Peter Milliken

[Questions On The Order Paper, May 10th, 1994]

Madam Speaker, Question No. 19 will be answered today.

Question No. 19-

[Government Response To Petitions, May 10th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36(8), I have the honour to table, in both official languages, the government's responses to 11 petitions.

[Questions On The Order Paper, May 9th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I would ask that all questions be allowed to stand.

[Pearson International Airport Agreements Act, May 9th, 1994]

Johnny-come-latelys is right, as the hon. member says. Not only are they Johnny-come-latelys, they are busy trying to pretend it was they who opposed it all along and that somehow the government has not followed through and done its bit.

The government has done its bit. It is asking for authority from this House to make a negotiated deal on very reasonable terms with the purchasers of the airport. If the deal is not favourable, then there will be no compensation at all. That is my understanding of the effect of the bill and I think it is great.

I will not bother expressing my own personal views on how much these people should get, but I can tell members it is a very low figure. I will go that far. The argument is that it should not be done retroactively but I do not think this argument holds weight.

These people went into this deal with their eyes open. They knew they were faced with an opposition party at the time, the Liberal Party of Canada, which announced it was going to review the deal. The investors knew they were at risk of losing any money they put into the deal when they went ahead with it, with the previous government which one could almost describe as crooked in its dealings in this case.

The deal has been canned by the government. The legislation is asking the House for authority to correct the situation. It is good legislation. The opposition should be supporting it enthusiastically. Instead, what do we get? An amendment has been moved. Since we are debating the amendment, let me read the words of the amendment to the House because some hon. members opposite may have forgotten what it was they moved many days ago, early in this debate.

I want to point out that no bill has taken anywhere near as long as this one to get through the House. This is a fairly minor piece of legislation, yet the opposition has gone berserk on it. It is amusing to listen, but honestly one would think they would have had their priorities better placed. They have run out of stuff to criticize. That is the problem. The government is so good they do not know what to criticize.

The amendment says that the House declines to give second reading to Bill C-22 and so on "because the principle of the bill is flawed due to the fact that it contains no provisions aimed at making the work done by lobbyists more transparent". What utter nonsense. Of course it does not. This is not a lobbyists bill. This is not one that seeks to change the law relating to lobbyists. This corrects one mistake in one contract and gives the government authority to correct the mistake. That is all it is for.

The bill does not say it is to change the rules relating to lobbyists. It never purported to do that. The government announced it is going to bring in such a bill. All we hear is criticism from the other side because we have not moved quickly enough on that. The bill will be forthcoming shortly.

Hon. members opposite need only hold their breath for a short time. I recommend they do so and the bill will appear.

When the bill appears they will have ample opportunity to discuss the law relating to lobbyists. They do not need to do it on this bill, but I am delighted they have taken the opportunity. At least we have the advantage of receiving their views on a lobbyists bill. We know when it finally comes before the House the debate will be extremely short because they have all made their speeches on it ad nauseam on this particular amendment.

I am looking forward to a very short debate on the lobbyists bill and getting it studied in detail in committee. I know hon. members of the Bloc Quebecois particularly, the Official Opposition in the House, will participate in the committee enthusiastically when that bill comes before us.

In the meantime, why are we delaying this very important piece of legislation? Is it because they want a general discussion on lobbyists? Maybe. If so, they have not said a lot about that. They have been busy denouncing this deal, which we all agree is a bad deal.

I do not think anybody in the House is at variance on that, except possibly that former cabinet minister who sits in the back over there now, the hon. member for Sherbrooke. His views may be shared by the hon. member for Saint John. I would not want to accuse her of supporting a deal like that because of course she was not elected to this House in the last Parliament, although she ran as a candidate for the party that did make the deal.

I think they are the only two in the House who would support it. Of course we have not heard their views that I recall in this debate, so I do not know for sure whether they support this bill. However the opposition does not. The Reform Party does not. The government does not. The New Democratic Party, to the best of my knowledge, does not.

So why all the debate? Hon. members opposite are simply, as I say, trying to jump on a bandwagon to make up for the fact that they failed to criticize this deal, failed to make their criticisms known publicly before the election.

Why was that? Is it because so many of the members of the party opposite were once Conservative and they feel some kinship with the former government that made this deal? Could it be that the hon. member for Richelieu and his colleagues who used to be Tories before they became members of the Bloc feel they ought not criticize the fellow that got them elected in the first place, Mr. Mulroney? It was his government of course and his successor government that made this deal. The deal was clearly made with the friends of the previous government, although it was the Kim Campbell government that made the arrangement.

