Ed Fast

[Canada Post Corporation Act, May 6th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague does have it right. This is about protecting 10,000 Canadian jobs in Vancouver, in Toronto, which is where he is from, and in Montreal. Our Conservative government is standing up for those jobs. Unfortunately, we have NDP members saying no, that those jobs are not important. Shame on them.

We want to ensure that we have representatives across the country standing up for Canadians and speaking out when their jobs are at risk. Senator Fortier is speaking out for Montrealers. MPs across the country recognize that Bill C-14 is absolutely critical to ensure that we protect those Canadian jobs. Make no mistake, it is very clear that if Bill C-14 does not pass and Canada Post Corporation shuts down the remailers, these 10,000 jobs will not be kept in Canada; they will go elsewhere.

[Canada Post Corporation Act, May 6th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, the short answer is, yes, we will continue to sit and it will do its work. The key issue is to ensure the status quo, the 10,000 jobs we presently have in Canada, remains intact and the families that rely on those jobs continue to live knowing they will be employed.

My concern is, as the strategic review plays out, that Canada Post moves forward and shuts down the remailers. There is the immediate consequence to 10,000 jobs in Canada. I am sure the member, who comes from Quebec and would obviously be worried about jobs in Montreal that would be lost if in fact we did not pass Bill C-14, would be concerned. He has to be concerned. That is his job, to stand up for the people of Quebec and ensure their jobs are protected.

[Canada Post Corporation Act, May 6th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, first, I assume the member listened to my speech. I believe I confirmed on three occasions that this was not about deregulation. Nor is it about privatizing Canada Post. I want to lay her fears to rest. This is not about deregulation.

Second, she talked about tinkering with universal service. For well over two decades, the universal mail service in Canada, the exclusive privilege, has been restricted to domestic mail, in other words, mail collected within Canada and delivered within Canada. The suggestion that we have somehow had universal mail delivery in the area of international, outbound mail is wrong. It is simply wrong.

Why is she not standing up for the people in Montreal who depend on the remailing industry for their livelihoods, for their jobs? What will she say to the families that will now have individuals and members who are without jobs, if in fact she does not support Bill C-14?

[Canada Post Corporation Act, May 6th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I named the area I come from and represent, which is the city of Abbotsford, and I love it. It is one of the most dynamic communities in the county. It has been built on the fact that people have understood the value of free enterprise, the right of individuals to develop themselves, to be free from government interference.

I hope this sentiment extends across our country, and I suspect it does. In every community there are pockets, some more than others, where we have this understanding of the value of free enterprise and where we are willing to go to bat for workers and industries wanting to build our economy.

[Canada Post Corporation Act, May 6th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I was very pleased to actually hear the Liberals support Bill C-14. There is very little we agree on in the House but from time to time we sing from the same page. Unfortunately, the NDP still is not getting that this is all about saving Canadian jobs.

This is not a complicated bill. Actually, it contains one simple clause. For most Canadians, it will have no significance that they know of but to the thousands of Canadians whose jobs will be lost if we do not pass this bill, it is critical to their livelihoods and their families.

What is remailing? Let me explain for those who do not understand what that industry is all about.

As we know, there are people in Canada who mail letter mail to each other. It is mail that is sent within Canada, collected within Canada and delivered within Canada. That mail is delivered by Canada Post and Canada Post has what is called exclusive privilege, which is simply another name for a monopoly. Canadians accept that. Our government accepts that. I believe all the parties in the House accept the fact that there is exclusive privilege for mail that is collected, distributed and delivered in Canada.

However, there is also other mail that is sent from Canada around the world. What businesses find is that the cost of that mailing can in some cases be very expensive. If a business is sending out thousands and thousands of pieces of letter mail a year, those costs can add up. They can affect one's competitiveness in a fiercely competitive international market.

Remailers are companies that will collect and bundle letter mail in Canada, take it to another jurisdiction, in most cases the United States, and mail it from there because the costs of mailing are significantly less. That is good for our economy because anything that allows Canadian businesses to compete better with the world markets is good. It is good for our economy and for families across this country, although the NDP just cannot understand that.

