SoVote

Jun/8/23 10:59:59 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the member for Cariboo—Prince George and I are in quite strong agreement that we have infrastructure problems in transportation. Here is my view at this point, having been working on these issues, as my hon. colleague has, for quite a while. We created in the 1980s harbour authorities and airport authorities that are arm's length from government and completely unaccountable to anyone. They are arm's length from the minister. The minister cannot get involved in the decisions of the airport authority or the harbour authority, except of course to rubber-stamp when they want something as destructive as the expansion of Roberts Bank. I wonder if the hon. member agrees me that we ought to open a bigger conversation: Do these airport and harbour authorities work for Canadians?

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Mr. Todd Doherty

Jun/8/23 11:00:50 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-33

Mr. Speaker, I know a bit about that, as I was part of the executive team that transferred our last national airport system in Canada, the Prince George Airport. We went from a Transport Canada federally operated airport to a local airport authority, the Prince George Airport Authority. The challenge with that is that once it stands alone, it is standing alone. There are very few opportunities for revenue generation. Who creates the safety and security policies for our ports and airports? It is the government, and it transfers very few dollars to these ports and airports to maintain them, whether it is regarding their safety or security. That is, again, why I am frustrated with Bill C-33. We always want our goods and people to be transported via safe, secure and sound modes. However, what we have seen is that the government views our ports and airports as cash cows, not as the economic engine generators they truly are. There are so many things we could do. We are the highest-cost jurisdiction in the world for aviation fees, which is why Canadians pay some of the highest costs for airline tickets. It is why cargo aircraft or passenger carriers that come in have to pay some of the highest costs just to land here and transport goods. If we made things a little easier for people to come to Canada to conduct business, imagine how great we could be. That is the Canada I want to live in.

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Mr. Jeremy Patzer (Cypress Hills—Grasslands, CPC)

Jun/8/23 11:02:36 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, there is an issue with the bill about creating a bunch of new advisory bodies and a bunch of new committees. Going back to other bills the government has implemented where new committees and new advisory panels have been struck, quite often we see a stacking of the deck, with a bunch of Liberal insiders on the panels. At the end of the day, it is delaying things and causing issues in trying to get projects completed and built. I know that people in Saskatchewan desperately need a port modernization strategy so we can get our products out of the Prairies. We are landlocked. We need the ports. These advisory panels generally do not do any good in helping the people in our situation. I am wondering if my colleague has any thoughts about that.

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Mr. Todd Doherty

Jun/8/23 11:03:37 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, if we were to do things the right way, we would not need these advisory panels. Local airports and port authorities are made up of experts within the industry: experts on the financial side of it, community members, and people who have experience running businesses with the challenges they have. It is a regulatory environment. Our government sees them as cash cows, not the economic engine generators they truly can be, and it picks winners and losers.

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Mrs. Tracy Gray (Kelowna—Lake Country, CPC)

