Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak on this issue as the public works critic for the official opposition and the former transport critic for the official opposition. I support the motion which states:
That the House call on the government to take the appropriate measures to sell the 11,000 acres of arable land back to the families and farmers whose land was expropriated to build the Mirabel Airport.
The simple fact that this issue is being discussed in the House of Commons should concern all of us. We are talking about a decision to return surplus land to the farmers from whom it was expropriated nearly 30 years ago. Various Canadians might well propose other topics for us to discuss today, but few issues have Mirabel's power to confirm Liberal arrogance, Liberal mismanagement, and the Liberal's continuing inability to plan for the future.
The municipality of Mirabel was created in 1971 by the amalgamation of 14 municipalities. It was a consequence, mainly, of the decision by Prime Minister Trudeau, on March 28, 1969, to build an international airport in Sainte-Scholastique.
Montreal was booming. Two years earlier, it had hosted Expo 67 and it was to host the 1976 Olympic Games. The Mirabel airport was to be the symbol of the future of this region.
An announcement which Transport ran in an issue of the Forces magazine proclaimed that Mirabel would be “the gateway to America” and was “the airport of the future today”.
In 1967, air traffic was growing at an annual rate of 19%, and Mirabel was supposed to undergo a phenomenal expansion to be able to accommodate 40 million travellers annually by 2000. Mirabel was supposed to become a North American hub.
Planning was almost perfect. There was to be a rapid rail link, two autoroutes worthy of the name, autoroutes 13 and 15, and a third one to link the airport with Hull and Ottawa.
In order to avoid the noise problems that spelled trouble for the operation of the Concorde at JFK airport in New York, and that were soon to be a problem for night flights in Dorval, they suggested a site that was 60 kilometres away from downtown Montreal.
The Liberal government of the time was planning to spend $1.5 billion to build a state of the art airport in a rural setting, far from residential areas, modeled on the new Dallas-Fort Worth airport in the US, which today is one of the main hubs of air traffic in that country.
Claiming it wanted to reduce the risk of prosecution as a result of noise by taking over a territory nearly as big as the city of Montreal, the federal Liberal government forced 3,200 families out of their homes. Some 12,000 people were directly affected.
Initially 97,000 acres were expropriated, a territory bigger than Laval island, to built Mirabel airport on the most productive arable lands in Quebec. Officials at the department of Transport virtually destroyed the economic life of a score of villages. Worse yet, Mirabel never really got off the ground.
At the official opening, on October 14, 1975, Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau said it was the project of the century. The Mirabel airport facilities include a one million square foot terminal, a 350 room hotel, an eight storey office building and a multi-level parking garage for 5,000 cars. Mirabel was used by airlines from Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Spain, Ireland, India, Italy, Morocco, Scandinavia and Switzerland as well as England, France, Germany and the Netherlands. Unfortunately the latter are the only countries with airlines still flying to Montreal.
Of course, Mirabel was affected by the oil crisis of the 1970s, the first hijackings and the recession. That contributed to the slowing down of the airline industry. Political instability in Quebec in the 1980s did not help either. In fact, during its busiest year ever, in 1990, Mirabel only handled 2.5 million passengers, a far cry from the more than 25 million planned in 1967. When studying the situation at Mirabel, it is very easy to blame political and economic factors such as the oil crisis, terrorism or Quebec separatists.
And yet, the other major airports of the world faced similar problems and despite the challenges of the IRA in London, Heathrow airport continued to grow.
All things considered, I believe that Mirabel's failure comes as a direct result of the federal Liberal government's policies. The original project never was completed. The high-speed rail shuttle between Mirabel and downtown Montreal never made it off the planner's drawing board and highway 13 was never completed. These links would have been justified had it been decided to concentrate in Mirabel all passenger fights, domestic, transborder and international.
In fact, the federal government proposed an incredibly stupid solution. Montreal was to have two airports. Mirabel airport would be used for international flights and Dorval airport, renamed Pierre Elliott Trudeau, would handle transborder and international flights.
I am not an airline manager, but I know the “hub” concept because I live near Vancouver. Passengers arrive on a nonstop flight from Boston and connect with a nonstop flight to Osaka. Other passengers arrive from Kelowna and take off for Sydney, Australia. A high percentage of the passengers in Vancouver airport are on a longer trip and Vancouver airport is only a connection point on their trip. The term “hub” applies to Vancouver airport.
The situation in Montreal, however, discouraged the local airports from becoming a hub.Travellers flying from Calgary to Europe had to land at Dorval, claim their luggage, take a taxi to Mirabel, check their bags in again, and then fly from there to Europe. Neither Mirabel nor Dorval was a hub, and the existence of two limited-use airports in one city prevented Montreal from becoming a hub.
As for the situation in other parts of the world, Amsterdam, with a population of 1.5 million, has an international airport, Schipol, and close to 40 million passengers fly through it annually. Paris, however, with a population of 10.5 million, handles 48 million passengers in a year through Charles de Gaulle, its main airport. While Paris has seven times the population of Amsterdam, its main airport handles only 20% more passenger traffic.
Very few international travellers will not recognize Amsterdam as one of the major European hubs. The impressive statistics for Charles de Gaulle reflect the status of the city of light as a tourist destination, as well as the importance of the French capital within the European Union, the Francophonie and a major jumping off point for the Maghreb.
Similarly, Montreal, while the headquarters of Air Canada, Air Transat and Jetsgo, is not really a hub. These three airlines have selected Toronto as their main base and hub.
Quite simply, the federal policy of maintaining two major airports in Montreal is the main reason for the failure of Mirabel. This is why we are here today discussing Mirabel.
I will end with two statements of principle. First of all, the Conservative Party is in favour of having a Canadian airline industry that is strong, competitive in every part of the globe, capable of carrying Canadians to any destination within a system that is efficient and serves the interests of both travellers and taxpayers.
Second, we are on the side of those who are now on Mirabel property. They chose to purchase land that had been expropriated by the government, which has not assumed its responsibilities toward them. We respect their right to their property.
