Debates of May 8th, 2000

Cape Breton Development Corporation Divestiture Authorization And Dissolution Act

[Dennis Mills, Liberal, Broadview—Greenwood, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The member said that there are virtually no government members listening to or participating in the debate. The record will show that is not accurate.

[The Deputy Speaker]

What is a problem is when members make these references to the presence or absence of members. We do get into trouble. It is against the rules to do that. I can only admonish all hon. members to comply with the rules and avoid reference to the fact of who is not here.

Members have other things to do besides sit in the House. I am sure there are committees sitting as we speak. Members have other obligations. To point out absences is not helpful and, I would point out to all hon. members, is contrary to the rules of the House. We will avoid that, I know, in future remarks. The hon. member for Winnipeg Centre has the floor and I know he will want to get away from that topic.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the only reason I raised the relative shortage on the other benches was by way of introducing the calling of quorum.

[The Deputy Speaker]

I will certainly be glad to call quorum, but the way to do it is to avoid reference to who is here and who is not, because then we get into disagreements.

And the count having been taken:

[The Deputy Speaker]

I see a quorum. The hon. member for Winnipeg Centre has the floor.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for at least going through the exercise.

I began my remarks by talking about what a shame, what a tragedy and what a travesty it is to limit the debate on such an important subject. What I was getting around to was not just the face value of the argument about the closing of the Devco coal mines, but the fact that this is an issue of much larger significance.

Many things have not even been raised. The secondary impacts of shutting down Devco have not been dealt with and they will not be dealt with in any detail in the House because the debate has been limited by moving time allocation.

One of the natural things which comes to mind, one of the obvious consequences of selling off Devco and closing Devco is the whole issue of foreign ownership, economic sovereignty, loss of control of our own industries and our inability to control our own destiny when it comes to matters regarding the development of our natural resources.

One thing we have seen in this country in recent years is an absolute epidemic of foreign takeovers. In part a low Canadian dollar has led to this, and in part it is because there are people lurking just across our border who are willing to gobble up any aspect of our natural resources they possibly can. This is one of the predictable consequences we are going to see, I believe, as we divest ourselves of the Devco operations.

An even more frightening spectacle in my mind is that the whole idea of Devco was to feed coal into the Nova Scotia Power Corporation to generate electricity and to have a vertical integration. We would enjoy that benefit and the secondary benefit of the labour created by the mining of coal, that we could create electricity with that coal. There was a natural customer for the product.

Nova Scotia Power Corporation will now be in the unenviable position of trying to buy its power elsewhere. Where? It will probably be from the eastern seaboard of the United States. Mr. Peabody will supply the coal, I presume, to Nova Scotia. Who will ship the coal from the eastern seaboard of the United States to Cape Breton? It will be Canada Steamship Lines. The Minister of Finance and steamships will be going into Sydney harbour loaded with American coal to burn in Nova Scotia Power Corporation. If this seems shortsighted, if it seems economically perverse, I put it to members that it is. That is why this needs to be debated and that is why we need more time in the House to deal with some of these predictable consequences of shutting down the whole Devco operation.

I am a trade unionist and have been a union representative for much of my working career. I find in cases like this the best way to convey the true impact of this sort of economic move is to try to personalize the issue by looking at the actual people involved. If we try to visualize in our minds the actual families and workers who are being displaced by all of this, it is useful to look at a profile of the Devco employees.

If we try to get in our minds who these people of the United Mine Workers are, and there are four unions involved, of the actual members of the United Mine Workers of America union, 414 out of 500 or so have grade 12 or less education. The average age is 44.5 years. They have industry specific skills that make it very difficult to relocate into other industries. I raise all these factors to point out the difficulty of trying to reintegrate the displaced employees into other industries, et cetera, et cetera.

One of the reasons we see such an overwhelmingly low level of education in people who are fairly my contemporaries, where it is not usual for there to be over 80% of them with grade 12, is that they were seduced into quitting school and going to work at Devco. They were told the big lie. People came into their classrooms and virtually said “You can sit here and finish high school or you can go to work tomorrow with a good $12, $14 an hour job with grade 8 or grade 9 and we will keep you employed for life, until you retire, working in the Devco coal mine operation”. That was bad advice and it has complicated the reintegration of some of these displaced workers into alternative lines of work.

