Marc Garneau

[The Environment, November 7th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for Châteauguay—Lacolle for her question and for her hard work.

Our government is especially proud of what our oceans protection plan has done for abandoned vessels, not just in Beauharnois, but across the country. We are passing legislation strengthening owner responsibility and liability for their vessels. We are funding the removal of small high-risk vessels and empowering the government to address problem vessels more proactively. We take this work very seriously.

[The Environment, November 2nd, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague is right, we are very proud of our oceans protection plan, which now has approached its first-year anniversary and we have announced over 50 measures. With respect to ships that lose cargo, it is very clear that they are responsible for the cleaning. That is the situation with the Hanjin Seattle that my colleague is referring to.

[Aviation Safety, October 30th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, again, to address the issue, I want to correct my colleague. We are not getting rid of the function of checking the check pilots of the airlines, who check their own pilots. We are continuing to use this approach, because it is an intelligent, risk-based approach. It is one that we feel will, in the most economical fashion, address our requirements while not sacrificing in any way safety.

We are a modern transport ministry and we are working in a modern way.

[Aviation Safety, October 30th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, no, we do not plan to change this rule. To us, passenger safety is always a top priority. I want to correct my colleague. We are not getting rid of the function of checking the check pilots of the airlines. The member misunderstands what we have decided to do. Using a risk-based approach, we periodically conduct an airline safety audit. It is a much more intelligent approach and it is the approach that our government has adopted to ensure passenger safety.

[Transportation Modernization Act, October 30th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I want to reassure my colleague that we very clearly will not be holding the airlines accountable for situations that are beyond their control. They cannot control the weather. They cannot control an outage by NavCan, which provides air traffic control. They cannot control a security issue at the airport that closes down the airport. There are a number of situations that are beyond the control of the airline itself. It is definitely not our intent, and I will make sure that this does not happen, because we have already discussed many of these parameters. For events that are within the control of the airlines, passenger rights would have to be respected. We would not hold the airlines accountable for things they cannot control.

[Transportation Modernization Act, October 30th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, again, I have to point out that 90% of what is in Bill C-49 are amendments, changes, to one act, the Canada Transportation Act. If one looks at the legislative agenda, it is virtually impossible, whenever legislation is passed, not to have an effect on certain other pieces of legislation. However, it is a small number of changes, about 10%, that will affect other existing legislation. The vast majority of the changes are focused on one act, the Canada Transportation Act.

[Transportation Modernization Act, October 30th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, there is one part of the bill that focuses very specifically on safety, and it has to do with freight rail and rail passenger safety. We would be proceeding with regulations requiring locomotives to carry audio and video recorders in them. This is focused 100% on safety.

As minister of transport, I am unfortunately made aware of derailments on a very regular basis, some carrying dangerous goods. Also, sometimes, unfortunately, there are terrible accidents at grade crossings. I do not need to go back over what happened in the last few years in the area of rail safety. The Transportation Safety Board has been urging the Government of Canada for years, and it started under the Conservatives, to put audio and video recorders in locomotives. We believe this is an important step to improve rail safety.

[Transportation Modernization Act, October 30th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I will pick up on the last point, which is that we are not helping to create greater competition. It is not brought up very often, because I think all the parties agreed to it, but there are two critically important parts to the bill. One is allowing foreign ownership of Canadian airlines to go from 25% to 49%. That is specifically in order to increase competition. The second part is the joint venture. Subject to the competition commissioner and myself agreeing that it is not against competition and in the public interest, this would also provide more competition and more choice for Canadians.

On top of that, we are providing a passenger bill of rights. This is all good for the air passenger, and I have heard nothing but positive remarks on it. Therefore, I am not quite sure what my hon. colleague was getting at.

[Transportation Modernization Act, October 30th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, having been in opposition for seven years and on many committees, I never saw a single Conservative accept a bill or a proposed amendment at committee. They were never accepted. However, there are amendments that we have accepted.

We accepted Conservative amendment number 23 that requires class I rail carriers to report service and performance information to the CTA within five days. We had proposed 14 and we accepted that.

We accepted amendment number 3 that requires the CTA to publish service and performance information it receives from class I rail carriers within two days of receipt. It used to be seven days, but we accepted this amendment. Combined with the previous amendment, this shortens the reporting period from three weeks to one week.

Amendment number 5 from the Conservatives requires the commissioner of competition to make public his report to the Minister of Transport on a proposed joint venture. That is a good suggestion and we accepted it.

Amendments numbers 6 and 7 require the Minister of Transport to make public a decision that varies or rescinds forms and conditions of a joint venture. These were sensible suggestions that we accepted from the opposition.

Amendment number 24 is to shorten the implementation period for a new freight rail data reporting system to 180 days, rather than the proposed 365 days.

Therefore, six of the nine amendments that went through at committee came from the Conservative Party. That is six more than I have witnessed myself in the seven years that I was in opposition.

[Transportation Modernization Act, October 30th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, although people may have some doubts about this, I want to tell them that in our department we were planning to create a passenger bill of rights before the issue became very visible. Many will recall the passenger who was dragged off the United aircraft flight, which brought this issue to the fore. Then it seemed not a week would go by without some other incident coming forward.

We had planned this for a long time because we felt it was necessary. It had not been passed by the previous government. We decided the best approach to take was to enshrine passenger rights in regulations. It would provide the greatest flexibility. Changing legislation is always a difficult process. The best way to do that would be to give it to the organization most responsible for passenger rights, the Canadian Transportation Agency. This bill mandates the agency to create a passenger bill of rights. Afterwards, it will come to me for approval before it is promulgated in 2018. We feel that is the most sensible approach.