I’m happy to rise to speak on Motion No. 14. I’ve listened to the speeches that were made and some of the questions. For me, they raised a number of questions, and the following questions are just a sample.

I wonder: Are governments really this enthusiastic about unilaterally and retroactively taking away the rights of an organization that negotiated these rights in good faith and shouldered the risk and the obligations that were detailed on a contract that exists? That was the first question I had as I listened to the speeches. Are we really going to take away some kind of a legal, negotiated, executed right and make it retroactive for 50 years?

I thought maybe I misunderstood, but no, that’s what we’re talking about here, or at least I think we are.

One of the comments or some of the implications were somehow that in 1966, Canadian Pacific gave away or agreed to give away their provincial tax exemption. We must realize that we’re talking about a very small exemption. It applies only to the running of the railroad through the province. It doesn’t apply to any of the other activities that in 1966 Canadian Pacific had. Remember, Canadian Pacific in 1966 had ships, an airline, a chain of hotels, a huge oil and gas company, an enormous real estate company, a coal company and a railway in Canada only.

Did they really, in 1966, give that away? Did it get thrown in with the request around property taxes? If they didn’t, then why are we going back to 1966 in this motion? What is the magic of 1966 if it’s clear somewhere else, possibly clear in a court decision, that they did not give up provincial taxes? I don’t understand it. It’s a question that I think we should try to find an answer to.

The other one was that, as I was listening to the speakers, Senator Gold, Senator Cotter and Senator Arnot, they all mentioned in their speeches that we needed to deal with this quickly, with alacrity; it should be passed quickly, and I wondered why. Why was there a rush after 150-some years? Why suddenly did this have to happen quickly?

If you go back and look at Hansard, “quickly” and “with alacrity” were mentioned multiple times with no explanation as to why. So what was that about?

I wanted to know how much due diligence had been done in the other places. I haven’t done much due diligence, but it was interesting to know that the Saskatchewan legislature debated this for four minutes and 30 seconds. The House of Commons had an opposition day on it with some kind of listless debate that appeared like there was uncomfortableness but it was a foregone conclusion. I don’t believe it went to committee but I’m not sure. I didn’t get a good feeling, when I took a cursory look at the due diligence path behind us, that there was a lot of transparent due diligence by legislators.

I also wondered about precedence and what precedents we might be setting with this particular motion, as I understand it, and I’m not 100% clear that I do understand it. I do know that Canadian Pacific has a similar set of rights and obligations in the province of Alberta and in the province of Manitoba. So I suspect that whatever it is we do here, if we pass this, I think we will be obligated when Alberta comes and Manitoba comes to do the same thing.

This could be exactly what we need to do. I’m not saying it isn’t. But there is more to this than meets the eye, in my view.

This issue of precedent is interesting. So if we do what I think we’re going to do with this motion, we can expect Alberta and Manitoba here in relatively short order. If we somehow discover that we didn’t do our due diligence and we made a mistake by waving this through, we will get to repeat that mistake twice more because we will have made it now.

There is also the issue of — there was a little bit of this in some of the speeches — the precedent that what if this were an organization that was a little bit more virtuous than Canadian Pacific? What if it were a minority group that was about to win a $50-billion award in a province that the province couldn’t afford or didn’t want to pay or there was public — are we actually 100% clear on all of these questions such that we can just do it with a few words here in the chamber, like has been done in other chambers, and whistle it through? Is that why we are the last guys, because we should just follow along? I don’t think that’s what our job is. I don’t believe it’s what our job is.

So these were my questions. I did a little bit of research. I’m not a great researcher and I did it myself. But I would say, colleagues, that I am absolutely convinced that before we do something, we should do a little bit more due diligence ourselves. I don’t know that it will change the outcome. I don’t think that’s the point.

I think that we should do our homework here, though. I really believe that. And we should have all of us, all senators, make the decision on this particular motion with our eyes wide open and understanding exactly what it is we are doing and why.