Jim Gouk

[Pearson International Airport Agreements Act, September 28th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I understand that the Liberals may not have as much support in caucus for this motion as they might like us to believe. I am sure being good members of the old style party of the past that they will vote the party line as they are told. I understand that they cannot find anyone else to speak to this debate. I am really sad if that is the case because I have some questions I would like to ask and have answered here today. We will have to make of the process what we can.

This whole business of Bill C-22 and the Pearson development contract was a very questionable process at best. We question the type of lobbying that was done, the allegation at least that there was an excessive amount, the close links that those lobbyists had with the Prime Minister's Office and a lot of the actions that the government itself took, the short duration, using one of the bidders to provide a lot of the parameters for the bid in the first place, the way it was signed at the last minute when it was known that the Tory government was on its way out. It was a very questionable deal. There is no argument on that at all.

We have a backroom deal. One of the problems is the government is offering us a backroom solution to this problem. That is not acceptable.

We have not heard a single piece of evidence stating specifically what improper, illegal action was taken by the bidder in this process. That is what we are trying to get to the bottom of.

My colleague in the Bloc tried to get to the bottom of that. We tried to get witnesses in and had very little luck with it, either co-operation from the witnesses or for that matter co-operation from the government in subpoenaing those witnesses.

On the other hand, it is said that during the time this was signed the leader of the Liberal Party said that if he got in this deal would be cancelled. That is not what he said. I want to clarify that. He stated that he would hold an independent public inquiry into this entire process.

I have talked to the principals involved in this consortium. They said that did not hold any fear for them. They welcome a public inquiry into this. They will open their books to anyone, as they did when this so-called public inquiry took place. They said the have nothing to fear, they have done nothing wrong.

What happened with our independent public inquiry? The government hired Mr. Robert Nixon. Is it really an inquiry when from start to finish in finished report the whole thing took 20 days? It took place largely behind closed doors. We were not able to suggest who he might talk to. Several of the people the industry thought would be the obvious people for Mr. Nixon to talk to did not get called in. There was no opportunity to cross examine the evidence that was put in. Whether or not it was a fair inquiry or a public inquiry does not seem to be answered.

To decide whether the inquiry was independent we have to look at who Mr. Nixon is. Mr. Nixon is the former leader of the Ontario Liberal Party. Mr. Nixon was the chairman of the 1987 Liberal task force on Pearson Airport. Mr. Nixon is the father of a sitting Liberal member. Immediately after he put in his report in 30 days, Mr. Nixon was named as chairman of the atomic energy commission. Independent?-I hardly think so.

There is another allegation. I think it is fair to bring the allegations into this House because all we have heard about this contract are allegations. In Mr. Nixon's so-called independent public inquiry there was no evidence. There were only allegations of possible improprieties, of possible wrongdoing. There was not one shred of hard evidence brought forward by Mr. Nixon.

The allegation that is floating in industry right now from many sources is that there are two Nixon reports, one Mr. Nixon actually wrote and one that was written for him and actually submitted. Do I have proof of this?-no, I do not, any more than the proof we have seen of the wrongdoings by the Pearson consortium in this whole deal. Allegations are all we have seen.

Then the Standing Committee on Transport decided it would hold hearings and we would have a chance to air all this out and find out what went wrong. As my colleague in the Bloc stated, many people were asked to come before the committee but very few of them showed up. This did not help the case of the consortium.

I was not very pleased that a lot of these people who claimed that they were hard done by did not come forward to defend themselves. We also did not get very much co-operation from the Liberal government in trying to ensure that we got those people in.

There were a couple of other interesting events. Aside from the people we asked who did not come there were several principals who asked specifically to come to the hearing and were denied. These were people like William Pearson, the president of Agra Engineering, George Ploder, president of Bracknell Corporation, and Scott McMasters, president North America, of Allders International Canada. One of the principal investors in this whole contract was denied the right to come before the committee. Why is the government trying to hide what truly happened in this whole process?

The topic of the return on investment being excessive has been brought up, while we have heard figures that are all over the scale.

The government was first alleging 18.5 per cent. Today we heard some figures going up to 28 per cent. The reality is this was examined by a firm I think the House would agree is credible. I am so overwhelmed by some of the stuff the government has done that I am at a loss for words on some of this. The firm I am talking about is Price Waterhouse. I do not think anybody here is going to question the integrity of Price Waterhouse. It said 14 per cent return.

