Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak at the third and final reading stage of this most important bill. This bill is an act respecting certain agreements for the redevelopment and operation of Terminals 1 and 2 at Lester B. Pearson International Airport. In layman's terms that means it is the bill to formally cancel the agreement which was entered into by the former government. This issue has been debated at length in this House and in committee.
This bill reflects another election commitment made by this government. During the course of the election, our leader who was the Leader of the Opposition at the time, gave notice that after the election the agreement would be reviewed by the incoming new government.
True to his and this government's word, upon election of the Liberal government we had Mr. Nixon review the agreement to ensure that the public interest was being served. His conclusions and recommendations which formed part and parcel of the Minister of Transport's recommendation has resulted in this bill.
To make it clear to everyone, including the opposition parties, the bill effectively and formally cancels the agreement. Both opposition parties agree with the government that the agreement should be cancelled. There is unanimity in this House with regard to its cancellation. There seems to be no dispute whatsoever as to whether or not this agreement needed to be cancelled. I am happy to thank both opposition parties for supporting this legislation.
Having said that, the opposition parties have given their qualified approval but have voted against the bill at report stage. They will probably also vote against it tonight because in their opinion they have serious reservations with regard to the bill. Therefore, it is only appropriate for me to take the opportunity to try to answer the questions put by both opposition parties and the improvements which in their minds need to be done to this bill.
The Bloc Quebecois throughout the course of debate on this bill seems to be fixated with putting blame, or finding out where the blame lies. The government side understands that is important and essentially that is why we introduced the bill to cancel the agreement. We knew the agreement was flawed in its process and its substance. The process was questionable not in legal terms but in terms of the role of the lobbyists in putting together such an agreement.
Bloc Quebecois members have insisted that a public inquiry by a royal commission was needed to find out who was to blame for putting this agreement together in the first place. We could go on a wild goose chase to find out who was to blame. At the end of the day however even after a public inquiry by a royal commission, legislation would still have to be put in place to effectively and formally cancel the agreement, not to mention the millions of dollars and the time that would be wasted in such an exercise.
The Canadian people themselves gave a verdict to the people involved in that deal, namely the former Conservative government. The agreement was signed two weeks before the election, after being given notice by the present right hon. Prime Minister not to do so but to wait for the new government to review it. Despite that warning, the former Conservative government signed the deal. We know what happened to that government. Public opinion was that what had occurred was not in keeping with what was perceived as good government practices. Hence, that government was defeated. There were many other reasons for that but I suggest this agreement was part and parcel of it too.
With respect to the other parties that signed this agreement, the testimony at committee hearings and Mr. Nixon's report makes it clear that while we may not have liked the process and we might question the roles of the government, the partnerships and the lobbyists, the fact remains that an agreement was signed legally and formally by another government and another party.
During the hearings this government and its members did not stand in the way of asking for witnesses to come before the Standing Committee of Transport to question the people who were directly involved. I heard someone mention yesterday that perhaps all the parties did not avail themselves of that opportunity. That is perfectly true.
The solicitor from the Pearson Development Corporation was there. The Paxport people were there, including Mr. Don Matthews. The former president of Paxport was there, Mr. Hession, and a number of other witnesses. However, a number of witnesses, including former government members and lobbyists, indicated they could not or would not appear before the committee. That is regrettable because the government and the people of Canada deserve to know all the facts. We would have wanted that, but that did not occur.
There was some mention of putting subpoenas before witnesses as suggested by the Bloc. As worthy as that might seem however, that process was fraught with peril in terms of time and of whether or not we would ever get to the bottom of the story.
One fact is clear: The government, the opposition parties and the Canadian people agree that this deal should be cancelled. So what would be accomplished by going on a so-called witch hunt to look for that person who may or may not have done something right or wrong? Mr. Nixon said that nothing illegal occurred, that in fact, as we have all agreed, the process and the substance was flawed.
