Debates of March 22nd, 1996

Pearson International Airport

[Joe Volpe, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

I am speaking the truth. This is an open place and if we do not speak the truth we are very quickly found out.

The notable achievement of this special committee is that it heard more than 130 hours of testimony given under oath by 65 witnesses.

The public following this debate may be shocked to hear these kinds of things after having heard the rhetoric from the member opposite. From witnesses from both the public and private sector, those most knowledgeable on all the issues, all of the negotiations and all of the decisions made about Pearson, that committee saw an abundance of evidence including construction management contracts, architectural and engineering service contracts, other management contracts. Shall I go on?

The inquiry revealed to the public the role of lobbyists in the Pearson airport agreement. The report of the special Senate committee on the Pearson airport agreement is a very thick volume and I recommend it for the member's reading. This is a product of extensive inquiry which examined all of the relevant players and over 10,000 pages of documents, and which addressed all the motions put before the committee. I think that is very thorough.

An inquiry has been done. It has been open. It has followed the process of judicial inquiries. It has followed the process required by an open democratic system.

Given all the time and extensive consideration already devoted to such a comprehensive inquiry, I do not understand, but maybe other members do, how a member can demand that the government be expected to use millions more in taxpayer dollars to have yet another inquiry to come to the same conclusion. Need we go through this again? The answer is clearly and absolutely no. No further review is required.

Through the entire process, the allegations with respect to wrong doing have been substantiated by evidence that has been put forward. My colleague opposite is trying to score points in this political arena where we never take a partisan side. He introduces that element in this political forum.

I should advise him that some of these allegations attack individuals whose known service in the public domain at the provincial level such as the first individual who looked at the impartial agreement. We cannot cast aspersions on people who dedicate themselves to public service. They are under constant

scrutiny. If we want to cast aspersions, let us do so outside the Chamber.

The government has gone through the entire system as is required by the taxpayers and citizens of the country. It has acted responsibly, followed all the processes and it is being held accountable. All the procedures are maintained in their integrity and the public interest is first, foremost and always safeguarded.

[Dick Harris, Reform, Prince George—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak in support of the motion put forward by the member for Kootenay West-Revelstoke.

What we have here will undoubtedly go on for a while and will probably be viewed like a television mini-series by the time we get through. It has all the elements. It has intrigue, influence peddling, patronage and unholy relationships between very strange bedfellows and their respective party friends, the Liberals and the Tories. This could win an Oscar by the time we are through.

When this story is finished I do not think there is an author in the world who could write anything as intriguing that would carry all the elements that people look for as entertainment.

Unfortunately this is not something the Canadian people look on as entertaining, and it should not be something the Liberals and the former government smile smugly about, thinking all the bases are covered and that this will not come out into the open. It will. Something as unholy as the relationship in the Pearson Airport deal cannot be covered up forever. It will come up.

I am familiar with this issue, having sat for a number of months on the transport committee. I appreciate the opportunity to contribute to the debate and probably expand on the truths coming from this side of the House so that the Canadian people following the debate in the media and on television will get a real grasp on what actually has happened and what will happen around the Pearson airport deal.

We are talking about something the Liberals talked about prior to the election. The Liberals actually put this in their red book. They called for openness and transparency in the operation of government. How good they said it would be to get a Liberal government that would operate in an open and transparent manner, something that has been missing in all other governments that were not Liberal.

Quite frankly, we think that is a good idea. That is why the member for Kootenay West-Revelstoke has put forward a motion that calls on the government to deal with the Pearson airport deal, this whole mess, by establishing an impartial public judicial inquiry to look at all the events surrounding this apparently clandestine deal.

My hon. friend is asking for nothing different from what the Liberals promised in their campaign, openness and transparency and truth. This type of inquiry is needed when we consider how the matter has been handled up to now by the government, the Senate and the committees. A lot of time and money was wasted on the issue. To this date we are no closer to the truth than we were before this whole thing started.

The Liberals blame the Tories, which is not surprising. The Tories blame the Liberals, which is not surprising. I am surprised that both of them do not blame the Reformers and we were not even here yet. Make no mistake, Reformers are here now and the government has to deal with Reformers when it comes to openness, transparency and truth. There will be no more getting away with the stuff that the Liberals and their Tory friends have been doing for decades.

