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, MB]

Mr. Speaker, one of the more popular initiatives coming forward, at least in western Canada, is the whole initiative of long-haul interchanging. We are replacing what is currently a 160-kilometre interchange with a long-haul interchange, something that can go upward of 1,200 kilometres or more for shippers that need to get their goods to market. This is very popular with the grain shippers in western Canada. We are expanding beyond grain shippers to other industries such as mining and forestry. This initiative will allow for increased competition and has been welcomed by shippers across Canada. It is especially popular with grain shippers in western Canada.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to make a point of clarification. In his answer to one of our colleague's questions, the member stated that members of the opposition were allowed to move nine amendments. To be clear, members of the opposition have the opportunity to move as many amendments as they would like to a bill. In fact, the NDP and the Conservative members moved over 30 amendments, which was a boiling down of over 100 amendments that stakeholders introduced during their testimony.

The amendments that were accepted by the Liberal members happened to be duplicate amendments that both the Conservatives and Liberal members put together. What the member would like to represent as a very magnanimous approach to amendments in committee is false.

[Dan Vandal, Liberal, Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, MB]

Mr. Speaker, of course, as elected officials we know we can move as many amendments as we like, both at committee and in the House. It is a cornerstone of our democratic system. What I meant to say was that not every amendment moved had merit. Not every amendment has the support of all political parties. I like to think an amendment is based on the merit it has and is judged accordingly. Our party has always believed that through committee, we can make an existing bill stronger and fairer. That is how the system is supposed to work.

I commend the hon. member and her party for bringing forward amendments that were reasonable and were supported by all parties. Hopefully, that will continue through the debate on the bill.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I asked the member earlier, but I will ask him again. Could the member explain why he and his Liberal colleagues voted against the NDP amendment that would have, among other things, required airlines to reimburse the full price of a ticket when a flight was cancelled? It is a simple question. It is about protecting consumers and respecting air travellers.

[Dan Vandal, Liberal, Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, MB]

Mr. Speaker, as a first-time member of Parliament, and as a parliamentarian who did not sit on that committee, I believe he is referencing something that was brought forward in the previous Parliament. Nevertheless, we wholeheartedly support the spirit of a passenger bill of rights. Our minister, on every occasion I have heard him speak to this issue, has come out 100% for a passenger bill of rights. We are fully committed to it. We will consult, we will ensure that it is fair and transparent, and that it benefits all Canadians.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to rise to speak to Bill C-49. I will be splitting my time with the member for Yorkton—Melville.

We have before us what is very clearly an omnibus bill. It is a transportation bill that deals with many different pieces of legislation. It is more involved, more complex, and deals with more topics than perhaps the 95 theses. If the government wants indulgence today, it will not get it from members of the opposition.

I will continue to pontificate on this for a bit. We are seeing the government's total unwillingness to take its past commitments with respect to omnibus legislation seriously. It criticized the previous government for covering a range of different topics in the same bill. This was allegedly a big part of its push for changes to the Standing Orders. The Liberals said that the Standing Orders had to be changed because of the big problem of governments bringing forward omnibus bills. They said that a solution had to be found for this.

If the Liberals thought it was such a problem, the simple solution would have been for them to simply not propose omnibus bills. In so many different areas, whether it is Bill C-46, a bill that covers a range of different proposals on the issue of impaired driving, or a transportation bill, or budget bills they have brought forward, there is a real abundance of what clearly are omnibus bills even by their own definition.

The Liberals have said that an omnibus bill is a bill that members might want to vote for parts of it, but oppose other parts of it. Again, there is no credibility. Their policies and platform in the spirit of the season really is ghosted. Nothing is left but a ghost of the commitments the government made with respect to omnibus legislation.

I would like to talk specifically about some of the different pieces of the legislation.

Much of the discussion by members of the government has been about an alleged passenger bill of rights. I am sorry to report to members, but this is more trick than treat. The passenger bill of rights is skeletal at best. It is a framework for legislation that others will be asked to eventually develop, but the House is in no position to evaluate its substance. We are expected to theoretically consider a passenger bill of rights that somebody else might develop without any kind of clarity on its structure or how that would be approached or operationalized in practice. Again, it is more trick than treat even if passengers were expecting something more substantive.

As members of Parliament, we often fly. We could probably all share stories of less than ideal experiences we have had with air travel. It behooves the government to be more clear about what it is talking about when it brings these kind of measures before us. This is the Liberals' idea of being able to check a box for something they want to say they done but really is lacking in meat.

Many provisions in the bill come from a lot of different directions.

I also want to address the issue of joint ventures. If airlines want to propose a joint venture for a route, at present, the proposal is reviewed and ruled on by the competition commissioner, and hat is appropriate. The competition commissioner evaluates the impact of proposals on competition. When a joint venture is in place, that can have a negative impact on competition, because companies work together. Therefore, there is less competition that can be beneficial to consumers.

As a party that believes in the importance of functioning free markets, our caucus is very concerned about ensuring there is as much competition as well. We recognize if we want to get good outcomes for consumers there is a place for regulation. The best way to get to that end is that if we have robust competition, we are going to have good outcomes for consumers. Consumers can drive through the market the kinds of treatments and services they want by choosing between the different available options.

