Joe Volpe

[Canada Post Corporation Act, November 20th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I would love to answer that question. The hon. member gives me a compliment when he suggests that I have the entrepreneurial skills to take the considerations that are on the table for every one of those men and women who currently have a job and who are engaged in an enterprise that is giving them a remuneration with which they may or may not be content, but with which they are satisfied currently, and to replace that with something else.

I am a legislator. I wish I could say I was an entrepreneur, but all I know is that I have asked what will happen to their jobs if the actions that Canada Post was bringing upon them were to have great success. Canada Post could not guarantee that they would be absorbed as additional jobs in the Canada Post corporate plan, and the other companies, if they were forced to shut down, could not guarantee where they would go next. They would be at the mercy of most people who lose their jobs in an open market, out of luck.

[Canada Post Corporation Act, November 20th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I was beginning to wonder whether we were actually going to get to the bill itself. If members do not mind my repeating what the last questioner asked in the debate, it is about a very small element, section 15 of the Canada Post Corporation Act, to be amended by adding the following after subsection (2):

The exclusive privilege referred to in subsection 14(1) does not apply to letters intended for delivery to an addressee outside Canada.

That is all. That is what the bill is about. We have heard for the last 20 some minutes what the bill does not intend to do, which is fine. I do not think that we in this House should be worried about what it is not intended to do, but rather what it is intended to do. From my perspective, as one of those members referred to by the previous speaker on the committee, this amendment to the Canada Post Corporation Act is really intended to protect the jobs of those small businesses that operate within the parameters of the Canada Post Corporation Act as they were interpreted until two years ago. That is all.

We can either agree that the jobs of people who have been engaged in legitimate business and the businesses that have been engaged in a legitimate environment are worthy of consideration and protection, or they are not. The moment we agree that those men and women have been engaged in activity that has been productive for them and their families and for the Canadian economy, then we must take an objective and positive disposition to this bill. Why do I say that?

In order to get a good comprehension of what we are talking about, we have to think in terms of the dimensions of the discussion. It is good to think in terms of dimensions of discussions in dollars and cents.

Canada Post's annual report for 2006 says that despite a strong economy, the letter mail product was essentially flat in 2006. There was no growth as far as Canada Post is concerned, but it is concerned about the competition from the small businesses and the men and women that they employ.

Let us re-examine that context once again. That same report says that consolidated revenues from operations in Canada Post reached $7.3 billion for an increase of 4.6% over the previous year. This is an environment where the letter mail business is flat, so it has increased by 4.6% its revenues which total $7.3 billion according to its consolidated statement.

Is there another number that fits in with that growth? What does a 4.6% increase mean? Again according to the statements in the annual report, it means $320 million of increased revenue. There is $320 million of additional revenue over the previous year in order to carry out its mandate, in order to guarantee the jobs of the men and women in rural Canada and in urban Canada and to deliver the kinds of service that Canada Post is mandated to deliver.

And when it falls short of its mandate, the Government of Canada, as I read the Canada Post Corporation Act, has always stepped in to ensure that any shortfalls would be guaranteed by the Canadian taxpayer, but that is not the case now. We are not talking about that now. We are talking about an increase of $320 million that has brought to complete revenues of $7.3 billion.

I do not think we ought to focus too much on this. It is a fabulous amount of money. It does not equal anything I have ever dreamed of owning. However, $7.3 billion means that, according to Canada Post, it is now one of the biggest employers in the country. In fact, it is proud to say that it was named as one of the top 100 employers in Canada for 2007 in Maclean's magazine. Things would appear to be going not too badly.

What is the competition for a $7.3 billion company that employs 55,000 people?

We heard the parliamentary secretary say a moment ago that the competition is a group of companies that send letter mail, pick it up and send it abroad, outside of Canada. In other words, they are not interfering with the exclusive privilege of sending mail within the country. In other words, they are not interfering with the mandate of providing that network of communication and jobs around the country. They are not interfering with the mandate to hoist the Canadian flag in communities all around the country so that we can see that our federation works. Those companies and those men and women who have been earning their jobs and their money legitimately, according to the parliamentary secretary who was repeating what Canada Post in its best estimates found to be the case, are a $45 million to $55 million competition.

