Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise once again on this bill. Considering that I did not have an opportunity to finish my comments this morning on this issue, I would like to have a few minutes to further investigate the whole issue.
Certainly I think it is absolutely imperative that the bill be given time for adequate debate in the House and also time for adequate investigation of the whole issue in committee and to call all the witnesses that we need to call simply because of some of the mystery surrounding the whole bill.
There is a huge number of unanswered questions on the issue of the disposition of Devco's assets and the rumoured purchase of its assets, particularly by American interests, which seems curious. Clearly, Nova Scotia Power has the need for huge amounts of coal for the foreseeable future.
In spite of the need for coal and that coal exists in Cape Breton which will last for as long as Nova Scotia Power could probably envision using it, it makes no sense to me to shut down the mines in Cape Breton and essentially sell the contract to supply coal to Nova Scotia Power to an American interest, aside from the fact that the finance minister's ships are hauling this coal. Why have the Americans supply coal and have it transported to Cape Breton when the coal is in Cape Breton and can be mined as economically as it can be in other parts of the world? There is something really rotten about this whole deal.
There is not only the issue of whether whoever buys the mines would operate them for any length of time, but there is some real question about the intentions of the people buying it. What about the coal reserves that are available and strip mineable in Cape Breton and Nova Scotia? There is a substantial reserve of coal which is available without the undersea mining process that is taking place in the Prince mine and proposed Donkin mine. Those questions have to be answered.
There are the questions of drilling rights for the gas that is available, not only the methane gas in the coal seams in Nova Scotia but the other natural gas reserves that are rumoured to be available as well. All of those questions have to be asked.
There is the question of a lawsuit that is currently before the courts. It has been brought in by Donkin Resources Limited because of promises the government made to those people who were doing an assessment of the feasibility of opening the Donkin mine. It cut them off at the knees. There is that whole issue. How can it sell Devco before it settles the whole legal issue?
I found the suggestion by the member for Broadview—Greenwood interesting. He suggested that they set up a government board to oversee the pension fund and give Joe Shannon the chairmanship of the pension board on top of everything else. That was really interesting and really made a lot of sense. He did make some sense in the suggestion that a lot of these issues could be explored in committee with witnesses if the government allows us time in committee to do that. That is the question and one that has to be answered before we can accept that idea.
Because of all those reasons, the limited time of debate and the secrecy surrounding the suspension of the Financial Administration Act that guarantees us some transparency in this whole thing, it is imperative that we have the opportunity to get answers to these questions at some point in the process. It is the only way Canadians are ever going to understand what this deal was all about.
When I was in Cape Breton I met with the mine workers union. It showed me in black and white that obviously over a number of years the management of Devco was deliberating sabotaging the operation of the mines. We could quite clearly see from year to year where it cut off capital investment. Machinery was not replaced or repaired. There was down time from poor equipment. We could clearly see that, instead of preparing another coal face to be mined when the one that was currently in operation was completed was not done. When the operating face was mined out, the whole mine had to shut down while they moved and set up to do the process of preparing another face.
Why did the government do these things? That is not an efficient operation. That, in my view, was a deliberate attempt to make Devco appear to be as uneconomical as it possibly could, so it would be easier to shut down when the time came. Someone has to answer for those things. We have to have a committee. Joe Shannon, the chairman of the board of Devco, has some serious questions to answer about his role and how he got a multimillion dollar contract to move coal as he sat as chairman of the board of Devco. That has to be a sweetheart deal. I do not know how he possibly could do that. He also has to answer why as chairman of the board with a vested interest like he has he is sitting and assessing the bids with Nesbitt Burns Inc. in Toronto. He again is clearly in conflict of interest.
We have to hear from the Donkin Resources group that put a bid in and was rejected, in their words, because it was a Canadian bid. Being a Canadian bid should not be the reason to reject it. It should have been the reason to move it to the top of the list.
I had breakfast with another individual who put in a wholly owned Canadian bid that was rejected for similar reasons. He had some very interesting proposals tied in with his bid for Devco in dealing with the Sydney tar ponds and a lot of other things we have heard talked about today. I would like to hear from that side of the issue at committee.
I think there is so much being hidden that needs to be revealed and needs to be discussed about the whole Devco issue and what the government has been doing and what the government's intentions are with this that I certainly support the NDP motion to hoist the bill and move it into committee before we are finished second reading. I think it is a valid proposal.
I do not really care which committee it goes to. As far as the amendment to the amendment, I am ambivalent on that. However, the idea of getting it into committee and having a thorough study of the issues that surround this I certainly would support. I think the whole issue has a bad smell about it that needs to be clarified. I hope the government will allow us to do that.