That is nothing to be proud of. What does closure mean? It means that the government is cutting off debate.
This is an important issue. There will be almost 1,600 families affected by this legislation. We have talked for a little over five hours on this issue in the House. There is no reason in the world why we should not have the ability to talk about something that so fundamentally affects the people of Cape Breton as does Bill C-11.
I also remind the House that there have been many other times when the government has prematurely moved closure. Let us consider Bill C-20, the clarity legislation. We talked about it for 18 minutes before the government moved closure.
It is outrageous that the Liberals continues to do this and is not embarrassed about it. They seem to think it is fine if it is them pushing the legislation through. They should be absolutely ashamed. This is anti-democratic behaviour. On an issue that is as important as this one, it is absolutely ridiculous. The people of Cape Breton should be outraged by what we have seen from the government.
I will now move on to more specifics in Bill C-11. I have been to Cape Breton but I do not pretend to know it as well as some colleagues in this place. Cape Bretoners are wonderful and warm people. They live in a beautiful part of the world. Given an even chance, they would have an outstanding economy. As far as I can tell, Bill C-11 seems to be the final chapter in a legacy of broken promises by successive governments.
What started out many years ago as a plan to help out Cape Breton, instead seemed to be a situation where the government kept hanging the carrot in front of their nose causing them to move forward but ultimately to never realize their goal.
What was the goal of Devco and all the money that was put into Cape Breton? It was to build a sustainable industry in Cape Breton. Obviously, that has not happen. A lot of money has been poured into this and people have spent years in those mines building what they thought was a career. Now it has all come tumbling down around their ears. They have families and they expected to have a future in that place. It is now gone. The government should be absolutely ashamed for allowing this to happen over this long period of time.
We could recount reasons for for this, but it boils down to a lack of transparency and honesty from this government and previous governments about what would happen and what the chances would be of having a sustainable industry. Even today my colleagues have pointed out that there is no reason to believe that those mines could not be profitable. Because of government policies, that has not happened. Who pays the price for that? It is the workers at Devco and the people of Cape Breton.
I suppose there are many ways we could try to fix this. I do not pretend to be enough of expert to talk about those in great detail. However, I do believe there is hope for the people of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia and Atlantic in general. It does not lie with governments that do not give people the straight goods. It does not lie with governments that build peoples' hopes up only to dash them later. It lies in the private sector. It is time we gave the people of Cape Breton the same tools that many of the more developed areas of the country already have.
What are those things? The people of Cape Breton need to enjoy some lower taxes. Cape Breton is a beautiful and gorgeous part of the world. With a trained workforce and with people who know how to work hard, it has the ability to become a prosperous part of the economy that some parts of Canada now enjoy. How do we do that? We do that in a number of ways. First, let us clean up the mess at Devco. Let us get it behind us and ensure that people get a proper severance package, one that will not leave them high and dry if they are near retirement but do not have the number of years that would allow them to have that package. Let us treat them decently and put this issue behind us.
Second, let us go about allowing the economy to produce jobs that these people can rely on. How do we do that? We begin by lowering taxes for one thing. I am not saying that is the only thing. We must give people a decent severance package so they can pay for retraining.
The government must be allowed to remove the barriers that prevent so many companies from investing in places like Cape Breton.
Why is it that some parts of the country do extraordinarily well while others languish? One of the reasons is that the governments looking after those areas have all kinds of impediments in place that do not allow those areas to prosper. Cape Breton, I would argue, is a victim of those sorts of policies. Sadly, that has happened at the provincial level. I will not reflect on whether it is happening now. It has certainly happened at the federal level over a long period of time when areas like Cape Breton were operated like a fiefdom by certain Liberal members of parliament and senators. That is crazy and it has to end.
We are not in the 20th century any more. We have to step into the 21st century and give these people the tools they need to do the job: lower taxes, fewer regulations and a commitment to training the people of Cape Breton and Nova Scotia, which should primarily come through provincial levels of government. This is probably an area where I disagree with my friends on other sides of the House, but I think it needs to come through the provinces.
These people need to be well trained. If this begins to happen, we will perhaps see the sorts of things that have happened in other parts of the country begin to happen in Cape Breton. People will come to a beautiful place like Cape Breton because the impediments are now gone. They will want to enjoy the quality of life that a place like Cape Breton can offer.
This is an island that people from across Canada and from around North America flock to because it is so beautiful and a wonderful part of the world. The people are great and have a unique culture. Cape Breton has every potential to become a powerful economic area. However, it will not happen if we continue to go down the same tried and failed road we have gone down so many times before.
Help is not going to ultimately come from governments. If there is any lesson to be learned from the last 30 years in Cape Breton, it is that the government cannot be relied on. What happens time after time is that nobody wants to do what is right, they only want to do what is easy. They want to do what they think will get them re-elected, only to find out years later that they made promises they could not keep. For crying out loud, let us not go down that road again.
Instead, let us give these people the tools. Let us lower their taxes, leave more money in their pockets and let the entrepreneurial spirit shine in Cape Breton. I believe it can. We have seen it happen in many other places.
I will conclude by simply saying, especially to my friend across the way who has been responsible for moving closure so many times, that it is time to allow a little democracy to flourish in Canada. This is the House of Commons, the Parliament of Canada. If democracy should be evident anywhere, it should be evident here.
Sadly, freedom of speech is apparently something that is anathema to the government. It does not want to hear about people getting up and speaking out on issues that are important to the people so it moves closure and shuts down debate. It has now moved closure as many times as the Mulroney regime, and it should be ashamed.
Cape Breton has the tools to do the job. Unfortunately, it has been pounded by government after government suggesting that help will come from Ottawa. It has not. Promises have been dashed by this government and other governments.
The people of Cape Breton need a new vision, a vision that embraces the private sector, one that has provided so much prosperity for the rest of Canada. Let us hope that the government will see the error of its ways and allow the people of Cape Breton to really flourish in the future.