Madam Speaker, the federal government is less and less relevant in everyday life to Canadians except when we pay taxes.
One of the two federal departments that I have had the most frustration with over the past seven years is the Department of Transport. I am appalled at the insensitive behaviour and urban orientation of our Department of Transport gurus. We live in a big country and we need worldclass transportation infrastructure.
I am going to talk about marine ports and air regulations.
Municipal governments across Canada have been asked to co-operate on accepting ownership and responsibility for many federal marine port facilities and local airports since 1995. Now, out of the clear blue sky, the federal bureaucracy wants to impose an incredibly expanding regime on an incredibly dispersed and diversified sector, which is the small airline and float plane industry.
Municipal governments entered into these negotiations in a spirit of co-operation. The goodwill in some negotiations is now completely gone. The insensitivity of the federal government to local needs and rural realities has astounded me and many others who were involved in the process.
As a measure of the good faith and co-operation that was going on, the Department of Transport started off in 1995 with 81 marine port facilities that it did not want anymore. As of March 31, 1999, 24 facilities had been successfully transferred to other authorities and 57 were still in federal hands. There are real problems with this shortened list.
I know what a remote community is. If there is anyone on the B.C. coast who knows what a remote community is, I am the one in this place who knows. I have lived there. I made my living there. The largest community I lived in for most of my 20 years in the forest industry was one with 1,800 people and many were much smaller.
I have had to scratch my head that the federal government was taking no responsibility for one very remote community in my riding on the B.C. coast. It is called Zeballos. When I filed an access to information request, it all became clear. The Ottawa bureaucracy thought there was a road along the coast that connected it to the next community and that is why it was not remote. That road does not exist.
Then there is the ongoing saga of another remote coastal community in my riding, the village of Quatsino, a viable community of 300 people established in the 1880s. Many of the same families are still there. That community relies on boats and dock facilities for health care and to send their children to secondary school. Rather than designate the connecting facility as remote and worthy of federal maintenance in line with federal policy, the government is playing hard ball and telling the community “Too bad, you chose to live there”. What an insult. I am well aware of problems along the same lines in other west coast communities.
Then there is the situation where communities have taken over their local airport authority, relieved the federal government of the responsibility often on the basis of negotiations which occurred in 1994-95, only to be sandbagged by the Department of Transport later. I have an example of irresponsible federal offloading of costs at the airport in my very own community of Campbell River.
Negotiations with Transport Canada were completed in 1995 and the community took over the airport on January 1, 1996. During negotiations the municipality expressly stated that the federal government should not transfer ownership and then mandate new costs which would make it difficult or more expensive for the municipality to manage the operation. Lo and behold, what is happening now? The federal government is trying to mandate new emergency preparedness capabilities which would introduce new costs of $350,000 a year for that facility alone and the feds do not want to pay.
This has been happening across the country. The Federation of Canadian Municipalities and others are complaining. Negotiations between the affected stakeholders and the feds have broken down over the issue of costs. The stakeholders in the working group have abandoned talks with the federal government over this issue and the refusal of Transport Canada to talk about these costs.
The department only wants to discuss new standards and talk about costs later. This is impossible for the local authorities and is simply not acceptable. This is highhanded arrogant behaviour leading to an increase in the mistrust of entering into any negotiations with the federal government where downstream legislation or regulatory changes by the feds can increase local liability without compensation and where discussion seems to be a one way street with the Department of Transport driving. This is not fair negotiation.
What is required right now on this emergency response preparedness at all non-designated airports in Canada with commercial passenger service? It is a widespread issue and local authorities are complaining.
As if this is not enough, now the Department of Transport has decided to target the float plane sector.
In the words of one operator asked to respond to the new regulations and standards: “Once again Transport Canada has come up with a make work project that will waste its time and our money. If the cost for implementing and enforcing new regulations is to be borne by the operators at the water aerodrome, you can expect a mass exodus, if there is anyone left to leave. This draft document has been drawn up using a water aerodrome in downtown Toronto or Vancouver as a model. I do not think one regulation or standard can fit all aerodromes”. These are stakeholder comments.
The airlines serving Canada's remote communities do a good job under adverse circumstances and under conditions found nowhere else in the world. That is why we are so respected in the international community in this endeavour. We cannot tie up our entrepreneurs and pilots in red tape. Transport Canada has now proposed NPA 99-147 which deals with aircraft landing approach bands which would do exactly that.
I have some comments from one of the larger operators. The vice-president of Bearskin Airlines wrote:
This new proposed ruling suggests that an approach not be attempted if the reported visibility on a non-precision approach is reported below the published advisory limit.
In my experience of over 23,000 hours of flying in N.W. Ontario, there are many many times when the visibility was reported as 1/2 mile, but on one mile final I could see all of a 6,000 foot runway. In other words, flight visibility was 2 miles.
He went on to say that this new ruling would unnecessarily cancel a large percentage of the company's winter flights for no reason and with no safety advantage. He foresaw that a lot of aircraft would go to their alternates and in some cases would not be able to land legally at their alternate because of unexpected and unforecast weather situations which could lead to flights running short on fuel.
The complaints go on. Nav Canada said, “This is ill-advised from both a flight efficiency and flight safety perspective. Transport Canada should be taken to task to show the statistical connection between this proposed ruling and the safety benefits it contends will result. It is not reasonable to assume that any flight safety benefit will result from this NPA while flight deficiency will be adversely affected because approaches that could have been safely and effectively completed will be aborted or not flown at all”.
That is a list of some of my complaints. Ten minutes is a long time when there is nothing much to say but it is not very much time when there is a lot to say.
What is happening is the federal government is doing all of those things. At the same time it has created a rural dialogue to discuss how the government should prioritize federal tax spending and it wants to do it with rural youth in my riding and other parts of British Columbia. I wrote to the minister and the chair of the local school board to object to this poor priority for taxation spending.
In summary, we cannot let the insulated, comfortable and protective central bureaucracy and minister continue to increase their legislative and regulatory authority at the expense of new cost burdens on local authorities. This is simply not fair.