Bill C-2 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) Committee on May 31st, 2006

[Arthur Kroeger]

It is up to you, the members, to judge how much time that takes, but this is a very complex bill.

The President of the Treasury Board said this morning, in his speech to officials, that it had taken nine weeks to prepare this bill. That's very little time, in view of its considerable content.

You must judge what changes to make and how to discuss them. For my part, I hope that your members won't feel rushed and that you won't feel obliged to finish your proceedings on June 15 at all costs.

I appeared before a committee when I was Deputy Minister of Transport. The bill was at the clause-by-clause consideration stage. Four weeks were devoted to it, at a rate of about 40 hours a week. That totalled 150 or 200 hours. During that period, I believe 84 amendments were made to the bill.

All bills are different, but this is very important: what you establish here is a framework for the operation of government and officials. So I would say, without wanting to prescribe anything, that it would be good for you to take the necessary time.

[Benoît Sauvageau, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

What do you think would be the danger in rushing it?

[Arthur Kroeger]

One of these dangers is part of the question that Mr. Owen asked me, I believe: are we trying to do too much? Are we increasing the number of officers of Parliament? Are we increasing the number of processes? That could indeed undermine the proper operation of government.

It is also possible that you may find, after some studies are done, that some provisions of the bill are not practical. So it's up to you members to judge that. The fact remains that these questions are very important.

[Benoît Sauvageau, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

You're right; it's up to the members. Unfortunately, the NDP, to name only it, with the Conservatives' consent, will impose a motion on us this evening, that we complete the hearing of witnesses tomorrow, that we proceed with the clause-by-clause consideration next week and that we complete it as soon as possible. It appears we're not trying to make a good bill, but rather to keep an election promise before June 23.

What's quite curious is that everyone on this committee agrees on the principle of Bill C-2. However, it's the most dysfunctional committee I've ever sat on, despite the fact that everyone is in agreement.

So, Mr. Kroeger...

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Mr. Sauvageau, actually we have agreed to sit into the summer, so be fair to the committee.

I don't appreciate you calling this committee “dysfunctional”. I think it's a very good committee.

[Benoît Sauvageau, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

You're right, Mr. Chairman: it's not the committee, it's Mr. Poilievre.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Well....

[Benoît Sauvageau, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Pardon me, Mr. Chairman, for including you in that dysfunction. I'm sure your health is good.

So I was telling you that I agree with your remarks, but unfortunately we can't apply your judicious advice because the contrary is being imposed on us. So we'll have to live with an imperfect act.

Thank you.

[Arthur Kroeger]

That's the business of the members on the committee. Nevertheless, I believe you've heard a lot of witnesses.

From my experience, next week, when you begin the clause-by-clause consideration, it will be very important and it will be helpful for you to take the necessary time to ensure you know what you want, and that you find the best way to address the problem.

As you'll understand, I must stick to more or less general observations, since it is you, the members, who must judge the matter.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Time has expired.

A point of personal privilege.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

Mr. Sauvageau has again spent most of his time talking about how he doesn't have enough time and, in the process, attacked other members of the committee. This is a pattern, Mr. Chair, where the Bloc consistently says it doesn't have enough time, but yet spends all of its time talking about the time that it doesn't have. If they are truly truthful when they say they want and support the principles of this bill and that they want to clean up corruption, they will stop wasting the committee's time by arguing about how much time they do or do not have.

Thank you.

[Monique Guay, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

That's what you're doing right now.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

I want people to stop provoking each other.

Mr. Sauvageau, I don't want to get into any more of this.

Try to refrain, everybody, from provoking everybody.

Mr. Dewar.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Thank you.

Mr. Kroeger, in our party, we had actually proposed before the election some concerns that we had about what was going on. Ethics and accountability, and putting those two together, were pretty apparent in this town and across the country. We put forward a kind of mission statement, if you will, that Canadians were demanding changes in ethics and accountability. We wanted a strong Canada that had institutions, if you will, based on sound, ethical, and accountable mores and ideas. Having honesty, fairness, and transparency were critical.

My predecessor, Mr. Broadbent, put forward a seven-point plan. Part of it had to do with Parliament and the government, and part of it had to do with the democratic system itself. We were concerned and still remain concerned. This says a lot about the accountability of government and Parliament, but there's one component missing, and that's the accountability to the public. We've talked about some other concerns we have about proportional representation and concerns about other institutions, like the Senate.

That's background from our perspective as a party

But when we got into this bill—and we think we share some of your sense of the bill—there were some really good things and there were some things that we think can be improved upon. Access to information is an obvious one, and we'll put forward proposals and amendments on that. But there are some institutions that are unchartered waters, and I would like your comments.

I'd turn your attention to the parliamentary budget officer. There's an interesting component to the parliamentary budget officers. They would have the ability to cost private members' bills but not to really do a costing or evaluation of the government bills, as I read it. I find that interesting.