In committee I pressed some of the remailers. I said that surely it cannot be just $45 million to $55 million. They allowed that maybe they might inch up to $60 million, maybe even $70 million. In any case, according to a very quick calculation on a BlackBerry or any computer we would find that $60 million of gross revenue for these small companies, compared to the $7.3 billion, is about .8 of 1%. That is less than 1%. That is the threat. That is the Trojan Horse that people are now beginning to bring forward. That is why I said that we cannot be talking about what the bill is not going to do; we have to talk about what it is intended to do.

What it is intended to do is to save the jobs of those people who are working for those companies that in their total represent less than $60 million compared to the big giant of $7.3 billion. Seven billion dollars and three hundred million dollars is what Canada Post earns.

If we are trying to save the jobs of those men and women, if we think that their value, their dignity, their right to work is at least as good and legitimate as anybody who works for Canada Post, then we do not have any problem with this bill, because Canada Post does not have any problem with the bill.

In fact, Canada Post, in addition to indicating that it grew its income by $320 million, really did say that the net income for the fiscal period ending December 2006 was $119 million. On revenues of $7.3 billion, it netted roughly $120 million. That $120 million net is at least twice the gross value of all those small companies and their employees who will punch the clock or do what they can to go to work every day to raise their families in an environment that is productive, dignified and meritorious of a Canadian dream.

The bill should be doing that and that is what I thought the government wanted to bring across to everybody. That is why this bill is so brief. It just simply says to let these people work. Where are they working, according to the parliamentary secretary? They are not working all over Canada so they can diminish the mandate of Canada Post to deliver a network of communication for all Canadians and to bring them together and bind this country tighter as one unit. No.

According to the parliamentary secretary and to the best estimates of Canada Post, we are talking about people who are engaged in businesses where this opportunity is practicable. In other words, they cannot compete anywhere else. They can only compete in three areas.

It appears that those three areas might be the greater Toronto area, might be metropolitan Montreal and might be greater Vancouver. Those are not three insignificant markets. They are very large and important but they also have the infrastructure required in order to make some of these very small businesses function.

There is no competition anywhere else. There is no competition for rural mail service in small communities where Canada Post might be a significant if not the most significant employer. There is no competition for a standard bearer for our Canadian presence, the point of contact between citizens and government around the country.

For 20-plus years the business has developed. Obviously it has not been such an overwhelming success as to make great inroads into the revenue stream of Canada Post because the revenue stream totalled $7.3 billion last year in an environment where the letter mail business was flat and these companies were not able to generate much more than $50 million.

I look at this again and ask what we should do as responsible parliamentarians. If we are concerned about the jobs of the men and women who work for these small businesses that operate here in Canada. Members will notice that I did not say they had to necessarily be Canadian owned, but that they receive investment and they do employ Canadians. What happens to the jobs of the people who work for these companies? Will they be absorbed by Canada Post, a company that is trying desperately to be as productive, as efficient and as competitive as any other industrial giant? I do not know. How would it do that?

If this business that Canada Post has just realized exists is labour intensive, and it would be labour intensive in places like Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver and non-existent anywhere else, will Canada Post absorb those jobs and create new ones so that we now can say, as responsible legislators, that we are not taking away the opportunity to earn a livelihood and create a future for oneself and one's family, but that in fact we are transferring the possibility from these small entrepreneurs to a state related organization?

If we could do that, that would be fine but, in a competitive environment, Canada Post will not absorb those jobs. It will ask its union members, which is CUPW, to take on any additional work. Does anyone know why? It is because the work represented by those small companies and their dutiful men and women who work every day to earn money to carry on with their livelihood for their families amounts to less than 0.8 of 1% of Canada Post's gross revenues.

