Mr. Speaker, it is with great honour that I rise as the NDP natural resources critic to speak to Bill C-11, an act to authorize the divestiture of the assets of and to dissolve the Cape Breton Development Corporation.
Sadly we have here another example of the Liberal government abandoning the people of the Atlantic. About a year ago Premier Brian Tobin of Newfoundland said that the Atlantic did not abandon the Liberals, that the Liberals abandoned the Atlantic.
Not too long ago a person I am not shy to say is not my best friend, the premier of New Brunswick, Frank McKenna, said that the federal government was forgetting the Atlantic provinces and was not investing in the Atlantic provinces for economic development. He only realized 10 years later, now that he is not in, what his Liberal colleagues were doing. They took all the money they could and probably gave it to their friends. The reason the economic development of the Atlantic provinces never happened was that the Liberals gave too much money to their friends.
Devco was created by the federal government in 1967 to rescue the coal industry in Cape Breton. Now, 33 years later, the government is turning its back on the hard-working men and women of Cape Breton and creating great devastation for both the economy and the community of Cape Breton.
When I hear speakers today in the House of Commons it sounds as though the government has paid welfare for 33 years. Where is the respect for those miners who went underground and worked day and night? When people work in a mine they are dirtier than we are when we leave the House of Commons.