It is really interesting that the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce was one of the tentative investors in this. It invested at what looked like a 18.5 per cent return on that investment. When it dropped to 14 per cent, which is exactly what Price Waterhouse says it was, CIBC pulled out because it was not a good enough return for the risk involved in this type of investment. Maybe the government wants to suggest that CIBC is not credible, I do not know. It has not answered that.

Included in this particular bill is the fact that there should be no compensation for lobbying fees. If there was something illegal about the way this corporation lobbied the government then certainly it should not get compensation for any illegal activity whatsoever, no matter what.

If the lobbying was legal according to the government and we like many others do not like the fact that there is lobbying, then until such time that the rules are changed it is the same as somebody driving down the street at 90 kilometres an hour in a 90 kilometre zone and someone pulls out from a side street in front of them and gets hit; an investigation after deciding that 90 kilometres is too fast on that street. You do not charge the person who was doing 90 kilometres because he was doing it in accordance with the law, even if it was too fast for that street. That was not his fault. You change the speed limit but you do not do it retroactively. That is what the government is looking at in this particular case.

It talks of third party contract liability. It is going to allow a few dollars to compensate the principles in this for third party contract liability. Third parties do not have a contract with the government. They have a contract with the Pearson consortium. They can sue in court for whatever amount they care to sue for. It could well exceed $30 million figure the minister threw out here today and there is absolutely no way for the principals in this to pay it. They have that much money out themselves, whether it is by regular and proper activities or whether it is some proper activity, notwithstanding they have already spent in excess of that. Now all of these third parties are supposed to be included in the settlement of $30 million. It may or may not be appropriate. We have not seen the figures.

There is an ongoing problem with terminal 1 and terminal 2 and the government has not told us what its alternative to this contract is. I tried to find that out from the minister today in Question Period. We did not get an answer, which of course surprises me. It is Question Period, not answer period. That seems to be a very common thing, we do not get answers from the government to our questions.

This is something that should be brought out if we are going to deal properly with this entire business evolving around the Pearson airport.

We are looking for something that is very open, very public and very honest. The government is looking to make a secret compensation deal behind closed doors. The minister was asked when he came before the standing committee if he would make this process visible.

I proposed an amendment both at committee and at third reading here in the House to say we would support this bill if instead of hiring another independent person linked to the government who was going to collect all these claims from the consortium, the minister could decide whether he was going to pay, who he was going to pay and how much he was going to pay them. We asked if he will make these figures public, if we will be privy to these figures and the process used to get to them. His answer was about as vague as it was here today dealing with T1 and T2.

He said they might be able to release some of the figures, but they are not sure because cabinet is involved. The minute we involve cabinet we could wrap the figures up for 20 years and know absolutely nothing about what went on. Under those circumstances there is no way to ensure fairness has taken place.

Today in his address the minister said that the threat of litigation was holding up a new solution. No, it is not. We can have all the solutions in the world telling us what to do. There is absolutely nothing that is holding up some alternative solution to the Pearson airport problem with terminal 1 and terminal 2. All the minister has to do is agree with what is being proposed in the House back from the other place. The contract will be cancelled; it will be over. The fact that litigation is going on in court will not hold up new solutions.

We are looking for a court review of the entire process. That was not our solution; that was not what we desired. We wanted it done in the House through the Standing Committee on Transport where the entire process could be brought forth.

One of the risks that actually happens if it goes to court is that the government could end up reaching a settlement and we would never know the true story about what happened in the Pearson bid process. That is not something we desire.

To turn around at this point and simply close the door, to let the minister decide he will pay what he wants and there will be no recourse and no argument, the public will never find out who was at fault in the process.

Was it the people who bid? Was it the Tory government and the way it was done? Or, do the Liberals have a large part in some of the problems that went on here? As it turns out they talk about the Tory cronies coming to the trough, but in the later stages of the proposal there were as many, if not more, Liberals involved in both the consortium and the lobbying. Is that what the government is really trying to hide?

The salvage value of the work being done has not been answered. We want to know what the government has for an alternative process to deal with the problem at Pearson. All kinds of money have been spent on plans, drawings, engineering, passenger load surveys, negotiations with users and tentative contracts that could still be honoured by a new contractor. There is a tremendous value in that, but until we know what it is we do not know what compensation the government should pay out for those things specifically and what the Canadian taxpayer will be able to recoup through the process.

The minister suggested that taxpayers are faced with cuts and therefore we should not consider going into court and allowing the contractors from Pearson to get a large settlement. Is that not interesting? Does that not send a wonderful message out to the business community?

