Mr. Speaker, it is with great pleasure that I rise also to express my opposition to the government's plan to offer Coast Guard services on a user fee basis. According to our information, this is not the first time the government tried to invade this field in order to raise new funds for the national treasury. We must examine carefully the content as well as the form of this proposal.
This time, the government's objective, through the Coast Guard, is to take in close to $160 million by year 2000 from users, starting, in 1996, with an amount of $20 million only for navigation aids, such as buoys and lighthouses that guide ships on the St. Lawrence River. The issues of icebreaking and dredging of the St. Lawrence River and approaches to ports are being determined. According to our information, the icebreaking plan will take form next fall.
As part of its strategy, the government asked a private firm, IBI, to study this question. As member of Parliament and associate member of the committee, I had the honour to take part in the proceedings of the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans, and I am also very pleased to speak as critic for regional development. Many witnesses said that the IBI study was a hollow sham. Yet, the study was quite voluminous, but, according to a witness, it was not worth the paper on which it was printed. This gives you an idea of the quality of the work done because it seems that it was all a bogus consultation process.
Afterwards, the government had to yield to the pressure exerted by the official opposition and call a meeting of the fisheries and oceans committee which, in turn, invited witnesses to appear before it in order to know the opinion of those we could call victims
of this government operation. Again, this was a bogus consultation process.
Many witnesses, and important ones at that, expressed their views. On the one hand, we saw the arrogance of the Coast Guard commissioner, Mr. Thomas, very self-confident, very proud to talk about the IBI study, and on the other, there was the disappointment, concern and even the anger of users who will have to foot the bill without getting any real explanation of what was going on.
It must be said that over the next three years, people who play a very important economic role, as I will explain later, will have to pay $160 million without any impact study. Some witnesses talked about the devastating effects of that policy, for example, the SODES, which is an association of many highly credible maritime stakeholders in Quebec. There is no description of the services provided to users by the Coast Guard, nonetheless the user pay principle will be applied.
They did not feel the need to demonstrate rationally, as logically as possible, as convincingly as possible, the services actually rendered to these users they want to see pay in future. As for conviction or the moral aspect of the matter are concerned, the process is extremely arbitrary, as well as extremely authoritarian, somewhat typical of the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and the Commissioner of the Coast Guard, that is for sure.
As well, there has been no demonstration of any effort whatsoever of rationalization of Coast Guard operations, because if the Coast Guard-which, if memory serves, costs $860 million and change yearly-had successfully rationalized its operations, as the users suggest, those who have seen it in operation just about everywhere in Canada, there would be less money to collect and less reason to penalize users of these undefined Coast Guard services. This is extremely shocking. It is obvious to people that the Coast Guard has not cleaned up its own act before going and setting new user fees.
All of this gives rise to what I would term some disturbing facts. For example, the problem comes from Ottawa. Ottawa needs money and has decided to find a new way to intervene to meet this need. For its purposes, it has divided the country into three major regions.
So, while the problem is exactly the same from coast to coast, the country is divided into three parts: the west, the centre-that is, the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence-and the maritimes. As it happens, Quebec is the one that gets it in the neck, because it will end up paying, with the Great Lakes, nearly 48 per cent of the $20 million at issue this year.
I have heard federalists say, for your information, that, if there is a country, there is a country. Unless Ottawa decides simply to divide up the country, to acknowledge in some way that there are differences, big ones, we are obliged to talk sovereignty. There are therefore federalists who are legitimately upset, and, we hope, shaken by the federal government's move to divide up the country into the three regions I just mentioned.
What is more, according to user estimates, the government is raising costs, plus what this policy will mean eventually, by a dollar a tonne. The Coast Guard's response to this argument is that it is not a dollar a tonne, but ten cents a tonne. This is the kind of debate that can generate a lot of anxiety since some will think that 10 cents is important, but a dollar is even more so in a field where competition is exceedingly high. According to users, this will double the cost of maritime transportation operations in the St. Lawrence, if ever the contention of users is confirmed, that is, a $1 increase.
So they caved in to the eastern and western lobbies, but especially the eastern lobby, that is, the maritimes, and decided on a fee structure that seems to be clearly in favour of Halifax as opposed to one of its competitor ports called Montreal. The port of Halifax is a port of call for big container ships whereas the port of Montreal is an unloading port. It seems that the decision to apply user fees based on the tonnage of transhipped or unloaded cargo favours Halifax, while the decision to impose user fees based on the size of vessels would have favoured neither of these two ports.
This is a rather sneaky way to favour one port over another one when both are competing against one another.
There is a disturbing fact which gives a very concrete idea of what to expect: For navigational aids, a single 25,000 tonne vessel will pay $112,000 per year. A vessel of 25,000 tonnes, $112,000 per year. Not only that, but policies are also being designed which will cost far more, in particular with respect to icebreaking operations. This gives us some idea of the scope of the problem we will soon be facing.
One wonders if this is not an effort to severely reduce the competitiveness of the ports on the St. Lawrence compared with those ports of the maritime provinces, of the east coast of the U.S., even of the whole Mississippi valley. St. Lawrence harbours are in direct competition with those harbours and if shipowners decide it is too expensive to sail through the St. Lawrence, the danger for not only the Quebec economy, but also central Canada, is that they will have missed the boat.
Aluminum plants, the whole pulp and paper industry, the oil industry, the mining industry might then be in jeopardy, together with tens of thousands of jobs related to all these sectors.
This is a major issue and the official opposition is asking for a one-year moratorium. One wonders if, in a sovereign Quebec, it
would even occur to the leaders to come up with such a scheme to hurt the economy instead of helping it develop.