Transport, Infrastructure and Communities

The committee resumed debate on a Bloc Québécois motion to compel three federal departments to produce documents on trucking non-compliance since 2018 and to add two meetings with victims and industry witnesses. After extensive procedural wrangling, including multiple overturned chair rulings, Liberal MP Stéphane Lauzon moved a series of amendments. These amendments extended the document request to the Prime Minister’s Office, changed the timeline to 60 days and the start date to 2022, added redactions under privacy laws, expanded the witness list to three meetings, and appended a five-meeting study on modernizing Canadian ports to reduce reliance on the United States.

Conservative MP Dan Albas then moved a further amendment that added a BC Ferries report, orders for documents from Seaspan ULC, and a report to the House on the absence of the Minister of Public Safety and former transport minister. It also added studies on VIA Rail and on airport security and staffing challenges at NAV Canada and the Canada Border Services Agency, with a priority schedule for the committee’s work. The committee adopted Albas’s amendment as amended by Lauzon and the Bloc, and then adopted the main motion as amended.

Finally, the committee adopted a separate Bloc motion requesting that the Canada Truck Operators Association provide a complete list of its members within 15 days, after the Bloc member accepted a compromise to use “request” rather than “order.”