Does anyone think for a moment that Canada Post will absorb all of those jobs and create more new jobs for every one of those people so that it can spend more? It will not do that at all. CUPW members will be asked to take on additional work, but not for more money, presumably, because in an efficiency driven environment it could not do that, but to do it for the same money.

What would be accomplished by driving out of business these companies that provide jobs for people's next door neighbours? It will not hurt people who are not from Toronto, Montreal or British Columbia's lower mainland. It will not hurt the member from Thunder Bay and it probably will not even bother the members from Ottawa. It will have an impact on people from the greater Toronto area, the greater Montreal area and the greater Vancouver area, where people are working diligently to make Canada a success.

What will happen? Will those people now be transferred from a job in one company to a Canada Post position? The answer is no. It will not happen.

As members of the House of Commons, our first obligation is to ensure that no legislation goes through the House that damages the potential available to any Canadian and, concomitant with that, the obligation to nurture an environment that gives Canadians that same opportunity.

If that is what will happen, then this legislation is but a very small step in the direction of a positive initiative that should not be apologized for. That is bad English form. We should not add in a preposition and leave it dangling. We should say that it is something that allows a productive activity to flourish in a legitimate environment. That is what this bill would do.

Mr. Speaker, do not let any member in the House confuse the positive aspects, the intentions of this bill, which came out of a committee that considered, deliberated and debated motions and said that we needed to structure legislation that does something positive, such as save jobs, nurture job creators and ensure that the infrastructure that we already have in place and, with all due respect, that is represented by Canada Post, be maintained. The bill took what the committee said and fashioned it in very simple terms, very brief legislation, and said that this was what we had to do.

I urge everybody to support this legislation.

[Motor Vehicle Safety Act, November 20th, 2007]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-481, An Act to amend the Motor Vehicle Safety Act (electronic stability control).

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour of introducing a bill today entitled an act to amend the Motor Vehicle Safety Act, or ESC for short. I thank my seconder for the support.

If adopted, this bill would amend the Motor Vehicle Safety Act to provide that every vehicle weighing less than 4,536 kilograms sold in Canada or imported into Canada is to be equipped with an electronic stability control system. ESC is a safety technology designed to enhance a vehicle's stability, and to prevent loss of control and rollovers in all driving conditions.

According to a comprehensive 2001 Canadian government study, there were 2,778 motor vehicle deaths and 24,403 hospital admissions as a result of motor vehicle collisions. Estimates from Transport Canada in 2005 indicated that at least 255 fewer deaths would have resulted and 1,440 fewer hospital admissions as well if all of the vehicles had been equipped with ESC systems.

We need to be serious about applying modern technology to safety issues on our roads. ESC is a step in that direction.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Aeronautics Act, November 2nd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I am reminded since we are getting into lecturing and sort of religious illusions that we also serve who wait and sit. She might think that is cynical, but the fact of the matter is I asked her and her colleagues to tell me why she would suggest that there are not going to be inspectors when in fact that is built into the bill.

Why does she suggest that the Canada Labour Code does not apply when that is an untruth of the worst variety? Why does she deliberately say that we did not listen to witnesses--and I am talking about us; I am not talking about the government side--as she indicated that the opposition members worked together in order to bring this to fruition?

Then she says we did not incorporate what CUPE or other labour unions or professional organizations suggested. We brought all of those amendments forward for the scrutiny of members who take their jobs seriously, and I dare say yes, even her party's member on the committee. That is why I am absolutely flabbergasted that on the one hand she praises his work, who worked to ensure that we came up with this bill and then on the other hand en masse members of that party would turn around and say, “We don't care what our member did; we don't care what anybody else did; we are going to vote against the bill“--

[Aeronautics Act, November 2nd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I never miss an opportunity to give the public another opportunity to understand what we are debating.

The bill is about aviation safety. I note the NDP members have focused as much attention on railway safety as they have on everything else.

Whenever members of Parliament are concerned with the security and safety of the travelling public, it is always to be commended. This is why the committee members should be commended. They studied a bill for more than six months.

