Mr. Speaker, my questions for the Minister of Public Works and Government Services concern the property at 65 Carl Hall Road in Toronto.
This building was designated by the federal government as a federal heritage building in 1992. It is the former home of de Havilland, where many aircraft were built for service for the Canadian Forces in World War II. It is a heritage building because of the long and storied connection to our aerospace industry, including our first satellite, Alouette, and the Canadarm.
Aside from the building's historical value, it houses an impressive collection of artifacts from Canada's long history of air and space industrial developments. This collection is called the Canadian Air and Space Museum. It houses the only full-scale replica of the Avro Arrow, which was killed by the Diefenbaker Conservative government in 1959. It houses a full-scale replica of the Alouette satellite. It houses a Lancaster bomber that had a storied history in World War II and spent many years on a pedestal at the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto. It is being lovingly restored by volunteers, one of whom actually piloted Lancasters in the war. The museum houses many hundreds of donated artifacts from veterans from all over Canada.
The museum has been a significant part of Downsview Park and forms part of the public attraction to the park. Many thousands of visitors, including tens of thousands of school children from all over Ontario, come to learn about our aviation and space history in the building where much of that history began. In fact, in Downsview Park's own annual reports, there are lovely photos of the museum as an asset.
On September 22 of this year, the museum, along with other tenants of 65 Carl Hall Road, were suddenly and without warning given eviction notices. Downsview's public comments about the closure of the museum, which have been parroted by the government, were full of inaccuracies: there were no subsidies given to the museum; the museum was not 17 months in arrears; the park never consulted with the museum before serving the eviction notice; the museum did not opt to switch from profit-sharing to market rent, but was forced to do so by the park; the museum is not a private collection, but a volunteer-run charitable organization; the park has never offered an alternative to house the collection, and the museum was never given the opportunity to raise the funds to make the necessary repairs to 65 Carl Hall. The repairs were costed at $3.5 million, yet no engineering report was forthcoming, and the repairs have been costed at much less by the museum itself.
The response to my questions in September was that the park is at arm's length, yet three weeks after that was said, an order in council was signed by the minister to authorize the leasing of the land. The park did not have the right to do it without the minister's say-so. Can the minister please answer why she informed us in September that it was at arm's length, yet in October signed the order in council?
There has never been an answer to any question about what process the government used to remove the heritage status of the building. The building was declared a heritage property many years ago, but nothing of its heritage or status has changed since then. Under what aegis or process did the government un-designate this site, and when?
As a result of investigations concerning the leasing of the land, we know that the order in council clearly states that 65 Carl Hall Road was being leased to Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, owners of the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Toronto Raptors. It is reported to us that the chief operating officer of Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment and the vice-president for park development of Downsview Park are in fact brothers. We would therefore ask what steps were taken to ensure that their business dealings were neither a conflict of interest nor had the appearance of a conflict of interest.
The government has indicated that its mandate included the preservation of heritage and the protection of museums, yet the actions of the government fly in the face of those statements. Recently, Toronto City Council adopted a resolution calling on the federal government to grant a reprieve to the Canadian Air and Space Museum and provide assurances of its preservation on the Downsview lands. In addition, the North York Historical Society called for the mayor to petition the government to preserve the building known as 65 Carl Hall Road as a heritage building.
We ask the government to respond to these two requests from the City of Toronto.