Stan Keyes

[Canada Shipping Act, February 19th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, as always, I consider it a privilege to rise in the House to bring attention to an important piece of legislation.

Bill S-4 is an act representing shipowners liability for maritime claims in general and for oil pollution damage in particular. Transport Canada has made a strong commitment to updating the legislation which governs the shipping industry. Bill S-4 now before us deals with the modernization of the marine liability regimes contained in the Canada Shipping Act.

The bill deals with maritime liability and proposes to increase the compensation available to Canadian claimants, in particular for claims related to ship source pollution damage. In contrast to the current regime for oil spills, these amendments to the Canada Shipping Act will establish shipowners liability for environmental damage and allow for the cost of preventive measures taken in anticipation of a spill.

The legislation was originally introduced as Bill C-58 in the last parliament by the former transport minister. However the bill died on the order paper and was reintroduced in the Senate last October as Bill S-4.

The bill amends part IX and part XVI of the Canada Shipping Act. Part IX deals with global limitation of liability for maritime claims, while part XVI deals with liability and compensation for oil pollution damage.

The amendments to part IX of the Canada Shipping Act are based on the 1976 convention on limitation of liability for maritime claims and its protocol adopted in May 1996 under the auspices of the International Maritime Organization, the IMO.

As I stated earlier, the proposed legislation will increase ship owners limits of liability and improve considerably the amount of compensation available to claimants involved in maritime accidents. These limits are calculated on the basis of the ship's size and apply to all claims arising from the same accident. This enables shipowners to assess their potential liability, which is an essential condition for commercial insurability.

The regime of global limitation contained in part IX of the Canada Shipping Act applies to all ships including pleasure vessels. The current limit of liability for loss of life or personal injury for owners of vessels below 300 tonnes, which includes most pleasure vessels, is only $140,000.

As members can appreciate, this limit is totally inadequate and the new limit for vessels below 300 tonnes has been set at $1.5 million, which is more in line with the liability levels long established in the automotive sector.

[Access To Information Act, February 12th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, it is really unfortunate that the hon. member for Cumberland—Colchester does not recognize a dead end sign when he sees one. In fact, he has not recognized this dead end sign and he smacked right into it a couple of times.

As the minister has stated to the hon. member on this very issue, under the Constitution of Canada the responsibility for provincial highways, including highway 104 in Nova Scotia, falls under provincial jurisdiction.

Transport Canada's only involvement in highway 104 is to match, as the hon. member has stated, dollar for dollar, $55 million with the province. That, for the hon. member's information, is $27.5 million each.

The highway 104 western alignment project is one of a few projects funded through the Transport Canada-Nova Scotia strategic highway improvement program agreement signed in 1993. This agreement makes provisions for both the federal government and the province to each set aside about $70 million for a total of $140 million for highway improvements in Nova Scotia.

I want to repeat for the hon. member, and it is important for the hon. member to recognize this, that this is where Transport Canada's involvement in the highway 104 project ends. The province of Nova Scotia is the responsible authority for this project. It is the province that decides on the alignment, the design, the construction standards, the tendering process and how to finance the construction costs of the provincial system.

Nova Scotia chose to use a public-private partnership concept, and good for it, as a means to construct and finance highway 104 and agreed to allow the developer to charge tolls to the users of the new highway. The federal government is neither a party to nor responsible for Nova Scotia's public-private agreement with the developer. As I stated earlier, the government's only involvement—

[Access To Information Act, February 12th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, I want to begin my comments by stating that I clearly support the general goal of the bill. I commend my colleague, the hon. member for Brampton West—Mississauga, for introducing it but have a couple of concerns about it.

I have a bit of concern for what the hon. member for Cumberland—Colchester said. I admire him to a point, that point being that he does a little research. He made a few calls. Unfortunately the hon. member did not dig far enough.

He alleges that there are no penalties for this kind of action when access to information documents are destroyed. He is correct that there is certainly no argument that events, say Somalia or the blood inquiry, have drawn public attention to the fact that the Access to Information Act contains no penalty and that there is clearly a need for an infraction in the Access to Information Act.

However I went one step further than the hon. member for Cumberland—Colchester. I went to the Criminal Code to find out if anything could be done. I had a look at the Criminal Code, specifically section 126, and this is what it states:

Everyone who, without lawful excuse, contravenes an Act of Parliament by wilfully doing anything that it forbids or by wilfully omitting to do anything that it requires to be done is, unless a punishment is expressly provided by law, guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years.

