Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Outremont.
I would like to respond before I begin debate on this bill to the points raised by the hon. member for Elk Island. One of his specific remarks was when he talked about the agency review being conducted in secrecy. In fact, there will be a report on the process which will explain what the process was, how it was
carried out and what the results will be. That report will be appearing very shortly.
Second, he talked about his early days with his father on the farm and about a tractor and a horse. He suggested that in the case of the Liberal government we have the horses tugging at the tractor but it is not yet out of the mud. In fact, if you look at the details of what we have done-and this touches on some questions which were posed earlier today-I think the hon. member will agree that the tractor is out of the mud and is moving fairly briskly.
We have eliminated 589 governor in council positions, agencies close to the type we talked about. I accept the congratulations that he offered to the government for what we have achieved. In fact, we have made only 700 appointments to agencies, boards and commissions. Despite what the hon. member suggested, some of these boards and commissions such as the National Archives Advisory Board are essential to the operation of the government. It brings to government the advice of ordinary citizens of the type we hear of so often from members of the Reform Party, and rightly so in that respect.
Even the Globe and Mail , when trying to find information on this particular matter, could identify only 80 of the 700 appointments we have made with the Liberal Party. To give members an idea of how the tractor is moving very quickly, in the period November 4, 1991 to February 3, 1993, the previous government, the Conservatives-and I recognize that the hon. member was not a part of that government-made 1,819 appointments. In summary, the Liberal Party has abolished 589 of these positions and has appointed only 700. The previous government in exactly the same number of days appointed almost four times as many as the number we did. That is not quite the right math, but it is close enough for my friend who was a mathematics teacher.
Having made these comments it is my pleasure to begin debate on Bill C-65. This bill, as the minister indicated earlier, amends the statutes that established 15 federal boards, agencies or commissions in order to reorganize the boards or reduce the number of members and to dissolve seven other federal organizations. The passage of the bill will eliminate and streamline the operations of these federal agencies and will improve their efficiency and their service to Canadians.
Why are we doing this? We are doing this because we know that the world is changing rapidly and government must as well. In order to remain a strong competitor in the marketplace, as a country we need to adapt to the new challenges we face in the global environment. To remain competitive we know that we must, as the private sector has, undergo an unprecedented period of change and restructuring. We recognize the inevitability of change and we are committed to bringing good and efficient government to Canadians. In managing this change we wish to do it in a fashion that is fair, careful and never casual.
Earlier the hon. member for Elk Island talked about the possibility of abolishing certain boards quickly. We have carried out a careful process that looks at what the boards do. I would suggest that if members look at the list of boards they will find many with whose functions they agree in their entirety. They will also find many boards that are carrying out functions that are essential to the operation of government.
The danger, as the member for Carleton-Charlotte said to me, to make an analogy to another animal, the cow, the Reform Party cow if you like, may give a good pail of milk but it will then kick the pail over. We do not want to do that. We want to look at the agencies that work and many of them are working very well.
The Public Service of Canada is an effective and efficient public service by any measure internationally and it has over the past provided Canadians with services of the highest quality. Where services are duplicated, and they are, they will be merged and streamlined. Where agencies and boards are obsolete they must be eliminated. In other words, the government must continue to serve our taxpayers effectively but it must do so in alignment with their needs and with less resources.
We promised Canadians in the red book that we would renew government and reduce its size and unnecessary cost. As part of the initiative, the finance minister announced in his budget last year that a review of all federal agencies would take place. That review has been conducted under the leadership of the Minister responsible for Public Service Renewal. The objective, as it was set out in that review, was to eliminate unnecessary or inactive organizations, streamline operations by examining the size of boards and the remuneration of members; ensure that the role of these bodies was geared to meet the challenges of today and the demands of the years ahead. Those were the criteria for the decisions made about these boards.
The first decisions were announced in July of last year by the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs. These announcements reflected the recommendations given to the minister by the individual ministers responsible for agencies. They included the Ministers of Canadian Heritage, Finance, Fisheries and Oceans, Health and National Defence as well as the Minister responsible for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency.
This bill then is the first of two omnibus bills to implement through legislation the streamlining measures for agencies and boards announced since this government took office. It also allows for the streamlining of the operations of a number of agencies, boards and commissions by reducing the number of board members, as has been done with the boards of the Canada Council and Petro-Canada, folding one organization into another, as in the case of Emergency Preparedness Canada which was
folded into the Department of National Defence, the kind of approach the member recommended earlier, or combining functions of organizations such as merging the Procurement Review Board of Canada with the Canadian International Trade Tribunal.
When these decisions were announced the Ottawa Citizen wrote an editorial congratulating the government: ``Yuletide is a traditional season of political patronage appointments with a generous distribution of partisan favours at public expense, so it is especially happy news that 314 patronage positions have just been abolished by the Chrétien government''.
It goes on to point out that not all these boards are bad and that patronage sometimes serves a good purpose: "Boards and commissions can do work beyond the competence of the public service sometimes and patronage in its place can allow a government to choose the people it wants to execute policies it was elected to advance. Jean Chrétien's ministers are right to scrutinize these governor in council positions, all 3,000 or them, one by one", which is what we are doing. "If patronage appointments are not doing something essential to the public interest or doing it better than public servants could, the positions should be eliminated".
That is the criterion we have employed.
In conclusion, the agency review was conducted in conjunction with a number of other reviews, including the program review which has examined federal programs and services as well as policy reviews.
This process of examination will not come to an end with the formal completion of the agency review but will, members have suggested earlier, continue as an integral part of providing Canadian taxpayers with value for their money.
We know the importance of meeting our commitment to provide Canadians with good government. Improving how our nation is governed remains a priority with this government.
The bill before us makes sensible changes in a reasonable way while ensuring national interest is served. It will result in administrative savings and increased efficiency and delivery of government. I would urge hon. members to ensure speedy passage of this legislation because it is the kind of bill that all members can support. The Ottawa Citizen said in December: ``Marcel Massé is on the right side. He is on the side of fairness, flexibility and efficiency in government''.
