Mr. Speaker, I rise again to speak to Bill C-11 with some sadness.
The last time I spoke on the bill was in November. I raised questions about the basic misunderstanding of the problems in Cape Breton by the government. I spoke about the fact that many Cape Bretoners who still consider themselves Cape Bretoners no longer are able to live there. They now reside in my community of Dartmouth or in Montreal, Calgary or Toronto, or they have been forced to leave the country. They go to Boston or elsewhere in the United States because of the government's approach to the problems of Cape Breton.
The approach has been that it is time to move on; it is time to leave the island that they love; it is time to lower expectations, to know that what the coal miners have wrested from the rock with their sweat and with the lives of their fathers and grandfathers is not worth the government's attention any longer. What it is really time for is the government to stop being so arrogant and to stop being so patronizing.
Since I last spoke on this bill a number of things have happened. The people of Cape Breton finally got the government's attention by taking direct action. They took control of the mine. These men had finally had enough and the spouses and the families of the men had had enough. Together they took control of the mine. I do not blame them. They were not prepared to let the legacy of sweat their forefathers had left go without a fight.
I want to salute the member for Bras d'Or—Cape Breton for her levelheaded and hands on approach to the workers who took that dramatic action. I think the situation may have descended to violence had she not been there to keep communications between the parties going during that very tense situation. That took a lot of guts on her part and it took a lot of guts on the workers' part to take the action that they did. They brought the attention of the entire country to their plight.
I also wish to thank the member for Sydney—Victoria for the brilliant defence of his constituents and his articulate, eloquent and passionate representations made to government members, sadly to no avail. The Liberals seem hell-bent on destroying Cape Breton island. They told the workers down the mine that they would send their reasonable grievances to an independent decision maker to get them to end the strike and allow the coal to flow once again.
It was strange that when the coal stopped flowing the power supply to my constituency became uncertain. Still the Liberals say that shutting off the tap of Cape Breton coal is a good thing. Maybe I should be a little more charitable.
It is willing to let Devco go simply so an American company can have the privilege of buying the supply contract which will keep my constituents' lights on. However, from what I am hearing here and back in Nova Scotia, the government has never fulfilled this promise to the brave workers who went down that mine. I am not surprised, only saddened.
The only thing the government has done is assured workers in Cape Breton that they will be provided jobs in call centres. The Prime Minister himself flew to Cape Breton on the eve of a provincial election to tell people in Cape Breton that he would get rid of good paying jobs without providing decent severance and let them work for crap wages in call centres. The Prime Minister called this the best kind of patronage. I call it arrogant and patronizing.
While being a playwright, I had the great pleasure to write a play about characters living in Glace Bay, called The Glace Bay Miners' Museum . It was based on a very important story of the same name by Sheldon Currie. This bill presents to me a whole new scenario, a comedy of course, a farce I guess.