Paul Mercier

[Kenworth Plant, June 12th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, we are talking about 700 people without resources for two months. It is my understanding that the minister recognizes that these people are now entitled to unemplyment insurance benefits.

Can he guarantee us that he will do everything in his power to speed up the payment process, now that they are entitled to these benefits?

[Kenworth Plant, June 12th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Human Resources Development.

Last April 9, PACCAR announced that it was closing the Kenworth plant in Sainte-Thérèse, and this was confirmed in a letter that day to plant employees and the Quebec Minister of Labour. But yesterday the Department of Human Resources Development was still refusing to pay unemployment insurance benefits to laid off employees.

Does the minister find it acceptable that his department is depriving over 700 people of unemployment insurance benefits, when it is clear that PACCAR announced the closure of the Kenworth plant on April 9, 1996?

[Civil Air Navigation Services Commercialization Act, June 4th, 1996]

Madam Speaker, since I have the opportunity, I would like to take it to point out to my hon. colleague, the parliamentary secretary, that this parallel between ADM and Nav Canada really is part of the debate, the similarity is so striking.

The advantage we have is that, since ADM has been around for four years, we can see in advance what will happen with Nav Canada by looking at what is happening with ADM. What is happening with ADM is that a decision has been taken that is not in the public interest and we cannot even get any explanations.

Do you know what will happen with Nav Canada? A few years down the road, you will see it take a decision dictated by financial interests, contrary to the public interest. Nav Canada will give the minimum notice required under law, since our amendments calling for more specific notice were rejected, and will take its decisions, without providing any explanations. And we will not have a leg to stand on, and, on that note, I will take my seat.

[Civil Air Navigation Services Commercialization Act, June 4th, 1996]

Madam Speaker, I listened with interest to the comments of the hon. member for Laurentides regarding Mirabel airport and ADM. She was right on track, because there is an obvious similarity between ADM and Nav Canada, as we have been pointing out since this morning, and also in recent days. Both are private corporations with a mandate to provide services to the public. However, privatization has resulted in reduced services to the public. For example, ADM is not concerned by the Access to Information Act, while Nav Canada is not subject to the provisions of the Privacy Act.

I want to ask the hon. member if this is how she sees things, and if she feels ADM's decision should be postponed, considering that it is not accountable to anyone, regardless of the statement to the effect that ADM is free to make its own decisions and is accountable to no one in that regard.

So, my question is: Does the hon. member feel this measure should be postponed? Dorval was supposed to close five years after Mirabel opened. It did not happen because of a lack of political courage, with the result that we now find ourselves in this extremely complicated situation.

Does the hon. member feel, as I do, that this decision should be postponed?

[Civil Air Navigation Services Commercialization Act, June 4th, 1996]

Madam Speaker, my colleague from Rimouski-Témiscouata has rightfully pointed out the impact of language on safety. Before her, my parliamentary leader mentioned the airspace over Magdalen Islands, where pilots cannot receive services in French because these islands are served by a base in Moncton.

I think my parliamentary leader does not have to go as far as the Magdalen Islands to find a case in which the Official Languages Act is not being complied with. All he has to do is stay here on Parliament Hill where, a few days ago, I received from the office of the clerk of the transport committee an eight-line text with five errors in French.

How can we believe that French is respected in this country after receiving such texts?

[Civil Air Navigation Services Commercialization Act, June 4th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Laval East has emphasized, quite rightly so, the issue of safety in air transportation. I would like to come back to the issue that has just been dealt with two or three times in a row relating to the preamble we would have liked to see in the bill and which some say is unnecessary since there is the Aeronautics Act, on the one hand, and on the other, the government controls safety issues.

In fact, would it not have been logical to express the very spirit of the legislation in its preamble? This is a private company that has to provide a public service, just like ADM. I find the explanations given by my colleague from Argenteuil-Papineau totally justified, because of this comparison.

It is quite justified to express right at the very start the spirit of this legislation, the spirit in which it must be interpreted later on, in order to stress the public service role of this private company and the primacy of public services over mercantile interests. We do not see why the government refused to express this very legitimate concern in the preamble.

