Mr. Speaker, I have been listening to the debates since this morning and I see what the government is trying to do by suggesting that we are fearmongering and that we are living in the past.
I want to clarify something. I want to clearly state what our intentions are and also explain something that is very troubling to every parliamentarian here. I want to come back to the motion.
The motion very clearly calls on the government to apologize to the people whose land was expropriated in Mirabel and to acknowledge the collective trauma experienced by those who were forced to abandon their homes and significantly change their life plans. We are also calling on the government to learn from its mistakes and commit to not undertaking such expropriations again without public consultation, social licence and appropriate compensation.
When I looked at our motion, I was inspired by what the Prime Minister did in his speech in Davos.
The Prime Minister is a well-read man. In his speech in Davos, he drew attention to an author I really admire, Václav Havel. He talked about the power of the powerless and especially the celebrated idea of living in truth.
I would like to invite the Liberals to live in truth, so I want to explore the concept not of apology, but of forgiveness. These are two different things. The philosopher who discussed the concept of forgiveness the most vigorously was Vladimir Jankélévitch. The Prime Minister might be familiar with his work. Jankélévitch said that there is a difference between forgiveness and apology. As Vladimir Jankélévitch sees it, forgiveness is recognition of the seriousness of the offence. With this motion, what we are asking the government to do this morning is to recognize the seriousness of the offence against the residents of Mirabel. In keeping with Vladimir Jankélévitch's perspective, forgiveness is not the same as an apology, where the intent is to reduce liability or erase blame because it was involuntary.
My friend from Lac-Saint-Jean often uses the rhetoric of apologies, saying that it is not his fault and that it is unintentional. We forgive him. However, that is not what we are looking for from the government today. Instead, we are looking for true awareness. Apologies are an attempt to downplay responsibility, often by contextualizing, as my colleague from Lac-Saint-Jean does and as the government also does. What we are asking for, namely forgiveness, means taking responsibility, and that is what we are doing today. We are saying to the government that it acted dishonourably in the past and that it needs to take responsibility for it. That is how a wrongdoer expresses responsibility. What we are trying to do today, what we are asking the government to do, is to take steps to acknowledge the wrong that it did to the people of Mirabel so that it never happens again. I want to emphasize that: never again. In fact, all things considered, today the Bloc Québécois is asking the government to reflect on its responsibility, something the government does not often do. We want to make the government aware that it cannot repeat the tragedy of the Mirabel expropriations by contextualizing and blaming challenging conditions that may be adverse to our economy. I say this because the danger of a tragedy like the one in Mirabel happening again is very real.
In both Bill C-5 and Bill C-15, the government is giving itself a way to shirk its responsibilities under the pretext of responding to the tariff crisis. As in the case of Mirabel, both Bill C-5 and Bill C-15 use the rhetoric of major projects that will build a new Canada to justify deviations from democracy without any guarantee of results.
I would remind the House that, last June, the Bloc Québécois vehemently opposed Bill C-5, which allowed the government to exempt proponents of major projects from the obligation to comply with certain laws. The government goes even further with Bill C-15. Consider, for example, something hidden on page 300 of the bill. There is a seemingly benign amendment to the Red Tape Reduction Act, which was passed by the Harper government.
The government is giving the minister the power, for three years, to exempt any company from any law, except, of course, the Criminal Code. Imagine that.
Here is what the bill says:
...a minister may, by order, for a specified validity period of not more than three years and on any terms that the minister considers appropriate, exempt an entity from the application of (a) a provision of an Act of Parliament, except the Criminal Code, if the minister is responsible for the Act; (b) a provision of an instrument made under an Act of Parliament, except an instrument made under the Criminal Code....
The government is telling us that these exemptions are meant to facilitate innovative projects, but we have our doubts. In reality, what the government's amendment does is place any company above any law.
It is at this point that we need to look back on the infamous case of Mirabel and what it teaches us. Rushing ahead the way we are with Bill C-5 and Bill C-15, while setting aside the principles of the law and abandoning government responsibility, is a disaster waiting to happen.
As the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I would like to give an example of this inconsistent behaviour we are seeing. The government introduced a plan to build oil and gas infrastructure. This infrastructure is supposed to help us get through the tariff crisis. I will skip over the whole issue of co-operation in the case of the agreement between the federal government and Alberta, which was announced without British Columbia even being informed that negotiations were happening about infrastructure that would pass through its territory. I will leave that aside. Rather, the real inconsistency in the government's behaviour is that it is trying to persuade the public that its measures will address the tariff crisis.
When we take a closer look at what the government is actually doing, we quickly realize who would benefit from the creation of oil and gas infrastructure. The biggest players in the oil and gas sector are 80% American-owned. The government is in a hurry to give itself additional powers to build infrastructure without having to comply with laws so that, at the end of the day, it can give more opportunities to American companies. We could not make this stuff up.
In recent years, which large companies have made the most profit in Canada? Companies in the oil and gas sector have. For every dollar of profit, 60% goes into the pockets of American owners. Today, with Bills C-5 and C-15, the government is trying to force infrastructure projects down our throats that will have the same kind of impact we saw for the citizens of Mirabel. These infrastructure projects will benefit Americans under the pretext of fighting the tariff crisis, without respecting environmental principles.
I am saying all this because, ultimately, we realize that when the government acts in a hurry, disaster often looms. One prime example of this is what was done in the past in Mirabel.
Today we want the government to be aware of its actions, to apologize to the citizens of Mirabel and to commit to not repeating this type of mistake.