The change is very simple. The bill states, “does not apply to letters intended for delivery to an addressee outside Canada”. In other words, the exclusive privilege will not relate to letter mail that is collected in Canada but mailed from outside of Canada.

For 20 years this was not an issue. The industry, Canada Post, the unions, the remailers all accepted the fact that the Canada Post Corporation Act actually only provided exclusive privilege for letter mail that was collected and mailed within Canada to Canadians.

What happened along the way? The remailers started building their businesses. They starting investing a lot of money. They started creating jobs in Canada to provide a service to Canadian businesses. For 20 years there was no opposition to this. I am trying to figure out what happened.

Here is what I think happened. Canada Post obviously employs bright, young lawyers who are supposed to protect their interests, and that is fair. I am guessing that one day one of these bright, young lawyers checked the clause in the Canada Post Corporation Act, both in English and French, and, lo and behold, they found there was an inconsistency between the two clauses. The English clause did not say exactly what the French one said. It was an “aha” moment for the lawyer. He felt that he might have them and took the remailers to court.

The remailers were told that under the French version of the act they did not a right to exist and that the people working for them should not be employed in a remailing industry. The case was taken all through the courts until it ended up in the Supreme Court of Canada. The Supreme Court of Canada had to basically choose one or the other of the two interpretations, the English one or the French one. In the end, the Supreme Court of Canada decided, in its wisdom, that it was the French that should prevail.

That ruling came as a shock to the remailing industry and to our government. It came as a shock to most of the members of the House because we were at risk of losing an industry that employs some 10,000 people in Canada and an industry that is worth at least $100 million a year. Overnight this was going to be shut down.

I do not think that is fair. It is not the Canadian way and, quite frankly, it is not why I was elected as a member of Parliament. It is my job to stand up for Canadians, to defend Canadian jobs and to ensure we are fair with the Canadian people.

Our clause simply restates what everyone has accepted as the status quo for well over two decades. It says that remailers will continue to have the right to conduct their businesses, to take business mail within Canada, bundle it together and send it elsewhere in the world from another jurisdiction.

One might think that along the way Canada Post had been asserting its right to exclusive privilege over the remailing industry but that is not so. Back in 1988, Canada Post actually issued a magazine called Manager Magazine. In the April-May 1988 edition there was an article written by a lady by the name of Barbara Leimsner. In an article that she entitled, “Reaching for a Higher Plateau”, she said:

Outbound mail is not protected by exclusive privilege which leaves this lucrative business open to a new threat--aggressive competition from international remail companies.

That is Canada Post acknowledging that it was facing stiff competition and that it was taking on the remailers in the market legitimately. That was back in 1988.

Let us move on to 2005. A newsletter was issued by, I believe, Canada Post and, ironically, the newsletter is called , “Upfront”. It is actually in the form of a letter by the president and CEO of Canada Post no less, and is entitled, “Moving beyond our history”. The chief executive of Canada Post said:

Today, the notion of exclusive privilege is a thing of the past....We must all understand that today our customers have many opportunities to take their business elsewhere.

When she refers to taking business elsewhere, what else could she mean but that Canadian businesses have the ability to take their mail to a remailing company and have it mailed around the world from another jurisdiction.

Even as recently as 2005, Canada Post accepted the fact that exclusive privilege, this monopoly, only applied to domestic mail, mail that was collected within Canada and delivered within Canada. The CEO acknowledged in the article that exclusive privilege did not extend to the remailers.

Today, however, we have the court case that we must deal with. It says that there was an ambiguity in the law, that there was an anomaly between the English and French versions and that somehow we must reconcile those so they will choose the French version which has the impact of actually shutting down a major industry in Canada, eliminating some 10,000 jobs and $100 million worth of business a year.

The member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine referred to the fact that Canada Post actually owned a slice of the remailing industry for some four years. Is that not an irony? The very corporation that says remailers should not exist, actually invested in a remailing company some years ago and presumably made some money at it.

I do not know if the Bloc is supporting the legislation, but the other suggestion being made by my NDP colleagues is that somehow the profits that the remailers make today, and that Canada Post would like to now make its own, is critical to continuing a rural mail delivery service across Canada.