Unfortunately, this omnibus bill makes some changes to the framework in place for joint ventures. It gives authority to the minister instead of to the competition commissioner to make those decisions. In that context, it gives him a fairly wide discretion to make these determinations on the basis of public interest criteria. “The public interest” is the sort of concept that everybody is in favour of, but the devil is often in the details. When the minister has a wide discretion to make a determination on the basis of a concept of public interest, that really gives him the ability to do what he wants with respect to these joint ventures, and he may well be subject to influences and questions which are not in the public interest. We have regularly had concerns raised in this House about ministers who find themselves in conflicts of interest. Therefore, when we have cases of ministers who have been able to circumvent the law with respect to blind trusts, we should legitimately be raising concerns about the minister taking an authority that had previously been exercised through the commissioner.

One other issue that I want to address is with respect to interswitching for rail. The issues that I have addressed in the short space of my speech today again underline the breadth of transportation measures in this bill. That should be concerning to members. In the existing framework, the previous government brought in something that was called “extended” interswitching, which allowed for the use of another company's rail line. That would be done on a cost-plus framework, so the rates would vary depending on the costs that were in place for the company. It was fundamentally a competitive framework, because there was no fixed rate across the board for interswitching, rather there was a cost-plus framework, so it still encouraged some degree of flexibility and competition. However, the long-haul interswitching provisions the government has in place in this bill do not encourage competition. The way in which the rate is structured for that interswitching is based on an average rate, so it is the same rate that would be charged across different companies. It reduces the pressure for competition vis-à-vis different cases of interswitching. Our view is that competition is important, and that facilitating competition in the transportation sector and other sectors is beneficial for consumers. It leads to choice and innovation.

In conclusion, I would like to say that when we asked the minister about this during time allocation earlier, he said that he did not think we should be hearing more opposition speeches because they kept talking about the carbon tax. Since the minister does not want us to talk about the carbon tax, I think we actually have a duty to talk about the carbon tax in this context. Of course, the government does not want to talk about how negatively it is impacting the transportation industry by trying to impose a carbon tax, which is literally a tax on everything. It is trying to compel provinces, in a way that is profoundly disrespectful to provincial jurisdiction, to impose this carbon tax. I had the pleasure of presenting a petition for my constituents on this yesterday. Many of my constituents are very concerned about the negative impacts to the transportation, energy, and other sectors associated with the carbon tax.

To summarize, we have in front of us an omnibus bill. Again, the Liberal government is showing a disregard for its commitments. There are some specific things that I take issue with. The most publicized element, the air passenger bill of rights, is not at all clear. We would be much better off encouraging competition to help consumers have the flexibility to drive improvements in quality and innovation themselves.

The Liberals are in the process of taking choice away from consumers, talking about an air passenger bill of rights that is not clear or defined in any way. Of course, the government is proceeding with other measures that are very harmful for the transportation industry, such as the carbon tax.

On that basis, we oppose this bill.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, it is interesting. The member across the way wants to focus on one of the issues that clearly demonstrate just how out of touch the Conservative Party is with Canadians.

The member talked about the issue of the carbon tax and the detriment to the industry as a whole, yet it is fairly well accepted, with 80% of the population already participating in a price on carbon. No matter what the issue of debate might be inside the chamber, the Conservatives want to focus their attention on an issue that is not overly relevant to the bill itself.

My question is for my colleague across the way. Within the legislation, we have yet another election platform commitment being fulfilled, that of protecting air passengers. The legislation is going to enable that to take place.

Would the member across the way not agree that that is a good thing for Canadians? This is something Canadians have wanted, and it is being delivered in good part through this legislation. Would the member not at the very least acknowledge that that aspect of the legislation is good?

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Speaker, first of all, with respect to the carbon tax, I gave a 10-minute speech on this bad piece of legislation and spent about 60 seconds on the carbon tax.

Clearly, it is a sore point for the member, but that is why I feel it is important for me to bring it up. Not only is the government is clearly embarrassed to talk about the agenda to impose new taxes on Canadians, but it is very important to my constituents. That is precisely what I was elected to do, bring the concerns of my constituents to this House. We will continue to oppose the government's agenda with respect to imposing new taxes on Canadians at every turn, including the carbon tax.

I spoke about the air passenger bill of rights, and in the spirit of the season I would say that the Liberals may think it is a promise kept, but the devil is in the details. This passenger bill of rights is a phantom. It is very skeletal. It is more trick than treat. Members will observe, if they look at the legislation, that it does not at all create a passenger bill of rights, it is simply a framework to ask somebody else to create a passenger bill of rights.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Mr. Speaker, as usual, I loved listening to my colleague's comments and his speech. I am sure that, with all the experience he has acquired in the House in recent years, he is capable of recognizing a government tactic when he sees one.

Bill C-49 strikes me as a perfect illustration of how the Liberal government is trying to run the country. The Liberals are trying to put everyone to sleep with a bill that deals with practically everything we talked about in a committee meeting. They are putting everything together in one bill. They are throwing all kinds of different things together, so that the opposition would not be able to support one aspect and oppose another. They are using tricks that prevent members from being able to vote properly on each aspect of the bill and to walk away with their heads held high. The Liberals know this is going to create some unintended consequences, but it does not matter. Canadians are used to seeing them govern like this.

What are my colleague's thoughts on that?

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Speaker, thank you to my colleague.

I completely agree. The government introduced a bill that contains many different elements. The opposition has not had an opportunity to discuss all of them, because the government has shut down the debate twice, once before the committee study and once after. It is not fair. It is not honouring the parliamentary process.