Mr. Speaker, why is this motion being put forward today? Why waste the time of this House again when we have already wasted two consecutive days this week? The motion reads as follows:
That this House condemn the government for its neglect of Labrador, and for refusing to resolve the injustice of the Churchill Falls Hydro Contract-
And so on. The motion talks about injustice. But as far as I am concerned, the Reformers do not know the meaning of the word "injustice". In a moment, I will give them a brief history of these contracts which, as my hon. colleague from Newfoundland said earlier, were entered into in good faith.
Why is this motion before the House today? It is a matter of political expediency for the Reform Party, and that is cheap. You all know as well as I do that a number of byelections are coming up. Had they not been motivated by these byelections, I hope that they would have chosen a different topic for this opposition day.
You know that the unemployed are worried. In my riding, 5,000 of the 6,500 residents of a small town took to the streets. Not all demonstrators were from Amqui of course. Some of them came from outside of town to show support.
We are going to debate this motion here, while jobless people are in the street. Nice doing. Even at the political level, I am sure that putting this motion before the House and condemning this government will not do much to help the people of Labrador. When I first came to this House, two years or two and a half years ago, it thought that the Liberal government was extremely centralizing and was under the impression that the Reform Party was a tad more understanding toward the provinces.
Today, I realize that the Reformers are worse than the Liberals. They are in fact asking the government to meddle in the provinces' affairs on the pretext of resolving an injustice. I should remind the hon. member from the Reform Party that his party's position is to
the effect that the provinces should enter into agreements between themselves and increase interprovincial trade as much as possible.
Here is what a document, released by that party in January 1996, says: The Reform Party's vision of a new Confederation is that of a Canada in full expansion, that of a stronger and more creative country-how nice-which is as rich, as prosperous and as varied as our land. Our vision rejects the overcentralization of powers in the hands of a few, while insisting on the numerous benefits of a more equitable distribution of powers everywhere in the country and to the provinces.
Does the hon. member not agree with his party's proposals? Is he telling us that his party's vision is only for election purposes, and that if the Reform Party ever becomes the government, which would be a tragedy, it would be much more centralizing than the current government? And Heaven knows that the government opposite is very centralizing. Imagine the worst.
I would like to give a brief historical outline. I could go back to George V, but I will start in 1963. At that time, Hydro-Quebec said that it was prepared to buy all the electric power produced at Churchill Falls, provided it could sell its surplus to Ontario.
Negotiations got under way in 1963, but the parties could not agree on production costs and on a price per kilowatt-hour. Three years later, in 1966, Hydro-Quebec again offered to buy the energy produced at Churchill Falls and, this time, accepted to pay the asking price.
As you can see, the contracts were not entered into lightly. It took three years of negotiating before finally reaching an agreement, in 1966. Daniel Johnson senior was somewhat reluctant to sign the deal, and rightly so, because he feared that the agreement might be interpreted as a tacit approval of a 1927 Privy Council decision regarding the border between Quebec and Newfoundland, following which Labrador became part of Newfoundland. You are all aware of that dispute.
Finally, on October 30, 1966, Johnson endorsed the Hydro-Quebec proposal, taking pains to make it clear his authorization was not of a Newfoundland-Quebec agreement but rather of one between Hydro-Quebec and the Churchill Falls and Labrador Co., alias CFLCO.
Six years after negotiations began, on March 12, 1969, the contract was signed, for the term that has just been referred to: 65 years. It stipulated that Hydro-Quebec would receive 5,225 megawatts from Churchill Falls. Another 300 of the megawatts produced at the Falls would be reserved for the Newfoundland companies.
The contract was not a one way negotiation; the two parties held discussions for years and this was the conclusion they both reached. In exchange, Hydro-Quebec accepted the bulk of the financial risks associated with the project, assuming a portion of the eventual expenditure outlay. It also contributed its technology in the area of high voltage transmission lines. At that time, this was what Newfoundland needed. We should note that the Smallwood government of Newfoundland approved and signed the contract. It bears the signature of the premier himself.
In 1974, Newfoundland nationalized CFLCO and, in 1984, as has been said, the Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision-which is rather rare-in favour of Quebec, rejected Newfoundland's 1980 request to break the contract between CFLCO and Hydro-Quebec. In 1988, another Supreme Court decision confirmed the primacy of the contract signed in 1969.
The Reform Party has a lot of nerve terming this an injustice. The contract was the result of years of negotiations, and both parties were satisfied with its terms, as well they should. My hon. colleague should keep in mind that all of the provinces in this country sign trade agreements and have met on several occasions recently to try to lessen internal trade barriers.
Increasingly there are agreements with Ontario, with New Brunswick, with the Maritimes, that do not involve the federal government. We want to see more of this. It is far easier for provinces to reach agreements between themselves than with the federal government. This is why we are anxious for sovereignty, so that we can negotiate with Canada as well, for that will lead to agreements and to our being heeded more than in the past.
It is not up to the federal parliament to dictate the behaviour of these two provinces in an area that comes under provincial jurisdiction exclusively according to the British North America Act. The government's intereference in an agreement reached between two provinces strikes me as totally unacceptable. I hope the government shares my view.
My colleagues from the Reform Party, who don the garb of ardent defenders of federalism for a day, should understand that provincial relations is a matter for the provinces. I am still surprised that my colleague has tabled this motion in the House.
The members of the Reform Party are always calling for decentralization and returning matters to the provinces, and yet, today, they are playing petty, second rate politics with this motion. They think they will earn votes in Labrador by defending the people there and claiming an injustice has been done.
In other words, we Quebecers are penalizing the people of Labrador, because a contract was properly signed. Even the Supreme Court says this contract is valid and meets the required standards, and must therefore be adhered to.
I would like to ask the Reform Party to withdraw the word "injustice", because it is not injustice that Quebec is creating. We even have agreements with Newfoundland on a number of matters. We have teachers working in Newfoundland, and relations are excellent.
Certainly, the going gets a bit rougher when its premier, in his capacity as representative of all the people of Newfoundland, told us that the five little conditions we were looking for in the Meech Lake accord were not acceptable. At that point, on some issues it really hurt and it hurt a lot.
However, as far as the contract is concerned, it was signed by two firms, not the government, and it is valid. There is no injustice, and it takes a lot of nerve to call the contract unjust.