Mr. Speaker, I had started to give the chronology of events surrounding the Pearson affair during the debate on the amendment to the amendment. As I did not have time to finish, I will take the opportunity that is offered by this debate on the amendment to continue with that analysis.
We are asking for a royal commission of inquiry, and I think that no one can explain better than Robert Nixon why we must ask for such a commission. Mr. Nixon tells us, and I quote:
My review has left me with but one conclusion. To leave in place an inadequate contract, arrived at with such a flawed process and under the shadow of possible political manipulation, is unacceptable.
One cannot speak more clearly, particularly when one sees that the political manipulation does not come from supporters of only one party. There were two colours in that manipulation, blue and red.
With such words, those of Mr. Nixon, the government cannot justify compensating people who tried to take advantage of these irregularities without first shedding some real light on the whole matter, and the way to do that is to have a commission of inquiry look into it.
And I still quote Mr. Nixon, because he held an inquiry, without however giving himself the means to ultimately intervene. He says to us:
Failure to make public the full identity of the participants in this agreement and other salient terms of the contract inevitably raises public suspicion.
Not with our friends opposite, but in general. And Mr. Nixon goes on:
Where the Government of Canada proposes to privatize a public asset, in my opinion, transparency should be the order of the day. The public should have the right to know the full details of the agreement.
That is on page 11 of the Nixon report. That is why we are asking for a commission to allow us to know the full details.
At the beginning of his mandate, when he had just been appointed, in November 1993, the Minister of Transport told us that he was considering the establishment of a royal commission of inquiry into the Pearson Airport privatization. But he only considered it. He did not make a decision. He was won over, on the advice of his party and following discussions, I guess, with more experienced colleagues of his, who had been ministers longer than him in their days and no doubt told him that, as a minister, one must not think too much. And when it comes to acting, one has to act correctly, meaning not to make decisions that could reveal facts which could prove incriminating for some secret contributors to the party's campaign coffers.
If we go back to 1986, Mr. Don Mazankowski, who was Minister of Transport at the time, had appointed a task force to examine alternatives for the management of Pearson Airport. The report tabled in 1986 stated, and I quote:
"The prime objective of enhancing the airport's relationship with the local economy could not sufficiently be ensured under private sector management. The task force does not consider the private sector option a viable alternative".
The task force rejected the private sector option for the management of the airport. Why then did the Conservative government of the day, just before an election, in the midst of an election campaign, say an agreement had been reached and Pearson Airport would be privatized?
Now we are stuck with that irresponsible decision, denounced by the Liberals, who were in opposition back then and wanted to get right to the bottom of the matter. It sounds like they are not prepared to dig as deep now, not right to the bottom. We are asking that they keep the commitments they made during the election campaign. After all, that was not so long ago.
The year after the 1986 task force report was tabled, the Conservative government proceeded with the first call for tenders concerning Terminal 3 at Pearson Airport. Internal documents submitted last August to former Prime Minister Campbell described the risks associated with this transaction, in particular the increase in the fees to be paid by carriers and the fact this could result in substantial loss of income to the taxpayers.
In these documents, legal advisors indicated the exact make-up of the partnership in question was not known. It is disquieting to think the federal government would go ahead with a privatization plan without having all the facts at hand. It is even more disquieting to see the government which denounced the situation back in the days it was in opposition now refuse to get right to the bottom of the matter.
In September 1990, the federal government announced that it would privatize terminals 1 and 2 at Pearson Airport, while the civil service was negotiating the establishment of public bodies to manage airports in many parts of Canada, like Montreal. After terminal 3 opened, the bureaucrats realized that the airport was half empty and concluded that not only was privatizing terminals 1 and 2 questionable, but that the whole expansion project was anything but urgent.
What is not necessarily pressing in normal times can become urgent just before an election when people have contributed to the election fund. I suppose that it became very urgent when the Conservatives realized that they would no longer be on the government side of the House, although they did not think that they would not be on this side of the House either.
So senior officials used their contacts then to promote an option. That is what specialists on lobbying call the revolving door: officials leave the public service to sell their connections and contacts. I am thinking of Ramsay Withers. A code of ethics should be issued; it was promised in the red book. They have learned very little since then. That is why we want a more thorough inquiry than Robert Nixon's.
Remember that Mr. Nixon had no authority to order the production of documents. Documents are important. In the Ginn Publishing case, we were told that there were documents related to oral agreements that had left traces, as the heritage minister said, and that this contract would reveal discussions from the Cabinet of that time. It is very surprising that a contract would contain Cabinet discussions, but that is what we were told.
Mr. Nixon did not have the power to compel some witnesses to appear before him, so the irregularities he mentioned could be much more serious than those he suspects did occur. That is why we think a royal commission of inquiry should be appointed without delay. Moreover, why all the secrecy surrounding Bob Wright's negotiations, given the Prime Minister's commitment to shed some light on this deal? Do the Liberals have something to hide? If not, there is a very simple way to avoid such an accusation and that is to disclose all the facts. A royal commission of inquiry must be appointed. Then, we will know if the government was really determined to get to the bottom of this matter, to settle the lobbying issue, not do away with all lobbyists, but with the unscrupulous ones involved with companies that finance both parties' election campaigns.
Mr. Speaker, you are indicating that I have only two minutes left, so I will skip a few lines and talk about the Prime Minister who promised, during the election campaign, to order an independent review of the Pearson transaction. In spite of all Mr. Nixon's qualities, on the one hand, he had no authority and, on the other, he was a known Liberal supporter with close ties to the current government. Some Liberals are involved, undoubtedly. We know their names, we have seen them. No contractor gets involved with operations like these without having friends on both sides. That is precisely what happened in the Pearson Airport deal.
When Mr. Chern Heed, who had been Pearson International's chief executive officer since 1987, tells us that his departure is not unrelated to Pearson's privatization, this is troubling news indeed. I also remember reading in the Ottawa Citizen that people wondered why Prime Minister Chrétien remained silent on the privatization of Pearson Airport early in the election campaign, while three weeks later, once the details of the transaction were known, he said that he would intervene. Is it a coincidence that the Prime Minister waited until the agreement was signed before intervening?
Is it also a coincidence that the then Minister of Transport, Jean Corbeil, waited until early October, when the leaders debate took place, to conclude the agreement? Is it yet another coincidence that the government now refuses to shed light on this issue? That is a lot of coincidences for a single case! I might add that several issues have been characterized by such coincidences.
Such coincidences will occur as long as we will have a permissive law regarding the activities of lobbyists, and as long as we will not have an elections act that ensures democratic financing of political parties. Indeed, until we have here a law
such as the one in Quebec, we will be subject to all kinds of transactions of this sort, to all kinds of suspicious dealings.