That is absolutely not true. In fact, we heard the profit quoted earlier. Last year, Canada Post earned some $320 million in profit. It is not losing money. The suggestion that somehow the bill would cause Canada Post to lose money is absolute nonsense. It does not own that business now, and it has not for some 20 years. This is a business that was legitimately carried on by the remailers. For over two decades, they depended on what everyone understood the state of the law to be, which was the English version of the Canada Post Corporation Act. Now that has changed because the courts picked up on this anomaly and decided against the remailers.

We want to correct that situation. We want to send a message to Canadians, especially those who rely on the remailing industry for their livelihoods, that we will stand behind them.

I want to give credit to the Liberals in the House. They recognized that. They got it. They understood there would be an injustice foisted upon these workers and industries, which had been acting in good faith for such a long time.

A suggestion has also been made that this is somehow a step toward deregulating postal service in Canada and privatizing Canada Post. Nothing could be further from the truth. We have made it very clear, as a Conservative government, that we will not take steps to privatize Canada Post. We believe Canada Post is performing a very useful service in Canada.

We have ordered that a strategic review of Canada Post be undertaken to ensure Canadians receive full value from Canada Post, to ensure Canada Post continues to pursue the objectives and purposes for which it was created and to ensure the postal corporation remains vibrant within Canada.

The suggestion that now putting the heavy hand of the law on the remailers would somehow enhance Canada Post prospects or enhance the prospects of businesses across Canada, which would like to keep their costs down, is ludicrous.

I come from an area of the country where individual enterprise is valued very highly. The remailers that have invested for some 20 years in this industry have done so in good faith. They took risks. They built their companies. They hired employees. They continued to grow. They provided a valuable service to thousands of other businesses across the country. To suggest that shutting those businesses down and getting rid of those jobs is somehow serving Canadians is absolutely wrong.

If I could just summarize, in point form, what the bill would not do and then what it would do, I hope Canadians will understand why Bill C-14 is important to them.

As I have already mentioned, it is critically important to those who rely on the remail industry for their livelihoods, but it is also critical for Canada's ongoing economic prosperity because we depend on remaining competitive. Canada lags behind many of the other industrialized countries in productivity.

How do we improve on that? One way is to ensure that Canadian businesses can reduce their costs and compete in a fiercely competitive world.

What would the bill not do? It would not result in a loss of revenue for Canada Post because Canada Post never had these revenues in the last 20 years.

This is not about a loss of jobs. I do not believe the NDP is even suggesting that it is a loss of jobs in the industry. What we are doing is protecting jobs. What those members would like to see happen is that those jobs go elsewhere. In fact, members may not know this but a number of the remailer companies have shut down their business in Canada and have gone elsewhere. Do members now where those jobs went? They did not stay in Canada. They left the country. Therefore, why would we want to risk that happening to the 10,000 remaining jobs we have in Canada? It is not about a loss of jobs; it is reaffirming the status quo of the last 20 years.

Is this about deregulation? Absolutely not. We have made that clear. My colleague across the floor has made that clear. This is not an attack on Canada Post. We continue to support exclusive privilege to Canada Post and its critical role in allowing Canadians to communicate with one another.

This is about protecting jobs, protecting our industry, our remailers, ensuring that we protect the trust that Canadians have, especially Canadian businessmen, when they see government and Canada Post moving forward in reliance on a certain law, that we will not flip-flop down the road. Finally, this is about maintaining Canada's competitiveness in the global economy.

Is Canada Post an important federal institution? Absolutely. It has a presence throughout our country. Does it need the remail industry to survive? Absolutely not. The profits last year of $320 million speak for themselves. There is more than enough money for Canada Post to do a good job in ensuring that Canadians have good rural mail delivery. Canada Post will continue to collect and transmit mail within Canada, and it is entitled to compete with the remailers in sending mail outside of Canada.

This is about protecting jobs. It is about standing up for Canadians. I appreciate the opportunity to defend this industry today with Bill C-14.

[Citizenship and Immigration, May 5th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, media reports over the weekend suggested the government was proposing changes requiring all federal skilled worker applicants to submit the results of a French or English language proficiency test.

Could the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration clarify what this means for skilled workers applying to come to Canada?

