Mr. Speaker, the government has misled Canadians about Cape Breton Island.
Since Liberals decided to close the door on my home two months ago they have spread convoluted and inaccurate information. Let us look at the facts and not at Liberal rhetoric. Just over $1 billion have gone into Devco and $5 billion has come out, which is a five to one return on the public's investment. No stockbroker would sneeze at that.
The men who worked hard and paid taxes will not receive benefits. Our tax dollars will go in and nothing will come out. It is Liberal financial planning.
For every job lost at Devco another three will disappear from the private sector. Picture the impact in towns where unemployment is already over 40%.
This economic vandalism is all the more upsetting when looking at the reality of Cape Breton coal. The government has tried to say that $1 billion was wasted on Devco. It conjures up images of lazy workers and inefficient operations. What it does not say is that most of the money spent on Devco went on cleaning up sites the government inherited from the private mining companies which ran Cape Breton like a private empire for 200 years. When they bailed out they left the taxpayers the bill.
It has nothing to do with inefficient workers but everything to do with a government that did not have the spine to stand up to foreign companies and the big banks that backed them.
The truth is that Devco's coal mining operations, stripped of the clean-up costs and the numberless failed economic development schemes hatched by the government, actually made money. That is right. Do we hear about that from the government's spin doctors? Do we hear how Devco miners are known to be the best in the world or how Devco's employees have provided power for Nova Scotia and cash for their communities? No, of course not.
All we hear are more derogatory stereotypes, more contempt. Now, to add insult to injury, the government has announced its latest plan to revitalize our economy. There is $40 million for the social research and demonstration corporation, $40 million for a corporation based in Ottawa hiring Ontarians to study Cape Bretoners. What an insult.
I want to be on the record opposing yet another Liberal patronage gift. I want to be on the record condemning money for Cape Breton being spent in Ottawa. Just as the books were fudged with Devco and whole communities demeaned by slander and innuendo from the government, so now we see the future: more money for friends of the government, more money for Ontario.
I hope the government will have the courage to admit the obvious truth, that it thinks of Atlantic Canada as nothing more than a convenient way to channel money from the taxpayers to its friends. The government should stop studying Cape Bretoners and start listening to us. We want honesty. We want accountability and we want to control our own destiny.