Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak on this issue. I certainly appreciate the member's comments in opening up the matter quite clearly for all of us. I also hope this will peak the interest and raise the ire of Canadians across the country.
The privatization of Pearson airport and this government's hasty reversal of the privatization decision smacks of a political soap opera with very real consequences for the people involved, for Torontonians and for all Canadians. At this rate the soap opera will not have a happy ending.
The privatization of Pearson was a complex animal right from its conception. One of the reasons is that it was all done behind closed doors. It was a decision which grew more complex with, the passing of time and the ever increasing involvement of political players.
Now Bill C-22 comes along. It is not really a complex piece of legislation on the face of it. However the simplicity of its prose I am afraid masks what many believe is a complexity of intent on the part of the government.
Needless to say the Reform Party supports the cancellation of the privatization deal for Pearson, despite the fact that privatization of most if not all government industries would represent a great leap down the road to a new Canada. It is truly a shame the previous government and previous governing party was so mired in scandal and pork that it could put such a bad light in the minds of Canadians on this whole concept of privatization.
Of course Bill C-22 is no solution or remedy to the mess created by the former government. It just creates a new mess of its own. That is why it is imperative we scrap Bill C-22 by passing the motion of my colleagues in Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition and start from scratch to untangle this web of political intrigue, patronage and bad politics.
As we untangle this web we may find a new list of names along the way which played a prominent part in this whole episode. That I fear is the motivation in proposing carte blanche out of pocket compensation in Bill C-22, a bill that will not fix the Pearson problem but only make it go ever so quietly away.
I refer to the Pearson saga as a soap opera, but this soap opera has real players who have been genuinely hurt by this mess. As usual, the people who have the least to do with creating the problem are most likely to be hurt by it and least likely to be helped by the solution proposed by this government.
I refer to the residents of Toronto. They so very badly require Pearson to become a world class air terminal to serve a world class city. I refer to the men and women who would have done the work to modify Pearson. Those people were counting on jobs. I refer to all Canadians who whether they know it or not depend on Pearson, the most important hub airport in Canada, to keep business flying, to take Canadians efficiently to overseas trade destinations and to bring foreign traders in.
It is always the case that there is a ripple effect whenever a government makes a decision of any kind. This is precisely why government must learn to restrict itself, for it is inevitable that government when it acts will often disrupt the lives of people who have no stake in whatever particular project is undertaken.
Again, privatization is to be encouraged but when that privatization breaks down due to mismanagement and corruption, as it did in this case, then the reversal of that privatization must be undertaken with the greatest of care, even if it takes a bit of time.
That is not what happened here. This government wants to ram Bill C-22 down the collective throats of this House. It wants to ram Bill C-22 down the throats of Canadians. Whenever traditional government takes the decision to study something and issue a report, it is customary to expect that with the amount of time involved before bureaucrats get around to actually concluding something, so much dust will have settled and the pages turned so yellow with age that the problem will have evolved into something entirely different.
That was certainly the case for the last government and was also most certainly the case when this party was last in power. It is not in this case. I have become so sceptical about the workings of traditional politics that I cannot help but be suspicious that the sheer speed with which this government published its Nixon study and decided to allow for compensation reveals that this government has something to fear when it comes to leaving this issue on the table for too long.
The Pearson deal as it was struck needs to be revoked. Let us do that. Then, rather than granting the minister the power to dole out vast sums of money, somewhere in the neighbourhood of $30 million to $40 million for out of pocket expenses, a politically suspicious phrase if I have ever heard one, let us dig deeper into the issue to discover a couple of things. Number one, let us find out the degree to which the previous government bungled this deal.
A public inquiry, that is one dead horse that deserves to be beaten a bit more for fear that it may rise from the dead and trample once again on the political process in Canada. Let us take time to find out just how wide the web of political blunder has been woven. In particular, let us find out precisely the role of the lobbyists in this deal. Let us discover how many people have been needlessly and through no fault of their own adversely affected by the Pearson debacle in order that this government can provide restitution where restitution is due.
It is interesting to note the players who have come into being and whose party or whose companies and names have been published in other manuscripts. They should be examined closely. Let us use this as a case study in politics gone wrong so that it hopefully will never happen again.
We need to see just how much of a liability Pearson has been for the government. We know that a major liability has been incurred already and will grow if Bill C-22 is passed, especially with section 10.
Last, let us re-examine the privatization of Pearson to see just how to make it work. This time around I hope the government in power will exercise the political will and common sense wisdom necessary to bear in mind that political decisions like this affect more than just the political players involved. They affect everyone, the people who work at Pearson, the people who would rebuilt Pearson, and all Canadians who depend on Pearson in so many ways.
There is a valuable lesson to be learned from Pearson. By proposing Bill C-22 this government has proven to the Canadian people that they have learned nothing, especially with the compensation package. I hope that it will redeem itself by supporting the amendment to kill this bill, to stop the blind power of the minister to make huge repayments without accountability and by starting over.
If not, this government will have proved that narrow political interests are still at work controlling Ottawa and that the interests of hard working people have yet to be adequately represented by traditional political parties.