Jun/8/23 11:04:21 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-33

Mr. Speaker, it is always a pleasure to rise on behalf of my community of Kelowna—Lake Country. Before I begin this evening, I would like to thank all the firefighters and first responders who are keeping my community safe, as well as all firefighters across Canada. Firefighters run toward and into danger and put their own safety at risk every day. As a daughter of a firefighter, I also know how hard it is for families with the worries they have. I want to thank them for commitment and for keeping people safe. I will be splitting my time with the member of Parliament for Calgary Shepard. Today I rise to speak on Bill C-33, a substantive piece of legislation that I am sad to say is missing the mark on a significant opportunity to strengthen our ports and rail lines with regard to supply chain functionality and security issues. I have had several shadow ministry roles that have involved supply chains within Canada and trade, which means that I have spoken to hundreds and hundreds of organizations, both big and small, that either rely on a functioning rail and port system or are involved in keeping our supply chains moving. I have spoken with a wide variety of industries, from winemaking to RV rentals, all of which have been financially challenged by the sluggishness of the Liberal government in looking at ways within the authority of the federal government to ensure our supply chains are moving. Canada's economic security and food security should be a priority. When supply chains break down or are not functioning at full capacity, all Canadians are affected. Costs go up, and Canada loses credibility with our trading partners. Small businesses ultimately pay the biggest price when supply chains break down, as they have fewer resources. When it comes to strengthening our supply chains, this legislation has missed the mark. The Chamber of Shipping said that the legislation misses out on addressing the root causes of supply chain congestion and that the additional powers only address symptoms of congestion and could aggravate managing cargo efficiency. This legislation also does not address the relationship between shippers and rail companies, and there is nothing about rail service reliability. The legislation before us is more interested in increasing the powers of the Minister of Transport inside the boardrooms of our port authorities than actually strengthening the ability to move goods around and in and out of our economy or in addressing safety. It burdens our Canadian ports, particularly the smaller ports, with inefficient and anti-competitive red tape and increases in cost, which will always be passed on to consumers. It undermines the arm's-length independence with which ports are supposed to operate, with the federal government inserting Ottawa-knows-best politicians in board level decision-making. I would like to go into more detail on my point regarding the issues this bill raises in complicating the governance of port authority boards. The Minister of Transport, when he first spoke about this bill, said: These measures involve providing the Minister of Transport with the ability to designate the chairperson of the board from among the board members and in consultation with the board. This measure would ensure Canadian port authorities and our government are aligned on how we deal with the increasing complex economic, social and environmental issues facing our ports. He said, “aligned with the government”. What does that mean? Does it mean aligned with government ideologies, aligned by designating? As the minister said, “designating” is a word that basically means appointing. Is that Liberal friends? We have seen these kinds of actions before, with the Liberal government appointing Liberal friends, have we not? Anyone who is on one of these boards should be offended that the transport minister and the Liberal government do not think that they are smart enough or capable enough to choose their own board chair out of the group of people sitting around the table. These are independent boards, and the Liberals are bringing politics to these board tables. It is basic board of director governance that members of a board should choose who the board chair is. The minister also said about the legislation that it is: ...a requirement for Canada port authorities to undertake a review of governance practices every three years. These reviews would evaluate the effectiveness of board governance practices, such as assessments of conflicts of interest and record-keeping practices. The results of these assessments would be shared with Transport Canada and would inform future policy measures as needed. As such, a Liberal minister would judge a non-government organization on corporate governance. The Liberal transport minister would be mandating receiving assessments of conflict of interest from these organizations. The Liberal ministers are not exactly known for good conflict of interest judgment. I do not know if the minister has ever been involved in a governance review. I have been involved in more than one, so I can say that it can easily take up to a year to do a proper review, analysis, report, potential restructure and implementation. The government wants the port authorities to do these every three years. The minister is presuming to be an expert on fulfilling board of director and executive fiduciary duties and would analyze board governance every three years. Though looking at governance should be a practice of any board, mandating through law that port authorities need to do this every few years is burdensome. I ask, to what end? The Liberal Minister of Transport in Ottawa thinks he knows best how to run a port, so I would like to note that the member for Chilliwack—Hope, when he spoke on Bill C-33, pointed out in his original rebuttal to the minister that it was that minister who chose to ignore the recommendations of port users when they have put forth board nominees. That minister ignored the recommendations of western provinces when they put forth nominees, yet the minister insists on sticking his hands into the board he knows little about. Port authorities are supposed to be at arm's length from the government, and the red tape of reporting requirements, advisory committees and ministerial selections of executive management would cut against the efficient operation of our ports. It would reverse the arm's length aims of the Liberal government of the 1990s when it wrote the Canada Marine Act, but that is not surprising, as many Canadians have become aware that the Liberal Party of today is no longer the one they once knew. As I said earlier, I am disappointed this opportunity to act to better the functioning of our ports and railways has been sidelined by red tape and backseat driving. What good there is in updating safety and security protocols is overshadowed by regulatory burdens that consumers will ultimately feel. The focus of any update to law should be on safety and on economic prosperity, in particular with this piece of legislation. I should also point out that the government's updating of interference or tampering rules means nothing if it does not enforce them. A lack of accountability and an insistence on control have been defining hallmarks of the current Liberal government, leaving Canadians with less money in their pockets and poorer public services. The Ottawa-knows-best approach is how the current Liberal government governs, so on Bill C-33 the Association of Canadian Port Authorities simply said that more government is not the answer. I fully support improving the security of Canada's transportation system, including ports and marine facilities. I support increasing safety and strengthening our supply systems. However, the legislation before us would do little for these and would create a real Ottawa-knows-best top-down approach by adding burdensome red tape and costs that would ultimately be passed on to Canadians.

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Mr. Matthew Green (Hamilton Centre, NDP)

Jun/8/23 11:14:11 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Lori Desrochers and Pamela Fraser are two people whose family members perished in separate instances as workers for CN Rail. These deaths were not investigated by an impartial government or police investigation, but were investigated by CN Rail's own private rail police and corporate risk management. Since then, these families have received no justice, and CN Rail has faced no consequences. In a press conference on October 20, 2022, Lori Desrochers and Pamela Fraser called on Prime Minister Trudeau and Mr. Poilievre to take a stand to protect— An hon. member: Oh, oh!

