Taylor Bachrach

[Business of Supply, March 9th, 2021]

Mr. Speaker, the concerns of smaller airlines is something that I wish I had time in my speech to address more fully, because in many ways they have been left out of this entire debate, which has been dominated by the big carriers. We heard at committee from airlines like Air North, which have very specific concerns about the environment they operate in. We need some assurance from the minister that airlines like Air North and other smaller carriers across the country are not being left out of the ongoing negotiations and will be treated fairly in any package put forward by the government. They deserve support as much as the large carriers in this country.

[Business of Supply, March 9th, 2021]

Mr. Speaker, it is something I touched on in my speech. In my former role as a mayor, we worked very hard with the province to put in place inter-community transit service, and we did so at a time when Greyhound still existed. While we gained a small step forward for northern communities along the Highway of Tears, we were left with a huge gap when Greyhound pulled out entirely.

Today I would say that things have never been worse when it comes to the affordability of and access to inter-city regional ground transport. It is something we need to improve upon if we are going to resolve these grave issues of murdered and missing indigenous women.

[Business of Supply, March 9th, 2021]

Mr. Speaker, this is a very serious issue that we in the NDP have spoken out about. The Commissioner of Competition was clear that the sale of Air Transat would result in a less competitive environment and higher prices for Canadian air travellers. We have seen the impacts of lack of competition in the air sector on smaller communities in Canada. When we have only one large carrier, the price of flights is demonstrably higher, which has a real impact on affordability and people's ability to travel to the places they need to get to. I agree very much with the member on this issue and was disappointed to see so little explanation from the minister as to why that sale was approved.

[Business of Supply, March 9th, 2021]

Madam Speaker, of course, northernness is a bit of a state of mind, and with the population so concentrated in the southern part of the country, we do not have to go many kilometres north before it is considered northern.

The member raises a decent point about sovereignty. I would say the issue is more about the rural fabric of our country and supporting rural communities. These regional routes play such an integral role in that aspect of Canadian life. We have seen Canada become more urbanized over time and I am very concerned for the long-term sustainability and vitality of northern and rural communities. We need to keep that in mind as we look to support the air sector through the pandemic.

[Business of Supply, March 9th, 2021]

Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time this morning with the member for Courtenay Alberni.

I am pleased to speak today to this opposition motion which calls, in part, on the government to provide assistance for the hard-hit airline sector in our country.

This is a timely topic. If media reports are to be believed, we could hear any day now about the outcome of negotiations that have been going on for months between the government and the airlines. We have seen those negotiations stall in past months and we may again, so who knows how long it will take to hear about support for this hard-hit sector.

I would like to begin by acknowledging the tens of thousands of men and women who work in Canada's air sector and who have lost their jobs over the past year due to the pandemic's disproportionate impact on the air-travel sector: pilots and flight attendants, mechanics, ground crews, baggage handlers, air traffic controllers and all of those working in the many diverse aspects of air travel. I hope that if any of these folks are watching and listening to the debate today, they take heart in the fact that there seems to be broad agreement in this place that government help is needed.

The motion before us is from the Conservatives. While I agree with its substance, I find it interesting that on one hand, the Conservatives are hand-wringing over the magnitude of pandemic relief that this country has put forward, while on the other they are calling for billions of dollars in government help for the air sector. I will leave the Conservatives to sort that out among themselves.

The fact is that the air sector does need help. Prior to the pandemic, the aviation sector directly employed 241,000 people in Canada and supported close to another 150,000 indirect jobs in the supply chain. Very few of those jobs still remain. Month after month, we have seen new rounds of layoffs at the big airlines and, sadly, no action from the government.

It is good to see the Conservatives echoing very closely the points we in the NDP have been putting forward since the beginning of the pandemic. First, any assistance to the air sector must focus on maintaining employment, not on executive bonuses or dividends for shareholders. Second, assistance must come with a commitment to restore and maintain Canada's very important regional routes. Third, airlines must refund passengers the money they are owed for cancelled flights.

