Mr. Speaker, I rise once again to speak to Bill C-11. I listened with great interest to the minister's speech. My mother used to coin a phrase that I thought was very applicable in this instance. While the minister's speech was very conciliatory and praised everyone involved, my mother used to say that actions speak louder than words. In this case I think that is most applicable.
This issue was brought before the House in October 1999. I first spoke at second reading on the bill in early November 1999. The whole thing sat gathering dust until very recently. Then it came forward again, we finished second reading and it went to committee.
There was a fairly substantial list of witnesses at committee who had interests in this bill and the issues around it. Some of those witnesses were given less than 24 hours to appear before the committee. They had to rearrange family affairs, job schedules and all of those things.
They were brought in, four or five witnesses at a time who were not truly connected in their issues. They sat down to participate in what was termed a round table discussion at committee, which did not give either the witnesses an adequate opportunity to present their case or opposition members an opportunity to question them at any length to get to the bottom of the issues they were bringing forward.
On top of that, my colleagues on the committee introduced two amendments to the legislation. I believe the NDP introduced about five amendments. None of the amendments introduced by either party would have substantively changed the bill. I support the concept of privatization. It is a good idea and it should have been done sooner. However, there were ways to do it.
Had the government really been looking for some co-operation on the bill, it could have accepted every one of the amendments introduced by my party and the NDP. My amendments, hopefully, would have brought some clarity and accountability to this deal after it was done, respecting commercial confidentiality, but having the auditor general a year from the date of the sale examine the whole sale and its terms and conditions and report back to the House. Certainly the NDP had some good amendments in the interests of the miners and the workers involved that would have protected their interests by guaranteeing certain membership on the Devco board and the pensioners' adjustment board and all of those things.
It would have been a marvellous sign of good faith for the government to simply accept those amendments and it would have been a good strategy in my opinion. If the government had accepted those NDP amendments, which were not substantive, then I do not see how either my party or the NDP could have continued to oppose the bill, but I may be being too optimistic.
It seems to me that there is some kind of agenda going on here. In committee when I asked the minister if at some point Canadians could see the terms and conditions of the sale so as to understand the terms for whoever buys Devco, the minister himself said that he would have no problem with that. Then one of his officials whispered in his ear. I have no idea what he whispered, but certainly very quickly the minister said that perhaps the parties to the sale would not accept that clarity or accountability. That is a real shame.
After the conciliatory speech of the minister I do not want to be mean-spirited, but one has only to look at the history of the government and how it has operated in the time since I have been here. I refer to some of the activities around grants and contributions in Human Resources Development Canada. I simply do not trust the government to act in the best interests of Cape Bretoners or Canadians. I demand accountability and clarity to assure that those things are met because I do not believe that they will be.
When I was in Cape Breton I heard rumours from miners, the unions and prospective buyers. The story I heard was that the government intends to sell the assets of Devco to an American company which is already importing South American coal to Cape Breton. That bothers me.
We have coal miners in Cape Breton. We have an industry that has been operating in Cape Breton for some 300 years. We have some of the best mining expertise in the world in Cape Breton. We have a guaranteed market for the coal which is mined, and we have all kinds of coal to be mined.
For the Canadian government to abandon those coal miners and that industry in Cape Breton in favour of giving it to an American company to bring American or South American coal to Cape Breton is wrong. I cannot help but think it is very wrong.
It seems to me that it perhaps has something to do with a former environment minister who stood in the House and said that the coal industry was an environmentally dirty industry and that her government intended to phase out coal mining in Canada. I cannot help but think that is part of the agenda. I do not know how else one might explain the absolute refusal of Nesbitt Burns, in co-operation with the chairman of the board of Devco, who reviewed the bids which were coming in, to accept or consider Canadian bids.
I met with two groups when I was in Cape Breton, both of whom submitted bids for Devco, both of whom told me that Nesbitt Burns had phoned them, had refused to give them anything in writing that they could pass on to myself, to members of the NDP or others, and told them that their bids would not be accepted for consideration.
Coming into the committee process, I asked that one of those private sector Nova Scotia bidders be allowed to come to committee to tell the story. The spokesman for that group was not even phoned and asked to come before the committee to present the story. I think that is wrong.
Of course, the other group which also had a local bid in for the assets of Devco just happens to have a lawsuit against the Government of Canada for reneging on its commitment to the company in conjunction with Donkin Mine. Again, I do not see how the government could possibly sell Donkin Mine, which is part of Devco's package of assets. How could it sell when the whole thing is tied up in litigation before the courts?
I do not think that could be done. Certainly if I was part of that group I would very quickly get an injunction to stop the sale before it took place.
There are all kinds of issues. There are issues of mismanagement, on which the parliamentary secretary would not allow questions in committee. I think there is a long history of mismanagement around the operation of Devco and there continues to be today.
