Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise on behalf of the New Democratic Party in support of this motion. I hope in this debate today that we can convince the Liberal government to support this motion as well.
This debate is not about which airline merger, if any, is the right thing for Canada. It is about something much more basic than that. It is about ethics in government. It is about getting the government to uphold the laws of this country. In effect this motion is asking the Liberal government to uphold the law.
We have a law in Canada called the Air Canada Public Participation Act. The law prevents any Air Canada shareholder from owning more than 10% of the company's stock. It is perfectly reasonable to expect the government to uphold the law. That is what governments are supposed to do; that is their job. Normally we would not think we would need a motion in the House of Commons just to get the government to do its job, but in this case we do.
Since this airline crisis in Canada began, the Liberal government has not done its job. The airline industry is vital to our country. In a country as large as Canada with a population spread from coast to coast to coast, a strong, healthy, affordable airline industry is a necessity. It is the government's job to make sure the airline industry serves the public interest, not the shareholders alone.
It is the government's job to stand up for Canadians, Canadian communities and Canadian jobs. The government is not doing that. Instead, the Liberals have been flying by the seat of their pants making things up as they go along. The Liberal government's slow reactions have created uncertainty and made a bad situation worse.
If Canadians should be able to count on the government for one thing, they should be able to at least count on it to uphold the law. It should be a given that everybody in Canada has to follow the same set of laws, the same set of rules, but the Liberal government has not been doing that and has not ensured that that is done.
The Liberals are talking openly about changing the laws to accommodate their friends. I wonder if it has something to do with the $74,000 which Onex gave the Liberal Party and Liberal candidates, including the Prime Minister, in the 1997 election. I wonder.
What I do know is that so far Onex has not played by the same set of rules as everyone else. The whole situation is incredible. First Onex tabled it complex takeover bid just days after the Liberal government conveniently suspended the Competition Act, removing the Competition Bureau's power to review a merger. We heard the Competition Bureau yesterday indicate that the reason this was done was that more than likely it would not have met the test of the Competition Bureau.
I do not know how Onex knew that the Liberal government was going to suspend the Competition Act. Maybe Onex consulted a psychic. More than likely Ronald Reagan's is no longer busy now, so it is taking up some Reform and getting into that type of business.
It is incredible that this company is making a takeover bid, all the while assuming that the Liberal government will change the law for it. Think about it. The Onex takeover bid is technically illegal under the Air Canada Public Participation Act but Onex has just said, “That's okay. The Liberal government will just change the law for us”. That is like saying we are going to steal something because we expect the law to change to make that legal.
I have known for a long time that the Liberal government is under the thumb of some big businesses but this is a new low even for it. I said earlier that this debate is about ethics. Obviously the Liberal government has none.
The government is supposed to be a neutral arbitrator. It is supposed to be the one to stand up for Canadians. Instead it suspended the Competition Act to pave the way for its friends and campaign contributors. Now the government says it is going to change the law to make an illegal takeover bid legal. It is completely unethical.
I do not want to sound like I am being critical of Onex. I am critical of the process the Liberal government has followed. Instead of being a neutral arbiter and putting the interests of Canadians first, the Liberal government has bent over backward to change the rules for one bid. First it suspends the Competition Act and now it is threatening the 10% ownership limit.
People are probably asking why we need the 10% ownership limit. Think for a minute about the name of the act we are talking about, the Air Canada Public Participation Act. The two key words are public participation. The whole point of the 10% ownership is to keep any one shareholder from getting a stranglehold on the company. Air Canada is supposed to be a public company.
Remember that for years Air Canada was an extremely successful crown corporation. The taxpayers of Canada paid for Air Canada. It is clear now that privatizing it was a terrible mistake, a mistake driven by the Mulroney government ideology instead of the public interest. Air Canada belonged to the people of Canada and it was thrown away.
The Liberal government is throwing away the principle of public participation. Public participation is basic democratic value. No wonder the Liberal government is trying to get rid of it. It is in the business of eroding our basic democratic values.
Raising the ownership limit above 10% will open the door for one investor to get a stranglehold on the airline. We cannot allow this to happen. We cannot allow something as important as our national airline to fall under that kind of control. We must keep the ownership of our national airline as broadly based as possible.
What is more, we must bring in a modern regulatory regime to protect the interests of Canadian communities, Canadian jobs and the travelling public. Deregulation got us into this mess and only reregulation will get us out of it.
After 10 years of deregulation we have been left with higher ticket prices, lower wages and less service to remote communities. It is unthinkable that we could allow deregulation to continue in a monopoly situation.
Yesterday I was shocked to hear the Competition Bureau indicate that one of its success stories was that of Canadian Airlines prices and the American Airlines investment. That was its success story. Here we are today, because of the situation Canadian Airlines is in, and that is because competition was all that was looked at. There are things more important than just competition.
One group the Liberal government has completely ignored in the whole mess is the airline employees. The transport minister's policy framework was vague on the issue of protecting workers. All it really says is that workers should be treated fairly.
We have seen how the government treats workers fairly in Canada. In spite of pay equity legislation we have had to spend 15 years fighting the Liberal government fighting the law on pay equity. That means nothing coming from the Liberal government which, as we have seen over the last six years, does not know the meaning of the word fair.
Workers in the airline industry do not trust the Liberal government. They deserve concrete commitments that there will be no involuntary layoffs. No worker should have to lose his or her job because the Liberal government has run our airline industry to the ground.
Time and time again the Liberal government has put the interests of friends ahead of the interests of Canadians.
I have touched on many issues in my limited time here today, but the debate comes down to one crucial question: is the Liberal government going to uphold the law or not? Is it going to do its job as the government? This is the moment of truth for the Liberal government. It is a chance for it to stand up and say “Yes, we will uphold the law. We will stand up for Canadians. We are going to stop the special treatment”. The Liberals can do that if they support the motion and commit not to raise the 10% ownership limit.
This is one of those moments when each and every Liberal MP is going to have to look in the mirror and ask themselves who they were elected to serve. For the sake of the Canadian airline industry, I hope they make the right decision and join my fellow New Democratic Party MPs in supporting the motion to keep the public in the Air Canada Public Participation Act.
