Mr. Speaker, I understand that the Liberals may not have as much support in caucus for this motion as they might like us to believe. I am sure being good members of the old style party of the past that they will vote the party line as they are told. I understand that they cannot find anyone else to speak to this debate. I am really sad if that is the case because I have some questions I would like to ask and have answered here today. We will have to make of the process what we can.
This whole business of Bill C-22 and the Pearson development contract was a very questionable process at best. We question the type of lobbying that was done, the allegation at least that there was an excessive amount, the close links that those lobbyists had with the Prime Minister's Office and a lot of the actions that the government itself took, the short duration, using one of the bidders to provide a lot of the parameters for the bid in the first place, the way it was signed at the last minute when it was known that the Tory government was on its way out. It was a very questionable deal. There is no argument on that at all.
We have a backroom deal. One of the problems is the government is offering us a backroom solution to this problem. That is not acceptable.
We have not heard a single piece of evidence stating specifically what improper, illegal action was taken by the bidder in this process. That is what we are trying to get to the bottom of.
My colleague in the Bloc tried to get to the bottom of that. We tried to get witnesses in and had very little luck with it, either co-operation from the witnesses or for that matter co-operation from the government in subpoenaing those witnesses.
On the other hand, it is said that during the time this was signed the leader of the Liberal Party said that if he got in this deal would be cancelled. That is not what he said. I want to clarify that. He stated that he would hold an independent public inquiry into this entire process.
I have talked to the principals involved in this consortium. They said that did not hold any fear for them. They welcome a public inquiry into this. They will open their books to anyone, as they did when this so-called public inquiry took place. They said the have nothing to fear, they have done nothing wrong.
What happened with our independent public inquiry? The government hired Mr. Robert Nixon. Is it really an inquiry when from start to finish in finished report the whole thing took 20 days? It took place largely behind closed doors. We were not able to suggest who he might talk to. Several of the people the industry thought would be the obvious people for Mr. Nixon to talk to did not get called in. There was no opportunity to cross examine the evidence that was put in. Whether or not it was a fair inquiry or a public inquiry does not seem to be answered.
To decide whether the inquiry was independent we have to look at who Mr. Nixon is. Mr. Nixon is the former leader of the Ontario Liberal Party. Mr. Nixon was the chairman of the 1987 Liberal task force on Pearson Airport. Mr. Nixon is the father of a sitting Liberal member. Immediately after he put in his report in 30 days, Mr. Nixon was named as chairman of the atomic energy commission. Independent?-I hardly think so.
There is another allegation. I think it is fair to bring the allegations into this House because all we have heard about this contract are allegations. In Mr. Nixon's so-called independent public inquiry there was no evidence. There were only allegations of possible improprieties, of possible wrongdoing. There was not one shred of hard evidence brought forward by Mr. Nixon.
The allegation that is floating in industry right now from many sources is that there are two Nixon reports, one Mr. Nixon actually wrote and one that was written for him and actually submitted. Do I have proof of this?-no, I do not, any more than the proof we have seen of the wrongdoings by the Pearson consortium in this whole deal. Allegations are all we have seen.
Then the Standing Committee on Transport decided it would hold hearings and we would have a chance to air all this out and find out what went wrong. As my colleague in the Bloc stated, many people were asked to come before the committee but very few of them showed up. This did not help the case of the consortium.
I was not very pleased that a lot of these people who claimed that they were hard done by did not come forward to defend themselves. We also did not get very much co-operation from the Liberal government in trying to ensure that we got those people in.
There were a couple of other interesting events. Aside from the people we asked who did not come there were several principals who asked specifically to come to the hearing and were denied. These were people like William Pearson, the president of Agra Engineering, George Ploder, president of Bracknell Corporation, and Scott McMasters, president North America, of Allders International Canada. One of the principal investors in this whole contract was denied the right to come before the committee. Why is the government trying to hide what truly happened in this whole process?
The topic of the return on investment being excessive has been brought up, while we have heard figures that are all over the scale.
The government was first alleging 18.5 per cent. Today we heard some figures going up to 28 per cent. The reality is this was examined by a firm I think the House would agree is credible. I am so overwhelmed by some of the stuff the government has done that I am at a loss for words on some of this. The firm I am talking about is Price Waterhouse. I do not think anybody here is going to question the integrity of Price Waterhouse. It said 14 per cent return.
It is really interesting that the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce was one of the tentative investors in this. It invested at what looked like a 18.5 per cent return on that investment. When it dropped to 14 per cent, which is exactly what Price Waterhouse says it was, CIBC pulled out because it was not a good enough return for the risk involved in this type of investment. Maybe the government wants to suggest that CIBC is not credible, I do not know. It has not answered that.
Included in this particular bill is the fact that there should be no compensation for lobbying fees. If there was something illegal about the way this corporation lobbied the government then certainly it should not get compensation for any illegal activity whatsoever, no matter what.
If the lobbying was legal according to the government and we like many others do not like the fact that there is lobbying, then until such time that the rules are changed it is the same as somebody driving down the street at 90 kilometres an hour in a 90 kilometre zone and someone pulls out from a side street in front of them and gets hit; an investigation after deciding that 90 kilometres is too fast on that street. You do not charge the person who was doing 90 kilometres because he was doing it in accordance with the law, even if it was too fast for that street. That was not his fault. You change the speed limit but you do not do it retroactively. That is what the government is looking at in this particular case.
