Evidence of meeting #95 for Transport, Infrastructure and Communities in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was amendment.
A recording is available from Parliament.
6 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Schiefke
Clause 121 carries.
As promised, Mr. Strahl, I turn it back over to you, sir.
6 p.m.
Conservative
Mark Strahl Conservative Chilliwack—Hope, BC
Thank you very much.
I would now like to move a motion I submitted to the committee in writing in both official languages on Friday:
That the committee undertake a study on Aircraft Rescue and Fire Fighting at Airports and Aerodromes (Canadian Aviation Regulations, Section 303) allocating a minimum of three meetings to this study to hear from witnesses that include the International Association of Firefighters, the Canadian Airports Council and other interested parties, and that the Committee report its findings to the House.
Mr. Chair, this motion comes out of the debate in the House regarding another motion that's before the House, motion 96, which was introduced by Liberal MP Ken Hardie.
The purpose of the motion is to amend the current Canadian aviation regulations to adopt the International Civil Aviation Organization standards for airport rescue and firefighting. Specifically, the motion in the House is to give firefighters at Canada's major airports the mandate and resources necessary to reach the site of a fire or a mishap anywhere on an operational runway in three minutes or less, but it also specifies that a required function of firefighters be the rescue of passengers.
These changes are coming at the request of the International Association of Fire Fighters. The effect of the motion and the change proposed in it would be to increase firefighting requirements at airports so they can be met by professional firefighters.
There is some divergence of views on this issue. The IAFF has been obviously supportive of this, and for some of the major airports in our country, this will not be a major issue. They already have professional, full-time firefighters who can meet these standards and meet the definitions as laid out in the motion.
As we've been discussing here today as we're dealing with legislation, there are processes that are in place for changing regulations. These things are supposed to take a number of months and years and are supposed to hear from all sides of an issue—all interested stakeholders, all interested Canadians.
What we have heard in our discussions following the introduction of this motion, which again is up for debate very soon for its second hour, is that there are many smaller airports across the country that would be economically devastated if they were forced to change their operating model to adopt this very stringent requirement. They already do operate under the Canadian aviation regulations, which do allow for airports to have their own firefighting and rescue services, including allowing them to have airport operations staff who provide this rescue service, as opposed to having professional firefighters on call at the airport within three minutes of the middle of the furthest runway.
The costs on small airports or even mid-size international airports like Kelowna and Kamloops and Abbotsford in my province of British Columbia would number into the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars to make this change. We already know, because we've seen reports this week out of the Montreal Economic Institute indicating that the fees that are imposed on Canadian airlines and passed along to customers through higher ticket prices are already much higher than they are in the United States.
This proposal specifically calls for a charge to be added to every ticket for every passenger for every leg of their flights. That all adds up when you add all of the other charges that have been going up and up, including increased carbon taxes and increased costs for fuel. Those are all passed on to Canadian consumers.
We've seen, over the last number of years, that the number of incidents at Canadian airports is down. The number of incidents requiring a rescue is certainly down.
We think the best way to address this issue is to have this committee conduct more robust meetings, rather than simply having a debate that proposes a one-size-fits-all solution for all Canadian airports. That's the part of this that is the most troubling—the one-size-fits-all approach. We talked about that in discussing Bill C-33, when we were talking about the different regulations applying in different ways to different ports.
We believe this motion, which has been introduced and debated for one hour and will soon be debated for a second hour, needs a more robust discussion. Should the Vancouver International Airport have the same regulations and costs applied to it as Kelowna, Kamloops, Abbotsford or many of the other, smaller airports across the country? Can they absorb that and still meet their mandates to balance their books? The answer in the past has been no.
We've heard examples of how taking away this flexibility to provide a rescue service.... No one is talking about reducing the firefighting regulations as they are—getting to the end or midpoint of a runway in a certain amount of time and providing the ability, for instance, to put out a fire on a plane that had an emergency landing. Those requirements are still there. They are currently in the smaller airports operated by a dual-purpose staff who can provide that service to Canadians and that assurance to Canadian travellers and those travelling into our country that they are safe and secure, that they aren't in any danger because of the current regulations.
We want to make sure there are discussions and that we hear from the CAOs of those airports about what the change would do to them, and from the larger airports, such as Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto, in order to determine what their current practices are and whether this would have an impact on them.
I think there needs to be an overall lens on this, as well as to the cost environment for Canadian passengers and airlines. As I said earlier, studies out in the last week are indicating the wide discrepancy. What happens when there is a wide discrepancy in costs is that Canadians start to look to.... There's leakage. There are jobs and opportunities lost for Canadian airports, airlines and workers, because Canadian passengers look to airports near the borders. They look for cheaper alternatives in Bellingham, Seattle, Montana and Buffalo. We've seen numerous cases of leakage in the tens of millions of dollars. This additional cost would have an impact on families, business travellers, etc.
I think we always want to make sure there aren't unintended consequences when we have motions like this coming before the House.
Again, there would be three meetings where we would hear from the firefighters. We're not saying that.... Perhaps they have the right approach; perhaps this is the way that things should go, but again, there should be an appropriate regulatory process.
When we were asking about what the timeline would be, for instance, to bring in regulations to ban thermal coal, we were told that it would be a three-year process and that there would be a robust discussion with affected workers, affected companies and affected industry, and that it wouldn't be done prior to those regulations coming into force. What we have here instead of that, in this motion that's in the House, is simply an imposition, calling on the government to impose new regulations without having gone through that regulatory process.
