Rob Nicholson

[Mirabel Airport, December 1st, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, the minister has been hiding behind a technical argument, that he cannot do anything about a corporation that he controls. He knows that is a bunch of nonsense. We have been telling the minister, and I think he knows this, that a terrible mistake has been made at Mirabel. It is a mistake that touches the lives of people, some of whom can trace their family history back 300 years on that place.

I think the minister knows in his heart that a terrible mistake has been made. I am asking him to do the right thing. Give those 11,000 acres back to the rightful owners. Do the right thing. It is not that bad.

[Mirabel Airport, December 1st, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Transport. Yesterday, the House of Commons passed a Conservative motion to give the land in Mirabel back to its rightful owners. When will the minister dare to give back the confiscated land? When?

[Child Pornography, November 29th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, sentencing is not the only thing wrong with that legislation. The minister knows that the artistic merit defence has a loophole that lawyers could drive a truck through.

Now that the minister is beginning to admit he was wrong on sentencing, will he do the right thing and drop the undue risk of harm defence and really start protecting Canadian children?

[Child Pornography, November 29th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Justice.

For years we have been telling the Liberals that Canadians want minimum sentences for people who deal in child pornography. Up until now the minister and his party have been attacking us and thwarting the will of Canadians. Now we see in today's paper that the minister is willing to consider minimum sentences.

What brought about this conversion? What minimum sentence is the minister proposing?

[Supply, November 25th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate the hon. member on his comments. His very last comment was that he hoped that the House would support the motion. I can tell the hon. member that the transport committee, and the Parliamentary Secretary to the Transport Minister I am sure is aware, has just passed a motion similar to this which calls upon the government to finally admit the mistakes it has made over these last 30 years and begin the process of returning that land to the people who owned it.

I do not know whether the parliamentary secretary mentioned this because I just came into the chamber, but that was supported by all the opposition parties which represent a majority in the 38th Parliament. All the way around the Liberals are the only hold outs and they have been holding out for 30 years. They have refused to say they are sorry to the people whose lives they disrupted. I know many of the people in the Liberal Party and deep down they are sorry, but they are restrained, whether it is the frontbench or they cannot admit that they made this mistake.

I did not hear all of the comments by the parliamentary secretary. I will ask the hon. member, did he hear anything in the comments from the members of the Liberal side acknowledging this terrible mistake that they made 30 years ago and that they have done everything possible to perpetuate this ever since that time?

[Supply, November 25th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, the member touches on a very important topic and this cavalier attitude toward people who own property is much too pervasive. It is not just at the federal level, it is also at the provincial level.

In my area of Niagara, and indeed southern Ontario, the Ontario government comes out with a green plan, a very laudable plan, to protect agricultural land. Who is going to disagree with that? As a municipal councillor, I said that I was having trouble finding in the proposal where it said that cheques would be sent to the people whose land would be affected. I asked whether the Ontario government would be sending cheques to those farmers who all of a sudden are told that they are now part of a green plan and will not be able to use their land for anything other than agriculture.

That was not in there because of this cavalier attitude toward people who own property. It is wrong. The members of our party will challenge that wherever we find it and on every occasion.

[Supply, November 25th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, this is an old ploy by the Liberal Party. It sets up a wholly publicly owned crown corporation and then says that it cannot deal with it. The Liberals turned over land to the St. Lawrence Seaway. They do not know what they are supposed to do since Aéroports de Montréal has the land. Good heavens above, if they cannot govern then they should resign and get out of the business of government.

If there is a problem within federal jurisdiction, which this clearly is, they should come back to Parliament and change the law. That would be start to addressing the problem. They cannot address the problem by throwing up their hands and saying that they cannot do anything. They have only been in government for 80 of the last 100 years. If they cannot handle the business they should turn it over to a group of individuals who can get some of these things done.

I do not want to be partisan about this but I must say to all the members that they do not have to apologize for the mistakes that Liberal governments of the past made. What they need to do is get on board with this thing and do the right thing by Canadians.

[Supply, November 25th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I do agree with the member on one thing. He is right when he says that this is about Conservative values. A Conservative value is doing what is right for Canadians and standing up for Canadians. That has been a Conservative tradition in this country since Confederation.

He talks about ownership and, yes, that is what we are talking about. We are talking about the deprivation of ownership of all those people who owned that land. If the member was listening to my comments, I said that this right to own property was something that touches Canadians and all human beings very deeply. The member should ask the people in his riding, who came from eastern Europe, what it was like to live under a communist regime. Yes, there was public ownership but when their lands, their farms and their homes were expropriated by communist authorities, ask them what ownership was. If he tells them that it was public ownership where they came from, the people will tell him that their lands and their homes were stolen and they do not want to hear him talk about public ownership.