It says that the Liberal government is in trouble with its overspending. The Liberal government has to make some cuts somewhere. It does not particularly care if they are fair or normal as long as they will save a lot of money and as long as someone else can be blamed. That is where some of these cuts will come from.

I do not want to see money wasted by the government any more than anyone else other than probably the government. We bring forward financially responsible proposals and the government seems to want to waste money. It is strange that it would suddenly turn around and want to be financially responsible. It is not proposing financial responsibility.

The matter has to go back to the courts. The courts will decide what went wrong in the process. They will discover whether there was any illegal or improper conduct on the part of anyone involved in the process and they will set the compensation accordingly.

If there was something wrong with the way the consortium lobbied the government it will be identified. The principals will not be compensated for illegal, improper type conduct. If they conducted themselves properly, just because we do not happen to like the way the rules work we cannot punish private enterprise for following the rules of the government. If that happens it sends out a message that no one should do business with the government, and that is not the kind of message we want to send out.

As far as what is going to happen to the bill, the Liberal government has an absolute dictatorship for the next four years. Obviously it can pass anything it wants as long as it can keep its backbenches in order. So far it has been able to do that. We do not know how long it will be able to maintain that, but for now at least it has managed to keep its members voting the way they are told. We have to suppose that it will go back to the other place.

How are we going to deal with it? I am going to meet with the Senate. It is very clear we want a triple E Senate, but as long as we have a Senate there has to be some function for it. If it provides the chamber of sober second thought, which is the function of the Senate, we will work with what we have to work with until such time as we can improve it. We will try to find a solution or an alternative way to bring the matter back to the House yet again until the government deals fairly and properly with the whole matter.

We will not support the government's motion.

[Pearson International Airport, September 28th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. minister's response did not tell us what he has planned for Pearson.

Under the minister's national airport plan we will not see the commencement of construction on a new facility until at least 1998. This is not acceptable. I cannot believe the minister is prepared to tell Toronto it will have to wait until past the turn of the century for needed facilities.

What is the minister doing to shorten this unacceptable delay?

[Pearson International Airport, September 28th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Transport.

Once again we are seeing the federal government playing politics with the economic well-being of Canada. The users of terminals one and two at Pearson airport are languishing in outdated and overcrowded facilities while the government's fatally flawed Bill C-22 is passed back and forth like a football between the Liberal dominated Commons and the Tory-run other place. This is economic planning at its shameful worst.

Can the minister advise this House what action he is taking to ensure the economic well-being of Pearson airport while this political football game continues.

[Canada Elections Act, September 27th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, the intended purpose of this bill is to stop single interest parties from being established.

The manner in which it is written could also stop multiple interest regional parties from forming. There is a realistic purpose in establishing a restriction on financial assistance in the form of a rebate or a portion of the election expenses.

However, this restriction now exists by way of a requirement to field at least 50 candidates in order to qualify for that election expense rebate. On one hand, it is understandable to want to prevent the emergence of political parties that advance the interests of a single province. This bill, however, is not a very democratic way to achieve that goal.

Many people have suggested that democracy really only exists for about one minute every four years when one enters the polling booth. That is not good enough. This country clearly does have different regions and from time to time problems in those regions give birth to new political movements.

Sometimes those regional parties disappear early in their existence, such as the Progressive Party. At other times, a party such as the Reform Party of Canada which saw its start in a region grows to become a contender to form the next Government of Canada.

I would point out to members that this can also work in reverse as we saw in the last election when the Conservative Party went from being the government to a non-party status in a single election.

Forcing political bodies to run in areas where they have no interest is more likely to create regional alienation than it is to present it. A far better solution would be to create a more responsive political system that would tend to address these regional problems before they could spawn a new local interest party.

Consider the problem created by a single issue like fiscal responsibility. The have provinces are having their financial resources stripped from them to finance irresponsible government spending while the have not provinces are getting less from the concept of wealth sharing because of that same lack of federal financial responsibility.

In this case, provinces on either side of the equation could spawn a regional party when the real solution should be found in a new sense of financial responsibility on the part of the government.

An issue could be much smaller, like the firearms legislation. Ill conceived legislation such as that currently proposed by the justice minister could conceivably result in the emergence of a group from a particular area wishing to ensure that we focus on control of criminals instead of persecution of law-abiding citizens.

A combination of issues could cause problems that might cause non-federalists in a particular party or province to form a party, such as what happened in Quebec.