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The Deputy Speaker

Jun/8/23 11:14:59 p.m.
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Back it up. Just do not use names. The hon. member for Hamilton Centre.

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Mr. Matthew Green

Jun/8/23 11:15:05 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we have not heard anything from either the Prime Minister or the want-to-be prime minister. Now, do the Conservatives support railway corporations being able to avoid being held accountable for the death and injury of their workers by investigating themselves—

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The Deputy Speaker

Jun/8/23 11:15:22 p.m.
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The hon. member for Kelowna—Lake Country.

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Mrs. Tracy Gray

Jun/8/23 11:15:24 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-33

Mr. Speaker, first of all, I want to say in reference to the individuals who lost their lives that my heart certainly goes out to their families. I cannot imagine what the families have been through. What we are talking about here today is this piece of legislation and there are a lot of misses by this legislation. We are talking about Bill C-33. Certainly, in my intervention I mentioned a few times that this legislation should have been about safety and economic stability. Instead, this legislation is about corporate governance and control by the government to insert itself at the board table of port authorities. That is really one of the biggest focuses of this piece of legislation. There is a real miss here with where this legislation could have gone and that is really unfortunate.

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Mrs. Élisabeth Brière (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Mental Health and Addictions and Associate Minister of Health, Lib.)

Jun/8/23 11:16:39 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-33

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her speech. The Conservative members from Quebec, specifically the member for Mégantic—L'Érable, are calling for additional rail safety measures. Does my colleague not see that Bill C-33 includes a safety and security framework that would make it possible for the people of Mégantic to have their bypass?

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Mrs. Tracy Gray

Jun/8/23 11:17:41 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, there are some good pieces in this legislation. Some in there deal with safety, but there is a lot more that could have been done. That is where the real miss is with this piece of legislation. There are some parts that do help in some way. There have been years and years of consultation, as well as eight years of the Liberal government. To come with this piece of legislation that really has so many gaps is really a miss and it is really unfortunate.

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Mr. Tako Van Popta (Langley—Aldergrove, CPC)

Jun/8/23 11:18:24 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-33

Mr. Speaker, one of the objectives that the Minister of Transport gave in his introductory speech on Bill C-33 was to combat inflation caused by supply chain disruptions, yet it seems to do very little of that. I was at a round table discussion with marine operators and they said the new regulations are just going to make things more expensive for them and that this does not tackle inflation at all. I wonder if my colleague would have a comment on that.

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Mrs. Tracy Gray

Jun/8/23 11:19:01 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I really do not know how this legislation ties into tackling inflation at all. I mean, we saw inflation go up again a month ago. We also saw interest rates rise just yesterday. What the government is doing is not working. I do not know what is in this legislation that has anything to do with bringing down costs or bringing down inflation. If anything, it will add to costs because it is adding more of a burden to companies with all of these new committees. They are going to have to do governance reviews every three years as well, so I am not sure how that is going to bring costs down.

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Mr. Tom Kmiec (Calgary Shepard, CPC)

