Mr. Speaker, the hon. member referred to the job he had when the airport was established at Mirabel. You know that, in Quebec, the memory of the airport's creation is rather sad, not because it was not a good idea to set up an airport, but rather because of the way it was done-by expropriating the people living in the area.
This period has caused those now between 40 and 50 in the sovereignist movement to say there is one government too many in Canada. This is a flagrant example of the situation.
Do we have a position on this? We have had one for a number of months, and it is to tell the federal government that here is an organization deciding to transfer Mirabel flights to Dorval without public hearings on the matter and without the government taking any responsibility as tenant in the contract between itself and Aéroports de Montreal.
We made these two positions known several months ago. We ended up as the Bloc feared. We said that, if no public hearings were held, the government would end up in a terrible legal mess. We may even be just at the start of the legal mess. In the decision before us the judge cites the same arguments as the Bloc, that is, that public hearings should have been held and that the federal government should assume its responsibilities as the tenant of the Mirabel facilities.
Our position is that, from the outset, before the need for transferring flights from Mirabel to Dorval was even considered, before any decision was made in this matter, given the major economic consequences involved, there should have been public hearings. That is what the judge said. He also said that, under the current lease between the government and Aéroports de Montréal, the government has responsibilities. Just yesterday, in spite of the court ruling and perhaps because he did not have the time to take a close enough look at it, the minister maintained that the federal government had no responsibility in the matter.
If he keeps stubbornly maintaining this position and taking a shortsighted view to managing, the minister will hamper the overall development of the greater Montreal area, including the Mirabel area. The people of Mirabel can rejoice over the yesterday's ruling, because it allows them to keep their airport longer. Choices have to be made, and I think they were justified in reacting the way they did, but on the whole of the issue, we are faced with a situation where the decision may well be deferred.
We know how important it is these days to be able to speed up the decision making process. Looking at all this, sometimes I get the feeling that this is somewhat machiavellian on the part of the federal government. By not taking its responsibilities, it puts Quebec at a competitive disadvantage, compared to Toronto. Is this a deliberate choice made by the federal government? These are some of the issues that would be raised if public hearings were held.
In any case, as long as the federal government does not indicate its intention to follow up on the ruling handed down by Mr. Justice Viau, we have no idea of what it will do, but we are certainly anxious to find out.
Will the government accept the ruling? How will it deal with this crisis? As things stand, everyone in Quebec is a loser: the people in Mirabel, Dorval and Montreal, the region's economic stakeholders, and those in the tourism industry. All these people are victims of the inertia of the federal government, which, like Pontius Pilate, simply washed its hands of the matter, and now we have to live with the consequences. It is imperative that the federal government react quickly and take its responsibilities, so we can get out of this mess, which is the worst possible situation.