As I indicated, if the truth were known it would clearly show, not to the surprise of too many people, that the Liberals and Tories have been, still are and will continue to be in bed with each other until maybe we are no longer a country. Hopefully that will never happen, although the way the Liberals are treating the Bloc and the relationship developing between them, we never know what can happen.

This entire affair has been under the control of the government since the start. If there was ever a time to take an impartial look, an open look, a transparent look, a look where the criteria is truth, the time is now.

As members know, the previous Tory government signed a deal with a private sector consortium to take over Pearson International Airport. What upset the Liberals was the fact that this contract was signed during the 1993 election campaign. Their spin doctors and their strategists probably got them together and said: "You might lose some votes around the Toronto area if this thing gets signed by the Tories, so what can we do to turn this thing around? We will call it a lousy deal and we will threaten to cancel it". They have the money to get good spin doctors. They did put a different spin on it. They made the contract an election issue. They promised to scrap it should they be elected.

This is surprising. It seems to me they made a similar promise about the GST before the election. Am I mistaken that they were going to scrap the GST?

Nevertheless the airport deal was scrapped. In order to justify the termination of this project the government thought after it was done that perhaps some people were wondering about it. They thought they had better bring someone in to back them up, someone who would speak the truth, who would be impartial, who would be open, who would show transparency and truth, someone people could trust. They picked Robert Nixon, Liberal Robert Nixon.

Is it true that this Mr. Nixon was a Liberal member? He could not have been a Liberal member. There are allegations that he was a Liberal bagman. Could that be true? There are allegations that he had some very strong ties to the Liberal Party. Let us not forget where he is now. He could not be the CEO of some crown corporation that is controlled by the Liberal government? Could the recent round of ministerial appointments be in any way affected by the fact that Mr. Nixon was a long time friend of this Liberal government? Perish the thought.

The Liberals have said and of course everyone must believe them-

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, a point of order. I apologize for not being very familiar with the rules but this particular line is getting very close to casting aspersions upon an hon. member of this House and I think improperly.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Kilger)]

I give my assurance to the entire House that I am listening to the debate with great attention. Respectfully the member does not have a point of order. He is engaging in debate.

[Dick Harris, Reform, Prince George—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I was asking questions that had been raised.

Mr. Nixon reported back to the Liberals in 30 days-that was quick work-with a report that argued in favour of terminating the contracts. Were we really surprised? This was because of undue influence peddling among the chief players in the consortium and the Tory government. Can we be surprised about that?

I will not stand here and deny that I do not have any doubt that the previous Tory government may have ventured into patronage payoffs to friends of the party. Mr. Nixon had this in his report which took only 30 days and nevertheless cost $82,000. I am sorry, he got a bonus. After his bill was paid, he was then appointed as chairman of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited. I missed that earlier.

He issued an 11-page report which works out to $7,000 per page-

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Kilger)]

Order. I regret interrupting but member's interventions are limited to 10 minutes and I must resume debate. The hon. member for Mississauga South.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to participate in the debate on Motion No. 167 which proposes the government strike an impartial inquiry into the process of awarding and cancelling the 1993 Pearson airport redevelopment contract.

I have every sympathy for the hon. member's idea of an impartial inquiry. I am all for openness and impartiality. However, I am also in favour of protecting the Canadian taxpayer from a terrible waste of money. The motion would inflict this waste on the Canadian taxpayer because the cancellation of the Pearson airport contract has already been reviewed. It has been reviewed by the Senate and now it is being reviewed by the general division of the Ontario Court of Justice.

First I will discuss the Senate inquiry. The issue of the awarding and cancellation of the Pearson airport redevelopment contract was subject to a very lengthy inquiry by a special committee of the Senate. The special Senate committee was created for the express purpose of looking into all aspects related to policies and negotiations which led to the conclusion of the Pearson airport redevelopment contract, as well as the circumstances which led to its cancellation.

The committee was given the power to compel witnesses to appear under oath and to produce documents. The special committee heard more than 130 hours of testimony given by more than 65 witnesses, including all of the main players in this matter. Among the witnesses to appear were interveners from the private sector involved in the redevelopment project as well as high ranking civil servants representing the government. The witnesses who were called and who appeared were the people who were most aware of the stakes, the negotiations and the decisions surrounding the contracts. Their testimony was given in a very public manner with ample media coverage.