One of those lines of work ironically will be the next subject that we debate here today because we have been told that the government side will not put up any more speakers on the subject because it wants debate to collapse on the subject so that we can move on to the next subject which is tourism. What it really wants all the Devco miners to do is grow long, red pigtails like Anne of Green Gables so they can be cute little tourism oddities maybe. If they can learn to play the banjo or something they could entertain American bus loads of tourists who drive to Cape Breton to see them because there will be very little else for them to do, given the callous way that this whole issue has been treated.

Had we had more time and had we been given the opportunity to debate this issue further, I am sure other important subjects would be raised. But as it is now, once again we can hear the jackboots marching to the drums of closure and time allocation.

[The Deputy Speaker]

In accordance with Standing Order 38 it is my duty to advise the House that the item to be taken up at the hour of adjournment later this day is the following one: the hon. member for Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, The Environment.

[Peter Mancini, NDP, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I have already raised this point a couple of times. This is an important debate to the people of Cape Breton and I would call quorum.

And the count having been taken:

[The Deputy Speaker]

I see a quorum.

[Dave Chatters, Reform, Athabasca, AB]

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.

[Alex Shepherd, Liberal, Durham, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to again discuss the issue of Devco. Some may wonder why I am interested in this issue. It is because I have had the opportunity to visit Sydney—Victoria and the great island of Cape Breton.

I talked to the people when I was there about a year ago. They were upset about the passing of a part of their history. They also looked at the future with a new challenge of what they could do to once again make a viable economy on the island of Cape Breton.

I heard some of the members say “We don't want to make telephone operators out of all of these miners”. Indeed that is not the intention. When a company like EDS wants to invest money in Cape Breton, it is a positive and good thing. It tells us that company thinks there is a future in Cape Breton as the people themselves think there is a future in Cape Breton.

There has been a lot of discussion about abandonment of the workers. It is interesting to note from statistics that the number of miners is divided into three groups, as I understand. We have one group which has made 75 pension points and they are over 60 years of age. Approximately 140 of them are going to benefit from an early retirement program with pensions over $20,000 a year.

A second group who are approximately 49 years of age with less than 25 years experience are going to have work. This seems to be the essence of the problem. Apparently some in the opposition would prefer these people to be pensioned off. It is assured that there will be at least 500 jobs for these people, so there is no unemployment. In fact there are jobs to go to.

Finally, there is another regrettable group, 42 years of age and under, the last people hired by the pit. They are receiving three weeks salary for every year that they worked. Plus, if they worked over 20 years, they get four weeks salary for every year over 20. Quite frankly this is better than almost any severance plan in the country. The government has been generous.

We are very concerned about the people of Cape Breton and their ability to change their economy. Often speeches in the House have been on how to keep the past going, how to keep the mines open just one more month or one more year, how to keep a way of life going that in fact has changed. The reality is that the coal industry in Cape Breton, as is the case in Britain which I visited recently, has gone by the wayside. The same members speak in the House about the terrible aspect of fossil fuel emissions and the environment and maintain the importance of keeping a coal industry. In my opinion these comments are terribly inconsistent.

It is not just about coal mining in Cape Breton. One listening to the debate in the House would think that is all that goes on in Cape Breton. However in Cape Breton approximately 3,000 people are employed in the forestry. Close to $1 billion of private money is invested in Stora in Port Hawkesbury. In 1999 tourism witnessed the strongest year in its economy with $230 million being gained in tourism in Cape Breton alone.

What about knowledge based industries? Some 44 businesses have set up on Silicon Island, employing 300 people. What about Precision Finished Components in North Sydney? It is making money and expanding. Also located on the north side is a company that manufacturers plastic for markets in Canada and the United States.

The list goes on and on. Poly Tech Windows in Baddeck employs 40 people and exports its products to the United States and all over the world. Finewood Flooring in Middle River employs 20 people and exports its products to Germany and the United States. MacPherson Bros. in New Waterford exports prefabricated homes to Spain and Germany. The list goes on.

This tells me that the people of Cape Breton are adaptable. In fact the people of Cape Breton have changed their economy. It may well be that members of parliament do not seem to realize this. We should be happy that Cape Bretoners have turned their efforts to creating a new economy in Cape Breton. They went back in history. They went back to the mines and kept the mines open just one more month, just one more year.