In other words, section 126 of the Criminal Code might apply to the situation of someone deliberately destroying a document in order to thwart the Access to Information Act, in so far as the destruction would result in the person “wilfully omitting to do anything that it requires to be done”.

Let us have a look for a moment at what my colleague from Brampton West—Mississauga is proposing in Bill C-208 which would amend the Access to Information Act to add an infraction to the act. Specifically the bill states that a person who, with the intent to deny a right of access under this act, destroys or alters a record, or falsifies a record, or makes a false entry in a record, or does not keep required records is guilty of an indictable offence and may be imprisoned for up to five years or fined up to $10,000 or both.

That brings me to my main concern with respect to my colleague's bill. Section 126 creates an indictable offence, which is the most serious type of offence in the Criminal Code. Section 126 often carries a maximum penalty of two years. The seriousness of an indictable offence in section 126 is one of the reasons it might be necessary to add a specific offence to the Access to Information Act. In this case the specific offence of deliberately destroying documents subject to the Access to Information Act should not be quite as serious as an indictable offence with a maximum of two years imprisonment.

That is not what my colleague's bill proposes. It proposes to create a specific offence in the Access to Information Act. This specific offence not only would not carry a lesser maximum penalty than the one attached to the offence in section 126 of which I spoke. It would carry a heavier maximum penalty of five years.

It is important to outline that the Criminal Code slices offences up into three different categories. There are summary convictions, indictable offences and hybrid offences that the crown can elect to prosecute either as an indictable offence or as a summary conviction offence.

Summary conviction offences carry the lightest penalties and indictable offences carry the heaviest. With the hybrid offences the attached penalty depends on the procedure selected by the crown. An important point is that when an accused is prosecuted by indictment, he or she can choose to be tried before a judge and jury, which can be a very slow process. In addition, the accused is entitled to a preliminary inquiry when the offence is indictable.

I understand the hon. member wants to mark the seriousness of the offence by making it an indictable offence, but I would have to ask my colleague if it might also be counterproductive if—

[Transport, February 12th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for her question. It is an important issue to this government, to her, and to constituents across Canada, especially in western Canada.

The hon. member will know that the rail lines in this country have to submit five year plans before they do anything with any rail line anywhere in Canada. If the hon. member wants to familiarize herself with the process, she will learn whether or not a particular rail line will be closed down. Then when the decision is made, if a decision is made, on a rail line abandonment, that procedure, that process takes an entire three-year period before that track is torn up.

[Charlotte County Ports, February 11th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I would like to understand how it is that this member's intervention has anything to do with private member's Motion No. 282.

[Charlotte County Ports, February 11th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, it is important that I address the matter raised by the hon. member for Charlotte.

In my nine years of serving the constituents of Hamilton West in the House of Commons I have never heard a more self-serving speech than the one just enunciated by the member for Charlotte, than the previous questions asked and the past speech made by the hon. member.

This reminds me to ask the hon. member how his relationship is after his recent foray into the role of mudslinger. His constituents should know via the news media in the New Brunswick area that the member for Charlotte has cast a lot of innuendo around this project. He has degraded the personal and business ethics of respected individuals who have taken an interest in developing this port improvement project at Bayside.

The project responded to a request from the province of New Brunswick. It would have created much needed jobs and economic activity in New Brunswick. It has received environmental approval.

I was halfway expecting the member for Charlotte to apologize today to the federal government, to the province, to the companies and to the individuals he brought into disrepute. I expected him to ultimately admit his conflict of interest in the matter and to explain to his constituents and people across the country that his home is situated on a piece of land located next to the port property he is so concerned about. Imagine that. No conflict there. Regrettably the hon. member chose not to withdraw his motion today. That is why I have to say what I have said here today.

Let us address the motion by the hon. member who is so concerned about the involvement of Transport Canada in a quarry development project adjacent to the port of Bayside, New Brunswick. The entire quarry project as proposed by Charlotte County Ports Limited would be situated on land owned by the province of New Brunswick and not by Transport Canada. Approvals for such development fall under the jurisdiction of the province of New Brunswick and not the federal government.

The only involvement by the government is that Transport Canada is presently the owner of an adjacent facility that could be utilized for shipping the quarry products to international markets. In that regard Transport Canada has accepted for consideration an application for a remission of rates on the applicable wharfage tariff. That is as far as our involvement goes.