This bill has essentially tried to do a number of things. First and foremost however it was necessary to cancel the deal formally because there was no cancellation provision in the contract. The government needed to do that formally.
Second, the bill outlines what can or should be paid to the parties to this agreement. The bill does provide guidance and restrictions to the Minister of Transport.
This government has said it does not believe that the process was as it should be and that lobbyists played a very big part, perhaps too big. In the next day or two the Minister of Industry and the parliamentary secretary will introduce changes to the lobbyists act to ensure that the rules are clear to everyone as to what lobbyists can and cannot do with government or members of Parliament. It will put in place a code of ethics among other things.
However, the purpose of Bill C-22 is not to debate or discuss the role of lobbyists. That is a bigger issue which will come later. The bill does say the government will not pay one cent in lobbyists' fees. We will not pay one penny toward lobbyists' costs.
The bill also says we will not pay for the lost profits or lost opportunities that Pearson Development Corporation or the limited partnership might think that in cancelling the agreement they are entitled to.
This government has said clearly no lost opportunity, no lost profit. The only thing that we think this government will pay and should pay is legitimate out of pocket expenses that can be justified, that in fact show value for work received because there are a number of third party claimants that are part of the whole apparatus. They are to a certain extent innocent parties to an agreement, parties which might have done some architectural work, engineering work or other legitimate work which was invoiced to the partnership. The government is prepared to consider those invoices and to meticulously look at them to ensure that in fact they are legitimate, that they were for the purposes of Pearson airport and not for something else.
We have a negotiator presently looking at each and every one of those invoices. Some 60 volumes of paper need to be gone through to ensure that, as the Prime Minister and the Minister of Transport said, the government does not pay a penny more than what needs to be paid. We want to ensure that our process can withstand the scrutiny of the public, the opposition and the Auditor General.
We want to make sure that the cabinet by order in council only pays those invoices that are in fact legitimate. That is the process. There is a negotiator and that is what is happening now.
The Reform Party has had some problems with respect to the question of transparency. What is it that we are paying? Who should decide what should be paid? It was suggested that the parliamentary committee on transport look at those invoices and make recommendations to the minister and in fact have a hearing on what invoices should be paid. Those are legitimate questions.
The minister and I and others have stated that the system, the bill, the process within this House of Commons and government operations are transparent. Before even one cent is paid the Auditor General will obviously be very interested in this.
There is a public accounts committee of this House of Commons, chaired by the opposition that can ask for all the documents to be brought forward. There is the accountability of government. The cabinet is accountable to the people of Canada for making those kinds of decisions. There is an apparatus in place to ensure that the process is transparent, that accountability is clearly to the government.
The minister indicated, and I think we passed an amendment by the Bloc at committee, that he will table with this House all the documents that he can table respecting freedom of access to information and guidelines and rules as to what can and cannot be made public. There was a commitment made to this House that would take place.
The bill says, yes, we might pay something, but you will have to prove to us that each and every invoice is legitimate. One must take this bill in its context. This is a very unique bill, unheard of really in terms of Canadian history, where a government would move so boldly as to cancel an agreement and say no loss of profit and no lobbyist fees. It says something much more important.
It says that we need to get on with managing the future of Pearson because it is an important transportation hub in this country. It is a nationally significant airport that impacts the west, the east, Quebec and Ontario. We need to get on with planning the future of Pearson. This bill is absolutely necessary for us to do that. We cannot plan its future unless we formally cancel the agreement and deal with this matter once and for all.
The bill also says that if there is no successful completion to negotiations, 30 days after proclamation of the bill there shall be no payments at all. That is a pretty strong stick for this government to use to try and bring all the parties at the table to a reasonable completion to the negotiations. That is an important aspect to this bill because we cannot and I am sure the opposition parties would not want us to continue to carry on fruitless negotiations. This bill does put in place a sunset provision that says 30 days after proclamation, if there is not a negotiated settlement there shall not be one penny paid.
It also protects the government against lawsuits. We cannot take it to the courts because we believe we need to get moving on it.