It talks of third party contract liability. It is going to allow a few dollars to compensate the principles in this for third party contract liability. Third parties do not have a contract with the government. They have a contract with the Pearson consortium. They can sue in court for whatever amount they care to sue for. It could well exceed $30 million figure the minister threw out here today and there is absolutely no way for the principals in this to pay it. They have that much money out themselves, whether it is by regular and proper activities or whether it is some proper activity, notwithstanding they have already spent in excess of that. Now all of these third parties are supposed to be included in the settlement of $30 million. It may or may not be appropriate. We have not seen the figures.
There is an ongoing problem with terminal 1 and terminal 2 and the government has not told us what its alternative to this contract is. I tried to find that out from the minister today in Question Period. We did not get an answer, which of course surprises me. It is Question Period, not answer period. That seems to be a very common thing, we do not get answers from the government to our questions.
This is something that should be brought out if we are going to deal properly with this entire business evolving around the Pearson airport.
We are looking for something that is very open, very public and very honest. The government is looking to make a secret compensation deal behind closed doors. The minister was asked when he came before the standing committee if he would make this process visible.
I proposed an amendment both at committee and at third reading here in the House to say we would support this bill if instead of hiring another independent person linked to the government who was going to collect all these claims from the consortium, the minister could decide whether he was going to pay, who he was going to pay and how much he was going to pay them. We asked if he will make these figures public, if we will be privy to these figures and the process used to get to them. His answer was about as vague as it was here today dealing with T1 and T2.
He said they might be able to release some of the figures, but they are not sure because cabinet is involved. The minute we involve cabinet we could wrap the figures up for 20 years and know absolutely nothing about what went on. Under those circumstances there is no way to ensure fairness has taken place.
Today in his address the minister said that the threat of litigation was holding up a new solution. No, it is not. We can have all the solutions in the world telling us what to do. There is absolutely nothing that is holding up some alternative solution to the Pearson airport problem with terminal 1 and terminal 2. All the minister has to do is agree with what is being proposed in the House back from the other place. The contract will be cancelled; it will be over. The fact that litigation is going on in court will not hold up new solutions.
We are looking for a court review of the entire process. That was not our solution; that was not what we desired. We wanted it done in the House through the Standing Committee on Transport where the entire process could be brought forth.
One of the risks that actually happens if it goes to court is that the government could end up reaching a settlement and we would never know the true story about what happened in the Pearson bid process. That is not something we desire.
To turn around at this point and simply close the door, to let the minister decide he will pay what he wants and there will be no recourse and no argument, the public will never find out who was at fault in the process.
Was it the people who bid? Was it the Tory government and the way it was done? Or, do the Liberals have a large part in some of the problems that went on here? As it turns out they talk about the Tory cronies coming to the trough, but in the later stages of the proposal there were as many, if not more, Liberals involved in both the consortium and the lobbying. Is that what the government is really trying to hide?
The salvage value of the work being done has not been answered. We want to know what the government has for an alternative process to deal with the problem at Pearson. All kinds of money have been spent on plans, drawings, engineering, passenger load surveys, negotiations with users and tentative contracts that could still be honoured by a new contractor. There is a tremendous value in that, but until we know what it is we do not know what compensation the government should pay out for those things specifically and what the Canadian taxpayer will be able to recoup through the process.
The minister suggested that taxpayers are faced with cuts and therefore we should not consider going into court and allowing the contractors from Pearson to get a large settlement. Is that not interesting? Does that not send a wonderful message out to the business community?
It says that the Liberal government is in trouble with its overspending. The Liberal government has to make some cuts somewhere. It does not particularly care if they are fair or normal as long as they will save a lot of money and as long as someone else can be blamed. That is where some of these cuts will come from.
I do not want to see money wasted by the government any more than anyone else other than probably the government. We bring forward financially responsible proposals and the government seems to want to waste money. It is strange that it would suddenly turn around and want to be financially responsible. It is not proposing financial responsibility.
The matter has to go back to the courts. The courts will decide what went wrong in the process. They will discover whether there was any illegal or improper conduct on the part of anyone involved in the process and they will set the compensation accordingly.
If there was something wrong with the way the consortium lobbied the government it will be identified. The principals will not be compensated for illegal, improper type conduct. If they conducted themselves properly, just because we do not happen to like the way the rules work we cannot punish private enterprise for following the rules of the government. If that happens it sends out a message that no one should do business with the government, and that is not the kind of message we want to send out.
As far as what is going to happen to the bill, the Liberal government has an absolute dictatorship for the next four years. Obviously it can pass anything it wants as long as it can keep its backbenches in order. So far it has been able to do that. We do not know how long it will be able to maintain that, but for now at least it has managed to keep its members voting the way they are told. We have to suppose that it will go back to the other place.
How are we going to deal with it? I am going to meet with the Senate. It is very clear we want a triple E Senate, but as long as we have a Senate there has to be some function for it. If it provides the chamber of sober second thought, which is the function of the Senate, we will work with what we have to work with until such time as we can improve it. We will try to find a solution or an alternative way to bring the matter back to the House yet again until the government deals fairly and properly with the whole matter.
We will not support the government's motion.