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Member of Parliament

Hon. John McKay

  • Member of Parliament
  • Liberal
  • Scarborough—Guildwood
  • Ontario
  • Voting Attendance: 62%
  • Expenses Last Quarter: $111,926.23

  • Government Page
Context: House Hansard - 252 - Nov/21/23
Hon. John McKay (Scarborough—Guildwood, Lib.)
  • Nov/21/23 12:40:01 p.m.
  • Watch
  • Re: Bill C-52 
Madam Speaker, I will say at the outset that I will be splitting my time with the member for Vaughan—Woodbridge, who has some expertise in this subject. I make no claim to expertise. I am a mere consumer of transportation services, just like pretty well everyone else in the chamber. I would say a lot of us consume a lot of transportation services on a weekly basis because of the requirements of this particular job. I am coming at it from that standpoint. Before I get to that point, I just want to make a distinction between the passage of a bill and the creation of regulations. When we pass a bill in this chamber, we are essentially setting up the legal framework to be able to promulgate regulations. If we do not have that legal framework, then we will not be able to proclaim any regulations. It is not as if anyone in this chamber actually has any expertise on, say, noise abatement, which was discussed earlier; when baggage should arrive; what the proper standard is for flights to be on time, or not, as the case may be; or the various other irritants that go with travel in this country, which is quite frustrating at times. This legislation would set up the authority, and the regulations would put meat on the bones. After some period of time, members could initiate inquiries into the quality of the regulations through the scrutiny of regulations committee, which is a jointly chaired committee of the Senate and the House. It is not a very popular committee because it deals with exceedingly boring stuff, but there are certain members who are keen on exceedingly boring stuff. I want to talk about three things, if I may: service standards, security and competition. I have been switching airlines. I have the good fortune of living in the GTA. Therefore, I do have some choice, which is unlike some members who have no choice. I have a strange idea in how I should make my choice. My choices should be, number one, for the airplane to fly on time. I know that is a novel ideal to fly the airplane on time, but that is probably going to get me to choose that airline. The second standard I have is to not lose my baggage. Lately I have noticed that people do not put their baggage in. They carry it on, and I dare say that is largely driven by the fact that a lot of baggage is getting lost. I have a third rule, and that is to not treat me badly. Those are the three rules that I have for any airline I use: fly the airplane on time, do not lose my bag and do not treat me badly. I think that is pretty fair. After all, I am paying, or somebody else is paying, a pretty significant sum of money for me to fly to my destination. In that vein, BillC-52 would bring in an accountability mechanism by permitting the creation of regulations requiring airports and other operators within airports to create service standards for their part of the passenger journey. I do not see what is so complicated about that. Over the course of today's debate, hon. members have shared their experiences, many of which are actually quite negative, so this is a timely bill. We could make the argument that it should have been put forward earlier, and so should a lot of things have been done earlier However, here we are trying to deal with the creation of a legal framework so that the complaints I just enumerated can be dealt with in an organized fashion. That is the point of this bill. Examples include how long it should typically take for a bag to arrive on the carousel. I have no expertise on that. Maybe other members do, but I do not know how long it should take for a bag to get off the airplane and onto the carousel. This bill, through its regulations, would create some standards. When a bag is lost, and we have all been in airports where there are stacks and stacks of bags, there should be some standards to which the airline is held. The second part of the standards would create an enforcement mechanism. Currently, enforcement mechanisms are pretty grim. My family was flying to Europe and their connecting flight was through Montreal. That flight was late, they missed the connected flight and they had to do a day in Montreal. It was not a burden, really, but the application just to get compensation required the services of a Bay Street lawyer. Anything to make that process a little easier would be good. Part of what the bill could do, which I hope to see in the course of its review before committee, is look at the security arrangements at the entry into the airport. There is a delusion, I would say, that redundancy creates security. However, all redundancy creates is redundancy and time wasting. It was exemplified to me that there was no risk analysis when the former minister of public safety, Ralph Goodale, was taken out of the line for a special security examination. I do not know what Mr. Goodale's security clearance was at the time, but I daresay it was about as high as high gets in this country. Why would someone looking at the passport of a minister of the Crown who has the highest security clearance want to take him out of the line for a special security clearance? That is the height of absurdity, and I daresay it is the height of absurdity for many of us. Why are NEXUS cardholders put through checks that are similar to those of the people who do not have a NEXUS card? After all, we have been checked by the RCMP and checked by the CIA. It just seems to me that no thinking goes on with security. Finally, I want to deal with the issue of competition. My hon. friend from Winnipeg North, who members seem to be quite fond of listening to, made the comment that competition would start to eliminate some of these absurdities and get better service standards. Interestingly, WestJet has pulled back from eastern Canada, for reasons I do not really know. Porter, on the other hand, has expanded into international flights and many other locations outside of Toronto. It is an interesting area. I encourage members to give the committee a chance to do its work and to pass this piece of legislation so that the frustrations that I and other members have enumerated can be dealt with.
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Context: House Hansard - 172 - Mar/23/23
Hon. John McKay (Scarborough—Guildwood, Lib.)
  • Mar/23/23 5:55:34 p.m.
  • Watch
  • Re: Bill C-26 
Mr. Speaker, the hon. member seems to be concerned about the enforcement powers in this legislation. However, without those enforcement powers, it would be kind of a useless piece of legislation. If I am sending an email to him to go over there, somehow or another, his entity may be the weak link. If, in fact, he is concerned about his piece of the infrastructure, the problem is: How would he propose changing that without some sort of significant power on the government's part to make sure that his piece of the cyber-infrastructure is not the weak link in the entire system?
104 words
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