Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to shed what I would suggest is the light of day on the motion of the Bloc to reaffirm the maintenance of the 10% limit on ownership of the Air Canada Public Participation Act.
It would appear to be a straightforward motion, but there seems to be a lot of emotion and intrigue behind why the Bloc would choose today to put the motion before the House. I would like to look at some of the reasons the Bloc might have done so.
I would like to know whether the Bloc is putting the motion forward because of its strict adherence to the laws of the land. I would assume from comments given by the Parti Quebecois justice minister recently that Quebec would simply ignore the supreme court's decision on separation if it chooses. We know that separatists do not really have a lot of attachment to the laws of the land, so that cannot be it.
I wonder if it is because they truly believe it is in the best interest of the Canadian travelling public. I sincerely doubt that, because if the current situation were identical, with the exception that Air Canada was headquartered in Winnipeg, members can rest assured that the Bloc Quebecois would either be in favour of changing it or indifferent to the 10% limit.
The real reason, I would suggest, that Bloc members are so concerned with this 10% ruling is that they see its removal as a threat to Air Canada. If the elimination of the 10% rule would be acceptable, what would be next? Would it be the clause that requires the headquarters of Air Canada to remain in Montreal? Even though the Onex proposal has ensured that the new Air Canada headquarters would be in Montreal, the BQ knows that it cannot trust what a boss who is based in Toronto has to say. The BQ wants to ensure that the status quo remains with Air Canada.
It is only with Air Canada that the BQ wants the status quo to remain. The BQ makes no secret of the fact that it wants Quebec to separate from Canada, that it wants Canada's national airline to remain untouched in Montreal, but it does not want Montreal to remain in Canada.
Let us think about this. Canada may have one national airline situated in a city that does not want to remain in our country. Let us think of the chaos that would be created if the Bloc got what it wanted and Quebec no longer was part of our country. We have two national airlines today and all of a sudden we would end up with no national airline. That is the ludicrousness of this kind of argument and this kind of emotional attachment that the Bloc seems to have to the 10% rule.
I would suggest to Canadians and to the Bloc that the 10% rule should never have been there in the first place. It is not the government's role to dictate to corporate Canada and to a private-public shareholding company in Canada, a domestic company, what limit shareholders should have. It is not the government's role to put those kinds of attachments to any kind of arrangement. Nor should any other control be placed there other than foreign ownership.
The crisis today is a drop in the bucket of what the crisis tomorrow will be if the Canadian government and the Parliament of Canada do not deal with the situation of trying to maintain the status quo. The status quo will not work. We have to look at options and we have to be open to look at all options. That means the government has to remove those things that should not have been there in the first place which restrict the ability of the private sector to look at the options and to give different ways of solving the situation we find in the Canadian airline industry.
I question, as members can tell from some of my previous comments, the sincerity of the Bloc Quebecois in putting the motion on the table today and the reasons why it feels it is important to restrict the choices of the House of Commons, parliament and the government in looking at a solution to the crisis in the airline industry and to moving into the 21st century with a positive vision of what Canada and what Canadian airlines can offer the international community.
It is that kind of narrow-minded vision that the Bloc Quebecois has of Canada and its role internationally and its position with one another and how we can work together. That narrow-minded vision creates the situations we face day in and day out in the international community.
I have great concern that the Bloc has brought forward a motion of this nature now to complicate what is already a complicated situation. I hope the House will determine not to support it and to move on with the discussions over this industry's situation. I hope we will look at all options and not limit it to one simply because of a mistake that governments in the past have made in trying to control private enterprise in the country.
Certainly as a free entrepreneur, as somebody who believes in the open market, I find that any control that a government places is not good enough. I hope in future deliberations on how we we will help the industry through regulations and legislative change, that we will not move backward to a regulatory industry.