Mr. Speaker, as everyone is well aware at this point, we are talking about Bill C-11, the Cape Breton Development Corporation divestiture authorization and dissolution act.
Before I go into any specifics about the act I thought I would take this opportunity to talk about some personal and family history. One might say I have coal dust in my veins since it was the coal mines that brought my grandfather to Canada. Without coal I would not be standing before the House today. It is amazing how one can step back into history through people who are not long gone.
My grandfather was born in 1866 and by 1880, at the age of 14, he was working in a coal mine in Scotland. Later he operated a coal mine in China until the Boxer Rebellion at the turn of the century. He was on the docks in Shanghai when Europeans were being killed.
After returning to Scotland from China my grandfather, James, along with his two brothers, Ninian and Tom, came to North America to work in the coal mines of West Virginia. The three brothers continued to work together and moved to British Columbia where they worked in the coal mines. My grandfather worked at the Coal Creek mine near Fernie, British Columbia.
On May 22, 1902, there were 128 miners killed in the Coal Creek disaster. My grandfather was on the rescue team after this mine disaster and this traumatising event certainly affected him for the rest of his days.
I grew up in the coal mining town of Natal close to the B.C.-Alberta border in the Rocky Mountains adjacent to the slag piles and the coke ovens, adjacent to what was then the Trans-Canada Highway that went through the Crow's Nest Pass. It has since been moved from Crow's Nest to Rogers Pass.
We left there in 1955 because the government decided that Michel, Natal and Middletown should not be there. It bulldozed Michel, Natal and Middletown and relocated the communities to Sparwood, essentially because it was the entryway to B.C. on the Trans-Canada Highway. The three towns were bulldozed because of the government's concern for optics. This was the entry to British Columbia and on many days cars had to turn their headlights on because of the coal dust, and our house was white. People had a lot of pride in their community. There are a lot of people who still have strong emotional ties to these communities that are no longer there.
I understand the strong emotional attachments and the strong affinity to the coal mining industry expressed by the people of Cape Breton and Nova Scotia. I have been to Glace Bay, Sydney, Pictou County, the site of the Westray mine and the memorial. We cannot just wash this all away. Coal is in their veins.
Bill C-11 authorizes the winding up of Devco, one of the most politicized and embarrassing public taxpayer funded exercises seen in Canada. In a misguided and paternalistic way governments in Canada for the last 30 years, and in fact for the last 70 years when one considers the predecessors to Devco, have spent taxpayer dollars on the coal mining business in the maritimes.
Some of the cynical among us might say that this money was to buy votes. I would prefer to think it was just wrong-headed thinking, but then I am cynical.
In any event, it has created an economy that is not free and balanced by natural market forces. Now that the government is pulling the plug, we have a painful and awkward situation for which there is no easy solution.