House of Commons photoWon his last election, in 2004, with 37% of the vote.
Pearson International Airport October 19th, 1994
Mr. Speaker, on October 7, I sent to the Minister of Transport my solution for the Pearson airport contract problem. He has now had almost two weeks to consider the merits of my proposal.
Will the minister agree that the Pearson problem will not go away and that the proposal I sent him is the only fair and logical way to bring the matter to a just conclusion?
Pearson International Airport October 18th, 1994
Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Transport.
During his speech on the proposed amendments to Bill C-22 the minister stated that the Pearson consortium was seeking $445 million in damages through the courts. In fact that is his answer to virtually every question we ask.
However court documents clearly indicate no amount has been claimed, only the right to have damages settled by an arbitration tribunal in accordance with the provisions of the airport contract.
Can the minister tell the House why he is continually misstating the facts? Is it because he is trying to scare the public into
supporting an immoral, illegal and unconstitutional cover-up of Liberal election strategy gone bad?
Department Of Public Works And Government Services Act October 17th, 1994
Madam Speaker, I have asked a question of the Minister of Transport, in fact the entire side, a number of times. I have asked the minister, I have asked the parliamentary secretary, I have even asked the chairman of the Standing Committee on Transport. My question has been regarding the Pearson airport contract. If they think this is a bad deal we wanted to know what they thought was a good deal.
In spite of asking all these different people, I have never received an answer. What I want to do for a moment is take a look at what is good and what is bad about this deal; first what is good, from my perspective, of course.
It would have involved $740 million of private enterprise money going into the rebuilding of terminals 1 and 2 without any cost to the taxpayer. It would have created world class terminals at competitive and comparable rents for airlines. It would have had blended use of terminal 3 during the construction period, minimizing public disruption. There would have been a tremendous advantage to Air Canada and perhaps even Canadian Airlines.
It would have created a new world class air terminal and would have provided enhanced economic and tourism benefits for central Canada without cost to the air industry in other parts of the country or the Canadian taxpayer.
Then there is the matter of jobs, jobs, jobs-the Liberal Party election cry. The Pearson development contract would have created 14,000 person years of construction employment and another 1,200 permanent new jobs in the new facilities.
What is bad about this contract? According to the Liberals, this contract had no cancellation clause. What is interesting is that there was no cancellation clause for Terminal 3, for Vista
cargo terminals or for the Vancouver local airport authority. They claimed that it had limited bidding. The reality is that hundreds of contracts or requests for proposals were printed, dozens were picked up, and the fact that only a few were qualified to bid on it can hardly be deemed the responsibility or problem of the Pearson consortium.
They claimed that the rate of return on investment was too high; the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce did not think so. It was one of the original investors but they dropped out because the rate of return dropped to less than 14 per cent, which they thought was too low for the degree of risk involved.
They complained that the contract was signed during the election campaign. Most legal opinions agree that the actual binding date of the deal was August of 1993, before the election was called.
A very selective censored review of terminals 1 and 2 provided to Robert Nixon by the associate deputy minister and classified as secret, indicates the following: rate of return too high? The Pearson Development Corporation return on investment was endorsed as reasonable by both the Department of Finance and a government hired independent consultant. They claimed the crown was not getting a good return but the reality is this report said the crown's rate of return was considerably better than a crown construction option.
I have to provide at this provide an apology because in my letter to the minister which I sent a week ago I claimed that his action was unprecedented. In actual fact, the War Measures Act in 1942 which saw the Japanese stripped of all their property, legislated payment and denied the right of appeal, sounds rather familiar.
They claim that $445 million is the compensation sought. Court documents show no amount has been claimed, only the right to an arbitration tribunal.
So far this is all my side. Is there a Liberal side? We do not know. We keep asking the question and they keep refusing to answer it. The question is, and I will ask it again for the fourth time, if this is a bad deal, what is a good deal, what are your alternatives?