It is true that we brought an exhaustive list of people before the committee, an exhaustive list of interested industry operators, of union representatives, of professional organizations and of interested third parties. It is true that many of them said they liked the bill. Some of them even said they wanted to add some more. Others even said that we could improve the legislation by doing certain things. Everyone of them was listened to with deference and respect, and their input was incorporated in the amendments, now the bill. They are all in the bill.

It is verging on the dishonest, but I do not want to use that word too heavily, to suggest that the input people had as witnesses in the committee, before the committee members looked at the amendments, is the view that should prevail today.

For example, referring to Judge Moshansky is not very direct or honest. Judge Moshansky said he thought we should do the following. We did what he suggested. It is in the bill.

It is unfortunate and verging on the dishonest to refer to the lack of inspectors when we have amendments in the bill that must ensure the financing, the training and the deployment of inspectors to guarantee the safety mechanisms that we propose as standards. The members have already acknowledged they are there. The standards have been upgraded. The resources to ensure they be in place and supervised appropriately are there. That is in the bill.

It is verging on the dishonest to suggest that we are now talking about a bill that would impose extra work on professionals. They are governed by collective agreements. They are governed by their own professional code of conduct. They are governed by the Canada Labour Code, which is not superceded by any proposed amendment.

If NDP members want to kill a bill in which they participated in shaping for six months, then they should say to the general public that they want to be obstructionists, that they should give themselves a different name. They can do that. It is okay. I do not have any problem with it. However, it is verging on the dishonest for the members of the NDP to make the suggestions they have about the members of the Bloc and the Liberal Party, who believe in making Parliament work, who listen to the general public and who take into consideration the voice of experts in the field and then structure legislation.

Yes, it was with the cooperation of the government members. I know there are those who think we should take partisanship to the extreme and say that everything the Conservatives do is bad. I commiserate with them because it is as a result of the NDP manoeuvring in the last Parliament that we have the government we have today. However, I will not fall into the temptation of getting into partisanship by believing that.

I only say that it is absolutely crucial, when members of Parliament gather together for more than six months and iron out all the difficulties, whether they are real or perceived, that we present the bill to the House and give it at least one more chance. We went through this, it is called report stage. The amendments that members did not like or did not think they could put forward, could have been brought in a committee of the whole to get support of other members of Parliament to give it one last chance. We did that.

This bill sailed through at report stage. Now we have all those complaints from members of the NDP, the new whine party. They are saying that notwithstanding everything the rest of the general public represented by legitimately elected individuals think, it does not matter. They want to hold up the bill. They want to ensure the bill does not get approval of the House. That is okay.

If members have a firm ideological position based either on a good solid footing or on whatever comes up on the day, that is okay too. However, we should not try to project it as being something more than that. It is nothing more than obstructionism and it cannot be thought of as anything else.

The NDP is not interested in aviation safety. It is not interested in the security and the job security of those people working in the aerospace and aviation industry. It is not interested in the business interests of Canadian enterprises, be they big or small. If it were, the bill would have passed the House last June. If it were, this bill would have passed last week when it was reintroduced as part of the negotiation to bring back bills at the same stages when the House last adjourned.

Members of the House can disagree with each other. It is unfortunate that we have come to a stage where we want to express our differences by calling others liars. We are not. It is verging on dishonesty to suggest implicitly or explicitly that there was collusion, in private, in secrecy, on this bill. The minister who brought the bill forward appeared before the committee two or three times. I enjoyed giving him a hard time, but that is what the process is for. Therefore, if anyone had a problem with the minister's bill, we brought him and his officials before the committee over and over again. There was no secrecy.

The plan was to have members of Parliament structure this bill. Members of Parliament have structured the bill. The NDP, while it takes great credit for having done great work, has just said, with the last several interventions, that it is not part of the process. It certainly is not an honest part of the process. I wonder whether the members of the NDP will wake up and decide to make the House work. If they do not want to do that, perhaps they should all resign en masse and do the Canadian public a favour.

[Aeronautics Act, November 2nd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I am so delighted to listen to the voices of those who have not studied the bill.