Transport Canada received a request to lease a section of land that would permit the stone to be loaded directly on to ships for transportation to market. Regulations require that such requests be submitted to the department for consideration.

Both these requests have been reviewed in the context that they would expand the existing private-public partnership and would ultimately benefit the port through substantially increased revenues and the creation of badly needed additional outside storage area.

However, due to the significant divestiture process being made under the national marine policy, the request for the lease has been put on hold. The application for a remission of rates has been denied as it did not meet the criteria specified in the remission of or substitution of rate regulations.

Transport Canada is currently negotiating the transfer of the Bayside port facilities under the national marine policy and its divestiture program. The national marine policy will ensure Canada has the modern marine transportation it needs to compete in the 21st century. It will help to ensure that shippers have access to safe marine transportation, that the service levels reflect realistic demand and that the users who pay have more say in the future of their port.

In the past Canada's port system was heavily subsidized by Canadian taxpayers. It suffered from overcapacity and too much bureaucracy. Under the national marine policy the government will no longer dictate port operations or local business decisions. At the same time the Government of Canada will continue in a regulatory role its commitment to a safe marine transportation system and a clean environment.

The Government of Canada is commercializing public ports using criteria applied coast to coast. National ports, such as Vancouver port, will be managed by Canada port authorities, or CPAs as we call them, made up of representatives nominated by user groups and governments.

A second category of ports, regional and local ports, like the port of Bayside, is being transferred to provincial governments, municipal authorities, community organizations or other groups.

The Port of Bayside Steering Committee Inc. has established a local group representing the community and the port users. This steering committee is presently negotiating with Transport Canada for the transfer of ownership and management of all the port facilities.

Given that Transport Canada officials believe that negotiations with the potential new port operator can be concluded quickly, the Minister of Transport will not pursue any further action on the two requests from Charlotte County Ports.

Once the port has been transferred, the new port owner will be in a better position to make decisions, such as the setting of wharfage fees as well as other decisions that will shape the port's future.

In closing, I must reiterate that Transport Canada's involvement in this proposed project is very minimal. I think we heard that from the hon. member when he first spoke. It is limited to being the existing owners of an adjacent facility that could be used to export the material.

Given that decisions on the port's future will be left up to local operators, I cannot support the member's motion.

[Grain Transportation, February 9th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I had truly expected that a deliriously happy member for Brandon—Souris would stand in his place today to withdraw Motion No. 225 because for all intents and purposes it has been nullified by the transport minister's wise decision to undertake a comprehensive review of the grain handling and transportation system. Unfortunately such is not the case. The hon. member wants to play politics while this government is committed to finding solutions with the co-operation of all the stakeholders concerned.

I would like to go back a bit. The Canada Transportation Act enacted on July 1, 1996 is intended to modernize and streamline rail regulation, promote the formation of short line railways and ensure that shippers continue to have access to competitive transportation services. The act provides for a review of the provisions of the act during 1999 as they relate to grain transportation. However, given the difficulties incurred by the system, which the hon. member mentioned, during the 1996-97 crop year and the calls from stakeholders, the Minister of Transport decided to accelerate this review.

On December 18, 1997 the Minister of Transport appointed Mr. Justice Willard Estey to conduct this review. Justice Estey is one of Canada's leading jurists and he has been given broad terms of reference which allow him to conduct a comprehensive review of the system. Justice Estey's appointment has been exceedingly well received by the entire stakeholder community, including provincial ministers of agriculture and transportation.

For instance, Manitoba's minister of highways and transportation said “The western provinces are pleased that the federal government has appointed the honourable Mr. Justice Willard Z. Estey—. Justice Estey's pre-eminent background makes him a highly qualified individual to examine potential changes in the grain handling and transportation system”.

Leroy Larsen of the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool said “This is exactly the broad mandate we were looking for—. Let us get all the issues on the table”.

Ted Allen, the president of the United Grain Growers, said “You have to see it as a positive”.

Justice Estey will be conducting the review in two phases. During the first phase he will consult stakeholders in order to identify the key issues and problems. Work in this phase of the review is already under way. Justice Estey will report to the minister on his phase one findings by May 31, 1998.

I want to stress to the hon. member that this is an important part of the review. The second phase will commence after the resolution of the complaint currently before the Canadian Transportation Agency. Phase two will involve the development of a package of recommendations on issues and problems identified during phase one. It is expected that Justice Estey will submit his report on phase two findings to the minister by the end of this year.