It seems strange to me when I hear members of the Canadian Alliance Party complaining about the system. They should be celebrating that Cape Bretoners have found the courage to deal with their misfortune and the ability to go forward. Certainly it was not without some unease. The industrial revolution was not easy on a lot of people. People had to make significant changes, which is not easy to do midway through life. I would be the first to admit that.

To keep on going with something that is not working is not reality. The reality is that they require change. As I understand it, more people in Nova Scotia are engaged in teaching today than either the fishery or the forestry industries. Economies change and they change with the times.

The people of Cape Breton are up to that change. They have accepted the fact that their economy cannot continue to rely on coal as a basis of sustenance for them. As a consequence, they have tried to experiment and they will continue experimenting. The government, in spite of the discussion about turning miners into telephone operators, will continue to find ways to encourage private industry to establish in Cape Breton to the betterment of the people there.

I am happy to be part of a government that has made a tough decision to dispose of the coal mining operations, but it is the right decision. All of us realize that governments are not the best operators of coal mines whether in Cape Breton or anywhere else. It is time to move on. It is time for a new future. The people of Cape Breton realize it and the government realizes it.

[Svend Robinson, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is with a great sense of both sadness and anger that I rise to participate today in the debate on this important bill, Bill C-11.

In rising to participate in the debate I want to make a couple of preliminary points. First, as my colleagues from the New Democratic Party have noted during this debate, particularly today, it is absolutely shameful that once again on legislation this fundamental, this significant, the government is bringing down the hammer of closure before there has been any significant movement for dialogue with the workers who are affected and the communities that will be devastated by the results of the decision of the government. This is becoming a habit with the government.

As a member of the House for almost 21 years, I vividly recall Liberal MPs standing when they were in opposition and condemning the Conservative Party in the harshest of terms for its recourse to closure, to time allocation. This government, particularly in this parliament, has resorted to closure far more times, and who would have ever imagined over 60 times, than the Conservatives ever did. What we see is blatant hypocrisy and an attempt to more and more marginalize democracy itself.

We know best is the attitude of the government: we know best for the people of Cape Breton; we know best in real terms for the corporate interests that are just waiting to get their hands on the resources that are the vital part of this decision. I want to condemn the process the government has embarked on to shut down this debate.

Second, I pay tribute to my colleagues, particularly my colleagues from Cape Breton, for the tireless campaign they have waged both within the House and across the country in their home constituencies of Sydney—Victoria and Bras d'Or—Cape Breton to make Canadians more aware of just how significant and how important the issue is for all of us.

I represent an urban community on the other side of the country. I have the great privilege and honour of representing Burnaby. I have visited Cape Breton on more than one occasion and have been tremendously impressed by the strength and the resilience of the people of Cape Breton in the face of incredible adversity. That strength, that resilience and that eloquence are certainly reflected in our caucus in the representation from Cape Breton by the member for Sydney—Victoria and the member for Bras d'Or—Cape Breton.

I note as well the extent to which many of us were moved by the writing of another Nova Scotia member, a member of our caucus, the hon. member for Dartmouth, in her powerful play The Glace Bay Miner's Museum . She wrote about some of the impact in intensely human terms of the uncertainty and despair that affected many families as a result of the corporate decision making, the insensitivity and the inhumanity of decisions that were made solely on the basis of the bottom line.

We saw the ultimate obscenity of that approach with the death of the Westray miners, death which was clearly attributed to corporate greed. I hope the House will in the very near future adopt the amendments the leader of the New Democratic Party proposed which would make it very clear that we view it as criminal wrongdoing when corporate interests are put ahead of the lives and the safety of workers in mines and elsewhere.

I speak today with some albeit very limited knowledge of mining myself, having working as an underground miner at a very young age, as a young university student, in northern Ontario at the Dickenson gold mine. I worked underground in Balmertown, Ontario, in a mine which had an appalling safety record. Certainly in a very small way I can relate to the uncertainty faced by miners as every day they put their lives on the line when they go underground. All they are asking for is some sense of being treated with some dignity and some respect. Instead of that we see the government railroading the legislation through the House of Commons.

As opposed to the original legislation tabled in the House, the original Devco Act, we know there is no provision in the bill that would compel the government “before closing to ensure that all reasonable measures have been adopted by the corporation”, that is by Devco, “to reduce as far as possible any unemployment or economic hardship that can be expected to result therefrom”.

