Mr. Speaker, the speech of my colleague, the member for Richelieu, prompts me to take part in this debate, even though I do not have much influence in the Toronto Lester B. Pearson airport deal, as member for Kingston and the Islands.
In any case, this contract poses a problem and I am glad this government did something to correct the situation.
What we have been faced with is a filibuster by members of the party opposite who seem to think that when the government tries to fix something they had better jump on bandwagon.
I know what happened. Throughout the election campaign while we were criticizing this deal and indicating that it was unacceptable to the people of Canada, we heard absolutely nothing from the hon. member for Richelieu and his colleagues. They are busy trying to make up for lost time and they are doing it by making windy speeches in the House, saying how awful this is. They are trying to find fault with a perfectly reasonable and sensible government bill that gives the government the power to abrogate this deal. That is my understanding of it.
The hon. member for Broadview-Greenwood made an excellent speech on this subject the other day and so did the hon. member for Glengarry-Prescott-Russell. I was impressed because I was hearing the facts about the bill for the first time instead of the distortion we have been faced with from hon. members opposite.
I know the hon. member for Richelieu used to be a Conservative. He was part of the bunch who cooked up this deal. I can understand why he left that party; he had some sense of shame. He knew a bad deal when he saw one. He could smell a rat. That is what this deal was.
We saw it and we talked about it. The hon. member was not speaking about it and he should have been. He should have been denouncing this deal up and down the country. Instead of that, he was off talking about Quebec independence. He could have been talking about this deal because he knows a bad government. He was elected to support that government. That is the shame of it.