I will tell you where I'm going, and you can watch me get there.
The inclusion of Mr. Beauregard's widow as a witness, the inclusion of the unions, and the inclusion of the fired staff is, for this committee, to micromanage. That's where I'm going. I will now go back on that path.
As I mentioned, the difficulty is that we are quite frequently driven as politicians to be responding to the call of the day. We are sometimes driven by news media. We are certainly driven by public opinion. When we are driven by that public opinion, there are times when--simply because of the momentum caused by the news media and by the chatter in a Tim Hortons--that direction isn't necessarily in the best interest of whatever the issue may be.
You then come from the ministers and the ministries. You then take a further step to a crown corporation. Let's name the EDC. Actually, let's name the CBC.
In the case of crown corporations, of course, there still has to be some oversight and some accountability on behalf of the taxpayer and on behalf of the people of Canada by the Government of Canada. That very wisely is achieved by the power the Prime Minister and the cabinet have in selecting the directors and the presidents, the officers of those corporations.
In the case of the CBC, for example, where you have the Government of Canada actually taking upward of a billion dollars from the national treasury and giving it to the CBC for them to actually manage.... I must admit that when I was the heritage critic, I would say it was probably every 18 months that somebody, somewhere, on some issue, would actually start to try to micromanage the CBC.
I recall one instance in particular when if it hadn't been so time-consuming, it might even have been a little bit humorous. It basically had to do with the programming of CBC Radio 1. We had many representations about four or five years ago--maybe it wasn't that long ago, but in that timeframe--when the new CBC management decided they were going to change the format of CBC Radio 1. Pardon me, it was CBC Radio 2. The reason why this was particularly significant to lovers of classical music was that up to that point the majority of the programming had been classical music.
It must be said that the CBC had made the decision that they were not only going to be playing classical music, they were in fact going to be producing classical music. So there was a following of Canadians--if I recall the numbers correctly, it was in the neighbourhood of 2%--who were following CBC Radio 2. When they were told that CBC Radio 2 was no longer going to be strictly a classical music station, there was a great tumult. There was a great exercise on the part of the listeners and certainly on the part of some of the members of the standing committee.
We ended up actually having closed-circuit television between Ottawa and Vancouver, and I can't recall the other locations where the other witnesses came from. It was really quite interesting to follow this, but it turned out to be, if I may say so, a little bit of a waste of time. The reason why I say it was a waste of time is because at the end of the day the CBC politely listened, and then the CBC politely went ahead and did what they were going to do in the first place.
In the meantime, what the committee had done, and this is instructive for this committee, was they had used up, if I recall, at least five committee meetings, at least five. We actually used up a fair amount of money in terms of the closed-circuit testimony. We ended up pontificating as a committee and doing whatever we thought was best. At the end of the day, the CBC politely went ahead and did what it was going to do anyway. Now, remember that the CBC, as with Rights and Democracy, is governed by people who are appointed by this Prime Minister and by the cabinet. So they ultimately at the end of the day are the people who directly answer to the subscribers, the viewers, the customers, the clientele of the CBC.
However, the attempt on the part of the standing committee in fact was rather vacuous, and of course that was the position that I and the other Conservative members took throughout the entire exercise. I don't think this committee wants to take vacuous steps with respect to Rights and Democracy or steps that will possibly be best handled in a court of law. The widow of Mr. Beauregard has access to courts of law and has access to all sorts of remedies. Certainly I'm not a lawyer, so I have no idea of how many, but I do know there would be remedies that would be available to her to be able to take care of her concerns.
I suggest that what would happen if she did come to this committee is there would be an awful lot things that are extraneous to her basic fundamental requirements that would be handled, and would be handled in such a public way as perhaps to even be detrimental to her position.
I would like to have the opposition answer this question. If she did come to this committee and if she did make testimony, how would that advance her situation? If she did come to this committee and she did make testimony, how would that advance the ability of this committee to be able to change what regrettably has occurred? That's why I said at the outset of my comments here that I'm concerned about even raising this issue. I'm trying to raise it in as unemotional and as dispassionate a way as I possibly can. That said, the only thing that I can really visualize happening is that if she did come there would be an emotional reaction to a situation over which this committee has absolutely no control.
I've spoken about the CBC and it being an arm's-length organization. Let me speak about EDC, for example. EDC also is an arm's-length organization. They were given a tremendous amount of money, many billions of dollars, from the federal treasury from which they work. The interesting thing about EDC is that they have actually found themselves in a position in Canada of being a major supporter of our mining industry as well as obviously all of our export businesses.
With EDC we have seen with the testimony on Bill C-300 that if Bill C-300 were to go forward, EDC would actually be precluded from being able to carry out the kind of funding that they presently are doing on behalf of mining companies. This would represent a lack of funding support in the magnitude of about $22 billion to $23 billion, which were the figures from last year.
I can't imagine what that would do to the mining industry in Canada. They would be forced to make the decision on the basis of Bill C-300. Because what Bill C-300 actually calls for is that if things change, if there is a material change in the relationship the mining company has with the national government or with respect to the bureaucracy in the host nation, and there are questions that may arise, they would actually, according to my reading of Bill C-300, have to withdraw their tens of millions of dollars, or maybe hundreds of millions, from a given project.
That being the case, if they had to withdraw that money, the question on behalf of any prudent financial manager would be, “If I may have to withdraw this money because of something that may happen in the future”--