My discussions with the Bloc Quebecois suggested that its biggest issues are the financial ruin of this country and its desire not to go down with the ship and the need for a province, the Bloc's, to have more say over policies and issues that affect it in a different way than it does other provinces.

Had the federal government addressed these genuine concerns which affect all provinces and the people in them, the Bloc may never have emerged. As members can see, it is not hard to create an environment in which the emergence of a single interest or regional party can happen.

There is another aspect to this bill that must also be examined. If passed, this bill would tend to ensure that no new parties ever got started again.

Given that the emergence of the Reform Party wiped out one old line party of the past and threatens to continue the existence of the one remaining party of the past, it is not too difficult to see the real reason for this bill. That is neither fair nor democratic. At any time if the party of the day loses touch with the people it is supposed to be serving, the capability of the system to give birth to a new political movement to replace outdated ones must not be suppressed.

There is yet another flaw in the drafting of this bill. The requirements for registration of a party include the number of provinces in which the party must nominate candidates, seven, and the need for those provinces to comprise at least 50 per cent of the Canadian population. It would be possible for a party to run in Ontario and east, including one of the territories, without any representation in any of the four western provinces. If that did not create regional alienation I do not know what would.

The hon. member from the government side of the House would be better to withdraw this bill. He should concentrate instead on getting his government to get on with addressing the real reasons for regional alienation and general dissatisfaction with the way the old line parties of the past have run this country into the ground.

The governments should deal with the pressing issues of runaway spending, out of touch immigration policies, an out of control criminal justice system, and social programs that are facing financial ruin. If it does not know how to do this, we do, and you know who we are. We are the party that started off as a regional party and grew to our current national status because the other regions were fed up with the old line parties just as the west was.

If the real needs and desires of the people of Canada were met there would be no reason for this bill to be discussed.

[Emergency Personnel, September 23rd, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to notify my fellow MPs that I intend to bring forward a very important private member's bill that could likely save the life of a firefighter or police officer in the near future.

The bill would require hospital officials to notify emergency response personnel when they have inadvertently come into contact with an infectious disease while carrying out their life saving duties. This disclosure would be strictly private and confidential.

In an age when contagious diseases ranging from HIV to hepatitis are on the rise in Canada, protection for emergency personnel is needed more than ever. Lives are at stake here.

I ask the government to give my bill its most serious consideration once introduced. A formal symposium on this issue will be held in Ottawa next week. I feel it would be a sign of goodwill if all hon. members were to recognize the potential danger our invaluable emergency service personnel now find themselves in and pledge to resolve this dangerous situation.

[Young Offenders Act, June 20th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, when the government introduced the Young Offenders Act and said that it intended to make some changes to the act it was very pleasing for me because if ever there was an act that needed modified it is the Young Offenders Act. However, that pleasure quickly faded when I found out that all the changes it really had in mind was just a little bit of tokenism.

One of the major things we are concerned about of course is 16 and 17 year olds and whether they are going to be treated as kids or whether they are going to be treated as adults when they commit crimes.

The government has taken a little portion of this. It has said for 16 and 17 year olds it intends, most of the time at least, to raise them to adult court. The onus will be on them to show cause why they should not be tried in adult court and why in fact they should be tried as young offenders.

This raises two problems. One of the basic problems is if they are tried as adults while still being young offenders they are still treated differently than people who are regular adults being tried in that adult court.

The second problem, and this is the larger one, is that we have a tremendous bureaucracy now. This bureaucracy is part of what drives the deficit and debt as high as it is and climbing continually.

What is going to happen is every time one of these young offenders is proposed to be raised to adult court we are going to have them appealing this and trying to fight it. What we are going to be faced with are trials to determine where the trial is going to be held, whether it is going to be in juvenile court or adult court. That is not doing anything to the legal system. That is not doing anything to resolve the problem of bureaucracy and it is certainly not doing anything to bring justice to this act.

One of the things we think should happen is that the age should be dropped. Sixteen and seventeen-year olds should be tried as adults and should be classed as adults. We think the overall age should be dropped. If you have 10 and 11 year olds committing crimes there has to be some facility to deal with that other than saying that was not very nice and sending them home to their parents, especially when the government is also talking about changing the act so that even once they send them home to their parents the parents are powerless to do anything.

Another thing the government is touching on, but again it is only tokenism, is identifying the criminal activities of young offenders. What we had proposed is that all crimes of 14 and 15 year olds should be readily available through the media and for those 10 to 13 they should be made public if, in the judge's opinion, the need for the public to know and protect itself is greater than the need for confidentiality on the part of the offender.