Justice Estey has eagerly begun to perform his duties. He has already taken two trips to western Canada where he has met with over 50 stakeholders and he has met with provincial transport ministers from the western provinces. Several more trips to the western provinces by Justice Estey and the review secretariat are planned. This will ensure that the consultation process for the review will be broad and that all interested stakeholders will have the opportunity to make their views known to the review.

I agree with the hon. member that consultation is crucial to the success of this process. If stakeholders are not consulted, then the resulting product simply will not be good enough to serve the needs of the industry.

Producers are the experts, shippers are the experts, railways are the experts, grain companies are the experts and so on throughout the entire system. These are the people who matter in this review and these are the people Justice Estey is eager to hear from. Without their input the review would be a sterile exercise because it would not be able to serve the needs of all elements of industry.

Taking advantage of the opportunities afforded by modern technology, the Estey grain review will have a dedicated Internet web site which will allow all individuals to make representations directly to Justice Estey for his consideration. This will allow all, and I stress the word all, interested parties to have their say on this important topic and it will ensure that everyone is heard.

Even before the announcement of this review, the Minister of Transport had taken steps to ensure that the difficulties incurred during the 1996-97 crop year were not repeated. In July the Minister of Transport along with the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food and the Minister responsible for the Canadian Wheat Board met with industry representatives to discuss plans for the upcoming crop year.

The Minister of Transport challenged the industry to take steps to ensure that grain movement would proceed without incident. As a result of that meeting an industry led contingency plan was developed. This plan would allow the industry to respond to emerging logistic problems before they became serious enough to materially affect grain flows.

By identifying and dealing with the issues before they get out of hand, the contingency provisions would ensure that the system would not repeat its 1996-97 difficulties.

The system has responded well to the challenge by the minister. We are currently about halfway through the crop year and already the system has exported more than two million tonnes of grain than it did at this point last year. That is good news for everyone and it ensures that Canada can maintain its leading role in world grain markets.

In addition to the contingency plan however, the more important achievement of the minister was that he help initiate a dialogue within the industry so that everyone's efforts were focused on moving grain this year instead of pointing fingers of blame for last year.

Finding solutions to the difficulties in Canada's grain handling and transportation system will require the co-operation of all parties. This review is only the start of that process. We need to focus on solutions to improve the efficiency of the entire system from the time the grain leaves the farm gate to the time the vessels leave the port loaded with Canadian grain for its export destination.

The Minister of Transport took great care in the selection of Justice Willard Estey. Many candidates were considered for this position but few could match Justice Estey's impressive credentials. As a former supreme court justice, Justice Estey is skilled in absorbing and processing vast amounts of technical material and then making sense out of it all in a rational manner.

As a former judge, Justice Estey is also skilled in the important quality of giving equal consideration to all the material that is relevant to a question before passing judgment. Justice Estey is new to the grain industry but his actions to date indicate that he has thrown his energies into this process with great enthusiasm. Stakeholders have been impressed with his vigour and candour and they are pleased that the minister has made such a fine choice for such an important matter.

There can be no doubt that this is a matter that is of the utmost importance to the Canadian economy. The Minister of Transport is confident that the work that will result from Justice Estey's review will help us achieve the most cost effective, customer friendly grain handling and transportation system possible. Canadian producers deserve no less and they will get no less from this review.

I appreciate that the hon. member brought forward his particular motion. At the time he brought it forward, yes, he had concerns and believed that we as an all-party committee could sit down and discuss these issues. However, we now have a review process that is independent of the political process.

This is the hon. member's first term here so I can understand where he might be coming from, that we could do a heck of a job in committee, bring two committees together and discuss the issue at committee stage. However, the member will discover as he lives on through politics and attends many of these committee meetings over the next short term of his political career, that the walls start to go up, the divisions start to happen and sometimes not everyone can be heard because of limitations of time, limitations to what the committee can do and limitations on how much money the committee can use to travel.

As a result, by putting it into independent hands and out of the political process, we are confident that Justice Estey will be able to take into consideration all the views from all the stakeholders and all the individuals through the web site in order to come up with a solution that is satisfactory to everyone in this system.

[Child Benefit, February 5th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, the member for Waterloo—Wellington has a very good question for us here this evening. I can offer what I think is an equally good answer for him.