The inquiry resulted in the facts coming to light in a very detailed manner. The volume of documents alone provides evidence of the thoroughness of the review conducted. In order to assist the inquiry, the government reviewed hundreds of thousands of Department of Transport documents. It organized and shipped roomfuls of these documents to the Senate committee. I understand those documents are available to the public. The hon. member is perfectly free to visit that document room and review each and every one of those documents if he so wishes.

After such extensive consideration of the awarding and cancellation of the redevelopment contract, it would appear to me to be a waste of time and money for another inquiry to be called to look into the same issue. The process was very open and public and Canadians are now well aware of the main elements of the awarding and cancellation of that contract. To contend that another inquiry would somehow be beneficial to Canadians is to say the least misleading. Furthermore such an exercise would be a waste of precious tax dollars at a time when fiscal responsibility is the order of the day.

In the same breath with which the Reform Party is calling us for cutting spending, it is again also calling for the government to take steps which would involve the irresponsible spending of precious dollars in an inquiry into an issue which has already been the subject of very extensive and public inquiry. This is difficult to understand, irresponsible, and I stress, another clear indication that

the Reform Party is out of touch with what is most important to the Canadian people.

Let me turn to the other important review that the hon. member appears to have forgotten in presenting this motion to the House. The crown and the T-I, T-II partnership are currently engaged in litigation in the Ontario Court of Justice, general division. In short, the issues raised by this motion are already the subject of court proceedings. Why would the government duplicate that court process with a separate, expensive judicial inquiry? Surely a judicial inquiry is completely redundant to the process that is presently under way.

I would like to review very briefly what is at stake in the ongoing litigation. Hon. members opposite should know that the damages, if any, to the partnership will be very thoroughly reviewed by the court. The partnership originally informed the judge that it intended to present over 50 days of testimony to her. That is 50 days of examination by the partnership's lawyers, 50 days of detailed information by expert witnesses and others on the ins and outs of the Pearson agreement. Those 50 days do not even include the cross-examination by the crown's lawyers.

Now that the court has begun its hearings it is clear to everyone that those hearings are going to stretch well into the summer and likely into the fall. The first witness for the T-I, T-II partnership testified for over 10 days before the crown's lawyers even had a chance to cross-examine. Many other witnesses will be put through a similar process by the lawyers. Surely the hon. member does not really intend to duplicate that process.

Once the partnership has submitted its case, the crown will put its case to the judge. The Department of Justice has its own team of expert witnesses who will testify in open court. Those witnesses will also be cross-examined in detail by the lawyers for the T-I, T-II partnership. Then after all the examinations and cross-examinations, the lawyers on both sides will make weeks of closing arguments on the evidence and on the law.

The hon. member opposite surely cannot be seriously asking that we duplicate this process on the backs of the Canadian taxpayers.

In summary, the hon. member's motion is asking Canadians to pay for yet another expensive inquiry into the Pearson airport transaction. The Senate has conducted an extensive and expensive public inquiry already. The Ontario Court of Justice, general division, is currently reviewing the contracts in detail. These issues have already been very thoroughly reviewed.

Therefore, this House should conclude that the review proposed by this motion is in fact redundant. The taxpayers of Canada should not be asked to spend any more money on yet another review.

In the last moments that I have in the time allotted to me I want to comment on the last speaker's presentation to the House. I can tell you as a member of Parliament I was quite disturbed by the references to a member sitting in this place by casting aspersions on the minister of revenue's personal integrity and ability to do the job.

As a seatmate of that person over the last two years, and having participated with that member in the finance committee and in other matters to do with this honourable place, I can tell you I know of no finer, capable minister of revenue.

[Ian McClelland, Reform, Edmonton Southwest, AB]

Mr. Speaker, a point of order. I listened intently to the speech previous to the one of the hon. member. I did not detect the slightest reference to the present minister of revenue.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Cabinet appointments.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Kilger)]

Respectfully I would rule that the member for Edmonton Southwest does not have a point of order. It is a matter of debate.

