Madam Speaker, I will start by informing you that I will be sharing my time with the member for Windsor West.
I want to thank the member for Newmarket—Aurora for demonstrating the kind of fundamental incoherence of the Liberal argument when it comes to the bill.
We just heard a speech about how Bill C-10 is really about the competitiveness of the aerospace industry and the airline industry, and how it is unfair that competitors of Air Canada are able to move their maintenance work outside of the country. Then on the other hand, the member got up and said that Bill C-10 is really about jobs in Canada.
Well, if Bill C-10 were really about keeping jobs in Canada, and the argument the Liberals are making is that Air Canada cannot be competitive by keeping its jobs in Canada, it is an argument that we in the NDP do not agree with. However, this is the argument when the Liberals talk about competitiveness.
To get up and say that somehow Bill C-10 is not really about Air Canada moving those jobs out of the country is incoherent. They want the freedom to move those jobs out of the country so that they can move them out of the country, which is the essence of the Liberals' argument when they talk about how Air Canada is apparently getting beaten, although there is no news that I have heard that says Air Canada is on the verge of bankruptcy. Therefore, I thank the member for that.
I hope Canadians are listening, because if they were, they would see just how at loggerheads the two sides of the Liberal argument really are. They do not go together. They do not dovetail. Actually, they are in contradiction. This has been the story of the bill before us.
Another contradiction that has to do with the bill is on the timeline of it. We hear insistence from the minister that there is no deal, that Bill C-10 is not connected in any way to a purchase of jets from Bombardier by Air Canada. Yet, it has been a priority of the government to rush the bill through the House. If there is no deal, how can it be that there is a timeline for getting the bill through? There is no demonstrated need that Air Canada needs this to happen right away. The only way it could need it to happen right away is if it already had plans to move the jobs out of the country; the ones they have not already moved out of the country.
Incidentally, the member for Newmarket—Aurora was wrong to say that Air Canada had not moved any of its maintenance jobs out of the country. In fact, it did in 2012. The member for Winnipeg North understood that well when he was in opposition. The Prime Minister understood that well when he was in opposition. The people who are taking Air Canada to court to get those jobs back understood it well.
What is wrong with the bill is that it would eliminate any legal basis for challenging Air Canada now and into the future. It may well be that the Quebec government dropped its suit, but there are others who are prepared to take Air Canada to court in order to win those jobs back to Canada. However, after Bill C-10 passes, they will not be able to do that. They will not be able to do the very thing that the member for Winnipeg North and the Prime Minister were calling on the last government to do, which was enforce the act.
Now that the Liberals are in government, not only are they not enforcing the act, but they are changing the act. It is reprehensible, because it means that citizens in Canada who want to take Air Canada to court to enforce that very same act would not be able to, because the act would be changed, which is the shame of Bill C-10.
What we have learned from this whole process are a few things about the character of the government. There are a number of reasons why I think Bill C-10 is so telling in terms of the character of the government. It is kind of unique in that it was the first bill that the government brought that was not a routine motion or a direct consequence of an election commitment. Bill C-10 was really a preview of the current Liberal government's mind and what the Liberals do when they are not handcuffed by election commitments.
The first thing the Liberals did was something that goes totally against what they were campaigning for in opposition, which was enforcement of the act. They decided to change the act to take out the provisions that they said needed to be enforced. I do not see how anyone can think that is consistent from one moment to another. I think there is a bit of hypocrisy, frankly, which is interesting to note about the government.
It is interesting to note that western Canada in all of this was an afterthought, because, despite the protestations of the minister, it is hard not to believe that part of this was really about finding a deal for Bombardier. Instead of saying that we need to do that in a responsible way, in a way that does not play the maintenance sector off the production sector, instead of doing that in a way that does not play regions of the country off against each other, we would just go and cut a deal with our big corporate friends and sort the rest out later.
If it just so happens that we cannot get back a major part of the Winnipeg aerospace industry because the law has changed, so be it, because Winnipeg is not really on our mind and western Canada is not really on our mind. I found that very interesting.
From that I think we learned that it is not just about regions, or a lack of strategy when it comes to the aerospace industry, or the government's willingness to engage in hypocrisy, but it is also about big corporate friends getting one set of rules and everyone else getting another set of rules. Therefore, if individuals used to work for Air Canada and they were counting on that lawsuit to go through and looking forward to someone else taking up the charge after the Quebec government let that lawsuit go, then it is too bad for them. The Liberals are actually getting rid of those rules. The rules that protect those individuals, they are getting rid of and they are bringing in a new set of rules, a set of rules that are going to be good for Air Canada executives and shareholders. If that means Liberals are selling out Canadian workers, now that they are in government, that is just too bad. They cared about them in opposition because they wanted their votes, but now that they are in government they have better friends. That is the message of Bill C-10. Shame on them for that. Canadians ought to remember that at the next election, far away though it may be.
I think we learned a lot about the government in this whole process, and it is important to articulate those lessons.
Incidentally, just in terms of getting a bit of insight or a premonition, there is now an established pattern of not having a lot of respect for Parliament when it comes to the Liberal government. We first saw it with Bill C-10. The first time allocation was moved on Bill C-10. At the time, I could not figure it out because I was listening to the Liberal government saying that it had a lot of respect for Parliament, that Parliament is a great place, and that they wanted to hear from parliamentarians. We still hear some rhetoric to that effect, although it is harder to believe because, as the Liberals say, we too are interested in evidence and evidence-based decision-making. If we are going to make a decision about what to believe about the Liberals, and we look at the evidence in terms of what they have done, it is very hard indeed to believe their claims about respect for Parliament. That started with Bill C-10. It was a mystery then, because I wanted to take them at their word. I really did. Also, there was no deal. There was no deal for the purchase of Bombardier jets, no deal at all with respect to this legislation. There was really no need to push it forward, so it was genuinely mystifying.
As time has gone on and we have seen this lack of respect the government has for Parliament, we have heard from witnesses on Bill C-10 who also skated around the issue of whether or not there was a deal among perhaps the government, Air Canada, and Bombardier. We are not quite sure because no one from the government will enlighten us. It is hard to believe there is no deal at all. Moving time allocation on C-10 at every stage begins to make a bit more sense.
In question period today, and other days, we heard the Minister of Democratic Institutions say that one of the great things about the Liberals' process for a new voting system is that every member would have a say, every member would have a vote. We are all going to get up, and after the Liberal majority committee makes a recommendation to the Liberal cabinet, which comes back with legislation that is being dealt with by a Liberal majority, everyone would have their say on a new voting system, as if the Liberals' majority did not make a difference or as if they were comfortable with the idea that, if their majority did not make a difference, that would be okay.
Again, Bill C-10 is instructive, because it was only the last Monday we sat before the break that Bill C-10 came to a vote at report stage. Because the member for Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley changed his vote, we had a tie vote. He had voted against it at second reading and then voted for it at report stage and that came down to a tie. Because of that tie vote on Bill C-10, we got to see what the government is really like with respect to every member having his or her say. Not all of its members showed up because perhaps they did not think it was important. I will not presume to say why they were not there. However, the result of the tie was clear. The government did not say that was great, Parliament had spoken, and had it had one vote less, that would be fine. Instead, it lost its temper. It brought forward a motion that was completely draconian, that would have handcuffed Parliament, and created a climate where people were prone to losing their temper. Therefore, I think we saw another insight into the real mind of the Liberal government through Bill C-10.