If you would consider a situation in which one of these young offenders may be exhibiting some form of violent behaviour and is released back to a classroom full of other children, should not the school authorities for one and the parents of the other children there know that there was a potential problem and take the necessary steps to ensure the safety of their own children?

Another area that did not get touched on at all is the need to change the face of the way our correctional facilities work. What we need is a facility that bases its primary actions on education, skills training, community service and one other thing that the government seems loath to introduce, discipline. We do not have a structured type of system that is going to provide some type of education, some kind of knowledge so that they can become useful people instead of sitting in what often are considered country club resorts compared with what many law-abiding

young people have on the outside. We are doing absolutely nothing but making a mockery of our entire system.

The final area where we believe there has to be some major change and something where the government did not even involve itself in tokenism on is the concept of parental responsibility. We believe that whenever there is a young offender and it can be shown that lack of parental control is a factor in the crime being committed then those parents must be responsible for identifying the victim for their losses.

We will have some people arguing as to whether that is fair to the parents. Maybe the parents could not stop the problem. Maybe it is not really being fair to the parents of this young offender. We have to look at the two sides of it. On one side we have a parent, in the situation we are suggesting, and it has been demonstrated that their lack of exercising parental control was a contributing factor to the offence being committed.

On the other side we have the victim. The victim is wholly innocent. There is no question of the innocence of a victim in these types of situations. Who really should have the financial burden placed upon them by the actions of this offender? Should it be a wholly innocent victim or should it be a parent who perhaps should have exercised more control in preventing that offence in the first place? If there is any injustice in this at all it certainly should be on the side of the one where there could be presumed certain responsibility for this. There is no question that it should not fall on the victim who is wholly innocent.

We believe that these are basic changes to the act that must take place. The Liberal government has not addressed this concept whatsoever.

One of the things that involves the Young Offenders Act and in fact the entire criminal justice system is what is this act in place for. Who are we trying to protect? Who are we trying to reward or make life easier for? Is it the victim or is it the person who perpetrates the crime? I suggest that we have to provide protection for the innocent people.

There may well be cause for people to say the poor youth, they have had a bad upbringing, they come from a broken home, they come from poverty. These things may all be true and may have in fact contributed to the person committing the crime.

We have to deal with those issues separately. Our first premise is that we must protect law-abiding citizens and their property. The Young Offenders Act needs to be changed and the reason it needs to be changed is for protection of society at large and also for young people themselves who are the most frequent victims of juvenile crime.

I had high hopes when they talked of introducing this change to the Young Offenders Act and I am very disappointed that they have gone half measure. On one side, we might say that something is better than nothing but on review it seems that what they are offering us is nothing at all.

[Marine Transportation Security Act, June 14th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, at the beginning of this session I stated to the House that the Reform Party, I in particular but my colleagues also, would not oppose the government for opposition's sake. We indicated we would be the first to recognize good legislation when it was brought forward and we would support it.

I see no difficulty with Bill C-38 at this stage. I look forward to dealing with it in the Standing Committee on Transport. It is something which is overdue and is largely housekeeping in nature. There are many items to be confirmed in it but we will do that at committee stage. Consequently, the Reform Party is prepared to go along with moving as quickly as possible to the committee level in order to get on with other pressing business of this House.

[Pearson International Airport Agreements Act, June 14th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, consideration of this bill has been long and very perplexing for many of us. We have dealt with it in the House and we have dealt with it at committee. We think there are still some very serious problems with it.

Essentially I believe that two wrongs do not make a right. Many wrongs have been alleged in this bill. Right from the very start of the whole Pearson development program there has been an allegation of interference in the system of setting up the contract and awarding it.

There have been allegations of inappropriate lobby tactics and of crown princing, which is when something is designed so that only one prechosen person or group can qualify for it. There have also been allegations of generally improper government contacts in setting up this whole contract.

A public hearing in this whole process would have been desirable. A public hearing could have laid to rest who was at fault, whether or not this was a bad deal in terms of the contract itself, and whether or not the entire process by which this was done was flawed. This was something we tried for. It was something the opposition also tried for, but we were not successful in getting the government to agree.

What we got instead was the Nixon report which in effect was a non-report. We are not quite sure as the public is not sure exactly what the terms of reference were for Mr. Nixon. We are not sure exactly how he conducted this. We do know he did not call on several of the principals involved in this contract. We know he did not have anybody testify under oath. We know he did not make the information he received public. We know that the principals involved did not get an opportunity to refute any of the information he had gathered. He then made a recommendation to the government which interestingly coincided exactly with what the government planned to do.

