Madam Speaker, that was an interesting exchange between the leader of the official opposition and the Minister of Transport. The Minister of Transport, quite correctly, pointed out that he was a member and not a minister in the Trudeau government. He was a minister in the government of Mr. Turner.
Why does the Minister of Transport feel that he is under an obligation to defend the Trudeau legacy? He was not a minister during that period of time. He knows in his heart that a terrible mistake was made in the late sixties and the early seventies when 10,000 people were dispossessed of their property. He was not a minister in that government so what is in it for him? He does not have to answer for them. We heard it from him and we heard it from the member for Glengarry--Prescott--Russell.
Those members cannot divorce themselves from the mistakes of the past but they know in their hearts that those mistakes were made, which is why they do not want to talk about anything else. If we were to check the record of those members we would see that over the years they have talked about everything except the 10,000 people who lost their land, and they still do not want to talk about that today. They want to talk about everything else under the sun except those human tragedies.
I would like to hear the member address that. I have not heard him yet but I have heard him talk about everything else. He told us to talk to the cargo handlers and the companies who want to use Mirabel. I say that he should talk to the farmers who lost their land. What are they going to do about them? That is what the minister should be talking about.