moved:
That, in the opinion of this House, the government should undertake a review of the Federal Department of Transport's role in the Charlotte County Ports Inc. quarry project.
Mr. Speaker, this is a continuation of debate that we have had in this House on this particular project. I think the last time we spoke in this House on this project was in December when the marine privatization bill was before this House.
I guess it would not be an overstatement for me to say that I am upset with this quarry project in the province of New Brunswick and some of the inconsistencies that have been exercised on behalf of the governments involved.
I am going to attempt to be as fair as I can to the federal government. To a large extent, the government's involvement up to this point has been marginal. I think it has been marginal for a number reasons, the biggest one being that the provincial government has never basically kept the Department of Transport abreast of what has been actually happening in that area.
To provide the House with an overview of what has been happening, the Saint Croix River is an international heritage river. It was designated a heritage river by the Government of Canada back in the early 1990s. A plan was submitted by the province of New Brunswick to ensure that this heritage river designation was in place. I was part of the process of designating that river a heritage river.
Now what we have is a group of individuals from the United States coming up with a plan to create one of the most offensive environmental undertakings that one could imagine on that river. They have basically been given a blank cheque by the province of New Brunswick to do so. Again, there has been a lot of debate in New Brunswick on this very project. In the summer months of 1997 it was front page news in all the provincial newspapers in New Brunswick for a number of weeks.
Recently I wrote a letter to the premier of New Brunswick stating some of our concerns, my concern as a member of Parliament and the concerns of others who are doing business in that area. Landowners and a group of international citizens called the Saint Croix River citizens committee have taken offence to what the government in the province of New Brunswick wants to do there.
This story goes back a number of years to when a company from Nova Scotia, related by the way to the leader of the NDP, the L.E. Shaw group of companies, a very reputable company I might add, proposed doing a similar type of business, a quarrying business on the banks of the Saint Croix River in the Bayside Ports area. The company, Shaw Industries Limited, is a very respected company. At the time, it stated that if the citizens of the area were against this type of project happening it would abandon all plans for that type of development. Mr. Ken Hardy, speaking on behalf of the company, stated publicly that it was no the way they did business. If the people in the area did not want this type of development he was not going to do it. He kept his word.
The company in question, the Shaw company, originally had to spend $250,000 to develop a plan for this quarry. It had to go through a public tendering process, a call for tenders, to come up with a plan for this. So there was a public involvement or a public tendering process so that all companies in Canada could bid on that project.
However, when the Shaw company decided not to do the deal, aside from the fact that it honoured its commitment to not do the deal if the people were against it, it also could not secure markets in the United States. This can be verified by the Shaw group. The United States aggregate market is a very tough market to break into. The company could never penetrate the U.S. market for aggregate materials. It also had the problem, if it had proceeded, that it did not have a market. However, it did not proceed because it was sensitive to the public outcry.
What we have now is a company from the New York-New Jersey waterfront entertaining doing the same thing. Lo and behold, it did not have to go through any public tendering process. It did not have to submit a proposal. It was invited to come up and take a look at the project by none other than the former minister of economic development in the province of New Brunswick, Al Lacey, obviously a former cabinet minister in the government of Frank McKenna. He was a minister at the time the Shaw group proposed doing this. He was looking for business interests. His job was to secure business interests. He was a paid lobbyist on behalf of the group out of New York and New Jersey. He went down there with a magnificent plan for these people to move into Canada and do a piece of business.
Lo and behold he was successful at bringing them into New Brunswick without having to publicly tender or submit proposals on anything. Those doors were all knocked down for the Waterman group. They simply came and said what they would do. Mr. Al Lacey was to lead their cause. Obviously they would get the type of co-operation they needed from the province of New Brunswick, and they have.
What is disturbing to the folks living along that international body of water on both sides is that the proponents lied publicly about what they want to do. I mentioned this in the House before. This is where Transport Canada, led by the former minister, had a proposal to take over, to assume ownership of that port and that quarrying facility. It was a document that the premier of the province of New Brunswick actually denied existed.