Let me take the occasion, as members from both sides of the House have intervened, to remind hon. members to be judicious with their our words.

[Ian McClelland, Reform, Edmonton Southwest, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I have just a few words I would like to have on the record.

My experience in the House with the Minister of National Revenue would reflect the same as the member who just spoke: a very capable and a very hardworking member. I do not think we should leave on record the thought that there is any aspersion cast on that particular minister.

Having said that, there is aspersion all around. There is a saying that if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck in so far as it quacks, if you find it in your water and you see it in a group of other ducks, the chances are it may well be a duck. That is the underlying principle this motion tends to speak to.

We know full well, and those who have been in politics understand, that it is possible to promise much during an election campaign and deliver little or nothing after the election. The important thing is getting elected. Once you have been elected and if you have power then, as members opposite and the government have so ably shown in the distasteful handling of the GST promise, you can promise one thing and then do quite another and claim all kinds of reasons for doing this.

In the case of the Pearson airport deal, a deal was launched for well over a year. Whether we liked it or not, there were people involved from both political parties, the Liberals and the Tories, who had in good conscience come together to take over the Pearson airport.

This deal was signed by a Conservative Prime Minister. There are those around who feel that signing it during an election campaign, which I submit was very poor timing although the deal had been concluded by Treasury Board officials well before the election was called, did not show good judgment. In any event, it did become a political football during the election campaign.

During the campaign, the Liberals decided they would cancel the deal. This points out one of the weaknesses in the political process in our country. If someone of high enough stature within any political party, including our political party, but in the political world says something and then instead of saying: "Whoops, maybe I should not have said that", or: "Whoops, I was wrong", all the king's horses and all the king's men are rallied to support whatever position the person in power might have presented. Whether that position was right or wrong, good or bad, whether it was wise or just ill-tempered, it always seems that we have to salute the flag. No matter what flag is on the pole when we go by it we salute it. This is the genesis of the whole Pearson airport problem.

During the thrust of the election debate, because of the perception that this was an ill-timed move by the Conservatives to perhaps reward their friends before their government fell, the Liberals during the heat of the campaign said that they would cancel the Pearson airport deal. It was a campaign promise just like: "We will scrap, abolish, get rid of the GST".

Had the Liberals opposite worked with the same dispatch to get rid of the GST, there would be rejoicing in the land. But they did not. What they did do was work with dispatch but without much reason to cancel the Pearson airport deal. Why? Pourquoi? Because it was perceived to be a sweetheart deal that would favour some of the Tories that were part of it. That is the political reality of the situation.

As it turns out, this whole deal starts to unravel. After it was cancelled, and after the people who were negatively impacted were able to prove that they had gone into a deal with the Government of Canada in good faith, the Government of Canada in order to save any semblance of face or any semblance of honesty to ensure that the Government of Canada's word was its bond, had to buy its way out.

Now we have a situation where the taxpayers of Canada have to cough up something like half a billion dollars or $800 million because someone, probably the Prime Minister and those on the Liberal side, made an ill-timed, ill-tempered campaign promise. He should have said: "We will review it carefully and if it turns out that it is wrong, we will cancel it". He did not. He said: "We are going to cancel it". Eight hundred million dollars later we have no change in the airport, we have no new airport. It is the busiest airport in the country and nothing is happening.

This motion and the situation represented by the Pearson airport deal is perhaps a lesson to all of us in politics. Our fiduciary responsibility is not to ourselves, it is not to the parties that we represent, it is to the people whom we represent. It is to the individual citizens of Canada whether they voted for us or not.

We are charged with the responsibility of using our best efforts to do the right thing for the right reason at the right time. We need to put politics behind us and put principle ahead of us. That is what this issue is all about: politics before principle. In my opinion, we should be making sure that the foundation of everything we do is based on principle and not politics.

[Don Boudria, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to participate in this debate.

[Jim Gouk, Reform, Kootenay West—Revelstoke, BC]

Oh no, not the red book.

[Myron Thompson, Reform, Wild Rose, AB]

Put it down, put it down.

[Don Boudria, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

I hear a few cat calls from across the way. I cannot understand why I would get Reform MPs so agitated. That being said, I want to assure my colleagues that I do not intend to agitate them any more than is absolutely necessary.