That is not radical. That is not revolutionary. All it is asking is that there be an assurance that Devco, which has been in existence for over 30 years, shows some respect, consults, and engages in dialogue with the workers and the communities affected by its decision to make sure that the unemployment, the loss of jobs and the economic hardship are minimized. Why is the Liberal government not prepared to even make that commitment to these communities on Cape Breton? It is absolutely shameful.

My colleagues in the New Democratic Party and I are attempting to ensure that when the bill goes to committee we put back that basic commitment to the workers, to the people and to the communities of Cape Breton.

We know that there is a great deal of uncertainty in those communities. There is currently an arbitration process under way. Instead of the government respecting that arbitration process and putting the bill on the back burner while the process proceeds to its conclusion, what does it do? It rams through the legislation and says to hell with the arbitrator. The Liberals say they know what is best for the people of Cape Breton and they know what is best for their communities. The reality is that they know what is best for the corporate interests that stand to gain from the dismantling of this corporation.

I find it shocking, as my colleague from Bras d'Or—Cape Breton, my colleague from Sydney—Victoria and others have made very clear, that there are big corporate interests just waiting to move in and dismantle the corporation, to pick up the pieces and to profit from this misery. We know that foreign ownership of these resources is a very real possibility. More and more, as my colleague from Kamloops pointed out today during question period, we are losing control of our own economic destiny, our own future, our own ability to make decisions about the best interest of the people of Canada. We see that now in the case of Cape Breton as well.

This is not a debate about figures or statistics. It is a debate about flesh and blood people and families who look to the future and feel a tremendous sense of uncertainty. They are asking to be treated with some dignity and respect. Folks who are perhaps in their fifties and sixties know that it will be almost impossible for them to find another job but they at least want a decent pension. They do not want a job at a call centre. They want a decent pension and they want a future for their kids. They do not want their children to have to leave that beautiful part of our country to find a future, and they should not have to do so.

That is why we in the New Democratic Party are appealing to the government even at this late time to reconsider its approach, to pull the bill back, as my colleague for Bras d'Or—Cape Breton suggested in an amendment that she proposed in February 2000, to give the government and Devco an opportunity to enter into that dialogue with the people of the communities affected.

As I said, what those communities face with the closure of all Devco mining operations and the eventual gutting of the corporation is devastating. They face the direct loss of about 1,500 good quality, well paying union jobs. Spin off jobs will be lost as well. Two or three times as many small businesses will be hit particularly hard. They face the loss and the expenditure by Devco of as much as $50 million annually in that region to contractors and suppliers. They face the loss of almost $80 million per year in wages and salaries. In a community that is already economically depressed, imagine the kind of impact this has. Yet the Liberals insist on just ploughing ahead. It is a loss to Ottawa and to taxpayers of some $28 million a year in Canada pension, unemployment insurance and income tax. It is a huge economic loss of over $300 million to that region alone.

Mr. Speaker, I see you signalling me that my time has come to an end. I am quite prepared to continue for another half hour or 45 minutes if the House would give me leave.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)]

The hon. member for Burnaby—Douglas has asked for the consent of the House to extend his time for debate by 30 minutes. Is there unanimous consent?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Some hon. members]

No.

[Réal Ménard, Bloc, Hochelaga—Maisonneuve, QC]

Mr. Speaker, we would have been very pleased to listen to our colleague from Burnaby—Douglas, whose eloquence and concern for workers is well known.

I am very pleased to rise today, although the topic at hand is of grave concern to us. I say that I am pleased because workers across Canada know that, historically, they can count on the Bloc Quebecois. We have given them our support both through our colleague, the member for Portneuf, our natural resources critic when the issue was first raised a year ago, and the tireless dedication to workers shown by our colleague from Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup—Témiscouata—Les Basques, our human resources development critic.

I want to draw a parallel with a situation I experienced in 1993 as a young MP. My colleagues may remember that in those days Montreal was undergoing a process of industrial obsolescence that had started in the 80s. There was a program called POWA, which was totally inadequate for Montreal workers.

We will recall that in those days, in Montreal, there was the Vickers shipyard, at a time when there were 30% too many ships on the seas and workers in my riding had to be retrained. It was a time also, in the late 80s and early 90s, when the whole textile industry in Montreal was in trouble due to its obsolescence. It has since picked up.

I must once again draw a parallel between my experience in the 90s and what is happening in Nova Scotia. With Bill C-11, the government is getting ready to privatize Devco, turning over two coal mines to the private sector, and putting close to 1,000 workers out of work.

