We must not, however, lose sight of the fact that this is a serious issue. Since my hon. colleague is speaking about facts, it would be a good idea to remind him that as we speak, the Liberal government has yet to make the details of this deal public. Yet, we are discussing a transaction that has major financial implications. Our listeners should know that we are conducting this debate without the actual contract in hand, without knowing in detail the contractual obligations which bound the former government to the consortium in question.
Perhaps it would be a good idea to review some of the events leading up to this transaction. They clearly show that in our political system, until such time as we have lobbying legislation with teeth, it will always be possible for a government to indulge in favouritism.
The following question arises then. How is it that this government, when in opposition, stressed many times the need to review the lobbying legislation and even made this issue a priority? And how is it that six months after coming to power, it still has made no attempt to conduct such a review? We are critical of the government for its failure to act on this matter.
While we may agree with its decision to cancel the Conservative deal, we can only wonder why it did not see things through to their logical conclusion. Since the two parties are in agreement, something that does not happen often during the life of a Parliament, why will the government not attack the root of the problem by urgently introducing legislation here in the House to deal with the explosive issue of lobbying? Both the Reform Party and the Official Opposition would be ready to move on this matter immediately and would make themselves available.
There would have been no question of an agenda or of a timetable. We would have devoted all of our energies and efforts to studying this legislation as quickly as possible.
It so happens that, like the Conservatives, the Liberals have their political friends. Therefore, they are duty bound to support them. When you have a national party like the Liberal Party and you are looking for financial backup like they do, it is understandable that you be bound by the election fund that allows you to be in politics.
Of course, we, in Quebec, have freed ourselves from such a thing. This is part of René Levesque's legacy, this great political figure Félix Leclerc said was part of a much too short list of liberators of the people. The main thing we have inherited from the Levesque era was this piece of legislation he gave the National Assembly, one of the very first ones introduced in the Parti Quebecois government's mandate. Those were the days, the early days of the Parti Quebecois government, days that will come back though!
You are aware of the political situation. I will not elaborate on the subject, but some optimism is permitted on this side of the House. The reason we are in this predicament is because we do not have legislation "that has teeth" respecting lobbyists.
So, in March 1992, the government called for tenders-also known as bids in government language-for the privatization of Terminals 1 and 2 at Pearson Airport.
If you were the least bit concerned by the issue, you were already wondering: Why privatize Pearson Airport? In terms of public facilities, can you think of something more common, more public than an airport? Why privatize Pearson Airport then, if for one thing, it was the main airport in Canada and, for another, it was profitable? This was an airport that actually showed profits on its books, an airport that did not carry losses. Already, people were wondering: why privatize a piece of our national heritage which is crucial to the Ontario economy, as we know, when it showed profits?
You will tell me this is typical of the silly way of thinking of a Conservative government in bed with-and almost incestuously so-the private sector. That is what the ideological motivation was.
In the end, in June 1992, two bids were received. Strangely enough, the public tendering process on such a major public stake had produced only two bids, both bidders already having ties with the airport administration. And, let us not forget the time limit potential suppliers were given to submit tenders; the entire process lasted but 90 days. That was the first technical irregularity. Every member who knows anything about administrative law knows, for instance, that the labour standards committee gives 90 days to initiate whatever collective agreement grievance, even for matters much less binding. That is the minimum time allotted in the notice of dispute.
Yet, it was decided to apply this minimum time limit to something as major as a multimillion privatization process. So, that was the first irregularity, and observers did not fail to point it out. That is the crux of the controversy and this is where we really get the feeling of doing our job as the opposition, by raising these facts.
Who were these bidders? Who are they? Paxport is a consortium controlled by Don Matthews group. Don Matthews was president of Brian Mulroney's leadership campaign in 1983. My apologies to Joe Clark for saying this, but Don Matthews was president of Brian Mulroney's leadership campaign. This man is part of the Conservative Party machinery. He is so much a part of it that he was the mastermind behind four or five national fund-raising campaigns. And you know that Tory national fund-raising campaigns generally involve several zeros and that most of the money comes from private enterprise.
So the first bidder is directly linked to this great Tory family, now a kind of nuclear family, we agree, but once a little more extended than it is now.