Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today on Bill C-22 which provides for the cancellation of a contract. The Bloc Quebecois is, I believe, putting the lobbying process on trial. Several of my colleagues raised this matter during their presentations. The government side is beginning to label us as wafflers or quibblers, but what we are doing in fact is seizing the opportunity to discuss thoroughly a matter which the government only seemed to want to deal with superficially.
I think the government was in for quite a surprise because even though ultimately we would like a royal commission of inquiry to be appointed, this serious debate has allowed us to discuss some very important issues in the House, issues which the government may have preferred to keep under wraps. I want to take the opportunity today to recall the argument I presented last week and take it a little further. Among other things, I drew an analogy between the different airports as far as airport authorities are concerned and I would like to touch on this matter a little further today.
Basically, there have been three types of airport management since 1987. The then minister, Mr. Mazankowski, introduced deregulation and opened the door to the possibility of communities taking over the management of their local airport. Mr. Mazankowski indicated at the time that the administration of 200 airports in Canada could be retroceded to various communities. Thus, interested communities could take over in a reasonable way the administration of their airport.
Of course, prior to 1987, Transport Canada was responsible for all airport administration, with all of the inconveniences this entailed. I recall that when I began sitting on the Montreal Airports Advisory Board, a position which I held for five years, preparations were being made to negotiate with Transport Canada. The history of airport management in Montreal was already being reviewed, along with the cumbersome nature of Transport Canada's administration and its way of handling all changes. We had to contend with a great deal of bureaucracy and it took months to make any headway at all on specific issues.
Naturally, the Montreal region opted for a local airport authority to administer its airport facilities. At that time, we had already gone beyond the great dream of making Montreal the hub for air traffic, which the Liberals had promised when Mirabel was built. The promise then was that Montreal would become the hub for America and Canada.
Unfortunately, with the changes in technology, airplanes perform much better now than they did then, so they no longer have to land in Montreal. We saw that planes went directly to Toronto and the private sector in Toronto realized that pretty well too. That is why Ottawa has always favoured Toronto, Transport Canada favoured Toronto, and we soon lost our position as a hub. We saw that for all major activity slots in Toronto, if we tried to land in Toronto from Montreal-I am talking to you about Michel Leblanc with Inter-Inter, which had broken away from InterCanadian, was offered landing slots that made the survival of a well-managed company impossible. The expected happened: Inter went bankrupt.
We see that when power was left with Transport Canada, it was abused and Toronto benefited compared to Montreal. So when the policy took effect in 1987 and we had the chance to manage our own airports for the future, the greater Montreal area seized this opportunity. They formed a board of directors with an executive that was very representative of the region. The north shore, the south shore and the island of Montreal took charge and decided that they would negotiate the transfer of this airport with the federal government. Remember that the question of having two airports also arose then. The government was pondering whether to close Mirabel or Dorval. Here again is another case where we had very little say in the matter when power was centralized in Ottawa.
In other words, overnight, the federal government could have decided to close Mirabel because it was no longer used enough and to concentrate all the traffic in Dorval, or vice versa. That was extremely dangerous for us.
One of the first things that the Montreal airports authority did was to thoroughly examine this issue of having two airports in the Montreal region. An international panel helped us to see the very great potential of two airports; it is like having one airport with two terminals. The international panel told us that it was wonderful and that we should take advantage of it. Of course, since the Montreal airports authority now holds the cards, it has developed an action plan and a business plan to promote the airports. Finally, we also have our say on landing rights and we
can act much more vigorously and effectively to attract potential clients from all over the world.
While negotiating that transfer, we realized some things. Of course, Ottawa wanted to negotiate a long-term lease and we wanted to look at the purchase options because for companies that come to the industrial park surrounding the airport, it is not easy, never knowing whether in 20, 30 or 40 years the airports will still be there or not, because the government might take them back.
So we raised some interesting issues in the negotiation. From a financial point of view, $30 million in annual revenue is generated and is to be reinvested in the community through infrastructure projects. However, we had to negotiate hard to convince the federal government to give us a $12 million share out of those $30 million. The government told us: We are willing to give that money back to you. However, according to our financial projection, we had $30 million in revenue in the past, but only $18 million was reinvested in Montreal.
It was very important to us that the revenue generated in Montreal would stay in Montreal. We clearly demonstrated that by investing $150 million, that is $30 million annually over a period of five years, in airport infrastructure projects in Montreal, something which would not have happened before.
Of course, the fact that Toronto was favoured made the private sector smell the opportunity. Indeed, the private sector saw an opportunity there and we know what happened during the election campaign. The previous government said: We will give this to the private sector; we have many friends involved. This, of course, brings the whole issue of political party financing. In the end, I think that the Conservative Party bowed to the pressure of friends eager to take advantage of a good opportunity.
What happened then is that the new government realized that it also had many friends involved in the dealings. This situation led to this infamous Bill C-22, which is now before us and which seeks to allow the government to compensate its friends, who also happened to be friends of the previous government. It does not matter which camp lobbyists belong to! I have nothing against them; they look after their own best interests. However, I think that when you spend taxpayers' money, you have to do it in an appropriate manner.
This is why I wanted to take this opportunity to tell once again to this House that local airport authorities are the best protection against this problem with lobbyists.
Of course, if a royal commission of inquiry was set up, the private sector might think twice in the future before asking a minister to table bills such a this one to compensate friends of the regime with taxpayers' money.
In conclusion, I will gladly oppose Bill C-22, but I also think that our amendment asking for the setting up of a royal commission of inquiry should be implemented. I urge hon. members to support that amendment. And while we are at it, this commission could also look at the possibility of letting the Greater Toronto Area manage the airport through a local airport authority. This would provide maximum protection against lobbies, while also ensuring that taxpayers money is well managed in Canada.