Mr. Speaker, I wish to express my thanks to my colleagues who spoke on the motions in Group No. 2, namely: the member for Laval-Centre, the member for Anjou-Rivières-des-Prairies, the member for Saint-Hyacinthe-Bagot and the member for Kamouraska-Rivière-du-Loup.
Why? Because those members spoke on a fairly important group of motions. I take this opportunity to say that I am somewhat concerned by the lack of interest hon. members from the other parties seem to have for this very important group of amendments on which I will speak in a moment.
Those amendments do not seem to raise much interest in Reform and Liberal ranks and this concerns me. As I said, I will explain why in a few seconds.
It seems that because these amendment motions were introduced by the official opposition they have no merit and are not interesting. Actually the reason Liberals have no interest in these amendments is that they are not the ones who had the good idea of
introducing them. This is why they oppose them and do not even bother to discuss them.
As my colleagues did this morning, I must emphasize that the Bloc Quebecois is not opposed to the principle of privatizing air navigation services. It does not oppose privatization if that will help these services to become viable to some degree.
What we are troubled by are the precedents. My colleague from Kamouraska-Rivière-du-Loup referred to the case of ADM, the acronym for Aéroports de Montréal. I do not wish to take sides in the debate on Mirabel or Dorval or on the timeliness of privatizing Mirabel or Dorval or not, but I must say that this government, on the pretence of making the industry aware of its responsibilities, uses privatization as a means to shirk its own responsibilities.
The other day we saw the minister wriggle shamefully out of answering opposition questions by saying: "That is not the responsibility of the Minister of Transport. It does not come under the authority of the federal government, but rather under the authority of the ADM. We no longer have any say in this".
It is totally unacceptable to have the government, under entirely creditable and honourable guise, trying to wriggle out, to take French leave, to avoid making a decision when one needs to be made.
Still on the subject of the ADM, we should note that this sort of privatization suffers from a certain lack of transparency. Decisions can be made without public consultation; decisions can be made without an environmental impact study. When studies are done, as was the case apparently in the ADM decision, the public does not have access to the impact studies, since these corporations are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act.
Finally, here I am at the main point of my remarks-information. Information, according to René Lévesque, means freedom. The purpose of the motions in group No. 2 is to provide better public information.
No one in this House will argue against, at least I hope they would not, the importance of airport facilities for local communities in the regions. In my riding, at Saint-Mathieu-de-Beloeil, there is a tiny regional airport, which is very important to Saint-Mathieu-de-Beloeil and of course to the neighbouring communities as well. The same is true in the ridings of my colleagues in the Bloc Quebecois and in other parties: regional airports are very important.
Given the importance of airport facilities to these local communities, it is essential we provide proper information on decisions that have been made, particularly if a decision has been made to close an airport facility. So as my colleague for Saint-Hyacinthe-Bagot rightly said a few minutes ago, we cannot count on people in the regions being necessarily informed by the dailies-and I am thinking of the people in Mont-Joli-such as the Globe and Mail or the Toronto Star . We have to be able to inform them directly through the local media.
It is not utterly silly to claim that it is important to include in this bill a clause forcing the government to inform the public, through the local and regional media, about the major impact of decisions by Nav Canada.
Obviously, it is also important to inform native bands that would be affected by Nav Canada's decisions to close airport facilities.
I will conclude by saying a few words concerning the use of the information highway to inform interested parties about Nav Canada's decisions to close airport facilities.
As an example, I will tell you about a discussion I had with the Minister of Foreign Affairs. It will not take too long. The minister told us that he wanted to consult Canadians through electronic mail. That is good, but not all our fellow citizens have access to these services yet. Therefore, other means, include the good old fashioned postal service, must also be used to consult the public.