Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to have the opportunity to speak in this debate and I suppose I would have to say to make one further plea to members present and those members presumably representing their caucuses to take seriously what it is we are involved in tonight.
I heard my colleague from Churchill River say that some of us are trying to get inside the heads of our colleagues opposite to understand what they are really thinking about the impact of the legislation before us on the lives of miners who have devoted literally their working years to the coal mining of Cape Breton and the impact on the whole communities in which those people live.
I suppose for members opposite it may seem we are just here to wrap up a bit of unfinished business, that we are just taking care of what is left over after the miners of Cape Breton have been employed for a period of time by Devco. Now progress has to go forward and since privatization is the mantra of the government on many fronts these days, it is just more of the same and we are just of wrapping up the assets and putting them to bed, washing our hands of it and everything is taken care of.
It is very important for us to take stock of exactly what has gone on here and what it is we are really engaged in, in dealing with this stage of debate on Bill C-11. We need to think about the backdrop for what is going on here. What is the context in which this discussion is taking place?
I know that my colleagues, particularly the two members who so ably represent the people of Cape Breton Island, the member for Sydney—Victoria and the member for Bras d'Or—Cape Breton, have worked very hard to put forward the concerns of their constituents, not just of the coal miners, but of their families, their extended families and their entire communities, really the entire economy of Cape Breton. They have tried to make members, particularly on the government benches, understand the extent to which Devco has been a positive economic development tool for all of Cape Breton Island.
The economy of Cape Breton Island is an exceedingly important part of the economy of the province of Nova Scotia. That is why members from all of Nova Scotia are very much engaged in this debate. But it goes beyond that.
What all of the members of the NDP caucus understand, and it does not appear as though there are many others in the House who understand, is that if the government of the day gets away with doing to the people of Cape Breton Island and to the generations of coal miners of that community, what it is apparently hell-bent on doing, then it could do the same to any other community in Canada. That is why the New Democratic Party has been absolutely steadfast and persistent in standing against what the government is doing here in dismantling Devco and basically saying it will just wash its hands of the future of the coal mining industry in Cape Breton.
The government will do the trendy thing. It will lay it open and invite the privatizers to come in. It will turn it over to private industry. Anybody who thinks that is a welcome initiative to the people of Nova Scotia, particularly the people of Cape Breton, does not know the history of coal mining in Cape Breton.
They do not understand what went on in the lives of miners who were employed by those private corporations. It was hell. It was a very unhappy era in the history of Nova Scotia's economy.
If it is too much to ask government members to go back and look at what happened in the province of Nova Scotia when coal mining was in the hands of the private sector, maybe some of the members opposite could take a moment to think about what went on in the hands of a private corporation in Nova Scotia more recently. There is no one opposite, particularly this week, who can pretend they do not know the history of what happened under the private corporation, the Westray mine, Curragh Resources.
I have to say that in my 20 years in politics, without a doubt, the most horrifying experience that I have ever endured was to spend an evening, as I recall of four or five hours, with the coal miners who had survived the Westray disaster and with the widows and families of the victims of the Westray disaster a day or two after the lives of those 26 miners were lost. If there was one thing that became clear to me, it was the difference it made to coal mining in Cape Breton and in fact much more dangerous coal mining taking place in Cape Breton. Let us be clear that it was much more challenging, with very deep mines way out under the ocean floor. There is no question that it was very dangerous work and very vulnerable to any number of horrifying kinds of disasters.
Does anyone know what the difference was? There was a genuine sense that the public interest had to be protected, that the lives and the livelihoods of the miners had to be protected and that this was a resource, this was an asset to the whole of the Cape Breton and Nova Scotia economy. What a contrast between the experience of workers employed by Devco, a crown corporation in Nova Scotia over the last several decades, and the horrors of what happened under the private coal mining company of Curragh Resources at Westray.
When I contemplate the kind of private industry start-up that apparently the government is very enthusiastic about, at least in concept, I do not think we are fully convinced that the government is serious about coal mining continuing under private auspices. In fact there is every reason to be suspicious that this really is the government saying “Let us wrap up the coal mining in Cape Breton and let us just move on”. There is every reason to be concerned about what this is really about. Even if we took the government at its word and it was enthusiastic about coal mining under private auspices, we have to wonder if it has really learned anything from the lesson of Westray.
If there was any member opposite who did not fully understand what that lesson was before last week, there is no excuse now for saying that they do not understand it. The United Steelworkers of America that represent the surviving miners from Westray have been here on the Hill for the last eight days to make sure that there is no person in this Chamber, no one representing workers anywhere in the 301 ridings in the country who does not understand what it meant for coal mining to take place under the auspices of a private company and where there was no assurance whatsoever of there being a union. That is the other part of it, the health and safety laws of this country mean nothing in the context of a union free mine setting. I have to say in conclusion that the backdrop for this is very alarming, as is the failure of the government to learn the lessons of history.
Another part of the backdrop that I think is highly relevant is the general assembly meetings of the OAS that are taking place in Canada, for the first time since Canada joined the OAS 10 years ago.
We have the spectacle happening right now before our eyes. It is not something that people are talking about as a possible future development but of coal being imported from Colombia, one of the worst countries in the world in terms of labour standards, environmental standards, health and safety, and human rights. That coal will be imported from Colombia to be burned in Nova Scotia because the government has pulled the plug on Devco mining.
We have a government that has no interest in either the current lives and the future of coal miners in that community and the broader impact, or in a serious commitment to ensure the continuation of coal mining in Cape Breton. In view of the developments that are about to unfold and in view of what is already happening as a result of the government basically pulling the plug on coal mining in Cape Breton, it is amazing that we have had almost no participation of government members in the debate around such important issues.
This a very sad day, not just for the miners in Cape Breton who in many cases have given their health or sacrificed their lives to provide coal that has been so important to economy of the country. It is also a sad day to think that the government could turn its back on the regional economy. This country is made up of regional economies. I think it is fair to say that this is a lesson that will not be missed by the people of Nova Scotia or others across the country who care a great deal more for their communities and the regional economies.