Mr. Speaker, what a strange situation we find ourselves in today, debating whether or not to pass a bill which might control the amount of compensation which can be paid as a result of the cancellation of the Pearson airport privatization deal.
Under normal commercial circumstances in the private sector cancellation of a contract usually means a negotiated or litigated settlement which takes into account the lost opportunities and the lost profits.
Admittedly these private sector negotiations can sometimes take years to complete. It is often only the lawyers who make money out of the whole exercise. However an entity in the private sector does not have the luxury of legislating itself to be exempt from the obligation to compensate another party when it breaks an agreement.
Generally speaking there is something unattractive in the idea that a government can do what the private enterprise cannot do by exempting itself from the need to compensate a group and to also exempt itself from the ability of someone to start litigation against it.
I must admit I feel somewhat uncomfortable about the reality of the bill, the fact that the government could introduce such a bill to protect itself. I know this Liberal government has a large proportion of lawyers in its ranks whereas within the Reform caucus we only have one lawyer.
Perhaps it is this abundance of lawyers in the Liberal Party that has driven the introduction of the bill. Perhaps they are celebrating what must be every lawyer's dream, the ability to control the outcome of a case. Why would one need a judge and jury when one can simply legislate the outcome of the event with no recourse?
I admit feeling somewhat uncomfortable about this situation although I also admit that the circumstances in this situation are rather unique. It was August 1993 when the then Minister of Transport announced that a general agreement had been reached with the Pearson Development Corporation to redevelop terminals 1 and 2.
The minister indicated that the agreement would be finalized in the fall with a legal document for the long term management operation and redevelopment of the terminals. What an impressive list of players there were involved. Included were Donald Matthew, a former Tory president and fundraiser; Otto Jelinek, a former Tory cabinet minister; Bill Neville, formerly a Tory chief of staff and part of the transition team for the previous Prime Minister. There was a Quebec multimillionaire, Charles Bronf-
man. There were also some well known Liberals, a certain senator, Herb Metcalfe, and Bob Wright, a Liberal fundraiser.
It is the involvement of these high profile Liberals that caused me to use the word might in my opening sentence when I said the bill might control the amount of compensation. Could it be that clause 10 of the bill will allow the Minister of Transport to look after Liberal friends while shutting others out?
The portion of the bill in question reads: "If the minister considers it appropriate to do so, the minister may with the approval of the Governor in Council enter into agreements on behalf of Her Majesty to provide for the payment of such amounts as the minister considers appropriate".
The question I have is whether appropriate compensation for a Liberal supporter will be different from appropriate compensation for someone else. One wonders aloud. Despite all this, there is one aspect to the circumstances surrounding the signing and subsequent cancellation of the Pearson deal that provides a powerful argument for supporting Bill C-22.
It comes from the natural sense of justice that a person feels when having warned someone that there will be consequences of an action, that person defies the warning, goes ahead with the action and subsequently does indeed suffer the consequences.
Just nine days after the Pearson agreement announcement of August 30, 1993, the previous Prime Minister called the election. Prior to the conclusion of the legal agreement on Pearson, the then Leader of the Opposition, now Prime Minister, clearly stated that parties taking part in the agreement did so at their own risk because a Liberal government would not hesitate to pass legislation to block the privatization of terminals 1 and 2 if the transaction was not in the private interest.
The chief negotiator for the government at the time took the statement so seriously that he asked for written instructions about whether to complete the transaction. On October 7, 1993 in the final days of her government, the previous Prime Minister gave her written instructions to complete the deal and the same day the agreement was made.
Subsequent events, starting October 28, 1993 with the appointment of Robert Nixon to review the deal, have resulted in its cancellation. Although the idea that a government can exempt itself from responsibility for compensation bothers me, on balance I would tend to support the bill because all parties to the agreement were clearly warned of the consequences. Perhaps some of them even believed that the deal would be cancelled but took a gamble that compensation would be paid in the normal manner after cancellation. Quite a gamble.
I doubt that any party to the agreement could claim that there was not an awareness of the stand of the present Prime Minister on the issue when he was in opposition back in October 1993. There was plenty of publicity and plenty of reason to believe that the deal would indeed be cancelled if the Liberals took power. At the time the polls certainly showed that to be a possibility.
Incidentally I have often wondered why those same pollsters who so confidently predicted a win for the Liberals never realized that Reform would get 52 seats. I wonder whether they really knew and suppressed the information or whether they did not conduct a reasonable poll.
I will continue to listen to the debate on Bill C-22 and will continue to take input from my constituents who have been writing me letters and making occasional phone calls on the issue. I would urge all other members to do the same: listen to the debate and receive input from their constituents before they make the final decision on whether to support Bill C-22.