Yes, the finance minister of the Liberal government.
Naturally, being nice, honest and hardworking people, I have to wonder when we talk about job creation and helping out the miners just exactly what the government has been doing. I would say that it certainly gave the miners the shaft while it closed the mine down. That would be my way of looking at it. I do not think I am wrong but I am willing to accept that maybe I am.
Meanwhile out in Alberta, to comply with the government's promises made at Kyoto, Japan without adequate consultation with business and industry here at home, at least some great experiments are being done to reduce carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels. In Alberta technology has been invented that can actually bury carbon dioxide in the coal seams so that for every molecule of carbon dioxide taken out in order to clean up our air, we get back two molecules of usable methane gas. Experts predict this will allow Alberta to bury, they call it sequester, all carbon dioxide from all the coal they export and expect to burn in their coal fired power plants in the next 500 years and make money while doing it.
Where is the new technology for coal back east? Instead of technology it brings in call centres. I go back to what I originally said. The government is trying to force the miners of Cape Breton to become telephone operators. I have to wonder exactly where the government got the brilliant idea to go this route.
Eventually the government got the brilliant idea to privatize the coal mining operations. Would we not expect the privatization to be completed before it did a shutdown, before the workers left because they lost hope of making a future for themselves and their families in that part of Canada, before they gave up their foreign markets? That was so tough to get in the first place but the government gave it away lock, stock and barrel. Here we are today looking at Bill C-11 which is trying to get the government off the hook after so many years of mismanaging one of the country's greatest natural resources, the coal of Cape Breton.
Men who went down to the mines as teenagers still do not have enough years of service combined with their ages to qualify for any pension under the plan because they are still too young. These men are supposed to be retrained. Maybe they will become telephone operators at the Prime Minister's new call centre but I doubt it.
Maybe the Liberals will move in some other centre, like New Brunswick's role as the registration centre for all Canadian firearms, and the Prime Minister can turn Cape Breton coal miners into federal bureaucrats. Maybe that is the game plan, I do not know.
Before I close I would like to quote Mr. Murphy:
We feel that handing off of the Nova Scotia Power Inc. supply contract to foreign suppliers is an unacceptable situation. We decided back in May to do something about it by forming a worker's co-op and submitting the bid for the Devco assets through the Nesbitt Burns process. Our bid was rejected, as was a bid put forward by Donkin Resource Limited, which is determined to press on with opening the Donkin Mine with the support of the community and groups such as our co-op, which is ready to invest in the project to ensure that at least some of NFPI coal is supplied by Cape Bretoners.
Mr. Murphy also goes on to question why the federal government would rather hand over a lucrative contract to a foreign company when the coal could be supplied locally. That is the question. Why would the government do it, unless there is something for somebody else's pocket?