This causes us to wonder what our duty is, what our responsibility is, as parliamentarians, when this sort of thing goes on in regions we might describe as one industry regions. The coal industry, the mining industry, the coal mining industry is not marginal in the Cape Breton community.

I have seen the figures on this. I am told that it was a really major industry. This is all the more of a concern since the government is saying today “It is no longer as cost effective as we would like it, as we think it ought to be, we will privatize it. We will let the private sector take over this industrial sector, but we do not want the responsibility of knowing how these workers are going to go about finding a second job”.

Members will say that the government set aside a certain amount for separation bonuses. According to our information, and the members of the government side will correct me if I am wrong, there are some 230 miners with 25 years' experience.

It is not easy. When you have 25 years of experience, of seniority, when you have worked have worked in the same firm for 25 years, you have a certain know how, knowledge in an industrial sector. It also means that you may be 45, 50, 55 or perhaps even 60, and it is then not easy to relocate or to find another job.

Bill C-11 does not resolve the problem of 225 or 230 miners with 25 or more years of experience with Devco, who are excluded from early retirement programs as currently defined. This is where our parliamentary responsibility calls out to us.

I ask Liberal members: what if it were your brother, your father or your best friend who had given 25 years of work to a company and who, all of sudden, found himself without an income because a government has decided to withdraw from that industrial sector?

Even more disturbing—and the hon. member for Portneuf alluded to this earlier—is what is happening now, this relative loss of momentum in the coal industry. We understand that anything related to the primary and secondary sectors of our industry is experiencing difficulties of one degree or another. This is what we call the “tertiarization of the economy”.

The economy is increasingly a service economy. This means that certain sectors including the coal industry, that used to be very important are now experiencing problems. Earlier I mentioned the textile industry, but I could have included the leather and linen industries, Vickers in Hochelaga—Maisonneuve, and the shipyards for which the hon. member for Lévis fought hard and even introduced a bill in the House.

What do the fight led by the member for Lévis, the representations being made by the NDP members for Dartmouth and Bras d'Or—Cape Breton, and the battle that I fought as a young member of parliament regarding POWA, in 1993-94, have in common? They all illustrate the responsibility we have as parliamentarians not to let older workers down, because it is harder for people who are 45, 50, 55 or 60 to find a new job. That is what I cannot understand about this debate.

As has already been said, once again we are dealing with an extremely authoritarian manner of carrying out House business. What is the procedure which characterizes the most dictatorial of governments? Let us not mince words, it is imposing gag orders.

For our audience, who are less familiar with the way the House works, what does this mean? It means that, with a cavalier gesture, without regard for the freedom of expression of parliamentarians, which is part of our mandate from the public to rise to speak in this House on behalf of the best interests of our fellow citizens, the government, the Liberals, these pharisees, these whited sepulchres, have decided through their parliamentary leader to impose a gag order so as to limit the speaking time of the members of the opposition.

Let us not forget that we are speaking today of the immediate and future earnings of the mine workers. When we are dealing with the income of the family wage earner, we are of course dealing with the situation of entire families who would, if it were not for the vigilance of the opposition parties, be in difficulty. This is unacceptable.

Today we shall be adding our voices to that of the NDP because we are an enlightened opposition and understand that Bill C-11, while it does not concern Quebec directly, obliges us to solidarity. We have always been there in solidarity when workers were being threatened.

I am grateful to the NDP members for waging this battle today. I want to tell the workers of Cape Breton that we are with them and that we care about their destiny and their future.

What do we want done? We want the Standing Committee on Natural Resources and Government Operations to give some thought to the fate of the part of Canada known as Cape Breton, which relies on a single industry, or just about, and we want better solutions to be found to this industrial transition, which has meant that the coal industry is not as important in the year 2000 as it was in the 1960s and 1970s.

We say that this industrial transition cannot be achieved without serious support from the government. We understand that jobs will not be found as easily for some workers and that it is the responsibility of this parliament to ensure that they have an adequate income, in recognition of the contribution they have made to the economic development of their region.

I want these workers to know that we will not forget them and I say shame on this government, which once again has failed to support those who need the help of this parliament.

[Pierre De Savoye, Bloc, Portneuf, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I may be wrong, but we do not appear to have a quorum.

And the count having been taken:

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)]

The hon. member for Portneuf is right. We do not have a quorum. Call in the members.