Pearson International Airport October 7th, 1994
Mr. Speaker, Bill C-22 has once again been rejected and sent to committee by the other place.
Will the Minister of Transport admit that this bill is not going to go away and that he has absolutely no plan as to how to deal with this ill-conceived legislation?
Pearson International Airport October 5th, 1994
Mr. Speaker, the minister offers no proof because there is no proof to offer. Yet he continues to refuse to hold a public inquiry to determine what, if any proof exists. Will the minister admit to this House
that his position is nothing more than a cover-up of a Liberal election strategy gone bad?
Pearson International Airport October 5th, 1994
Mr. Speaker, yesterday the Minister of Transport made light of my statement that without a public inquiry we will not know if the Pearson deal really was good or not. Obviously he believes it to be a bad deal.
Will the minister advise this House what proof of wrongdoing by the Pearson group led him to this position? What proof does he have?
Pearson International Airport October 4th, 1994
Mr. Speaker, we do not know one way or the other because the Liberals are covering the whole thing up.
The minister's national airport program will take until 1997 to establish, at which time the process of funding and constructing the now overdue rebuild of terminals 1 and 2 at Pearson will start.
Can the minister honestly tell the House and the users of terminals 1 and 2 that it is okay to wait until the next century for facilities needed now, or alternatively tell the House where the high spending Liberal government is going to get another three-quarter to one billion taxpayers' dollars to spend on an airport it ultimately wants to privatize?
Pearson International Airport October 4th, 1994
Mr. Speaker, during his imaginative, if not wholly accurate, oration on the Pearson development contract delivered during the recent debate on amendments to Bill C-22, the Minister of Transport stated that the contract on terminals 1 and 2 was not a good deal; then he went on to misquote my position during question period yesterday.
If the minister thinks the current contract, which would have seen $750 million of private sector money that the government does not have spent on development of terminals 1 and 2 was not a good deal, would he please tell the House and all the Pearson airport users operating in unacceptable facilities what alternative plan he has that will quickly get them into acceptable facilities?
Pearson International Airport Agreements Act September 28th, 1994
Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for Hamilton West. I am glad to see someone from the government side speak that is subject to questioning.
The analogy that the hon. member brings up is very interesting. He said that there were some allegations or possibility of impropriety, so it is in the best interests of Canadians to cancel the deal and not compensate these people. He did not say that it has been properly investigated or if anybody really even created an improper procedure in this whole thing.
It is like being a person associated with somebody who drops dead. We do not know what killed the person, but we charge him with murder because after all he was around somebody that died. We do not even know if a murder happened, never mind whether this person contributed to it. Yet we want to find him guilty. That is what the government is saying in this bill: "We think there are some improper things and if we think there is something improper, then by God there must be something improper, because we know it all". I challenge that.
I would ask the hon. member if they are so anxious to cancel this bill because it is such a bad bill, they must obviously have something better in mind. I asked the Minister of Transport today what he had in mind, what he was going to replace this contract with, what he was going to do about the problems at Pearson airport terminals 1 and 2.
The government must have something better in mind. I would like to hear from the hon. member what will replace this bad deal that is better?
Pearson International Airport Agreements Act September 28th, 1994
Mr. Speaker, the term dictatorship suggests when those in power can do whatever they wish. That is exactly what we have. Any time we have a majority party it is the equivalent of a temporary dictatorship. It can be a benevolent dictatorship, if it wishes to get re-elected, but it has absolute power nonetheless. That is where that particular term comes from.
The hon. member mentioned the people who work at Pearson and the fact that he comes from Toronto. I assume he was going to suggest they had argued in the political process of getting elected that they were going to challenge the Pearson deal. They did not challenge the Pearson deal. They simply overturned it.
We are talking about contract cancellation. That is not what they are doing. They are trying to pretend the contract never took place. That is not what they said they would do during the campaign. They said they would have a public review. We are still waiting.