Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I certainly appreciate Mr. Deltell's motion and the opportunity for us to discuss this publicly. Like Mr. Sorbara, I want to see corporate responsibility, but further than that I actually want to see responsible government.
Responsible government depends on the grassroots, individual Canadians who elect members of Parliament to be powerful, to come here, and to hold the government to account regardless of their party. If you're not formally in government, as in the cabinet, you have a responsibility to hold your government to account.
The best way to do that, I would suggest to my honourable members across the way, is to have a motion like this supported, and the reason being is that there's anger, as Mr. Fergus has said. Yes, there is, Mr. Chair, in my riding especially.
People don't like the idea that government money, which is their money, their tax dollars, is going to supply programming that will then offset executive compensation. They don't like it when governments are unaccountable and simply say, “We're disappointed but it's a free market. We don't bear any responsibility,” when it just isn't so. We want to see transparency.
Have the minister come in here and explain how the program works. Have the minister explain why there weren't accountability functions—like what happened with Air Canada under Minister Flaherty—with specific language around executive compensation to make sure that when government, again, taxpayer money goes to a private corporation, there are protections to make sure that it doesn't go to ends that do not serve the public, but only the private, in this case, those executives.
I do realize that some members have reservations about this. I'm not going to lecture on what the politics are. They know very well. I just would say that it is our job as members of Parliament to hold the government to account.
This is a government program, and just like we had concerns on this committee on tax expenditures and whether they were effective or not.... We even have a Prime Minister who says he didn't feel that the tax credit they cancelled in this year's budget was effective. Maybe we need to put on the table that this particular program, the way this government is running the contracts and not including those accounting provisions, is also faulty and is also not effective.
Again, I would just reinforce the point that this is what we are sent here to do. It's what my constituents want. It sounds like it's what many of our constituents want.
Going back to anger, no one is suggesting that we don't discuss it. In fact, we're actually talking about an orderly process set out by over 100 years—150 years soon—of parliamentary procedure to deal with the issues of the day. The great thing is that Canada is still standing, and I would say it's partly because our system does develop democratic, transparent means for us to deliberate issues of confidence in the government.
If members on the other side want to vote against increasing responsible government, transparency, and being able to look at their constituents and say, “You know what? There were some valid points. Let's take a look at it. Let's argue on the merits”.... Rather than arguing about the motion, Mr. Chair, we could argue when we actually get the facts from the relevant authorities and hold them to account.
As Mr. Deltell has said, perhaps Bombardier has not communicated. This would give them an opportunity to communicate. Perhaps the government might want to reconsider how it approaches not just this particular funding, but how it does this in the future. I would imagine that the taxpayer would benefit from that. I think our parliamentary system would benefit from that. It would show that the system works.
Last, Mr. Chair, we could again all go home and tell people that we came here to do our jobs, and we did that.
Anyway, it's something that a tweet cannot capture. It's something that a short speech cannot capture. I think our parliamentary report would be at least a substantial addition to the national conversation.