Many Canadians are rightly skeptical about government bailouts, which is why it is so important that strong conditions are put in place to ensure that public funds are spent in the public interest. Unfortunately, in the case of the wage subsidy, we saw a program that was not structured strongly enough to prevent layoffs. Air Canada, for example, received over $500 million in the wage subsidy, making it one of the biggest beneficiaries of the program in our country, but it laid off over 20,000 workers with no financial assistance whatsoever. The company could have chosen to furlough those workers, utilizing the wage subsidy and allowing them to retain their benefits, their seniority and their pensions as many other companies did. Unfortunately, Air Canada chose otherwise.

Nor was the wage subsidy structured strongly enough to ensure it went only to those corporations that truly needed it. An analysis by the Financial Post, which I know my colleagues will be familiar with, showed that at least 68 publicly traded Canadian companies continued to pay out billions of dollars in dividends to their shareholders while receiving the wage subsidy. To ordinary Canadians, those facts just do not seem right. Thus, in the case of the deal being negotiated between the government and the airlines as we speak, it is essential that strong conditions are agreed upon that put employees first and prevent corporations from using public dollars to fund executive bonuses or dividends for shareholders.

The second set of conditions relates to regional routes. As the pandemic took its financial toll on airlines, smaller regional routes were the first to fall. Though often less profitable, these routes are nonetheless vital lifelines for communities, especially smaller communities. Even during the pandemic, people still need to travel, whether for work as essential workers or for medical appointments. We also know that these regional routes often support mail services and carry freight.

With Canada’s regional bus service much diminished in recent decades, cuts to regional air routes leave people with few options.

In Atlantic Canada, routes have been cut from 140 to just 29, with only nine of those connecting the region to the rest of Canada. The riding I represent in northwest B.C. experienced first-hand how the commercial decisions of the big airlines could leave communities high and dry. For months, my home community of Smithers was without scheduled air passenger service. It has since been restored, but scheduled flights remain suspended in Prince Rupert and Sandspit, as well as in other communities across the country.

Given the severe impact of the pandemic on passenger numbers, it was not surprising that these regional routes were suspended and reduced. However, airlines provide an essential service for small communities, and if the government is going to provide financial support to the sector, restoring these essential transportation links should be an integral part of the arrangement.

Supporting regional routes will not only mean people can get to their medical appointments in the city or commute as essential workers. It will also give tourism operators some certainty that their clientele will be able to return once it is safe to do so. It will give small municipally owned airports, which rely on the revenue from scheduled flights to maintain their infrastructure, some financial certainty. It will give rural regions some comfort in knowing the pandemic will not be allowed to further deepen existing geographic inequities and that, as the recovery takes hold, every part of the country will have a fighting chance.

In a country the size of Canada, maintaining a basic level of service to all corners of the country is not a luxury. It is a basic need. The restoration of regional routes must be a central component of any sectoral relief for the airlines.

Last, on passenger refunds, since the beginning of the pandemic New Democrats have been calling on the government to act and make passengers whole again when it comes to the money owed to them by the airlines. My colleague, the member for Churchill—Keewatinook Aski first called for this in a letter to the minister on April 13, yet while we in the NDP spent months going to bat for passengers, the Conservatives were nowhere to be found until months later.

This motion today shows us that the Conservatives have finally located their boarding pass and made it to the gate in one piece on this issue, which is good news because the more voices in this place calling for refunds, the better.

It is frankly unacceptable that the government has left Canadian passengers waiting for over a year to receive money that is rightly theirs. From the standpoint of basic consumer rights, this simply should never have happened. If people pay for a service and then do not receive the service purchased, they expect a refund. This applies to things we buy online as much as it should apply to a $1,000 airline ticket.

The people affected are Canadian families, and I have heard from lots of these folks. In the midst of a global health emergency and the worst economic recession in Canadian history, these ordinary people have been saddled with unnecessary financial anxiety.

When he was pressed on this issue, the minister’s response was totally unsatisfactory. On June 16, he said:

In the best of all worlds, we would like to make sure that all passengers are happy, but as you know, the airlines have been hammered by this pandemic.

In other words, corporations come first and the government will get to the people when it can. It does not have to be this way.