I know that the debate will continue somewhat today and that both opposition parties will try to make their case again for more transparency, more accountability. The Bloc will suggest that we cannot deal with this bill because we do not really know the true facts about what happened behind those closed doors. That is true and it is regrettable but we have to deal with reality. The reality is that we need to get on with planning Pearson's future, dealing with the bill. There will be other opportunities to discuss the influence of lobbyists and so on and that will come in a subsequent bill.
I want to touch base on a couple of points that I think are absolutely necessary. Talking about expediency, when the bill moves to the Senate where it will go through a similar process, we hope that the Senate will respect and move expeditiously in passing this bill. It is in the best interests of the country to do so in order that the government can get on with planning for the future of Pearson and assisting the travelling public as much as possible.
We believe that this is a very unique bill in Canadian history because of some very unique circumstances. Hopefully they will never occur again.
I believe we all will have learned from this process what governments can and should do prior to an election, especially on nationally significant issues. Perhaps decisions do not have to be made in the last minutes before the end of a government's mandate, especially on an issue that captured the attention of this House some one and a half years before the election. Our party spoke very often and very forcefully to the government, raising concerns about the process and as to whether we ought to divest ourselves of a nationally significant piece of property which serves millions of travelling Canadians as well as people visiting this country.
I know how frustrated we were. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Industry will tell you that we were very frustrated because we had no opportunity to discuss whether or not the concept of privatization of Pearson should even proceed. We were not given the opportunity. It was done in a very heavy-handed way by a former government. It paid the price for those kinds of actions that Canadians saw as being very cynical and having caused an awful lot of problems for politicians in general as well as the House of Commons with regard to its credibility and integrity.
The Bloc Quebecois wants to accuse us of essentially doing the same thing as the former government. Heaven forbid. The fact is that we are cancelling this contract. We will not pay compensation to lobbyists for profit. We will only pay invoices that are legitimate. They will perhaps say there are some Liberals somewhere in there that we are trying to protect.
This government before, during and after the election and up until now has made one commitment to the Canadian people. It did not fudge, hedge, or anything else.
This bill does cancel the agreement totally. The only thing left is to decide if there is any compensation to be given to the other party that signed that agreement.
I would hope that the opposition parties, as I said at the beginning of my remarks, support the government in cancelling this agreement and also recognize that no bill is ever perfect.
We agree that amendments sometimes are made. In fact the committee did report an amendment and the government side supported it. We agree. Yes, there were amendments put yesterday by both opposition parties. I tried to tell the opposition parties that transparency and accountability are built into the bill as well as built into the system.
Yes, we are all mistrusting of the system. We have been here only seven or eight months on the government side. We will have to show members and restore everyone's faith in the system. There are checks and balances in the system to ensure that only those invoices that need to be paid shall be paid and we will, as a government, be subject to the court of public opinion.
I am not sure that the public wants us to write a cheque to rid ourselves of this problem. Of course not. The minister and the Prime Minister have said that we will not pay a penny more than we have to. It was a legally signed agreement. As repugnant as it was that a former government should even do it two weeks before an election, it did it. That government did it.
Therefore we have obligations. When a government does what it is doing today by this bill, it has to consider its impact on future contracts, on the international reputation that we have as to whether or not a government can be trusted that once it enters into an agreement, it will in fact fulfil its contractual obligations. That is a worry and members should understand that.
That is why it allows the discretion in the bill to pay for the legitimate expenses. I hope as we wrap up debate on this issue that the opposition parties will understand that this government wants to get on with planning the future of Pearson airport and the aviation industry in this country.
The only way we can do that is to finally put this agreement behind us and get on with completing the negotiations. In fact, if the negotiations are not completed and this bill is proclaimed 30 days thereafter there shall be no compensation.
We hope that our friends in the other place, the Senate, do not play any games with this bill and the public interest is best served. We hope it expedites this bill as quickly as possible so that we can get on with again planning the future of Pearson.