Jun/8/23 11:19:53 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-33

Mr. Speaker, I am glad to be able to join the debate at such a late hour and to contribute my thoughts on Bill C-33 for my constituents back home. Again, I always want to thank them for sending me here to represent them, and I know they expect us to provide good work and feedback to the government. As I said earlier in the debate, if it were up to the member for Winnipeg North, none of us would ever speak. He thinks we are delaying the bill when we are really just providing some feedback to the government at a stage of the bill before it possibly heads to committee. This is a bill that would amend these seven different pieces of legislation: the Customs Act, the Railway Safety Act, the Transportation of Dangerous Goods Act, the Marine Transportation Security Act, the Canada Transportation Act, the Canada Marine Act in a different portion and another act to which it would make consequential amendments. This type of legislation would be an omnibus bill, but it is themed in a certain manner. One always knows something is up when legislation has a title like “Strengthening the Port System and Railway Safety in Canada Act”, which definitely means that the government is not strengthening anything. It is just making everything more complicated. The marketing people must have gotten to the legislative drafters on this one and included it here. I share many of the same concerns other Conservatives have expressed on this piece of legislation. I will refrain from commenting on the marine portions, because I happen to be from a landlocked province. Our views of the oceans are very limited, as in zero, unless we go online. I will not comment on those. I will comment on the fact that this piece of legislation would be establishing new advisory committees, which I believe could be a source of more consternation and frustration in ports and other places. I note that no tenants are to serve on them directly. There is no dispensation made to ensure that happens. There are going to be issues with supply chains. There is nothing in this legislation, as the member for Langley—Aldergrove just said, that would actually address that. The reason we know this is that some of the largest groups out there that represent stakeholders who care about supply chains or manage them in some way have said so very clearly. The Association of Canadian Port Authorities, which will be my only marine reference, said that more government was not the answer. The Chamber of Shipping said that the legislation misses out on addressing the root causes of supply chain congestion, and additional powers only address symptoms of congestion and could aggravate managing cargo efficiently. Those seem like the people one would want to go to and make sure they are onside with legislation before one brings it forward and claims it would help supply chains to get better, which is what we heard from members on the government benches. I will give the government credit for one thing. Thankfully, this is not a spending bill. That is good news for taxpayers back home, although consumers will likely pay higher prices once the legislation goes through because of the extra red tape and all the extra measures being introduced. It is not in all parts of the bill, but significant parts of the bill would likely increase costs. In that spirit, I do have a Yiddish proverb, which is, “If a problem can be solved with money, it is not a problem, it is an expense.” Thankfully, this would not be a new expense for taxpayers. This particular bill, as I said, would not be directly spending new monies that we simply do not have, with a $60-billion-plus deficit already on the books and the doubling of the national debt over the course of the pandemic by the Liberal government. Taxpayers back home in my riding cannot afford to put more things on the national credit card. They are already on the hook for over $4,000 per family household. I want to take a different tack, as I said I would. CP is actually located in my riding, and I visited it on March 2. Its headquarters are in an old community called Ogden, named after one of the former senior employees of CP. The community has had a storied history. It has gone through a couple of redevelopments. There used to be a tram that went over the river, and it would ferry employees back and forth. It does not exist anymore. However, this particular part of the city has a lot of history. The command centre for Canadian Pacific is there; Canadian Pacific is CP now and actually merged with Kansas City Southern, or KCS, in a $31-billion deal. It is a really big railway company. It is located in my riding, and it is a big source of employment. Its career fairs are always very well attended because it is a good employer to work for. It provides excellent pay and good working conditions. It is a unionized work environment, and the union fights hard for its members, while management negotiates, much of the time, in good faith. The command centre and the training centre are there. The simulator train is there, which is very cool, and I will talk about that as well. The hydrogen fuel cell train is also there, and I missed it on my tour. I just did not have enough time to get to it. I understand that other members, like the member for Edmonton Riverbend, actually got to see the brand new future of cargo train services in Canada, the hydrogen fuel cell train. Let us talk about the command centre. I have represented my riding for almost eight years now, and I had never been to this command centre, which was open throughout the whole pandemic. It is basically what one would imagine. It looks like it is in the 22nd century. There are screens everywhere. People are working to make sure that trains, as they are moving across Canada and parts of the United States, are on the correct line. The number one thing the employees talked to me about was safety: making sure the trains were safe and were on the rails, and that any problems were addressed as quickly as possible. That is the whole idea behind this command centre: to make sure it can ship goods across the country and ensure the safety of the workers, the safety of those in the command post and the safety of those in the communities they are serving, because safety, as they kept repeating, is the number one priority. They invest a lot of time and effort, especially on the training side, to make sure their employees can provide that guarantee. It is hard work to have to pay really close attention to what is going on. They know exactly what is on each train, where each train is coming from, and, if there are trains from other companies on their network, where they are and where they are moving. The command centre was an impressive place to be and to see people are on shifts when they are working, switching out and switching in employees all the time, just to make sure nobody is working while tired. There was a lot of live communication going on, directly with people in the field. This is a sector of the economy that is drastically changing. It is a 24-7 business. In the riding of Calgary Shepard, there is also a huge shunting yard that was meant to be switched out and moved outside the city. That never actually happened. It was never negotiated. The training centre is a very cool place as well. It is a unionized environment where, again, the number one rule is safety. People were very concerned about that as we were walking around. The centre builds everything. Young electricians were coming in, and before CP, now CPKC, actually agrees to send them to the field, they have to rewire and wire everything. They put them on this huge board, all around the training centre. If they make a mistake, they take it all down and make them do it all over again. Again, they talked about safety. They wanted to make sure that if they go out into the field, they can fix anything that is broken so the equipment is maintained, 24-7, as well as possible. It is not perfect, but it is as good as they can possibly do it. One can definitely tell that the people who work there, who do the training, take a lot of pride in their work and in the record of the company as well. They know it is their colleagues, their fellow employees, who are working for the company. They are trying to make sure they provide a safe work environment. Being on the simulator train was really one of the coolest parts. As members of Parliament, we all get to do these things, experience what it is like in different jobs. I actually got to drive one of these trains. It really feels like one is inside one of these giant trains and that it is moving down the tracks. It can be sped up or slowed down. I had a conductor showing me what it looks like, what it feels like, to be in one of these trains. The weight of the machine as it is moving can be felt. It is a totally simulated environment, and a lot of people go through. This is the equipment that people are trained on before they are sent out into the field. It is hours upon hours of training. I do not remember the exact number of hours they have to do before they are sent out on a train, but it is a lot. It is many more than in the United States. Again, they said that if they are going to put someone behind one of these big machines, they want to make sure they are ready for anything. In fact, routes they will be taking will be simulated as many times as they need, until the route is done without any mistakes. If one does not control the machine, it will actually automatically start to slow down. That is the active monitoring of whether someone fell asleep or whether they are actually paying attention. It is amazing what types of safety mechanisms are put into place. I wanted to talk about this, because CP has been a pretty good corporate citizen in the riding of Calgary Shepard. I only have one CP cenotaph in my riding. I do not have a legion hall. I do not have other Remembrance Day memorials to go to, but CP has put on a memorial service every single year for the residents of the area. They have invited everybody to attend publicly. Usually, when they could, though the pandemic kind of prohibited them, they invited people for hot chocolate, tea, and cookies inside the halls, and they let people tour the different wagons and train services. In my riding, my experience has been that CP has been a good corporate citizen. I wanted to share that with the House, just to show that safety is in fact its priority and that they do quite a good job of it.

