Madam Speaker, the apparent purpose of todays's bill is to enhance Canada's competitiveness in the Pacific Rim. That is a laudable objective, but the government's current efforts to sell Ridley Terminals are not consistent with that objective. That is the issue I would like to address.
In a recent editorial, the Vancouver Sun commented on the sale of Ridley Terminals and said:
Selling Ridley Terminals for a pittance to a private operator, a junior miner with no operating revenue, without any apparent mechanism to guarantee fair and equitable treatment for all producers flies in the face of common sense and makes a mockery of Ottawa's pledge to make B.C. ports the gateway to Asia-Pacific trade.
In another article, the Vancouver Sun identified that company. It said:
The unidentified “B.C. company” teaming up with a junior mining firm to buy a federal coal terminal in Prince Rupert is an Ontario-based cement manufacturer headed by George Doumet, a low-profile Vancouver-based international businessman....
The article goes on to say:
Doumet has rarely been mentioned in the Canadian business media since Candou Industries, the holding company of the Doumet family of Lebanon, declared bankruptcy in 1983 in what was reported at the time to be one of the largest insolvencies in Canadian history.
This is curious, because there seems to be an unholy rush to move ahead with this sale. We have to wonder why. On September 29, the transport minister obtained an unusual cabinet order preventing Ridley's management from signing coal contracts longer than 18 months without his consent and is seeking cabinet approval to negotiate Ridley's sale on a hurry-up basis.
If we take another look at this company and Mr. Doumet, we have to wonder, why the rush? Justice Wood, in a decision on November 29, 1991, on another issue when Mr. Doumet or his companies were before the court, said:
The trial judge made an assessment on the question of whether the discrepancy between the share prices in 1983 and 1989 raised a reasonable inference of fraud or negligence and found that it did.
The folks that he is talking about are the folks that the government wants to sell Ridley to. The judge went on to say:
The judge below made an assessment of this question on the basis of the evidence before him, specifically that set out in Mr. Doumet's affidavit material. He concluded that that material disclosed that there is more than just a discrepancy between the 1983 sale price and the 1989 share price upon which the allegations of fraud are based.
The question is, why is the government in this rush to sell to this company? When we look at the order--