Is that why there has been this reticence on the part of the opposition? The Leader of the Opposition of course was a Mulroney puppet at one time. He owes his whole political career to Mr. Mulroney.

It cost $143 million, was it not, to get him elected? Is that not what they paid to get him elected in his riding in a byelection? If that is what it cost, maybe that was the price of his silence on this issue until the debate came up here in the House of Commons, long after the event, instead of a level criticism dumped on this deal early on, way back during the election campaign. That is the kind of thing that should have happened.

Here the government is seeking to do the right thing and all we get is a long debate with criticisms thrown at the government as though somehow we had made this deal. We unmade the deal; we cancelled it. We have brought the bill in to correct the situation. Hon. members opposite instead of criticizing the government for this should be offering their enthusiastic support for this legislation.

[Pearson International Airport Agreements Act, May 9th, 1994]

The hon. member now says that is why he changed. I am glad he saw at least some light. Unfortunately there was not quite enough light to bring him to the other side of the House.

Nevertheless, the hon. member realized it was the previous government that caused this calamity. It made this deal and made it in a great rush before it got defeated at the polls. Those members knew that government was going out, so what did they do? They ran to their friends and said: "Quick, let's make a deal. We will sell the airport to you because those Liberals won't sell it to you, not on these favourable terms. Let's make a quick deal and we do not care if we hoodwink the Canadian taxpayers on the way by". Of course the Tories had been doing that for nine years anyway. Everybody knows that.

They cooked up this deal to get it through in a hurry while the hon. member opposite stayed silent. Our party, to its credit, denounced the deal from the very beginning and announced it would review the deal. That was the right thing to do.

We announced we would review the deal on taking office and that was done. It was a promise made and a promise kept. Hon. Robert Nixon was appointed to review this deal thoroughly and capably and he prepared a report. He said the deal was no good, that it was a bad deal for the Canadian taxpayers. Accordingly, the deal was rescinded by the government.

We have acted entirely properly on this. Now we are faced with a filibuster in the House by the opposition because it somehow wants to try to find fault with this thing. That is what it says.

[Pearson International Airport Agreements Act, May 9th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, the speech of my colleague, the member for Richelieu, prompts me to take part in this debate, even though I do not have much influence in the Toronto Lester B. Pearson airport deal, as member for Kingston and the Islands.

In any case, this contract poses a problem and I am glad this government did something to correct the situation.

What we have been faced with is a filibuster by members of the party opposite who seem to think that when the government tries to fix something they had better jump on bandwagon.

I know what happened. Throughout the election campaign while we were criticizing this deal and indicating that it was unacceptable to the people of Canada, we heard absolutely nothing from the hon. member for Richelieu and his colleagues. They are busy trying to make up for lost time and they are doing it by making windy speeches in the House, saying how awful this is. They are trying to find fault with a perfectly reasonable and sensible government bill that gives the government the power to abrogate this deal. That is my understanding of it.

The hon. member for Broadview-Greenwood made an excellent speech on this subject the other day and so did the hon. member for Glengarry-Prescott-Russell. I was impressed because I was hearing the facts about the bill for the first time instead of the distortion we have been faced with from hon. members opposite.

I know the hon. member for Richelieu used to be a Conservative. He was part of the bunch who cooked up this deal. I can understand why he left that party; he had some sense of shame. He knew a bad deal when he saw one. He could smell a rat. That is what this deal was.

We saw it and we talked about it. The hon. member was not speaking about it and he should have been. He should have been denouncing this deal up and down the country. Instead of that, he was off talking about Quebec independence. He could have been talking about this deal because he knows a bad government. He was elected to support that government. That is the shame of it.

[Pearson International Airports Agreement Act, May 6th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I wonder if the hon. member for Joliette could conclude his remarks. He is almost done, with two minutes left. I am sure he will get unanimous consent to finish his speech.

[Pearson International Airports Agreement Act, May 6th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order.

[Questions On The Order Paper, May 6th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I ask that all questions be allowed to stand.

[Business Of The House, May 6th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I think you also will find unanimous consent for the following motion. I move:

That, notwithstanding any standing order, the sitting of the House on June 6, 1994 shall commence at two o'clock p.m.

(Motion agreed to.)