Madam Speaker, recently, this week and last week, there has been a great deal of discussion on the Hill about the consequences of the Westray disaster. There has been a motion already before the House and now there is a bill before the House from the hon. member for Halifax having to do with finding a way through the criminal code to deal with the contempt that mine owners sometimes show for the lives of their workers by virtue of negligence with respect to safety in the workplace.
There is another way to show contempt for the lives of miners and workers. We can show contempt for them by the way we dispose, in this case, of the property, of the place where they have made a lifetime vocational commitment. I am talking about the coal miners of Cape Breton, many of whom have worked for Devco for literally decades, some of them 30 years, 40 years; many 25 years, 20 years. We see the government moving to privatize Devco. I am against privatization in any event. I have seen the effect of other privatizations. It is an ideological fixation that I once associated with the Tories and I used to find surprising on the part of the Liberals, but now they have actually become even bigger and better privatizers than the Tories.
It is not just privatization in principle; it is also what is going on in particular with respect to Devco. What is happening, and this is what the government is not willing to do anything about or to fess up about, is that really what it is selling is not Devco. It is not a mine that someone else will take over and run to produce coal and sell coal to Nova Scotia Power or to other markets. What it is selling is a franchise to sell coal to Nova Scotia Power, which is a significant user of coal. The fear of my colleagues from Cape Breton, miners in Cape Breton and the people in those communities is that the real agenda is not to transfer ownership; it is really just a way of selling this contract to sell coal to Nova Scotia Power. The mine itself, the machinery and all of the other things, including the employees, are a disposable part of the deal. The real heart of the deal, the real kernel, is the franchise to sell coal to Nova Scotia Power.
We would not be surprised if whoever buys Devco is not just someone who wants to go into the coal mining business, but rather someone who is already in the business of mining and selling coal from somewhere else. They do not have to take over Devco in the real sense of the word. They do not have to produce coal in Cape Breton. All they have to do is buy Devco to get the franchise or contract to sell coal to Nova Scotia Power, and they have a ticket to great wealth from here on in, courtesy of the Liberal government and the Liberal backbenchers who have their hands over their eyes when it comes to seeing what is really going on here.