We promised we would bring this forward when we were debating this because we want to hear from firefighters, and we want to hear from airports and from airlines and from the workers who would be affected by this if this change were forced onto airports by a simple motion in the House of Commons.
We think there's a better way. We think that this issue is important and that it deserves more discussion, and the discussion should start here. We should hear from those parties and then, crucially, report back to the House. I think it is our right as members to ask for those hearings to happen, ask for that robust discussion to happen and then report back with the expectation that the government will hear from us, hear what we heard and come back with a response. Hopefully, there will then be a robust regulatory discussion and not simply the discussion happening for two hours in the House of Commons.
I note, Mr. Chair, that the bells are ringing in the chamber. I guess we have to suspend until that vote is over.
6:15 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Schiefke
Okay.
Do I have unanimous consent to continue discussion and debate?
6:15 p.m.
Some hon. members
No.
6:15 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Schiefke
Okay. We do not have unanimous consent. I will see all of you back here in 10 minutes, promptly after the vote, as we will reconvene and continue until 8 p.m. because we have been given the extension of resources.
Thank you, colleagues.
7:10 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Schiefke
I call this meeting back to order.
I'll turn the floor over to you, Mr. Badawey, for comments on what was put forward by Mr.—
7:10 p.m.
Conservative
7:10 p.m.
Conservative
Mark Strahl Conservative Chilliwack—Hope, BC
I believe I had the floor when the meeting was suspended.
7:10 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Schiefke
I thought you'd said , “With that, we have a vote being called, and therefore”—
7:10 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Schiefke
Okay. I'll give you the floor, Mr. Strahl.
I'm sorry about that. I thought you were done with your remarks.
7:10 p.m.
Conservative
Mark Strahl Conservative Chilliwack—Hope, BC
No problem, Mr. Chair. I can understand how you might have thought that.
7:10 p.m.
Liberal
Angelo Iacono Liberal Alfred-Pellan, QC
That's not how I interpreted it. We still had 30 minutes to the vote. If Mr. Strahl had wanted to finish his point, he was free to do so. To my understanding, what he was talking about was coming to an end. He could have continued talking. We still had time. He chose to stop. The option was there for him to finish.
December 11th, 2023 / 7:10 p.m.
Conservative
7:10 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Schiefke
I believe the rules are that if members so choose, they can choose to have the half-hour to ensure that they can be in a position to vote.
Thank you, Mr. Iacono, but I'll turn the floor over to Mr. Strahl, unless Dr. Lewis wanted to comment on that.
Mr. Strahl, the floor is yours.
7:10 p.m.
Conservative
Mark Strahl Conservative Chilliwack—Hope, BC
Mr. Chair, I understand that a committee of the whole is happening in the chamber right now. Can I assume that we're able to operate while that committee of the whole is going on as well? Is there anything preventing that from happening?
7:10 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Schiefke
I'm just conferring with the clerks. I'll let you know in about one minute, Mr. Strahl.
7:10 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Schiefke
Mr. Strahl, you asked a good question. We're going to confer on it to make sure we get this right.
We'll suspend for two minutes.
7:10 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Schiefke
Mr. Strahl, for committee of the whole we don't have to suspend until there are bells, so I'll turn the floor back over to you.
7:10 p.m.
Conservative
Mark Strahl Conservative Chilliwack—Hope, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the clarification.
I did have the opportunity to look at section 303 of the Canadian Aviation Regulations during the bells and the vote. It is important to note that there are already stringent requirements there, including the requirement for personnel who are charged with airport firefighting to have specific training and to have specific equipment provided, right down to their personal protective equipment. All of that has to be provided and is specified by the regulations.
We're very clear that in those three meetings to hear from witnesses, we would want to hear both from firefighters....
I note that the union representing firefighters at the Montréal-Trudeau airport has indicated that they have strong opinions on this as well. They're not IAFF, but we'd certainly welcome them to come and be a part of this discussion.
There have been questions about their mandate in the past and about whether or not they can respond to incidents happening just outside the fence of the airport, etc. There was a tragic case in which they weren't allowed to respond, which I believe Mr. Barsalou-Duval brought up in this committee previously. There's a requirement to hear from individuals who have an interest in this, either from the airport management side or the firefighter protection side.
I noted that in the regulations, this applies to airports that have over 180,000 aircraft movements per year, so it's not every small airport. The Chilliwack municipal airport, for instance, would not be forced to upgrade its firefighting capacity, should motion 96 be passed and implemented, but others would. It's important to note that some of them would require new buildings, for instance, to house permanent firefighters to allow them to get to a runway in the prescribed time, as is envisioned in the motion. Others would require new, specialized equipment, which can run into the millions of dollars as well.
These are discussions that are worth having in a robust way. They should be had here at this committee. I think that we would welcome the opportunity to hear from interested parties in order to have that discussion. I'm open to discussion about whether three meetings are long enough or too much, and if we should expand the proposed witness list or whether or not we can make do with what we have here.
Given the debate in the House that's coming up again tomorrow, we wanted to move this motion. I look forward to hearing from colleagues what they think about whether three meetings are enough, whether parties should be invited and whether there are specific items that should be discussed at those meetings. I think this is a good start and a good opportunity for us to have the robust discussion that we need to have.
With that, Mr. Chair, I will turn it over to other members of the committee.
7:15 p.m.
Liberal
