Mr. Speaker, I had the experience of eight years of the Mike Harris government in Ontario, and privatization was the way to go. His government privatized anything it could lay its hands on. I will give one quick example because Ontarians need to know the history.
Highway 407 was sold after it was bought and built by the Ontario taxpayer and was making money. It was sold by the Mike Harris government and all of the profit from that sale went into election year revenues as one line of income in the budget. To this day, those of us who use the 407 are paying hugely higher tolls than the going rate around the world for a similar type of toll road.
One of the things that is most exasperating about this is that when the Conservatives sell off the country's crown jewels, not to pay the bills but to ensure that their rich friends become richer, we do not even get the fire sale dollar amount that we would normally get. One change in the law and all of that would suddenly stay with the private side, which gets to make all of the money and Canada gets nothing from it. Nothing.