On behalf of the Minister of Human Resources Development I can report that the Government of Canada places a high priority on literacy. This was reiterated in the February 1997 budget where the funding was increased in the national literacy program to $29.3 million from $7 million. Our commitment was also why on September 8 Senator Joyce Fairbairn was appointed as special adviser for literacy to the Minister of Human Resources Development.

HRDC and StatsCan released a report back on September 8 that the hon. member referred to which was the first of the international adult survey monogram series. The first report highlighted the strong literacy skills of Canada's youth which is the highest literacy score of all Canadians. HRDC supported this report as part of our commitment to understanding literacy issues better. It reinforces a serious literacy challenge that has profound social and economic implications faced by industrialized nations around the world.

I promise the hon. member for Waterloo—Wellington and other members of this House that this government will work in partnership to ensure Canadians have access to literacy skills. After all, this is a prerequisite for participation in an advanced economy.

[Child Benefit, February 5th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak today to this private member's motion which recommends that the government review the level at which the child tax benefit is indexed. In particular, I want to respond in the short time that is remaining in this debate, five minutes or so, directly to the hon. member's claims that were just made in this House moments ago. He points across our hall here in the House of Commons to say this government has to be doing something in order to help the family, in order to help child poverty.

I remind the hon. member that in just the last two budgets the federal government increased by $850 million the assistance provided to low income families through the child tax benefit, $850 million. It is a commitment that this government sees toward families, toward families in poverty, toward children in poverty, even though we are attempting to do exactly what the Reform Party wants this government to do, to take hold of our financial responsibilities in this country.

What else did we do? Since July 1997, over 720,000 low income working families have received increased benefits as a result of the restructuring and enrichment of the working income supplement. What does that mean in practical terms?

Maximum benefits increased from $500 per family to $605 for the first child, $405 for the second child and $330 for each additional child. That is a commitment by the federal government toward child poverty.

Next July these benefits will be extended to all low income families as a result of the establishment of the national child benefit system. It is a joint federal/provincial initiative. The national child benefit has three objectives. We are trying to prevent and reduce child poverty, improve work incentives and simplify administration, three solid goals.

Under the national child benefit system the federal government will assume a larger role in providing basic income support to families with children.

For their part, the provinces and territories will be making corresponding reductions to the child component of their social assistance payments and reinvest all the savings in complementary programs and other benefits and services for low income families. Again, that is a commitment by the federal government of Canada toward child poverty.

For the lowest income families, the increases in the child tax benefit represent a 50 per cent increase in federal benefits. The federal government has promised a further enrichment of child benefits of the same magnitude during this mandate. We have promised that.

The hon. member opposite understands that. He has heard us say this time and time again. Selective memory, I suppose. You know, when in opposition, we oppose. No matter how good those government programs are, no matter how fiscally responsible the government opposite is, we have to piecemeal and pick out any opportunity we can to justify ourselves as an opposition.

Do you know why I can say that? Because I sat over there from 1988 to 1993. I understand the mentality of opposition. But there were times, even when I sat over there, that I applauded the federal government for initiatives it took between 1988 and 1993.

Most certainly there were not many of them. When you recognize that the federal government is doing a job for the people of Canada, especially when we are talking about low income and children in poverty, this government has been very successful to date for children.

A motion to adjourn the House under Standing Order 38 deemed to have been moved.

[Criminal Code, February 3rd, 1998]

Madam Speaker, I will try to be as quick as I can with the different questions arising from the member's question this evening.

First, I remind the hon. member for Cumberland—Colchester that safety will always be the first priority of Transport Canada. As most Canadians are aware, Transport Canada has operated the country's air traffic control system safely for more than 50 years. We are very proud of that record.

On the issue of NavCan and its management over the past year, the air navigation system continues to be safe and secure. The managers there are intent on maintaining the good and positive record and on enhancing it whenever possible. Air traffic control staffing levels at airports across Canada have always varied in accordance with changing traffic demands and training lead times.

I hope the hon. member understands that at no time is the safety of Canadians put at risk, whether it has to do with the devolution of responsibilities of air traffic control to NavCan or the firefighting and rescue capabilities at a particular airport. I have an airport on the outreaches of Hamilton so I am very cognizant of the member's concerns for the airport.

May I assure the hon. member opposite that again he can receive the unequivocal guarantee he has received already from the Minister of Transport that Halifax will be treated the same way as all other cities in the country have been treated in the negotiations. He will know the Minister of Transport has stood in his place and has put into process the firefighting regulations which are again being looked at by the commission. It will report. In the meantime—