[Minister Of Human Resources Development, May 30th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Human Resources Development invited my colleague, the member for Bourassa, to go and find himself another country, because he, an immigrant, dared to support the sovereignist option. If we are to believe the minister, and the Prime Minister as well, my colleague had a pressing moral obligation, as a new Canadian, to throw his faithful support behind the federalist cause.

I imagine that the minister applies this curious notion of parliamentary democracy to me as well, because I, too, am an immigrant and I, too, am a sovereignist.

However, like my colleague, I realized that the federal yoke was preventing my adopted province from reaching the potential it could as a sovereign nation. Heeding the invitation issued to my colleague, the member for Bourassa, by the Minister of Human Resources Development, I therefore decided to find myself another country. The country I picked was Quebec.

[Civil Air Navigation Services Commercialization Act, May 29th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, my speech will be quite similar to the one I made at second reading, since the bill before us is more or less the same, considering that all our amendments were defeated.

Again, we agree with the principle of privatization. However, we will oppose the bill because the government did not take into account certain principles which we felt were important and rejected our amendments.

One of these amendments had miraculously been accepted by the Standing Committee on Transport and we thought it would go through. It was an important amendment, since it provided that Nav Canada should, like the government did before, agree to comply with the Privacy Act.

The amendment had been adopted by the committee, but the government tabled another amendment to counteract ours. Therefore, the minister rejected the recommendation of the transport committee, even though his party has a majority in that committee.

Even so, we submitted other amendments that were all defeated. Let me quickly explain again what the issue was, to show the importance of the principle involved, and to explain why, in spite of our agreement in principle regarding privatization, we will have no choice but to vote against the bill.

First, there is the issue of privacy which we felt very important and regarding which our amendment was rejected. We also asked that further information be provided regarding the media and other means of communications that Nav Canada would use to inform the public about its intention to change, restrict or cancel its services, so that interested parties can react.

We felt it was important to specify which media should be used and how widespread the information should be, to ensure that everyone would be well informed. It would have been only natural to support this principle, but such was not the case. We also felt it was improper to have private users of Nav Canada's services pay for national defence, which is exempt from having to pay the fees involved. This situation is not reasonable. We tabled an amendment, but it was rejected.

More importantly, we wanted to emphasize the spirit of this legislation in a preamble. This is a private organization providing a public service, and we wanted the preamble to say that service to the public should always take precedence over financial interests. Even this principle, which would have been stated in the bill to ensure better service to the public, was rejected.

My colleague, the member for Kamouraska-Rivière-du-Loup, drew a parallel between Nav Canada and ADM. We did not get together on this, but I am going to do the same thing, because the similarities and analogies are striking. ADM and Nav Canada were created by the government, more specifically the Minister of Transport. They are private organizations, both providing public services. What is now happening with ADM does not augur well for what may happen with Nav Canada.

I remind members that ADM recently took a decision, the principle of which I will not comment on here, but I protest against the fact that ADM, because of the status the government has given it, has no obligation to release to the public the information on which it based its decision.

Just a while ago, in response to a question, the minister said: "Yes, but there is SOPRAM". SOPRAM has 21 members. Of these, seven are on the board of directors that took the decision. Even this organization, which is, in short, the only avenue by which the public may examine ADM's decisions, even the members of this organization are not entitled to take out the studies that ADM says it used in reaching its decision. They must consult them on the premises. So much for the public's right to information.

So the parallel is obvious. The ability to make decisions in both these organizations is enormous, and the obligation to be accountable to the public, and to explain those decisions, is nil. It is therefore fairly easy to predict what might happen with Nav Canada. Just think about what has just happened with ADM. I would imagine that Nav Canada, with the enormous powers it

possesses, will make the decision to do away with this service or that service, when it does not seem sufficiently profitable.

As the law requires, it will publish its intention to do so in certain newspapers of its own choosing, according to criteria that are far too broad. Then, if there is no reaction, or even if there is one, since what is required is only to give notice, the situation will be judged and Nav Canada will take the decision it wanted in the first place, making its intentions as little known as possible and possibly without releasing the studies and other documents on which the decision was based.

