Madam Speaker, congratulations on your appointment to the Chair.
I am certainly pleased to talk on Bill C-9 today. It will have a big impact on my community and in many communities of the province of Nova Scotia and the entire maritime provinces because it deals with ports and harbours. It also deals with the St. Lawrence seaway which does not directly affect us but it certainly does indirectly. There will be a major impact on the federal ferry system, the pilotage programs and harbour police. Many aspects of the way of life in coastal communities either on the west coast or on the east coast will be affected.
The bill talks about the impact it will have on the ports and harbours and the pilotage people. It does not talk about the impact it will have on municipalities. It does not talk about the tremendous impact it will have on the provinces and the people. It will have an incredible impact on the people who are affected by the downsizing programs.
The thought crossed my mind as I was reading the bill that it is very much along the line of the present government policy of downsizing which seems to be pervasive throughout government programs. In some cases it seems to be innocuous and maybe even sensible, but the fact of the matter is that whenever national standards are taken away and the responsibility is given to the provinces and then down to the municipalities, we lose consistency and control over how the ports are managed. There will be inconsistencies from port to port from province to province and all over the country when this bill passes. I know it will cause a lot of grief.
Right now we have national policies which are inconsistent. Provincial policies change very rapidly. Provincial policies can change in an instant, whereas national policies only change over a period of time. They are much slower to change. The people involved who are affected by these quick decisions by the provinces will be hurt a great deal more than if the control of the port stayed with the federal government.
The pervasive downsizing approach by the government was eloquently repeated yesterday by the premier of the province of Nova Scotia, a former member of this House, who said, “We have suffered hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts in recent years. Just give us a chance to get our bearings. It seems that the cutbacks are promoting cutbacks. Let us lay off for a little while until we get on our feet before you come back at us again”. That is what this is doing. This is coming back at the smaller communities and the smaller ports. Even though the premier of the province of Nova Scotia was a former member, he recognizes that.
A really good example of the negative impact of downloading and losing the consistency of national policies is the port police policy that the hon. member for Saint John so eloquently talked about a little while ago. The port police in Canada are highly specialized and highly trained police. They are specialized in the fields of drugs, immigration, firearms and contraband, all things that are really important to Canadians. If we lose an effective police force on the ports, the whole country will pay a huge price for it.
Under Bill C-9 all the ports police are being disbanded and municipal police or whatever are going to take over this responsibility. It is not even clear who is going to take this over. The government is disbanding the ports police and there is no plan.
Again we run into the inconsistency problem that I mentioned before where one port is doing one thing, another is doing something else and other ports have no plan at all. Basically if we do go to inconsistent port police we will have training that is inconsistent, quality that is inconsistent and the application of the rules and the law that is inconsistent.
We feel that the ports that have poor policing systems will be identified by the criminal elements in our country. They will become the ports of choice for criminal operations. We think that is going to happen because we are losing our national standards for our ports police. We are going to have every port with its own police application and approach. That is another big impact from downloading.
I am again going to quote Nova Scotia Premier MacLellan. He said yesterday, “Nova Scotians have been devastated by what Ottawa did. We have to get our financial house in order, there is no question about that, but excessive financial brutality is something else again. We just cannot do that. It is not the way to treat people”. That is what is happening.
Let us move on to a few other aspects of C-9. Probably the most important issue is the classification of ports. The government is dividing all ports into three classes: major commercial ports that are financially viable; regional ports that are to be divested over six years—I almost used devastated and that could be interchanged with divested because I believe they will be—; and the other class of ports is remote ports.
These again are separate from the fisheries and oceans small craft harbours where the same thing is happening. Those wharves are all being divested or becoming port authorities. It is going to have a tremendous impact on the communities.
Somebody in the closet in Ottawa who is writing this legislation does not have any idea of the impact this will have on communities like Wallace, Pugwash, Barachois and Parrsboro that I am sure Madam Speaker is very familiar with. Communities like Advocate and Shelburne in Nova Scotia where a military base just closed. Now they are having their port taken away from them or they are disowning the port I should say because the port is not viable by itself and they are going to lose.
The first classification of ports is major ports. They will become Canadian port authorities. They will probably be all right because they have already been designated as viable. The regional ports have a very uncertain future and this is where we are going to focus our attention. The third is the remote ports which will continue to be supported by the federal government.
Our focus will be on the regional ports such as the ports I listed a minute ago. These ports have not had the opportunity to be heard. They do not even have any idea what is going to happen to them. They do not even have any idea that this is happening. We want to make sure that the regional ports do know what is happening. We will make sure, to the best of our ability, that they are informed and given the opportunity to speak and tell us what the impact will be on their communities.
Often the port, the wharf, is the lifeblood of the community. If you take away the port and let it collapse, and this legislation will eventually force many ports to collapse, the whole community will collapse. I do not think we can stand by and let that happen.
One option that has been put up for the regional ports is to privatize the port facility or sell it. Sell it to whom? What about the community? What about the community that uses it for recreational boating and fisheries and as a centre of its commercial activity? What happens if it is sold to a company that has no interest in the community?
There was a proposal in Bayside, New Brunswick to sell the wharf and the whole port to a U.S. company. It wanted to take control over the entire port. It wanted to open a gravel pit or a quarry. It said that the only way it could do that would be if it totally controlled the whole port of Bayside. What happened to the people in Bayside? What about their concerns?
Had it not been for the MP for Charlotte, that deal probably would have gone ahead and an American sand and gravel company would now own a port in New Brunswick. It would own the whole port that tax dollars paid for, a port that is the centre of activity in the whole area of Bayside.
Again I hearken back to Premier MacLellan's comments about downloading, devastation, brutality. Let us go slow on this regional ports facility deal. We will be monitoring the regional ports facility issue very very closely.
There has not been enough consultation with the regional ports. They do not even know what is happening to them. We may propose that we split the bill. We should do the national ports and remote ports now and the regional ports later as we get other alternatives that will offer opportunities for these communities.
We just cannot wipe out hundreds of communities. There are hundreds of communities on the list that have been presented. Regional and local ports from all parts of the country in every province will be affected. These communities do not realize that they are about to lose the hub of their whole community. They have to know and must have a chance to speak and be heard. We will be bringing that to their attention.
The privatization aspect of this bill is really frightening. An American company can buy a port since there are no restrictions on who can buy and own ports. The bill just states that the ports are going to be divested, that they will be sold to the highest bidder. There are now planned auctions for ports in Nova Scotia. This is an incredible way to treat the people and the citizens of these ports that will be sold.