Other countries took very different approaches. In the U.S., the EU and the U.K., governments mandated refunds from the airlines. As a result, American passengers had the ability to claim refunds from Canadian airlines while Canada’s own citizens were denied that right.

The hard-earned money of Canadian passengers has now become a bargaining chip in a high-stakes negotiation between the government and the airlines. With the issue of refunds so closely tied to the negotiations around financial relief, Canadians are going to rightly wonder whether it is the airlines or the government that is refunding passengers.

To conclude, when the public health directive is to stay home, the hardest hit sectors are the ones that move people around. In the air sector, the pandemic has cost tens of thousands of jobs and threatened services that are central to the functioning of our country.

Few question that the government has a role to play, but based on the history of bailouts, many are skeptical of the government’s ability to structure support in a way that truly protects the public interest.

The motion we are debating today speaks to some of the conditions that could ensure public dollars are invested in the public good and not simply converted to private profits.

[Business of Supply, March 9th, 2021]

Madam Speaker, my hon. colleague touched on the issue of passenger refunds, and this is something that really concerns us.

Other countries acted swiftly last spring to mandate the airlines to provide passenger refunds, but Canada did not. As a result, billions of dollars in passenger refunds have become a bargaining chip in the current negotiations between the government and the airlines.

The Conservatives were silent on this issue for months while the other parties raised concerns. Going back to last spring, what would the member have liked to have seen the government do differently on the issue of refunds?

[Pharmacare, February 25th, 2021]

Mr. Speaker, hundreds of people have reached out to me over the past month and shared their struggles affording medication. They include Pam in Burns Lake whose son's expensive medication will not be covered once he graduates, or Valorie, a senior in Terrace who has to delay paying her basic bills in order to afford her diabetes drugs. We proposed a plan based on the government's own report, and it rejected it.

When is the minister going to have a universal pharmacare program for Pam, Valorie and the countless other Canadians who need it?

[Aeronautics Act, February 23rd, 2021]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today to Bill C-225, introduced by the member for Jonquière. A similar bill, Bill C-392, was put forward by the Bloc in a previous Parliament by the member for Repentigny.

Bill C-225 would amend seven acts to require infrastructure projects currently within federal jurisdiction to be subject to provincial laws and municipal bylaws concerning land use and environmental protection. This would affect infrastructure ranging from airports, ports and harbours through to telecommunications infrastructure such as radio masts and cell towers. It would also impact any project funded through the Canada Infrastructure Bank and federal property administered by the National Capital Commission in Ottawa and Gatineau.

The NDP supports co-operative federalism. We believe that decision-making should be multilateral, reflecting the unique values and perspectives of provinces and local communities. We made it clear to Canadians in the last election that we would work to limit the federal government's unilateralism and promote mutual respect between levels of government. When it comes to big infrastructure projects, we believe that social licence must be a key requirement before projects proceed. A co-operative approach between different levels of government would mean better policies. Canadians are better served when the federal government is listening and respecting provinces and municipalities.

This bill raises other important questions concerning federalism in Canada. While there will always be projects that are in the national interest, federal jurisdiction over areas such as airports, ports and communications towers too often means that local values and concerns are not given adequate weight in federal assessment and decision-making. At worst, these processes can be perceived as a rubber stamp for projects the federal government already intends to approve, projects that overlook the work of community leaders who seek to protect the environment or conserve important aspects of a community or region.

New Democrats believe in empowering local communities to have a stronger say concerning development that affects them. After all, communities and residents live with the long-term impacts of infrastructure projects. It is only right that we ensure their voices are heard in the decision-making process. By putting the onus on the federal government to meet the bar set by provincial laws and local bylaws, this bill would give a greater voice to the orders of government closest to the people and, as such, we believe it deserves further study at committee.

This bill would not render federal projects impossible. Rather, it would set a high standard for the government to prove that there was a true national interest required to override local laws. It is not reasonable to assume that, because the federal government is the proponent, a project is automatically in the national interest.

For projects that truly are essential to Canada's interests as a country, the well-established legal principle of paramountcy, which holds that when federal and provincial laws are found to be in conflict federal law prevails, could be used as a last resort. It should not be assumed that local people cannot understand or appreciate the national interest. After all, it is local people who make up our country. Likewise, both local and provincial governments have an interest in the well-being and prosperity of the nation as a whole and are able to consider these factors when crafting their laws and bylaws.