I don't know if you've looked into that part of the bill at all or if you can look at other jurisdictions as to what that kind of office would provide and what the need would be. I understand the need, and we certainly wanted to have that. It was mostly to do with concerns around the Department of Finance: how the surpluses would be out of whack with what everyone else was saying, therefore the money that was available to government and Canadians wasn't there, and alas, every year the government would say, oh, look, the surplus was a lot larger than we had anticipated. We wanted some transparency there, and that's why we thought an oversight was important.

I'd like to mention a couple of other points, if I have time.

On that one particular component of the bill, it's curious to me that you would cost private members' bills, in which traditionally you can't spend money, and then have the government bills not costed. What do you think the intent is? What could this do?

[Arthur Kroeger]

I'd thought the intent was probably fairly innocent in the sense that when the government does a bill, the Department of Finance, the Treasury Board, or whomever, are going to have to satisfy the cabinet as to what it will cost. Presumably, it's the kind of information that could be made available to Parliament.

If a private member designs the bill, there isn't anybody around to say, here's what this is going to cost. In that sense, I had interpreted it to be a service to private members and to parliamentarians generally.

Of course, if the parliamentary budget office had doubts about the costing that was attached to a government bill, I believe your legislation gives that officer access to all the data in the department. If there were cause, the office could check it out and perhaps give you a different opinion.

I had assumed that the costing of a private member's bill had an innocent intent.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

I might receive clarification now, but traditionally I've been told to steer away from anything that has to do with finances, as a private member putting a bill forward. If it's an extra service, so be it.

If we go back to where the source of this was--I'd actually, just as a comment, say that this committee has been going on for quite a while--you mentioned Mr. Alcock and his remedies, and I heartily agree with you. Particularly for the people in this town, the effect would have been paralysis to government if they had been enacted, in my opinion, and from what I was hearing from public servants. You did have the Gomery commission, and here we are. So I think, with respect, we've been at this for a while. We had an election on it.

There's a perceived rush. I'm not wanting to rush. We want to make sure good things get done.

But when you look at the public accounts committee and at the estimates process, we haven't talked about that enough, in my opinion. It's strange to me--and I'm wondering if you see it in this bill or another tool--to allow Parliament to be more vigorous in looking at spending at the front end and not at the back end.

In other words, if we look at some of the concerns that came out of Gomery, and before that, other programs, it was after the money had been spent, and voilà, look here, we had some misspending or account problems, and so on. Sometimes, indeed, the problems were exaggerated, and we found that out after the headlines.

Some provinces are much more rigorous in their estimates process. We have the blue book here. I've looked through it. This year was a bit of an anomaly because it came out before the budget. So I'm no stranger to--

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

You have one minute, Mr. Dewar.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Could you comment on how we could better serve Canadians by the estimates process?

Thank you.

[Arthur Kroeger]

That's an important question. It is one of the fundamental functions of Parliament, obviously.

I'm a little surprised. There was one recommendation that Judge Gomery made that I thought was very good that hasn't been picked up in the legislation, but it hasn't been picked up in anything else that I've heard the government say. Justice Gomery said to increase the resources available to parliamentary committees.

By most standards--of the United States, I won't even speak, but most other countries have far greater support for their parliamentarians and their parliamentary committees than we have in Canada. So you're really trying to operate on a shoestring. The Library of Parliament does a formidable job for you, but there aren't all that many of them.

So, number one, if the government and the parliamentarians saw fit to increase resources for committees, I think that could do quite a lot. That could give you good research reports.

I used to be responsible for the main estimates, but I was a Treasury Board official. The thing is that thick. You can't as parliamentarians get into that unless somebody has done some research and says, “Hey, take a look at this”. You need the staff support and the analysis before you come to the table. So that's number one.

Number two is a question of how Parliament wants to organize itself. This is something that has always kind of puzzled me, because historically--I'm not just talking about the present government, I'm talking about governments that I've known over a period of time--there was not very much system. Somebody is appointed parliamentary secretary, they serve two years, and then their term is up. So, okay, we'll make you chair of this committee; it doesn't matter if you know anything about it or not, and whoever is the chair of that committee goes off to do something else. You get random substitution of members on committees.

There are a number of practices that are actually, to some degree, I think, within the control of Parliament itself, and there, parliamentarians have to make a judgment call as to which of these functions is the most important--because there are reasons you do substitutions. If you really wanted to get into the financial structure of the department, you could organize a series of hearings, and officials, I can tell you, would really enjoy coming and giving you a two-hour briefing, saying, “Look, here's how we're organized. Here are the main programs. Here is the budget. Here is our history. There's the background. Now, what do you want to get into?” At future meetings you could say, “Well, you know what? We're really curious about your regional programs.” So you'd start burrowing into those.

