Mr. Speaker, once again I rise to talk about Bill C-11.
Certainly I concur with what has been said already by my colleagues in this House, both within my party and within the NDP, although our objective on the bill is somewhat different from the NDP because we support the idea of privatizing Devco. It only makes sense to me.
Over the last 30 years this government and the Conservative government have certainly proven that Devco was created for political purposes, existed for political purposes and appears is going to die for a political purpose, which is really unfortunate. What is going on here is such a tragedy. What the government appears to be preparing to do is immoral.
I talked to you before, Mr. Speaker, and I will say it again in the House; what the Liberals are doing to Cape Breton is just as horrendous as what the Trudeau Liberals did to Alberta under the national energy program. I would understand if Cape Bretoners rose up in screaming protest to what is happening. If Cape Bretoners and Atlantic Canadians never again in Canadian history voted for a Liberal candidate I could certainly understand that.
We have a history of mining in Cape Breton that goes back hundreds of years. We have some of the best mining expertise in the world in Cape Breton. We have hundreds of millions of tonnes of coal in the ground in Cape Breton. We have a market in Nova Scotia for all the coal that Cape Breton miners can produce for Nova Scotia power. We have management capability in Cape Breton that wanted to bid on the assets of Devco and wanted to operate the mines, the wash plant and all the rest of the assets for the benefit of Cape Bretoners and Nova Scotians.
This government, it would appear, is denying them that opportunity without even a fair hearing. That makes no sense to me and it again smacks of the same kind of mismanagement, corruption and patronage that has dogged Devco for the last 30 years.
I tried to get into those issues in committee. I tried to expose some examples of the patronage and mismanagement that went on. The president and chairman of the board of directors of Devco was quoted in a local Nova Scotia newspaper on how terrible the management of Devco had been and how that was the reason Devco could never be profitable.
The fact is that coal mining in Cape Breton can be profitable, but certain conditions have to be met before that is possible. The government does not appear to be allowing those conditions to be put in place. To preserve Devco as a crown corporation and to preserve the system imposed on the coal mining industry in Cape Breton would never be profitable. It would never survive without the ongoing billions of dollars of subsidies that have been poured into it. They would have to continue to be poured in.
If Devco were privatized and not saddled with the liability of the successor rights of the existing union contracts today, or the huge liability going all the way back to the Dominion Steel and Coal Company which succeeded Devco, and if a private company could buy the assets of Devco and operate it without those liabilities and without the huge environmental liability that has accumulated over the years, which everybody has been trying to ignore, coal mining could be profitable in Cape Breton. It could do much for the economy. It could employ miners. It could be a wonderful opportunity for Cape Bretoners to control their own destinies, to have jobs and benefits, and to carry on.
The government will not allow that to happen because then Cape Bretoners and Atlantic Canadians would be independent. They would not have the strings attached that they would have by shutting down Devco, putting in a call centre and perhaps creating hairdressers like they did in the TAGS program. Those programs always have strings attached. There is always a political payback for those kinds of programs if the government puts them in place. That is what the government is trying to maintain in Atlantic Canada. That is such a shame because I think there are real opportunities here.
We will not support a few of the amendments in the three groups. The NDP has reintroduced at report stage debate the amendments we introduced in committee. We will support them as we will support the NDP amendments to ensure that there is some local representation on the board of Devco and on the pensioners administration board. Why would anybody not be willing to do that? It only makes perfect sense.
The only amendments we will not support are the ones dealing with successor rights under the union contracts. If the government has not already guaranteed, and I think it has, those successor rights guarantee that whoever buys the Devco assets will never operate the mines, or at least not operate them for any length of time, and will therefore shut them down.
It is pretty obvious that the government has refused in committee or in debate to indicate whether or not there was any requirement in the conditions of sale of Devco that whoever buys it would have to operate the mines even for one day. I suspect not.
When I was in Cape Breton the miners that work underground in the Prince Mine told me that the real reason there is such a rush on the bill is that they are working on a particular coal face in the mine. Instead of preparing another coal face at the same time so that when that one is mined out they have the next face to move to and continue, there is no preparation for another coal face. This indicates to me that there is no intention, once the current coal face is mined out, to continue operating the mine. They could not, if they wanted to, without that forward thinking.
When we look at some of the yearly financial statements of the corporation we see no long term plan to operate any of the mines in the Devco corporation. Certainly there is no capital investment, maintenance or upkeep of the assets. It can be seen as plain as day that it is heading for a dead end and will be shut down. It is being strangled to death.
It is no wonder that the people of Cape Breton, the NDP, our party and the Conservative Party are suspicious. This whole issue is shrouded in a veil of secrecy under the guise of commercial confidentiality.
When I asked the minister in committee if Canadians would ever know the terms and conditions of the sale, he assured us that once the sale had gone through and the bill had passed he would have no problem disclosing the terms and conditions of the sale, until one of his minions leaned over and whispered in his ear that it would not be possible, that the terms and conditions of the sale would have to remain secret forever, that they could never be exposed.
Why would everyone involved not become extremely suspicious of what is going on? A very valuable asset is on the auction block, and that is the contract with Nova Scotia Power. Clearly that is what is being bid on. As far as anyone in Cape Breton knows and as far as anyone here knows, and I guess only the government knows for sure, any local bids have not even been considered in the sale. The bids being considered are foreign bids, American bids, assuming the coal is to come from offshore.
When the transport minister was asked a question about the mess in the airline industry, he stood in the House to say that is a small price to pay for a Canadian solution. There is a price to pay for a Canadian solution in Cape Breton, and we should pay it.