Mr. Speaker, when we consider the current administrative and financial aspects of running the St. Lawrence Seaway, we can just imagine the president of a private company announcing to his board of directors and shareholders that the capital they invested in the company produces an average yield of 1 per cent.
Canadian taxpayers may react like the shareholders after investing $7 billion in the St. Lawrence Seaway, which brings in $70 million annually, or 1 per cent. I imagine the shareholders would not be very pleased and would be even less so if the president went on to announce that tonnage on the St. Lawrence Seaway has declined by 50 per cent over the past 25 years. I imagine there would be frowns all around and that the president would be accused of poor management and asked to explain the reasons for these disastrous results.
The books would reveal a top heavy bureaucracy which does not make for efficient management but does generate many opportunities for giving jobs to friends. They would also show other signs of poor management, and even if the purpose of this bill is not really to improve the situation, we would hope that the amendments we are proposing would have that effect.
We believe that basically, as in other legislation, this government is trying to scale down its financial commitments and responsibilities in order to offload them onto other levels of government and the private sector.
At any rate, we are not opposed to this bill. We think that the management of the St. Lawrence Seaway could only improve if handled by someone else, since it could not be handled any worse than it has been by the federal government.
But for this bill to produce good results, we in our party would like to make a number of really important changes, one of which deals with the divesting of certain ports. Some of these ports, which have been victims of mismanagement for many years, are in bad shape, and we feel that the government has a duty to put them back into decent shape before they can be sold. That is one of our conditions for supporting this bill, and a number of the amendments we have put forward deal with this.
Also, with the federal government financially withdrawing from the St. Lawrence Seaway and in the absence of any government subsidies, loans and financial contributions, one would expect that the federal government would stop, to a great extent, imposing its will on the boards of directors to be established. But that is not what is happening. We can understand the federal government having one representative on these boards. However, we strongly object to the fact that, except for those members coming from the provinces and municipalities, board members will be appointed by the government, without our knowing whether it will do so arbitrarily or if, as it should, it will listen to the suggestions made by the organizations represented. We will move amendments to make sure the government will listen-not merely consult, but listen-to the organizations involved, when they make recommendations regarding the appointment of members to ports' boards of directors.
I only raised two issues. The hon. member for Kamouraska-Rivière-du-Loup mentioned a number of other ones. Other comments will be made but, in conclusion, we agree with the principle of this legislation and we will support it, provided our proposed amendments to improve it are accepted. Otherwise, we would have no choice but to oppose the bill.