There should have been some process whereby all the people involved in this contract and the way it was set up and awarded would have made public the very things they were involved in.

We did ask many of the principals and the lobbyists to attend meetings of the Standing Committee on Transport. Unfortunately, most of the principals and virtually all of the lobbyists declined to appear. We in the opposition attempted to put in a very long list of witnesses for the committee to subpoena but this was not done.

After two attempts at getting the principal witnesses in and their choosing not to attend, the committee decided there was no need to go any further. On the basis of the fact that these people were invited to committee and they chose-and I do use that word very clearly-they chose not to attend, this puts to rest for all intents and purposes the whole question of whether it was a good deal and whether it was a flawed system by which this whole contract operated. They had the opportunity to come forward and expose where they thought the government was making a mistake and this is something they did not do.

I am not aware of this in Canada but in the United States legal system there is a plea of no contest in addition to guilty or not guilty. No contest is when someone accuses you of something or alleges certain wrongdoings and you simply choose not to deny these and the court makes its decision accordingly.

While we may not have that legal concept in Canada that is in essence what has occurred in Bill C-22. The people involved who say they have been wronged chose not to come to the committee meetings. The government, which says this was a very bad deal and a bad system, also chose not to go public and expose to Canadians what in effect was wrong with this deal. Since they have chosen to do this I am essentially prepared to go with that and say that fine, if the principals do not wish to contest that they were unfairly dealt with and the government chooses not to defend its decision, then so be it.

It does leave one last aspect on which the government has to have some input and some knowledge of the process that is taking place. That is the process of the government arbitrarily choosing behind closed doors to pay or not to pay compensation to the players in this whole deal.

Given that they were not prepared to come forward and defend themselves in terms of whether or not the government made a bad decision brings to question whether or not any compensation should in fact be paid. I am certainly more than willing to listen to the claims they might have. I proposed an amendment at committee stage so they could bring their claims to committee, but that did not pass.

Now we have a situation in which the minister can choose to either accept or reject claims. The public and for that matter even the committee in this House are not going to be privy to what those claims were, what the justification was or even to whom these claims are paid.

As the master contract was to the Pearson Development Corporation it is quite possible the minister may choose to make the payment, if he makes one, to the Pearson Development Corporation. It can then disburse the funds within its own organization and we will never know who really got paid.

This whole process is wrong. The government has now hired Mr. Wright. Mr. Wright is not running this whole program but he is collecting these claims to the government. They are then being turned over to auditors who examine them to see if they involve lobbyist fees or lost profits and a recommendation will flow from that to the minister. He can then choose to accept or reject the recommendation.

Mr. Wright is being paid $1,000 a day on top of his expenses. I am not questioning whether or not Mr. Wright is worth that money. I am questioning why we hired Mr. Wright when the proper conduit for these claims and for these claimants to come

forward and make their case should have been to the Standing Committee on Transport. That is the proper process.

We are here to represent all of the people of Canada. In that way they can see that justice was done. That is the process we still need. That is why I brought forward this motion. I want it to go on record that it was originally drafted by the Bloc Quebecois. The Bloc brought forward the motion but held off in favour of the amendment I brought in. I bring it forward now because we are still seeking some way to keep this entire process visible and transparent.

My amendment did not tie the minister to following our recommendations, only that we got to see and make those recommendations in the first place.

I would like to close by simply suggesting that we have to do the right thing. A wrong process has been flowing through this program all the way. I will conclude by repeating what I said at the beginning of my speech: Two wrongs do not make a right.

[Pearson International Airport Agreements Act, June 14th, 1994]

moved:

Motion No. 1

That Bill C-22, in Clause 10, be amended by adding after line 35, on page 3, the following:

"(4) The Minister shall cause to be laid before the House of Commons any agreement entered into under this section not later than five days following the entering into of the agreement or, if the House of Commons is not then sitting, on the first day thereafter that the House is sitting.

(5) An agreement referred to in subsection (4) shall be referred for review to a standing committee of the House of Commons or the Senate or to a joint committee appointed for that purpose by Parliament."

[Air Canada, June 9th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, will the Minister of Transport agree and commit to this House that negotiations involving Air Canada and Canadian Airlines will be left to those companies unless government intervention is requested and then be fully visible and transparent?