The motion before us today proposes that the government establish an inquiry into the process of awarding the Pearson airport contract, an award that occurred under the previous Tory government.

I have had some opportunity to deal with the issue of judicial inquiries. I would like all Canadians to understand the following.

The commission of inquiry into the Sinclair Stevens affair which I think was quite necessary was not exactly free. It cost the taxpayers of Canada millions of dollars. The commission of inquiry into reproductive technology I believe cost the taxpayers of Canada $97 million-

[Ian McClelland, Reform, Edmonton Southwest, AB]

What did it happen to do? It happened to get the Liberals elected. And you would put a price on integrity.

[Don Boudria, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

The hon. member across asked whether I would put a pricetag on integrity. No, because the integrity is already there, it is not necessary to put a pricetag on it. The integrity is there. That is not the issue.

The issue is whether in addition to the inquiries that have already been held we need to waste taxpayers' dollars so that we can please the hon. member across the way. For months and months he was asking questions here in the House, questions that the lobbyists for the Pearson airport project just loved. They were applauding all over the place. They were breaking open the bottles of champagne

after listening to the hon. member from Kootenay West asking all those questions. The lobbyists loved him.

I was not elected to please those lobbyists. The hon. member across the way is quite free to love lobbyists. However, when we on this side of the House were elected during the 1993 election-

[Jim Gouk, Reform, Kootenay West—Revelstoke, BC]

It was a mistake.

[Don Boudria, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

No, the people of Canada when exercising their democratic rights do not make mistakes. I have more respect for them than that. Notwithstanding what the Reform Party just said, that the people of Canada made a mistake in electing the present government, I do not think they did. Had they elected the people across the way, even though I would not have particularly cherished that proposition, I would not have called that a mistake either.

That would be disrespectful of my constituents and I do not intend to do that. I do not intend to leave a remark like that on the floor of the House of Commons without responding to it. I am sure on second thought the hon. member will want to withdraw that remark.

Let us get back to the issue at hand.

The issue before us is as follows. A contract was signed by the previous government at a most inappropriate time-a few days before an election, which it knew it would lose. This contract was particularly rewarding-juicy even-for those who stood to benefit from it.

When we came to power, we did what the Prime Minister had promised we would: we set up a commission of inquiry headed by Mr. Nixon, a very distinguished Canadian, a former minister of finance in Ontario, the son of a former premier of Ontario. I would add, without fear of contradiction, that Mr. Nixon is probably Ontario's most respected citizen.

Mr. Nixon conducted the inquiry and concluded that the Pearson contract was particularly generous to those who had signed it and not so to Canadian taxpayers.

The government therefore took the necessary measures and proposed the bill before this House. The House passed it and sent it to the other place, which chose not to pass it. They will get to it later, no doubt, but in the meantime the House, the Prime Minister and all of us on this side of the House did what had to be done for Canadian taxpayers, that is to say, we cancelled this contract. I think that that was the right decision.

Now, the hon. member across the way, who for months has been siding with the lobbyists, would like another inquiry. One has to ask oneself what is the reason for this inquiry, which is being requested by someone who is sympathetic to the lobbyists, someone who kept telling us for months that the contract, which had already been signed, the lucrative contract which benefited the companies in question, should go ahead.

Why did he want this contract to go ahead? I do not know. Today he wants a commission of inquiry, he wants to spend more of the taxpayers' money, on top of the money that would have been squandered if we had allowed the airport contract to go ahead. No, Mr. Speaker, I myself am not ready, in any case, to launch into something like that, which would waste perhaps $100 million of the taxpayers' money, when we already know that the people of Canada did not want the Pearson contract. The people of Canada elected us to office, and one of the things they asked us to do was to examine it. We did so, we cancelled it, and we are proud to have done so. Now we must see to it that the people in the other place respect the wish of Canadians and of parliamentarians in this House.

Let us leave all this behind and move on with an offer of good government for the people of Canada.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Kilger)]

The time provided for the consideration of Private Members' Business has now expired. The order is dropped from the Order Paper.

It being 2.30 p.m., the House stands adjourned until next Monday at 11 a.m., pursuant to Standing Order 24.

(The House adjourned at 2.30 p.m.)