Dick Harris

[Pearson International Airport, March 22nd, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak in support of the motion put forward by the member for Kootenay West-Revelstoke.

What we have here will undoubtedly go on for a while and will probably be viewed like a television mini-series by the time we get through. It has all the elements. It has intrigue, influence peddling, patronage and unholy relationships between very strange bedfellows and their respective party friends, the Liberals and the Tories. This could win an Oscar by the time we are through.

When this story is finished I do not think there is an author in the world who could write anything as intriguing that would carry all the elements that people look for as entertainment.

Unfortunately this is not something the Canadian people look on as entertaining, and it should not be something the Liberals and the former government smile smugly about, thinking all the bases are covered and that this will not come out into the open. It will. Something as unholy as the relationship in the Pearson Airport deal cannot be covered up forever. It will come up.

I am familiar with this issue, having sat for a number of months on the transport committee. I appreciate the opportunity to contribute to the debate and probably expand on the truths coming from this side of the House so that the Canadian people following the debate in the media and on television will get a real grasp on what actually has happened and what will happen around the Pearson airport deal.

We are talking about something the Liberals talked about prior to the election. The Liberals actually put this in their red book. They called for openness and transparency in the operation of government. How good they said it would be to get a Liberal government that would operate in an open and transparent manner, something that has been missing in all other governments that were not Liberal.

Quite frankly, we think that is a good idea. That is why the member for Kootenay West-Revelstoke has put forward a motion that calls on the government to deal with the Pearson airport deal, this whole mess, by establishing an impartial public judicial inquiry to look at all the events surrounding this apparently clandestine deal.

My hon. friend is asking for nothing different from what the Liberals promised in their campaign, openness and transparency and truth. This type of inquiry is needed when we consider how the matter has been handled up to now by the government, the Senate and the committees. A lot of time and money was wasted on the issue. To this date we are no closer to the truth than we were before this whole thing started.

The Liberals blame the Tories, which is not surprising. The Tories blame the Liberals, which is not surprising. I am surprised that both of them do not blame the Reformers and we were not even here yet. Make no mistake, Reformers are here now and the government has to deal with Reformers when it comes to openness, transparency and truth. There will be no more getting away with the stuff that the Liberals and their Tory friends have been doing for decades.

As I indicated, if the truth were known it would clearly show, not to the surprise of too many people, that the Liberals and Tories have been, still are and will continue to be in bed with each other until maybe we are no longer a country. Hopefully that will never happen, although the way the Liberals are treating the Bloc and the relationship developing between them, we never know what can happen.

This entire affair has been under the control of the government since the start. If there was ever a time to take an impartial look, an open look, a transparent look, a look where the criteria is truth, the time is now.

As members know, the previous Tory government signed a deal with a private sector consortium to take over Pearson International Airport. What upset the Liberals was the fact that this contract was signed during the 1993 election campaign. Their spin doctors and their strategists probably got them together and said: "You might lose some votes around the Toronto area if this thing gets signed by the Tories, so what can we do to turn this thing around? We will call it a lousy deal and we will threaten to cancel it". They have the money to get good spin doctors. They did put a different spin on it. They made the contract an election issue. They promised to scrap it should they be elected.

This is surprising. It seems to me they made a similar promise about the GST before the election. Am I mistaken that they were going to scrap the GST?

Nevertheless the airport deal was scrapped. In order to justify the termination of this project the government thought after it was done that perhaps some people were wondering about it. They thought they had better bring someone in to back them up, someone who would speak the truth, who would be impartial, who would be open, who would show transparency and truth, someone people could trust. They picked Robert Nixon, Liberal Robert Nixon.

Is it true that this Mr. Nixon was a Liberal member? He could not have been a Liberal member. There are allegations that he was a Liberal bagman. Could that be true? There are allegations that he had some very strong ties to the Liberal Party. Let us not forget where he is now. He could not be the CEO of some crown corporation that is controlled by the Liberal government? Could the recent round of ministerial appointments be in any way affected by the fact that Mr. Nixon was a long time friend of this Liberal government? Perish the thought.