In both cases, then, we are dealing with organizations that do not provide the public with the services it would have received when the government was providing them. Privatization, in one case as much as the other, has the effect of cutting back on services to the user, a lesser view of what service is, in one case as much as the other. That is what we cannot accept. Needless to say, I shall be supporting my colleague's amendment.

That, then, is what I had to say. Unfortunately, we cannot support this bill because it contains too many serious shortcomings to be acceptable.

[Civil Air Navigation Services Commercialization Act, May 17th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, there is an amusing story behind clause 96.1 of the bill we are considering. As amusing stories are rare in this House, I will relate it briefly. Clause 96.1 does not appear in the text of the bill we passed at first reading. It appears now, because the bill before us was amended by the Standing Committee on Transport. It added this clause under the amendment proposed by our party.

No need to remind the House that the majority of members sitting on the Standing Committee on Transport are Liberal and therefore, with the government's motion to delete this clause, which was added by the Standing Committee on Transport, we have the minister rejecting a proposal from his own committee with a majority of its members from his own party. At the very least, we can say this is a different approach.

And what does clause 96.1 say? It says:

96.1 The Privacy Act applies to the Corporation as if it were a federal institution.

The purpose of the amendment we proposed, which the committee accepted, was to ensure that Nav Canada would protect personal information on personnel and clients, just as if the government were still responsible for all air navigation services.

My colleague on the other side says there are other corporations, such as the CN, that are not subject to the Privacy Act; but by saying this, he is giving me other arguments. He says there are entities created by the government which no longer have the same obligations as before privatization. These government creations are now private sector corporations. Yes, but they took on responsibilities for public services and, as such, they should give the public the same services the government was providing before. It is clear, it is only logical. But they have forgotten all about that on the other side.

The fundamental principle is this: it is unacceptable for a government creation to reduce services to the public when this creation is a private corporation serving the public. It is inappropriate to create such screens.

My colleague, the member for Argenteuil-Papineau, said it again this morning, there is a stunning parallel between ADM, another government creation which manages the Montreal airports, and this corporation which is being created so that the public will not have access to information concerning the studies on which ADM based its decision. You can be for or against the decision, that is not the point. The point is that the public has the right to know about the studies used by ADM. Our offices requested those studies, but the request was turned down because this organization is under no obligation to provide them.

What we have here is a deliberate attempt, on the part of the government, to hide behind corporations which act as screens, allowing it to dodge responsibilities it had before they were created.

I now come to the argument that, as Mr. Philips is reported to have said, what should be changed is the Privacy Act. If this argument was logical, Liberals would have applied it in the bill we are discussing today. Yet, in that bill, what do we see? We see a section that we agree with, but that contradicts the principle just mentioned.

Section 96 says:

1. The Official Languages Act applies to the Corporation as if it were a federal institution.

This is excellent but, if it is valid for the Official Languages Act, why is not valid for the Privacy Act? Why do we not say: "The Official Languages Act will not apply to Nav Canada, so we are going to amend the Official Languages Act". That is not what the bill says.

All of the sudden, we are told: "As for the protection of privacy, it is not the same, it is the Privacy Act that has to be amended". This does not make any sense.

The result of all this, and I will conclude here, is that we understand perfectly what the federal government is up to. It is transferring public property currently under the management of the federal Minister of Transport to Nav Canada, and then will hide behind Nav Canada in order to withhold important information from the public.

Such an approach goes against the transparency the government as a whole is bragging about, and its effort to defeat our amendment, which was accepted by the committee and rejected by the minister, shows I am not making a case based on assumptions, but on facts.

The Liberals want to use their majority in the House to defeat an amendment that was passed in committee, because they know a majority of Liberal members will vote as the government tells them to, without even knowing what this is about. And they call that democracy.

[Referendums, May 17th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, the government seems to have a peculiar notion of clarity.

It is getting increasingly bogged down in its clarity. Since the Prime Minister refuses to recognize a 50 per cent plus one vote in favour of sovereignty, how can the minister claim that the federalist status quo side won the 1995 referendum, given that it only got 50.4 per cent of the votes?