Madam Speaker, I am pleased to act as a last minute replacement for my colleague from Beaufort—Montmorency—Orléans, the erstwhile Bloc Quebecois transport critic. He would no doubt have been as pleased as I to comment on this motion by our colleague from Sydney—Victoria, which reads as follows:
That, in the opinion of this House, the government should consider the advisability of taking into account safety concerns and local economic spin-offs before proceeding with any further privatization of Marine Atlantic services between Cape Breton and Newfoundland.
I am, moreover, pleased that fate has given me the opportunity to speak on this subject this morning, since I had the pleasure as a tourist this summer to use the services of Marine Atlantic with my family. Its services are highly appropriate, highly competent, and very secure. This motion uses three terms which draw my attention: “safety”, “local economic spin-offs” and “privatization”, and I would like to speak a little on them.
When it comes to privatization, which I shall return to at the end of my speech, this must be handled with kid gloves, for if there must be privatization it must not mean a change for the worse.
When we are talking about a ferry that can accommodate over 1,300 persons, if I remember correctly, and 400 motor vehicles, an imposing ship, safety measures are self-evident. It was very very well maintained.
Failure to keep it so can lead to drama. There was such a drama in the North Sea, in the Mediterranean, with a similar ship. It was doubtless not properly maintained. There was negligence, whereas here in the maritimes the ships are well maintained.
So, from a safety standpoint, before we start talking about privatization, we should ensure that today's standards are maintained.
There is another area where caution should be exercised. I am speaking of benefits to the local economy. We can imagine that the government has taken care for some one hundred years—it was in 1889 that it took over the Port-aux-Basques to North Sydney run, and I have taken the trip between Port-aux-Basques and North Sydney and North Sydney and Argentia, a comfortable 14 hour trip—to do two things at once: provide a safe and adequate service to users and to promote regional economic development by encouraging local economic development.
If we put this service into the hands of private enterprise, we will have no guarantee in economic terms of the same interest, the same care and the same concerns or of any desire on the part of the new management to develop the local economy, which, as my colleague from Sydney—Victoria pointed out, is facing difficulties in the fishing and coal industries. As we all know, the maritimes are facing a very difficult period.
This is not the time to question a winning formula. The service is a good reliable one that provides obvious local benefits. More attention should be paid to it. When the government privatizes or jettisons a public asset, there is no guarantee that the resource will be better utilized or the service better provided.
As our transport critic told me on the phone this morning with regard to the motion, he hears more and more comments to the effect that services, maintenance or safety at the Quebec airports that were privatized—particularly in Mont-Joli, Sept-Îles and Rouyn-Noranda—may not be at the level they used to be before privatization.
We must not become dogmatic. The current thinking in the western world is that the state must delegate more and more of its traditional responsibilities to all sorts of stakeholders. Yet, common sense dictates that responsibilities in the air, marine and railway transportation sectors should be those of the state, of the community.
There is currently a belief in the western world—and the Canadian government helps promote it—that the state no longer has any business providing these services. A debate is urgently needed to challenge the idea that the private sector is the solution to all our problems. Quite the contrary.
One can see that poverty is on the rise, that there is a globalization of misery. Instead of having increasingly civilized societies, we now have two-tier societies where the very rich make up 15% of the population. As I was recently told, in Chile, for example, and in Argentina, which have public health services on a par with those in Quebec and Canada, following all these free trade policies, all these pressures to promote globalization and freer trade, if one gets sick who does not belong to the select 15% club, it seems—and I hope I am wrong—one better bring his or her own sheets to the hospital. If you are hospitalized in Chile, the more family members you have to come and feed you the better. From what I hear, the health care systems in Argentina and Chile were as good as ours until they were undermined to a point that is a disgrace to countries that call themselves civilized.
So I am very pleased to be speaking to this issue this morning, because when you have a winning formula such as Marine Atlantic ferry services, which runs perfectly well, on time and safely, why mess around? Why run the risk of turning this over to any old Tom, Dick or Harry, who will, in all likelihood, think it is alright to maximize his profit and who will perhaps take chances with government inspectors, as we see too often, and possibly endanger the lives and safety of tourists visiting this lovely area of the maritimes, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland?
We therefore readily agree with this motion. We congratulate the minister from Sydney—Victoria for presenting it and, as the member for Trois-Rivières, I can say that I view it as part of a much larger movement that we must increasingly oppose because, the official rhetoric notwithstanding, this movement is not synonymous with real progress, but rather with an erosion of quality and all too frequently a maximization of profits, which is what we are seeing too much of right now throughout the world.
When we know, and this can never be said often enough, that 358 billionaires, according to a UN—not a Social Credit, but a UN—report, control 45% of the world's wealth, we have a problem that should be debated by all parliaments without delay, and perhaps by a rejuvenated United Nations, which could arrange a true debate on the development of our economies in general.