Mr. Speaker, the member is probably accurate in his assessment. Even under the previous Liberal government, the CBC was downgraded somewhat and being forced to rationalize its services, I thought in the interests of having the private sector move into the more profitable parts of the business. Certainly, with a Conservative government in place, that is even more cause for alarm because of its propensity to sell off crown assets.
In particular, the member will recall that last year the government made a statement that it was looking at selling off crown assets. It did not give a list of crown assets. The government did not decide to start selling off crown assets in 2006, 2007 or 2008 when the market was in pretty decent shape. It waited until Iceland declared bankruptcy and the world is in the worst recession in many years. All of a sudden, surprise, there is a list of government assets that it might be willing to sell off.
That gets to the question of the member's reference to the issue of a fire sale. Many people would support the government selling crown assets under certain conditions. However, Conservative governments always tend to sell public assets at fire sale, cut rate prices.
If I had time, I would explain what happened with the sale of the Manitoba Telephone System in Manitoba. The government, under Gary Filmon, valued the shares at half their price and sold them. Shares which were worth around $23 a piece and even today are trading in that vicinity were sold for $13 and half of that $13 was subsidized. That is exactly what happened. It was a big reward to the government's friends in the investment business.
So yes, the member is absolutely right.