We have seen that the Liberal government's centralizing approach to major infrastructure decisions fails to account for regional perspectives and has furthered divisions between provinces. Too often we see federal decisions imposed on communities without giving them a say. From cellphone towers to new aerodromes on farm land, we need a government that engages with communities in a more meaningful way.

The Liberals keep saying that we need to respect the division of powers in Canada, but perhaps we should better think of federalism as a balance of powers and not a division, one in which the voices and ideas of local leaders are just as valid as the views of Ottawa. This bill could help resolve these tensions by ensuring that development plans and municipal regulations adopted by local authorities are better respected by the federal government.

I must say it is a bit unclear why this bill includes reference to all projects funded by the Canada Infrastructure Bank, since it seems that the vast majority of the projects funded by the CIB should already be subject to provincial and local legislation and regulations. Perhaps this is something that could be clarified should this bill make it to committee.

It is not that we do not have serious concerns about the Canada Infrastructure Bank. Of particular relevance to this discussion about respecting local needs is the CIB’s insistence on public-private partnerships that emphasize the returns of private investors over the long-term needs of communities. We support the notion that CIB-funded projects should respect local and provincial legislation; however, it is unclear why this would not otherwise be the case.

Just as the rationale for including CIB-funded projects is somewhat unclear in this Bill, so is the exclusion of pipelines, which were included in the bill’s previous iteration. Recent pipeline proposals clearly demonstrate the failure of the federal government to adequately address the concerns and values of other orders of government. The federal government can hardly claim that Northern Gateway and Trans Mountain were approved through a harmonious process that respected all three orders of government. The government approved Northern Gateway despite opposition from over a dozen local governments in British Columbia and many first nations up and down the B.C. coast.

The Trans Mountain Expansion project was thrown out by the Federal Court of Appeal, because it found that the federal government’s consultations were woefully inadequate and that it failed to consider the environmental impact of increased marine traffic in the Salish Sea. Not only did a second run at consultation fail to meet the expectations of many communities and first nations, the federal government then fought in court B.C.'s attempts to legislate environmental protections that would prevent oil spills from damaging the environment. It is indeed difficult for the government to claim it has satisfied local and provincial concerns regarding TMX.

In the cases of both Northern Gateway and Trans Mountain, the federal government announced its support for what it claimed were projects in the national interest before the assessment processes were finalized. With the federal government acting as both booster and arbiter, the concerns of communities, first nations and even provincial governments did not stand a chance of influencing the inevitable outcome.

To conclude, Bill C-225 poses interesting ideas that would help rebalance federalism to better reflect the perspectives of regions and provinces. It would empower local communities by giving them a say on infrastructure projects that would have been unilaterally imposed on them in the past, and it would force the federal government to do a better job of considering the environmental impacts of infrastructure projects before it approved them.

There remain some outstanding questions raised by this legislation that deserve further study. Analysis from the Library of Parliament suggests that this bill would be legally viable as the courts would likely interpret it as incorporating, by reference, provincial laws into federal statutes. This is a legislative technique that is frequently used and accepted in jurisprudence, and we believe this idea merits further study at committee.

I look forward to debating these ideas in the future, and I thank the member for Jonquière for bringing forward this bill.

[Committees of the House, February 22nd, 2021]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague, the member for Courtenay—Alberni, for his tireless advocacy. In his speech, he so articulately laid out the incredible impact of this pandemic on tourism operators. When I think of northwest B.C., I think of the steelhead guiding lodges in the Bulkley Valley, Haida Gwaii and the tour operators there, the cabin rentals and other small businesses that have been so dramatically hit by this crisis.

Does my hon. colleague think that the current programs created by the government can be adjusted to meet the needs of these small tourism operators, or do we need a new set of programs specifically tailored to the needs of that unique sector?

[Committees of the House, February 22nd, 2021]

There is a problem with the interpretation. The French and English are coming through at the same volume. I am not sure if other people are hearing that, but it has been doing that for a little while.