[Criminal Code, April 18th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, it is amusing to see the NDP and the Bloc pat each other on the back for not protecting Canadians. I am actually appalled. I listened very carefully to the speech from the member for Vancouver East. I know she said that the way to address terrorism is by having a roof over one's head and having food on the table.

Quite frankly, if she looks at the Air India disaster, the people who were accused and convicted in the tragedy, having a roof over their heads and having food in their belly was not an issue. It was a matter of religious and political extremism.

I want to ask her, in light of the Air India disaster and the inquiry that followed, how can she still justify not supporting some reasonable anti-terrorism measures that our Supreme Court of Canada has already provided us guidelines for and we are complying with those guidelines?

[Justice, April 18th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday Canada's Supreme Court rendered its decision in two cases dealing with the “two beer defence”. This defence has been used for years as a way for drunk drivers to escape responsibility for their actions.

Can the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice tell the House how this decision interacts with Bill C-2, our Tackling Violent Crime Act, to safeguard Canadians against those who commit serious and violent crimes?

[Airline Passenger Bill of Rights, April 17th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for bringing this motion forward. In principle, I do support the motion. Whatever we can do to strengthen consumer rights in Canada is welcomed.

I am also an air traveller. I travel every week to and from my riding, and I know what it means to be delayed, to sit on the tarmac waiting for a plane to take off.

I want to start by unequivocally stating that our government is committed to consumer protection for Canadians. Our country has a solid, effective and constantly improving consumer protection regime, and that applies to those Canadians who travel by air.

Canada's approach to air travel has always been to put the safety of the travelling public first. That is non-negotiable. That is why Canada is a world leader in aviation safety, as the member mentioned. Canada has even been cited by the International Civil Aviation Organization as having among the best safety standards in the world. Safe operation of our aircraft is our paramount consideration.

What about some of the other aspects of air travel? What about the comfort, safety and convenience of the travelling public?

The motion before us asks us to do a number of things. It calls upon our government to protect air passengers' consumer interests in a consistent and rules based way. It also asks us to provide adequate compensation to air travellers who experience inconveniences and delays on commercial flights originating in Canada.

The motion seeks to address those concerns by formally calling upon our government to implement a passenger bill of rights similar to the one in Europe and the one in the United States. Let us look at those models. Let us first review the situation in the United States.

As it turns out, the United States actually has no national passenger bill of rights. Although the state of New York tried to adopt a law which would have addressed health and safety concerns related to long delays on the tarmac, the U.S. Court of Appeals actually struck down the law. Despite past efforts, the United States has never been able to implement a broad passenger bill of rights to date.

Not only does the United States not have a passenger bill of rights, but it does not even have a complaints mechanism available to passengers. A discontented passenger is left to deal directly with the airline and has no other recourse for resolution aside from the courts.

Only Europe has a passenger bill of rights at this time, and it is appropriate for us to reflect on the particular circumstances of that bill of rights.

The fact that the European Union has some 20 different member states, many with their own air carriers, explains why the EU was so anxious to have a consistent set of rules and approaches to consumer complaints.

What was worse was that in Europe there were persistent challenges with congestion and overbooking, challenges which existed as early as the 1990s, which is approximately when the European passenger bill of rights was originally introduced. The European aviation industry was known to regularly overbook passengers, cancel undersold flights and make refunds very difficult.

Europe also faced serious challenges when its airline industry saw over 35 low cost carriers exit the market between 2003 and 2006. That in itself would have been a huge blow to consumer confidence in the European airline industry.

The European Union passenger bill of rights addresses specific situations where either boarding is denied by the carrier or flights are cancelled or delayed for a long period of time.

That bill of rights also requires each member state to have an enforcement body to deal with consumer complaints. Surprisingly, its enforcement process has many similarities to our Canadian approach. Just as in Canada, enforcement bodies in the EU provide recourse to passengers for complaints not resolved by the carrier.

However, European Union resolution of complaints is limited to the very issues I have already articulated: denied boarding, cancellations and delays. This is different from our system where our complaints enforcement body, the Canadian Transportation Agency, has a much wider mandate. The agency has the power to address a wide variety of air traveller complaints as reflected in the broad range of carriers' terms and conditions.