But that's a question of how a parliamentary committee chooses to organize its work. Officials can't do that for you, and to some extent, even the government can't do it for you. It's parliamentarians themselves.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Mr. Lukiwski.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Kroeger, welcome. I enjoyed your presentation very much.

I want to go back for a few moments to a fairly popular subject, it seems this afternoon, and that's the time required to deal with this bill.

With all the greatest respect in the world, I have to disagree with my colleagues, Mr. Sauvageau and Madam Guay, and I think they both know I respect them very much. But their implication is, or their assessment is, that we are trying to rush this bill and not give it the due consideration, the rigorous examination, required. But I think we've struck a fairly happy marriage, because, for a couple of reasons, there is some need for speed, if you will.

We've heard from a number of witnesses who have stated that they are asking us to deal with this and get this bill through committee quickly so it can be enacted into law, for a number of reasons. A more primary reason, in my opinion, is the fact that because this is a minority government that could fall at any time, should we not deal with this expeditiously, we could be faced with yet another situation where a good attempt to get a necessary bill passed is derailed because of an impending election. So we have the challenge then of how to deal with things expeditiously, yet still give it it's due diligence. And I think what we're doing here is the best compromise, and that's to extend the sitting hours.

I noted with interest that you said that when you were on the transport committee you dealt with a bill 40 hours a week; right now we're dealing with this bill 24 hours a week. By the time we reach the end of the session, June 23, we will have spent over 120 hours or so discussing this bill. As you would well know, a normal standing committee of Parliament meets four hours a week, and over the 28-week period that Parliament usually sits, that would be about 112 hours. So in fact in a short and compressed period of time, we will have met the equivalent of a year of a regular standing committee.

Should we go beyond that—and we have a motion that has been approved by all of us at this committee to keep sitting until this bill is done—I suggest that we can probably increase the sitting hours to approximately 40 hours a week, starting the week following the rising of this House, and if we sat for another three weeks after that, it, in effect, would be the equivalent of yet another year of a normal standing committee. I think we're all quite prepared to do that, because we all agree that this bill needs to be passed, but we need to give it its due diligence and all of the rigorous examination of every clause.

I'm not asking for you to say yes or no on this, but I would ask for your comments, given the parameters that I've just described to you, on the need for some urgency, and the fact that we're putting an intensive amount of work into this bill through examination and interventions by witnesses, and then when we go into the clause-by-clause, whenever that may occur--and I'm not sure if it's going to occur next week or not. Do you suggest that if we end up getting approximately 200 hours of examination, that might be considered adequate?

[Arthur Kroeger]

I wouldn't feel competent to put a number on it. Let me tell you how I think about the bill.

These are institutional questions you're dealing with. You're creating new officers of Parliament who are going to be there for the long term, or so you hope. You're creating new procedures. And again, this isn't a quick fix. This is something that you, as parliamentarians, and officials, and ministers, are going to live with for the foreseeable future. It's not as though it was really urgent to pass this bill because people were stealing money hand over fist. Canada is not that kind of a country. You're not trying to deal with larceny or fraud in regional offices or on the part of anybody in politics.

Coming back to Mr. Dewar's comment about morals and values, every year there's an organization called Transparency International that publishes a so-called corruption perceptions index. It's got 170-plus countries on it, and Canada is always in the top 10, with the Scandinavians, the New Zealanders, and the Dutch, and good folks like that. So it's not as though we have a question of rampant corruption that it's urgent to deal with; you're dealing with longer-term matters.

I don't know, I have no idea, what the right number of hearings is. I might venture a suggestion just from my own experience of some past legislation. Once you get into clause-by-clause, and where you're not having partisan arguments but you're actually figuring what the best way to do this is, you may find that's more complicated than you have thought. But that's speculation on my part.

I would not want to prescribe to parliamentarians what is the right amount of time to give this. I would express the more general opinion. This is long-term legislation. I hope you won't feel that you've got to come to too many conclusions in the short term, but I wouldn't go further than that.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

Thank you.

Mr. Chair, I'll cede the rest of my time to my colleague Mr. Petit.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Yes. He has about a minute and a half.

Mr. Petit.

[Daniel Petit, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Mr. Kroeger, I heard your evidence, and I found it excellent. I would like to know your opinion on one important point.

You worked as a senior official in the federal public service. I want to be sure that an honest official subject to this act will have the necessary instruments to disclose a problem. We're not just talking about problems like the sponsorship scandal. There are all kinds of problems, whether it be illegal cost overruns, fraud and so on. These problems arise across the public service. It seems to be a habit in the federal government.

In your opinion, will Bill C-2 enable an official who has seen million dollar cheques pass before his eyes every week to say that that is unacceptable and to take the necessary steps to put an end to that problem? It's hemorrhaging, and it has to stop.