Mr. Speaker, I am going to limit my remarks on the budget today to transport, which is appropriate since I am the transport critic for the Reform Party and the Reform Party being, of course, the national opposition party.
Generally transport is an area that has great potential in reducing government costs and the devolution of government services to the private sector. In this area transport is generally moving in a direction that I agree with. One item that is being changed that I particularly agree with is the privatization of air
traffic services. This is a good move, especially now that the government has more or less agreed to go to the not for profit concept, as opposed to the crown corporation concept it was initially pushing.
Airport devolution is a generally good idea although I have some concerns about skimming. When I speak of skimming, I am talking about when they take all the revenues from 26 national airports, put them into a group and apply them for the most part to their general funding. At the same time they dump on to various provinces and regions all the costs of the subsidies to smaller airports. In most cases they are much less than the revenues the government is realizing from national airports.
One big area in the recent budget is the WGTA, the grain transportation subsidies. I have always supported the concept that they could be reduced and ultimately eliminated, with the caveat that the government must deal with many items that cost producers money. These are items that do not produce revenue for the government but take money out of the pockets of producers. I speak specifically of things like rail car allocation and labour disruption.
In a document the Minister of Transport put out coinciding with the budget he explained and recognized a problem with rail car allocation. He said it was something they would look into but that they would not do anything with at this time. It cost Canadian grain producers a tremendous amount of money. It is not a cost factor for the government but it should have been dealt with in conjunction with the reduction and elimination of the WGTA.
Likewise we have labour disruptions; the shutting down of ports, particularly the port of Vancouver; and rail strikes. We had a strike in the port of Vancouver last year. The government legislated the people back to work but did nothing to deal with future problems.
We had another one this year. Again the government legislated the people back to work but did nothing about a long term solution. Immediately on the heels of the Vancouver strike this year we had a national rail strike. Again the government legislated people back to work but did nothing about a long term solution.
These are matters that cost Canadian taxpayers and citizens money but do not provide any revenues for the government. These are matters the government should not be ignoring, which has unfortunately been its method of dealing with them.
I turn to the subject of Pearson airport. It will be a great surprise to many people that I would talk about it. Pearson airport has major ramifications on this year's budget. A bit of misleading information is coming out with regard to it and to the budget.
The government is currently looking at putting in a new runway, at a cost of something in the vicinity of $150 million. On top of the cost of the runway a possible lawsuit is in the works by the council on concerned citizens. It is concerned because building the runway is in direct contradiction to the findings of the Environmental Assessment Review Panel. It is entering into a lawsuit and the government will have the cost of dealing with the action, over and above the cost of the runway if it is built. In addition we have the development contract regarding terminals 1 and 2 at Pearson airport.
At minimum it will cost about half a billion dollars in combination of cancellation costs and court costs dealing with the cancellation. Even after it is all over with we still have to rebuild terminals 1 and 2, which two years ago was to cost the private consortium $750 million. We can be assured that if the government built it at the same time it would cost more and now we are talking two years later. We are talking of a minimum in the vicinity of $1 billion for that aspect. In total we are talking about an expenditure at Pearson of some $2 billion. It is interesting that none of that money is in the budget.
Let us talk in terms of the Liberal budget. Is it good? Is it bad? Does it do enough? We have to consider what it said and what it should be saying. This covers a couple of items in the transport portfolio alone. If the same type of misleading information applies with all other departments in government, what other surprises lie ahead of us? We have not seen the full picture. Unfortunately Canadian taxpayers will not get the rest of the facts until it is too late.
The budget does not explain the true situation in Canada. It does not deal with the true problem in Canada. As a result there will be further problems ahead that have not been spoken as yet.