I'm easy maintenance, Mr. Chairman.
I have here a letter from GCI to Mr. Winfried Haastert from August 6, 1986:
Dear Mr. Haastert:
Re: Proposed Manufacturing Facility at Bear Head Nova Scotia
Some considerable time has passed since your first visit to Canada to investigate the potential of investing here. I feel that it is useful to provide you with a brief summary of the efforts towards this project to date so that we may recognize the remaining priorities to bring the proposed facility into reality.
Please find the attached memo.
So that is the main project where I came in, and this was on a request from the Canadian government, through the Canadian embassy, asking to create jobs and bring business to Nova Scotia, to the Strait of Canso, where the heavy water plant was. The gulf refinery had been shut down. It was the constituency of Allan MacEachen at the time. Then Mr. Mulroney had made this remarkable speech to the Nova Scotians: “I have three things for you: jobs, jobs, and jobs.”
To create jobs and to keep jobs is my life job. It's all I've done. I don't understand anything else. But jobs mean business, and business means industrial contracts. Industrial contracts mean you have to obtain them somewhere. That is the basis for jobs, for income, for taxes, whatever. And there, Mr. Chairman, you have a fantastic family. You have the politicians from the constituency, you have some from the government, you have the unions, and you have the entrepreneurs--in one boat, because they all want the same thing. I'm convinced that each of you faces the same problem in your constituency: jobs, to make sure we have jobs, and income, and happy families.
I love that job. So I said, “Yes, I am going to do it.” If you would give it to me tomorrow again, even with my 74 years, I would be on a plane and I would do it. It was the most exciting job of my life.
Peacekeeping equipment and environmental protection, under the label of the maple leaf of Canada--show me a better export product in this world. I can tell you that the Canadian soldiers and the Canadian generals worked with me like hell, and Thyssen spent money on and on, and we designed the most sophisticated equipment quietly with them. And then I had to recognize--forgive me what I am saying--that the government did not care a shit about the security of our soldiers. This is where my war started and this is why I have made quite a few substantial enemies. But I tell you, I'm proud that they are my enemies, because if they were my friends, I would be one of the lousiest Canadians you could ever think about. But we'll come to that one day.
I don't want to read all this stuff to you. It shows what happened with this whole agreement. This is the whole report, and it shows you also a very interesting program. The program was done for Mr. Frank Moores and his wife. It was on the 30th, 31st of January, 1988. Mr. Karlheinz Schreiber and his wife, Mr. Max Strauss, and we also had the privilege to have with us Dr. Sami Jadallah, Sheikh Mohammed Hussein and Prince Sultan, the crown prince from Saudi Arabia, who finally was stupid enough to pay $200 million more for armoured cars than they were supposed to.
In the meantime, everybody laughs about it in Germany, because the Supreme Court confirmed there was no fraud under the Saudis' table and they made an overpayment, which was directed, under their direction, to those people who supported the policy of the Saudis during the Gulf War and later on.
If one would have two minutes--