The Liberals have said and of course everyone must believe them-

[Justice, March 22nd, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, stable waste has reached a new height in this Chamber. Canadians have lost all faith in the justice system and they are looking to Parliament to restore some of that faith.

I ask again, so that Canadians can be sure that the justice system is going to work to protect the victims of crime and protect Canadians from becoming victims, will the minister do something to ensure that killers will not escape justice by simply claiming they were drunk? Will he do it?

[Justice, March 22nd, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, so now the supreme court has decided that killers need yet another loophole to escape justice, despite the fact that Parliament, which I thought was running the country, passed legislation that stopped killers from using drunkenness as a defence.

Will the Minister of Justice commit today to act to ensure that killers cannot use drunkenness as a way to escape the justice that is due to them? Will he do it?

[Borrowing Authority Act, 1996-97, March 21st, 1996]

Madam Chair, I would respectfully like to cede my time to the hon. member for Wild Rose.

[Borrowing Authority Act, 1996-97, March 21st, 1996]

Madam Chair, it is not the Reform Party and the member for Capilano-Howe Sound whose thinking is in the past; it is the members of the Liberal Party whose thinking is in the past. They still believe it is up to the government to create jobs through job incentive programs.

History will show that the only real jobs that have ever been created in Canada have come from the private sector. The private sector has been telling the government to give it a break on tax levels, on the cost of doing business and on payroll taxes and it will create the jobs. In other words, get out of our face and get out of our pockets and we will create the jobs.

The minister said these jobs are all being created because trade has been increased. That may be true. We would not be getting half the trade business if the government had not gone to our trading partners and offered to finance the goods with taxpayer money in order to make the deals. Why is that? The cost of doing business is so high in this country that we are no longer competitive. We can no longer sell our products abroad unless we have government financing to help the deal along. Talk about being in the past.

I ask the minister whether he believes, yes or no, that real, long lasting, good paying, permanent jobs can come only from the private sector.

[Borrowing Authority Act, 1996-97, March 21st, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to the member opposite talk about his party's lack of vision in reducing the deficit.

The province of Alberta has adopted platforms which parallel what the Reform Party believes with regard to fiscal matters and responsibility. This year the Government of Alberta will not only balance its budget but also anticipates having a surplus. It can make a decision to either apply the surplus to the debt, to its health care system, to post-secondary education, or to the seniors program. Alberta has the luxury of a surplus because it has adopted some very hard and tough fiscal programs to get its deficit under control and its budget balanced.

How would the hon. member respond to that success?

[Borrowing Authority Act, 1996-97, March 21st, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I am astounded to hear the remark about putting a burden on future generations from the hon. member for Lincoln.

Using the Liberals' own numbers, they are going to add a minimum of another $100 billion to the national debt and another $10 billion to the interest payments. If that is not a burden, I do not know what it is. It is a burden which was created by the Liberal Party.

The hon. member talked about there being no tax increases in the recent budget. I would like to refer to the de-taxing of child support payments for custodial parents. While I am sympathetic to that change, will the hon. member deny that the change will in fact result in a net revenue gain of $200 million to the Liberal government?

[Borrowing Authority Act, 1996-97, March 21st, 1996]

They have the same philosophy today.

[Borrowing Authority Act, 1996-97, March 21st, 1996]

I can. You do not listen to the people.

[Borrowing Authority Act, 1996-97, March 21st, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Glengarry-Prescott-Russell never fails to astound me as he stands up in this House and blames the country's problems on everyone else except the Liberal government.

Surely the hon. member realizes that over the last 35 years the Liberal government has held power in this country more than the Tories, far more than the Tories. All the things that have caused discontent in the province of Quebec could have been sorted out a long time ago by previous Liberal governments. Sure, the Bloc party has to take some credit for whipping up the current separatist feeling within Quebec, but the things the province of Quebec is asking for, such as devolution of powers and more control over things the province of Quebec could do better itself are the same things the other provinces in Canada have been asking for all these years.

Why did it take bringing the country to the very brink of separation which was caused by the Liberals' inept handling of the referendum campaign in Quebec? Why did it take coming so close to breaking up the country of Canada to wake the Liberals up to the point that finally after 35 years they are starting to talk about devolving some of the powers of the federal government to the provinces?