Mr. Speaker, I hope I have enough time left to respond to the comments made by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Transport.
First, I will deal with the last part of his tirade on the Pearson airport. He refers to the Toronto Star as his constituency. We know the Liberals play to the newspapers and we now have proof, right out of the mouth of the parliamentary secretary.
He keeps talking about the fact that this is a pay-off for the Tory supporters, but in fact, by his own admission, the principal group involved at the time of signing is the Claridge group which is made up of Liberals.
As far as the settlement is concerned, we do not want a specific settlement, we want the rule of law to apply like anyone else. The Liberals cannot screw up, which is what they did with the Pearson cancellation, and then write legislation to protect their own hides.
With respect to the highway study that he mentioned, he is the person who continually says that the committee is the master of its own destiny. I believe the chair of the committee is an honourable person, but he got orders from on high to disregard the commitments he made to me.
The suggestion was made by the hon. member that I would rather be in my riding than down here doing my work. There is a parliamentary schedule. There is a schedule to be here; there is a schedule to be in the constituency. While he was dithering around doing who knows what, I was in my riding conferring with my real constituents, the taxpayers of this country, not the Toronto Star . I held 18 town hall meetings during the January recess period and the parliamentary secretary knows that.
He says that they pulled in all these wonderful people. The principal leader was Moya Greene, who came right out of the transport department. He made a mistake. I asked for a certain report and they faxed it to me. In the report which they faxed to me were handwritten notes made by Moya Greene. They goofed again.
The more the Liberals try to twist the facts, the more trouble they get into. They heard four months of testimony from witnesses and on a one day, by invitation only, round table, they brought in their own special people to manipulate this thing. They overruled four months of testimony and wrote a report based on one day.
If that is what they intended to do, why did they waste hundreds of thousands of taxpayers' dollars travelling from one end of the country to the other? Time, money and effort were expended by all those witnesses who thought they were getting democracy, when the Liberals intended to hold a one day meeting and override the whole thing.
Honour and democracy are alien words to that side of the House. Instead of buying a new red book they should buy a dictionary.