I am wondering whether the NDP position is now one that says that the government has fallen through on bringing a bill before the committee and giving the committee members an opportunity to shape the bill, which is what we do in a minority Parliament, we actually shape the bill.

I am wondering why the NDP members would say on the one hand that they applaud the work of their colleague on the committee, the tremendous work that the committee has done and then highlight the improvements that have been debated, discussed, voted upon, brought forward and now in the real bill, and then on the other hand say that even though all this has been done they will vote against it.

What is it about NDP logic that says that every time we take a step forward, we must take two steps back so that we can complain about the fact that somebody is moving forward?

I find it absolutely fascinating that the House leader for the NDP would repeat things that are totally untrue. Does she expect, in asking her colleague, who has never attended one of those meetings, that if she repeats something that is clearly untrue, the general public will believe it to be something that it is not? Is it part of the NDP approach to engage in debate for the next election and send out messages that have nothing to do with reality?

The reality is that we have an aviation industry and an industry that involves many owner-operated flights, small companies, all of them concerned with aviation safety. It is part of the business. We do not expand the exercise by ensuring that everybody suffers an incident or an accident. The NDP members do not seem to grasp that. They also do not seem to grasp that all the improvements that their critic participated in bringing forward are ones that the Canadian public wants.

Is it the NDP's position that it will thumb its nose at everything the Canadian public wants? Is that what it wants to go into an election with?

[Aeronautics Act, October 31st, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, now we are getting into some rather substantive discussion, and therefore, the substantive discussion deserves a substantive question.

If it is important for the NDP to have the bill removed for six months so that we have no concern about safety for six months, or more important, that we send it back to committee so that the bill can be improved, the member must have in her hands the exact amendments that she thinks must be made, and she must have in her hands the suggested improvements for the House to consider. Failing that, the member is simply engaging in dilatory motions.

I would ask the member to produce something other than the CUPE prepared amendments, all of which were debated by the committee. Some of them were accepted and some of them were rejected. I wonder whether the member has something that is new and that the committee has not yet heard and that she would like the House to consider for the benefit of all Canadians.

If the House would allow me a small but incisive partisan observation, about 18 months ago the member and her party came before the House because they were unhappy with the prosperity that was visited upon the country by the Liberal government and they wanted to have a Conservative government instead. The member has one now. What is she complaining about?

[Aeronautics Act, October 31st, 2007]

Are you on topic? Get on topic.

[Aeronautics Act, October 31st, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, this issue of immunity for employers and airlines caused me some concern. The concern is that because it is thrown out there by the NDP it suggests that somehow members of Parliament were not looking out for the best interests of the public.

Here is what that provision actually said. First of all, there is no immunity from criminal acts. Nobody but nobody, no employers, no employees are immune from prosecution for criminal activity.

Second, where the immunity provisions entered in was only in those areas of SMS that allowed for an employer or an employee to come forward with something that was wrong or not functioning, for the purposes of correction, so that the SMS could work. It did not absolve any airline, any operator, any owner or any employee from anything that crossed criminal lines.

For the NDP to suggest that there was anything other than that is a total misrepresentation of what transpired. It is an affront to the people who worked hard to not only improve the authority of the minister and the regulatory system but to actually enhance it by bringing in a culture of volunteerism and cooperation. I think that it is important for the public to know.

[Aeronautics Act, October 31st, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for North Vancouver for giving us a balanced view of what happened in this committee because the integrity of committee members was assailed by members of the NDP. They had one member present who went along with every single issue and amendment. We brought in witnesses, experts, union representatives, and employer and employee groups. The member for North Vancouver was there to listen to all of this and to formulate his own views about what happened.

Is it his opinion that all of the amendments that are now incorporated in Bill C-7 are part and parcel of the public input in a bill that is supposed to and does reflect the public interest? If his answer to that is positive, is he not shocked that members of the NDP, none of whom were actually present at this hearing, would characterize this as something completely different and alien from what transpired? Does he not think that that is an insult and contemptuous of the House of Commons and the members who worked diligently to achieve such legislation?