The chief spokesman for the company, Al Lacey, the paid lobbyist, a former minister of the crown in the province of New Brunswick, lied publicly. He lied to the media. He lied to business interests. He lied to me as member of Parliament on their true intentions of taking over that port. Lo and behold lies will eventually catch up with you. We know that.
A 40 page document was leaked to me indicating step by step, inch by inch, how the group would take over the port, the group out of New York and New Jersey, and owned by a man by the name of Randy Waterman. When that document surfaced they all scurried like rats trying to get away from it, but they could not. They were videotaped on national television lying through their teeth on what were their true intentions.
The government continued its sort of conspiracy of silence. There is no transparency at all in this process. It simply pursued the course it was intent on pursuing and not deviating from to make sure that this group out of New York and New Jersey, led by Mr. Waterman and represented by Mr. Al Lacey, would get their way.
They lied on their intention to take over the port. Their 40 page document amounts to nothing more than what I call economic blackmail. I will table it in the House for all to examine. They state that unless they get full and complete ownership of the port they will abandon their plan to take over the port. That amounts to economic blackmail.
The local people were absolutely outraged when that secret document surfaced, indicating that they wanted to take over the port. It did not end there. What has happened in the meantime is that they went after the provincial government. They said that maybe they would not abandon their plans to assume ownership of the port if they struck a better deal. The better deal was to give them the land. They would do the job and compete with other American interests located in other parts of North America.
They have actually achieved what I call the ultimate in economic blackmail. Now the province is entertaining selling them the lands. The lands in question are not federal lands. They would be provincial lands that would be handed over to the company for a 40 year project. In other words, the life of this project would be 40 years.
This sounds quite bizarre but it is accurate. Two weeks of mining this aggregate at the price they would be receiving for the aggregate in the United States would actually pay for the cost of the entire package of land on which they want to do the 40 year deal. That is absolutely bizarre. This is better than giving them the land. They are selling it to them at what we would consider a bargain basement price. It is a deal made in heaven for these people.
How do these people get their foot in the doors of government in the province of New Brunswick? It still has a democratic process where things like this have to be debated and talked out in a public forum. There was a complete conspiracy of silence in the province of New Brunswick.
The minister of economic development refused to provide me with information. He does not correspond with a member of Parliament representing people living in that area. A brick wall has been put up between the government of the province of New Brunswick and me and the citizens group representing citizens up and down both sides of that international water. There is something wrong in the process when that happens.
Who are these people? That is a big question. I had serious discussions with the FBI and the RCMP. There are a lot of unanswered questions about these companies as represented by Mr. Randy Waterman and owned by Mr. Randy Waterman. They are big and they are powerful. They operate out of New York and New Jersey. That should tell us something.
They basically have a cartel. They actually control the aggregate business in the east coast of the United States. It is impossible for foreign interests to import aggregate into the United States. Hence, the inability of the Shaw group to establish markets there.
We have a fellow by the name of Al Lacey. I would not consider Al to be a stupid man. He is certainly not stupid. He heard the bells and whistles and immediately said he knew a group that could do this deal. They can establish markets. They can make this thing profitable but they happen to live outside Canada. They happen to be one of those families down in the United States that have been very successful in the aggregate business.
The worst of all deals possible is taking place at the moment in the province of New Brunswick because its government does not care about transparency when it comes to business with individuals, in many cases individuals of ill repute. If we look at the legacy of the government of the province of New Brunswick in the last 10 years, a number of deals have gone flat, have gone belly up, because it had not done its homework. The FBI and other police officials in the area have suspicions about these people and what their true motives might be in Canada.
I suggested that the premier of the province of New Brunswick should undertake a full scale investigation which the citizens committee has demanded from day one. The government has been reluctant to do that. I do not think it wants to know the truth. The people in that area demand to know what is going on. They deserve full and complete transparency in that entire piece of business.
It is incumbent upon the Government of Canada, the Department of Transport and the minister to say there are a lot of unanswered questions, some of which were recently brought to their attention, that need to be complied with. As I said at the outset, I do not think the province of New Brunswick has been full and complete in the information provided to the minister and the department.