I am not a miner or a mining engineer, but when I accessed the yearly financial statements of the corporation I could see for myself, and certainly others in Cape Breton pointed out to me, that for some time there has been a management regime in place that appears to be bent on putting Devco out of business and putting Devco's financial statements in the red. There was a deliberate attempt to wind down Devco through mismanagement and lack of capital investment, lack of maintenance, and all of those things.
We were not allowed to discuss those issues by the government, through the parliamentary secretary. The parliamentary secretary is a person I have come to have a lot of respect for over the years in which I have sat on the natural resources committee. I think that he has bent over backward to be fair on many occasions when he was chairman of the committee and I have a lot of respect for him. I can understand what was going on in committee and around this bill, but that does not make me any less disappointed about what took place. We were repeatedly told that the committee was a legislative committee dealing with a bill and that we were only allowed to deal with issues arising out of the bill, not the issues that are connected to the sale of Devco but are not actually part of the bill.
As the witnesses appeared before the committee, after short notice, they were asked to sit down three, four and five at a time and told that they had 10 minutes between them to present their case. In some instances we had a minute or less to ask them questions. I do not think that we were able to adequately explore any of the issues around the sale of Devco and the implications for the people of Cape Breton.
I am convinced that there was a Canadian solution. I know there was but the government for whatever reason did not seem prepared to look at that. I think it would have been humane and the right thing to do if the government had done something to offset the impact to the miners. That goes right back to 30 years ago when Devco was put in place. It was partly an effort to offset the human resources liability of the Dominion Steel and Coal Company that went bankrupt and had left miners without pensions, severance pay and all those things.
It was the government's responsibility, rightly so then as it is now, to wind down Devco. However, because of the commitment in the Devco bill that the government made to the people of Cape Breton, it would have been only right for the government to accept the human resource liability and offset it in whatever way it could.
In fact section 17 of the old act says that the corporation shall adopt all reasonable measures to reduce to the fullest extent possible any economic hardship or unemployment that may result from the closing of any coal mine operated by the corporation. The government of the day committed to doing that and that obligation is certainly upon this government to fulfil it.
Part of Bill C-11 is to eliminate that clause. If some time in the next months ahead we discover that the government sold the assets of Devco to an American company that closed the coal mines in Cape Breton, the government would be in breach of its own commitment, in fact in breach of the legislation that is in place today until this bill comes into force and that particular clause is eliminated.
I can understand why the government wants to remove that clause. It certainly would be liable if it did not. However, there were ways. The government has gone a long way through the injection of the money that the minister talked about for the economy of Cape Breton and the diversification of that economy. Those things could and should be done but that liability cannot be tied to the new owners of Devco. The liability of the miners, the families and the environmental liability of the Dominion Steel and Coal Company was what for so many years made Devco unprofitable. That was where Devco lost money.
We have heard members in the House, certainly the NDP members and others, say again and again that the coal mining operation of Devco was a profitable operation. It was mining coal at a price, when sold to the market that they had, where it was making money. It was the liability that the government had saddled Devco with so many years ago that made it unprofitable.
If the government intends to saddle the new owners with that liability I do not visualize anyone buying Devco. We will never know because it will be under the terms and conditions of sale. We cannot see the government insisting that the new owners of of Devco take on the responsibility for the human resources liability, such as the union contracts, the union liabilities and all the things that go with it, plus the huge environmental liability that exists there today. The minister did not talk about who would be responsible for the environmental liability.
I was down there. The liability cost of decommissioning the two mines, the coal wash plant and all the rest of it, not to mention the mess at the Sydney tar ponds and the slag pile from the Sydney Steel mills, is huge. There is no question in my mind that the people of Canada will be stuck with that cost. No company, either local, American or foreign, will buy Devco if it has to accept that liability.
Since we will be stuck with that liability anyway, why would the government not accept both the human resource liability and the environmental liability? It could then consider the local bids from the key people of Nova Scotia and Cape Breton who are willing to operate not only the Prince mine but the Donkin mine and perhaps even the Phalen mine. They could operate them locally, employ local people, sell the coal to Nova Scotia Power and use the international pier to feed extra coal into the export market. Cape Bretoners were willing to do that and this government would not even have a look at or accept their bids. That was wrong.
On that basis, there is no way that I can recommend to my party that we support the bill. It is not because we do not agree that coal mining in Cape Breton could not operate profitably under the private sector, and should operate under the private sector, but simply because of the way this deal is being handled, the secrecy surrounding it and the refusal of the government to tell the House and Canadians that it has at least made a commitment to the terms and conditions of sale and that whoever buys the assets of Devco has to operate the mine for a particular length of time.
I simply cannot support the bill and will recommend to my party that we vote against it, as I have at every other stage. I believe there is a viable coal mining industry in Cape Breton. There is a Canadian solution available that will put Cape Bretoners to work. The government has been negligent in not considering the Canadian solution, and that is a shame.