The worst part about this is that those people who had their land expropriated knew that the land was not necessary. When the Constitution was amended it should have put in provisions with respect to property rights, so individuals who have had their land taken away by the Crown or some public authority would have a remedy, that they would be able to challenge that if in fact it was proven that the land was not necessary. However, 97,000 acres were taken. Heathrow airport only has 2,700 acres and here we are talking about 97,000 acres. That would be the most incredibly sized airport in the world.

When there were problems with it, everybody was to blame except the Liberals. Every aspect, every cost overrun and every passenger who did not use the airport were to blame. It was never the government.

It is about ownership and I think he should get behind this Conservative motion. He says that it is in the past. Wrongs in the past should be addressed, not swept under the carpet. The member can check the record on this but his party has been consistent for 30 years in not wanting to talk about this but that is wrong. It was wrong in the 1970s when they took this land from these people, and in 2004 it is still wrong.

[Supply, November 25th, 2004]

They wanted to do anything, anything at all, and when the move was made to offer the land back to the people who had owned it, they tracked it to see if there were any mistakes. But the mistake they never lived up to was the mistake that was made by them. That was the one they never wanted to acknowledge.

This story is not at an end. This motion is brought forward by the Leader of the Opposition and I and my colleagues are pleased to support it and pleased to have the support of other members in the House. It should have the support of the members of the Liberal Party.

They do not have to apologize for the mistakes of former Liberal prime ministers. Do what is right, that is what I say to people. They should do what is right and the Liberal members know what is right. Quite apart from the fact that they do not want to talk about it, they know deep down that what they did was a terrible mistake.

The job is not yet completed. There is plenty of land for Mirabel airport for the foreseeable future and the land that we are proposing be given back to the rightful owners to correct those mistakes is well within the purview of this government, but this mistake is just part of the arrogance with which the government has always treated property owners.

I remember speaking about this issue in 1988 in the House of Commons. I also raised the matter that is still with us about the St. Lawrence Seaway. There were expropriated lands in the Niagara Peninsula to twin the canals.

Have you heard that proposal lately, Mr. Speaker? Is anyone going to twin the Welland Canal? I asked the Minister of Transport if there were any plans for it. I will tell the House what the Liberals will tell us. They will say, “Well, we expropriated the land, there is no plan whatsoever, but it is always for the foreseeable future”.

The people who suffered because their lands were expropriated, like the people at Mirabel, just have to live with that. The Minister of Transport says it is the public interest, but what about those people's interests? They are Canadians too and they deserve to have their interests heard in this chamber, but again what the minister would say is that it was turned over to a crown corporation and “what can we do about that?”

The Liberals create these crown corporations and then nothing can be done. They have been the government, for heaven's sake, for 80 out of the last 100 years. They could correct all these mistakes if they put a mind to it, but they will not. They will not correct those mistakes. Why? Because they have to look at their own past and look within themselves to correct a mistake they made. That is a pattern and it is a pattern that I have seen throughout my life.

I remember about a year ago when there were D-Day celebrations and it was revealed that the Liberals were going to send 60 veterans and 70 bureaucrats. Do members remember that one? The government changed its mind, but what was fascinating to me was that the Liberals changed their minds because they had to be shamed into doing it. It is always the same: never do what is right because it is right to do it, do it because one has been shamed into it. Yes, in the end the government helped out Canadian veterans and sent some more. The Liberals had no choice. The spotlight was on them.

It is like the mess of the sponsorship scandal. When the light is on the Liberals, what are they going to say? They say they are going to repent. The Prime Minister was as mad as hell and was going to fix up things here. Yes, he was going to fix up things because everybody knew about it then, but that is always the way and that certainly is the way for the people of Mirabel.

I hope the people who had that land expropriated are following this along with the people who had land expropriated that would never be needed for the St. Lawrence Seaway. I hope all people who have been victimized by governments will have a look at this and follow the debate. What they will find is the same thing that took place in the 1980s. Every time the subject has ever been raised the government does not want to talk about it. They will talk about anything else, about 100 different issues, about the price of coffee, they will say, let us talk about that. It is Mirabel, we will say, but they will want to do something else.

It is a shameful part of the Trudeau legacy but I say to those members that they do not have to be stuck with it. They should do the right thing. Let us join together. This is a minority Parliament. The Minister of Transport has said to me on a number of occasions that he is flexible and wants to work with people, so let him work with all of us here.

He does not want to talk about those 11,000 people. He says that there are procedural difficulties and that there are contracts. There is a man on the moon. There is always something holding them up. I say that he should do the right thing and Canadians will thank him.

I hope the members of the Liberal Party get on their feet and say, “Yes, this is a minority Parliament. We want to work together. It was a mistake from a long time ago. We can admit that mistake. Let us move on and do something for these people because that is what is right”.

[Supply, November 25th, 2004]

He says we were in government. I can say that when moves were made to rectify this, it was the members of his party who would not. We can check Hansard and find out--