Mr. Speaker, just over a month ago, on February 4, I stood in this House and asked the Prime Minister to explain a document that had come into my possession that detailed a government plan to shut down the Cape Breton Development Corporation.
This plan, stamped “secret” on every page, included a precise chronology for the privatization of Devco. Then, in the likely event that privatization would be unsuccessful, the government was told exactly which parts of Devco could be sold off, parts like the Donkin mine. Most important, the plan told the government what it had to say to convince the people of Cape Breton that the destruction of their jobs, of their traditions and of their communities was a good thing.
When I revealed this document the Prime Minister would not answer my question. He passed me off to the natural resources minister who had not even been paying attention. That is how seriously this government takes the voice of Cape Breton Island. The Prime Minister had advance notice of my question and he did not even bother to brief his minister.
It took a week for the Liberals to respond to my release. It took them a week to come up with a line to explain away written proof of their underground strategy to destroy the Cape Breton coal industry. The best they could do after a week was to say that the plan they had authorized at cabinet level had never been presented to the cabinet.
This defies belief. Is the government asking us to believe that when the cabinet requests a study it simply disappears? If the cabinet tolerates civil servants behaving that way then our country and this government are in more trouble that I thought.
Eventually the Liberal spin doctors decided this line was a little too unbelievable as well because they dropped it and said that yes, there had been a plan but that it was abandoned because of the pressure applied by the island's Liberal MPs David Dingwall and Russell MacLellan.
A cabinet minister who was explicitly mentioned in the cabinet memorandum as being a key player in implementing the privatization or shutdown was suddenly transformed into the saviour of the corporation. Even better, Russell MacLellan, a backbencher, was supposed to have input into a cabinet document that he could not have known anything about.
This explanation insults Canadians. Any grade 10 political science student knows we have a parliamentary system that relies on cabinet confidentiality as one of its central pillars. So if a backbench MP is getting access to secret cabinet documents, then at least one cabinet minister should be forced to resign.
This fudging of answers has reached a fever pitch as the Nova Scotia election gets closer. The backbench Liberal MP turned Liberal premier struggles to convince Nova Scotians that his total lack of activity on their behalf over the past two decades is not due to his total lack of ability. Paul any economic recovery will bypass Cape Breton Martin and Jean your out of luck Chrétien are singing Russell's praises in trying to pretend that they actually remember who he is. But this will not work.
The people of Cape Breton are still waiting for the Liberals to answer the question I asked last month. We do not want any promises, we just want the truth. If the truth is that the government has tried and failed to make Devco commercially viable and has tried and failed to privatize it, why will it not be honest with the people of Cape Breton Island?