Mr. Speaker, please allow me to start by thanking the hon. Leader of the Opposition for proposing that we have this debate this evening. I think the debate is timely. I am pleased along with my colleagues to accommodate the request. Again I thank him for his suggestion.
We will remember the winter of 1998 for a long time. Personally, I was just back from holidays when the ice storm began in eastern Ontario.
Normally, it is no big deal. After all, we are Canadians and, as mentioned earlier, ours is a wintry country. Sleet and snow are not unusual and it is nothing to get too excited about, except that, this time, it was different.
As I remember, the day after the storm started, the power went out briefly at home. The same day, the power went out at my son's place, and when my wife and I set out to help our son, we realized that the power was out in the whole area where he lives. Later in the day, the power went out in several neighbouring villages. That evening, as I was getting ready for bed, the power went out at our place too.
I was fortunate. At our place, we were out of power for only five days; at my son's, it was six days. I did say that I was fortunate. It may sound strange to those who were not affected at all in other parts of the country but, under the circumstances, being affected during only five days was almost a blessing.
Out of the 100,000 people living in my riding of Glengarry—Prescott-Russell, more than 80,000 has no power. At one point, in fact, no one did, but that was only for a few hours.
Imagine driving from Ottawa to Montreal. Basically that rural area is my constituency, just east of the city to Rigaud and from the St. Lawrence River to the Ottawa River. To drive those distances without seeing one light anywhere is very strange. It is actually a bit eerie and even scary. But perhaps that is secondary. What is more important is the fact that people did not have that which is required to work and to live to a degree in the modern society in which we function.
No sector of the economy was spared, be it transportation, communications, finance, insurance, real estate. Everything had shut down completely. Farmers were crying on the phone speaking to me when they could reach me to tell me they could not milk the cows, to tell me that they were doing their best to find ways to melt snow to give water to the animals. I am sure many of them stayed hours and hours and perhaps even more than a day without even eating or even thinking of that because they were trying to help their farm animals survive.
To see that people in rural areas and small-town Canada were caught so much off guard by this condition is indeed a frightening proposition. As I was driving from my son's house to our own during the worst of that storm, I could not help but wonder whether electricity was some sort of a Frankenstein that we had invented and that the monster was eating us.
For a while I am sure many of my constituents thought that the monster had actually won the battle. But the monster did not win the battle because Canadians came to help one another. Canadians came to the help their fellow citizens.
My own staff in my office started to work on the Monday after New Years in January and worked continuously for 19 days. My parliamentary office never closed, seven days a week. My home became a form of dispatch centre for assistance. I put my residential phone number in the newspaper here in Ottawa so that people would know that they could phone and actually speak to us. Virtually all the time either my wife, my daughter or I, in the few hours I was there, answered the phone to try to keep the resources and assistance coming to our area for the constituents.
It has been tough. I would like to take a moment to thank the prime minister. When the storm first started and I saw everything falling apart, poles falling in front of me as I drove through my riding, I realized it was no ordinary storm.
Luckily, there was a cabinet meeting the morning the power went out at my house and I was able to immediately apprise the prime minister and my cabinet colleagues of the situation in our area and to extrapolate from there. It was a storm like none I had ever seen. Of course, I did not know that conditions would worsen in the hours and days that followed.
So, the cabinet, under the direction of the prime minister, saw fit to put the armed forces on a state of alert, allowing them to get prepared in order to be available to assist people in eastern Ontario and Quebec.
At the height of the storm over three million people were without electricity. In the beginning when I heard about 1,000 military people would be coming I was very glad. I was told that possibly 100 or so would be in my constituency. Gradually some 15,900 members of the armed forces came, over 2,000 of them were in Glengarry—Prescott—Russell. There were villages in my riding where virtually the only traffic we could see were military vehicles.
That was not be surprising for two reasons. First, many of them were there to assist us and, second, they virtually had the only vehicles that could travel in any case.
They did everything. They removed wires. They milked cows. They split wood. They did all those things for all the people in my area. I thank them.
Since I have only a few minutes left, allow me, on behalf of my constituents, to thank the people who came to help us. I think of the member for Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke who called me, saying he would send truckloads of firewood to my home. The prime minister mentioned that earlier in his speech.
I think of a young man, Denis Séguin, a former resident of my riding, who now lives in Sarnia, who convinced his friends and others to gather up some firewood, load it onto six railcars and send it to my region.
I think of my close friends who decided to come and help me personally, so I could be free to try to help my constituents, since, of course, when I was in the basement of my home, I was not able to do much for others.
I think of the media people.
I pay special tribute to CFRA and, by extension, to all the others. CFRA became a form of the emergency measures organization. Perhaps I should not use the floor of the House of Commons to put a plug for a privately owned company but I will anyway. It is just the way it was. CFRA and others did a good job. We should all recognize that and I thank them.
I also congratulate those who put together a concert to be held this Sunday in Ottawa at the Corel Centre.
Finally, when we got power back in my region, we decided to give back a little that had been given us. We sent loads of firewood and food to Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu and that region. Companies such as Laurent Leblanc Limitée, Pomerleau and others from the Ottawa area lent their trucks for free. We loaded them with wood and I personally led the convoy with my ministerial car.
We went to Saint-Jean, to Saint-Luc, to Noyan, and elsewhere in Quebec in order to try to share a little of what we had received.
I wish to express my gratitude, to the people of Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, who helped each other out, as well as all the people of Canada who helped us out.
It was cold and it was dark but we knew we had the warmth of all Canadians and their enlightened spirit to cheer us up in that great moment of difficulty.