The EU passenger bill of rights does not address the concerns raised by the United States regarding lengthy delays on the tarmac, nor does it address the issue of lost baggage.

Let me elaborate further on the situation right here in Canada.

I would first like to address the unfortunate circumstances that have probably triggered the motion before us. Let us not beat around the bush. This last winter was a tough one for Canadians. It is easy for me to sympathize with those people who were victims of delayed and cancelled flights during the 2007 Christmas holiday season as a result of the winter storms in eastern and Atlantic Canada. I happened to be one of those passengers. Indeed, some Canadians rely on air transportation as their only means of travel. It is also regrettable that vacationers had their reading week and spring break trips cancelled or significantly delayed as a result of the massive storms that hit Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal on March 8 and 9. These were very unfortunate events that are a product of our northern climate.

I began my comments with the statement that we in Canada are fortunate to have strong consumer protection laws. Let me take a few minutes to remind members of what that regime actually entails.

In Canada, as in most other countries, the terms and conditions of carriage are set by carriers that compete aggressively with each other. They are not set by government. This approach is consistent with our privatized air industry framework which relies heavily on the competitiveness of the marketplace to ensure that terms and conditions of carriage are reasonable and fair.

In Canada, airline passenger rights are protected through the provisions in the Canadian Transportation Act. All carriers operating within Canada or arriving or departing from Canada are required to develop terms and conditions of carriage and to make them readily accessible to the public. The information contained in the carrier's terms and conditions of carriage is important to consumers because it sets out that carrier's obligations and commitments to passengers.

As my colleagues in this House know all too well, the Canadian Transportation Act was recently amended unanimously by the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities. I am a member of that committee and I was part of that review process.

Bill C-11, an act to amend the Canada Transportation Act, was passed and received royal assent in June of last year. It included enhanced consumer protection for air travel. These enhancements were in addition to existing consumer laws that we already had in place. I would like to list some of those improvements we made under Bill C-11.

Under that bill airlines are now required to prominently display and post their terms and conditions of carriage at the business offices of their domestic airlines. Bill C-11 also made permanent the informal and flexible complaints resolution process within the Canadian Transportation Agency. It integrated the role and functions of the Air Travel Complaints Commissioner with the authority and day to day operations of the agency.

The changes introduced under Bill C-11 are improvements to an already open and transparent reporting process. It is also important to understand how the complaints process in Canada works.

Canadian passengers are first required to address their complaints directly to the airline. To me, that seems reasonable. They then have recourse to the Canadian Transportation Agency if they are not satisfied with the carrier's response. Consumers can also seek redress and file a complaint with the agency if an airline fails to follow its terms and conditions of carriage. As a result of the complaints process, the agency can then assess monetary damages, if appropriate.

When considering whether to introduce our own passenger bill of rights, we have to consider many of the elements that are already in place in Canada. These are terms such as those that lay out the obligations of a carrier when flights are cancelled or delayed, conditions that determine how lost baggage is dealt with, which does not happen in the European Union, and an existing thorough and comprehensive complaints process.

The bottom line is that Canadian air passenger consumer protection laws are much stronger than those in the United States, and they more than hold their own when compared to the passenger bill of rights in the European Union.

Let us wind up this discussion by simply saying that Canada should not sell itself short. We are doing a good job in the area of consumer protection. What I do not want to do is till soil that has already been thoroughly tilled.

While I do not for a moment question the motives of the mover of this motion, I am not yet certain that a new passenger bill of rights is absolutely necessary, but I am certainly open to hear his remarks and the rest of the debate on this motion. I am certainly open to having my mind changed on this issue.

[Airline Passenger Bill of Rights, April 17th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, the member and I share a concern that consumer protection be robust in Canada, especially for those who use the airlines to travel. He made specific reference to a model that I think he would like us to follow, the model used by the European Union, which has a bill of rights for airline passengers.

Given the fact he has quoted that as a model, could he elucidate for us a little further the advantages that model would have over Canada's current system? Perhaps he could also comment on Bill C-11, which was passed in the last Parliament and which seriously enhances consumer protection for airline passengers in Canada?