And the bells having rung:

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)]

We have quorum.

[Nelson Riis, NDP, Kamloops, BC]

Mr. Speaker, we just had a quorum call to make sure there were sufficient members of parliament in their seats to allow the debate to continue. Let us face it, this is a very dark day for Cape Bretoners, a very dark day for democracy and a very dark day for parliament.

Once again, in spite of the fact that this legislation will profoundly impact on the lives of hundreds and hundreds of families in Cape Breton and will mean a difference in the futures of hundreds and hundreds of families in this hard-pressed part of Canada, the government has decided that it does not want to hear any more debate, that it has heard enough. The government has, some 60 times in this session, again muzzled the duly elected representatives of the people of Canada from 301 constituencies who will have no further chance to participate in this debate. The government is saying that it has the understanding, the knowledge and the comprehension to say that enough is enough and that it has heard enough.

The reality is that there are many people here who want to speak to this legislation. The fact that the government has said that it is not interested in allowing debate any longer is a dark day for this institution. I know you, Mr. Speaker, must also be very said. I know Canadians are sad. I know parliamentarians are sad, at least on this side of the House. At least in our party we are making an effort to keep the debate going. I know others are very sad. I can see their heads shaking. This is a bleak, black, dark, gloomy day for democracy and for the parliamentary system in our country.

It is also a dark and mysterious day for Cape Bretoners. This has to be one of the most mysterious debates when people are raising questions that logically do not make any sense. For example, the government has decided that selling Cape Breton coal for Nova Scotia to generate power does not make any sense. It has decided that it makes more sense to import coal from Columbia, from Venezuela, from foreign countries.

Imagine how the people of Cape Breton are going to feel when those ships roll up to those docks in Cape Breton to unload coal from Colombia. It has to be embarrassing. We are going to bring coal from Colombia to Cape Breton.

Guess whose ships are going to be hauling that coal. This has to be a sad day for political leadership in the country when we find that the shipping company of the Minister of Finance is going to be used to ship coal from Colombia to Cape Breton. As a matter of fact, it has been shipping coal for a long time. There are 33 ships shipping coal from Venezuela, the United States, Colombia and other foreign countries to provide fuel for the power plants for the people of Nova Scotia.

If that is not enough, in today's newspaper we find that the Minister of Finance is a little short of ships and has to build some new ones. Does he select Canada's shipyards to build ships? No. He goes to the low wage shipyards in China. That is where he is building his ships. The Minister of Finance is building his ships in low wage China, using Philippine labour, and the ships are flagged in Liberia or some place in the Caribbean. The Minister of Finance is supposed to be setting a model for economic behaviour. There is a lot of puzzling around this which we have to get to the bottom of in committee.

Who is going to buy this? I know that the workers who are going to lose their jobs wanted to make a deal so that they could essentially run the new company. They wanted to find ways of raising finances. The Government of Canada said “Hold it, that is not good enough. We want a foreign buyer”. It is part of the theme of Canada being up for sale.

This morning Statistics Canada revealed that takeovers by foreign companies have now reached breakneck pace. We are in passing gear. Our low currency and the big for sale signs all over the world mean that foreigners are coming here to buy and control our economy like they never have before.

What does the Minister of Industry say about it? He is happy. He is one happy camper. He says that he loves that foreigners are buying up our economy and he loves that foreigners are controlling our future. I can say that we in the New Democratic Party do not like the idea of foreigners controlling the destiny of this country's next generation.

It is time to take Canada back. The problem is we had a made in Canada solution and the government said that it was not interested. It would much rather have a mysterious foreign buyer come in to take over the operation. This does not make sense.

Those people who over the years fought for this country in wars, who fought and died for democracy, and those leaders of our country from coast to coast to coast who struggled to build up economic sovereignty must be turning in their graves right now. They cannot believe this is happening in our country. It is a sad commentary.

I have heard some of my Liberal colleagues, who have given rather embarrassing presentations today, say that the people of Cape Breton should be thankful for this handout. You have been to Cape Breton, Mr. Speaker, probably many times. Most of us have been there many times. As a matter of fact I was there recently. We will never meet a prouder group of Canadians who are prepared to work hard for their incomes. They are working hard.