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Mr. Larry Maguire (Brandon—Souris, CPC)

Jun/8/23 11:30:07 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member, particularly for his comments in regard to one of our major railroads, which of course, is headquartered in his riding, and the training facilities he spoke of. He opened his speech by talking about the plethora of different areas this is trying to cover, and I wonder if he could just expand a little more on the areas he was referring to in his opening comments, as to the number of different areas this bill is trying to cover and if he sees that as any kind of a detriment or not.

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Mr. Tom Kmiec

Jun/8/23 11:30:50 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, let us go over some of those detriments inside this bill and try not to go into too many on ports, but there are quite a few issues with the ports that will be affected. There are additional ministerial powers that will limit local decision-making. That is not a good idea. Additional regulatory requirements will add cost to stakeholders, which, again, will be passed on, like I said, to Canadian consumers. It is also going to reduce anchorages adversely. Some stakeholders will be impacted. There are a lot of issues here with local decision-making being taken away and handed to the executive. I generally believe that is a bad idea, and it is reflected in many stakeholders expressing that publicly and declining to support the bill.

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Mr. Kevin Vuong (Spadina—Fort York, Ind.)

Jun/8/23 11:31:36 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, a lot of people are often surprised to hear that, in my downtown riding of Spadina—Fort York, we also have a port. We had a scare recently because the port authority also includes, within its domain, Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport, and there was a bomb scare. One of the challenges right now, with the different jurisdictions, is being able to put together an emergency management plan. I heard this yesterday when I was in the riding, at a meeting with the Bathurst Quay neighbourhood. I am curious to hear my colleague's thoughts on how, perhaps, the government could do better in working with other orders of government to ensure and protect the safety of every community that is home to a port, railroad and so on.

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Mr. Tom Kmiec

Jun/8/23 11:32:20 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the member brought up a good point. Again, I think we should prefer local decision-making that is informed by a national body to have wider information such as a national security list. It gets intelligence from our foreign allies, our international allies, who might provide or tip us off about events or activities that are being planned. That could then help local decision-makers adjust locally, in how much police enforcement might be necessary or how firefighting services could be improved, and also ensuring some basic operational things such as communicating on the same wavelengths and having each other's contact information. That is some of the basic preparation for emergencies that local port authorities, airports, all of them, could profit from in having that local decision-making placed first, where they know whom to go to and whom to communicate with when they need extra support.

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Mr. Dave Epp (Chatham-Kent—Leamington, CPC)

Jun/8/23 11:33:18 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to pick up on one of the hon. member's comments. It is a bit tangential to the bill tonight, but I noticed that he said that he has no legions to honour our armed forces in his riding. I want to extend an invitation. I just took a look at my last November 11 schedule. There are eleven in my riding. I was able to attend three of them and had surrogates for the other eight. I would invite my hon. friend to come my way and help me honour our veterans.

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