Mr. Speaker, this is a bill to divest the last vestiges of government ownership in Petro-Canada. If the member knew his history he would know that the NDP was instrumental to the formation of Petro-Canada. It was one of things the NDP leader, David Lewis, and his caucus pressed for in the minority parliament of 1972 to 1974. Petro-Canada came into being shortly thereafter and perhaps even during the life of that minority parliament the groundwork was laid for it.
We had always felt it was a good idea to have a publicly owned oil corporation but we were not always happy with the way the Liberals ran it. Over time the Liberals gave public ownership a bad name. All too often they saw it as an opportunity for patronage rather than a chance to do something better than could be done by the private sector.
One of the problems we therefore had, along with others who saw a role for public ownership in certain sectors, was that the Liberal Party of Canada gave public ownership a bad name. It became something we wanted to defend in principle but not always in practice.
We still think a measure of public ownership in the oil industry would be a good idea. That is why we have opposed the privatization of Petro-Canada. However Petro-Canada was not created through nationalization as the member suggests.