Today we are talking about hundreds of people who go down into those pits underground. They go down into those dark, wet, dangerous pits day after day and make modest amounts of money to provide income for their families. They have been tossed on the coal heap. Some 1,500 families have been told “Sorry folks, we do not need you any longer”. We are not talking about 1,500 jobs. That is the obvious number of jobs. We are also talking about spin-off jobs, because for every miner who loses a job, a dentist, a teacher, a shoemaker and somebody else are losing their jobs. We are probably talking about 5,000 jobs.

Then the Prime Minister roared into Cape Breton and said “Listen, I know 5,000 of you have just lost your jobs or are in the process of losing your jobs. We have got a great idea. We are going to open up a call centre so that at least 400 of you can be telephone operators”. The government expects people to cheer for this. To be fair, it is nice to have some kind of an infill.

We are talking about men and women who work hard. For generations people have been going down in those coal mines working hard to provide for their families. The idea of sitting in a call centre with a phone headset on for minimum wage is not that attractive but that is the best we have. We have to deal with this in committee.

We heard others say that today. For goodness sake, we are the most connected country in the world. Our banks are overflowing with money. We have talented and trained individuals. This country has the best minds. If we cannot find a better way to provide for the people of Cape Breton than what is in this piece of legislation and what the government has announced, something is very wrong.

If we put the proper economic strategy in place, if we included the proper industrial strategy along with an economic strategy, if we established a business plan for Cape Breton, we could turn Cape Breton into the showcase of economic development in this country if the will was there.

They are talented, hardworking, well trained and educated people who are prepared to work hard. They are prepared to create something of hope for their children, but they need a government on their side, not a government that is prepared to toss them out the window. That is another reason we have to get this bill to committee and deal with it properly.

I was in Cape Breton with some of my colleagues from the New Democratic Party. We met with individuals, mining specialists and people who know the Devco operation inside out. They all said the same thing. The theme which was emerging from all of our deliberations in all of our meetings was the systematic program to demonstrate that Devco was uneconomical.

Today many people have shared with us their personal experiences, the way they were approaching the coal faces, the way they set up those strategies and so on. In other words there was a scenario to enable Devco to be financially inept and therefore something the government had to sell off. That is definitely not the case. We have to expose that.

What do we say to a group of people who say they know they are going to get some measly severance arrangement? As a matter of fact I heard a government member say that those people are going to get $8,000 a piece to retrain themselves. Where do people retrain for $8,000? Maybe for a call centre job to learn how to put on a headset properly.

Eight thousand dollars is a bit of an embarrassment. As my fiends from Bras d'Or—Cape Breton and Sydney—Victoria pointed out, all sorts of other government settlements have been much fairer in how the men and women involved were treated. Cape Bretoners get shortchanged. Cape Bretoners do not get a fair deal. The government says to Cape Bretoners that it is not interested in giving them the same kind of deal it gives everybody else. Why is this? Why does the government treat the people of Cape Breton in such a cavalier fashion?

There are lots of questions. We are up against closure today and not many more of us will have a chance to speak. Let us just hope and pray that when the bill gets to committee and witnesses come before the committee to explain some of these questions and provide new information that the government does not use its muscle in committee and close that debate off as well. That would be the darkest day.

Although the threat of closure is about to strangle us here in a few more minutes, we hope that when the bill goes to committee we will have a chance to debate it properly.

[Darrel Stinson, Reform, Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Mr. Speaker, thank you for recognizing the constituency of Okanagan—Shuswap. Mr. Speaker, imagine sitting around in Cape Breton or anywhere in Canada 30 years ago with your coffee buddies, your friends and you were talking about what would be happening in Canada 30 years later. If somebody said that all the coal mines in Cape Breton would be shut down, somebody would have called for an ambulance and a white jacket.

What are we doing today? We are talking about exactly that. We have to stop and wonder how this all took place and what exactly happened.

I have had the opportunity to go to Cape Breton. I have also had the opportunity to go down into the mines with the workers, and hardworking and dedicated people they are. Not one of them I talked to was asking for a handout. When I talked to them they were asking for the truth.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)]

Order, please. It might have been that my subconscious knew that the member for Okanagan—Shuswap had already been on his feet speaking to this.

[Darrel Stinson, Reform, Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Mr. Speaker, but not on the subamendment.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)]

But not on the sub- amendment. According to the infallible records of the clerk it was. We could ask for unanimous consent for the member to speak for another eight minutes and that would solve the problem.

[Darrel Stinson, Reform, Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

I was just going to talk about the mismanagement with regard to Devco.