Madam Speaker, I rise to speak on Bill C-53, an act to establish the Department of Canadian Heritage and to amend and repeal certain other acts.
On October 18, 1994, as we are about to celebrate or lament the first anniversary of the election, because that was when the Liberal government came to power, we have to take a look and say: "What is this Liberal government trying to do?" Here we are 12 months after the election, the first time that the Liberals have been in power after nine years. We would have thought that they were bursting at the seams with new ideas, new policies and new philosophies to get this country back on track, bring the deficit under control, create jobs in this country and we find that we have another of a long list of reorganizations that was started by the previous Prime Minister who led a party that is no longer even represented in this House. We can only assume how well the Canadian people endorsed the idea.
Let me just quote Bill C-46, reorganization of the Department of Industry, Science and Technology to change its name to the Department of Industry; Bill C-47, reorganization of the Department of External Affairs into the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade; Bill C-48, reorganization of the Department of Energy, Mines and Resources to the Department of Forestry and Department of Natural Resources; Bill C-49, reorganization of the Department of Agriculture into the Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food; Bill C-52, reorganization of the Department of Public Works into the Department of Public Works and Government Services; and now we have Bill C-53; a long list but not I am afraid an impressive list from a government that in its first year we would have thought would bring forward some serious policy.
As I mentioned these are strictly holdovers from the previous government. I would like to ask the government of the day, the Prime Minister of the day and all these ministers of the day when we are really going to get down to the business of running this country. The next election is going to be looming long before the 1997 date that we had anticipated if they keep up this speed.
The hon. Minister of Finance as we speak is talking about his new paper, creating a healthy fiscal climate and economic and fiscal update. Yet all the other ministers can talk about is reorganization and renaming their departments.
We really do want to attack this gross budget deficit that we have and the horrendous debt that we have accrued. I read in the transitional part of the bill, clause 9(1), that nothing in this act shall be construed as affecting the status of an employee who immediately before the coming into force of this subsection occupied in essence any other position in all these other departments that are being renamed.
We have gone through all this for nothing, just simply nothing. There is no effort, attempt, or serious recognition by these departments. If they are going to reorganize surely this would be the time when they would seriously review everything that is being done by their departments.
The Minister of Human Resources Development tabled a document a couple of weeks ago telling us how he was going to review all the programs by the department under his control. What did we end up with? It was hardly even rated a discussion paper as Canadians still wait for the government to produce serious policy on how it is going to handle the reorganization of the major programs that we give to Canadians. As we speak, as I mentioned, the Minister of Finance has given us another fluffy warm statement that contains nothing, just nothing, about what he is going to do to accomplish his timid objective of bringing the debt down to $25 billion by 1996-1997. I have to admit I am at a loss that this government cannot do more.
The previous speaker talked about the great and wonderful things this department is doing. One of them of course is (a) under clause 2, the promotion of a greater understanding of human rights, fundamental freedoms, and related values. The Minister of Justice under his Bill C-41 wants to bring hate crimes or sections of our community that many people find abhorrent. We are not going to protect them with additional rights because the Minister of Justice wants to bring in these.
I am questioning why the Minister of Canadian Heritage is also responsible for doing the same thing. How many civil servants are thinking and working and spending our taxpayers' dollars trying to bring forth policies that Canadian taxpayers do not want?
Next is (b), multiculturalism. We in the Reform Party say that a Canadian is a Canadian and is equal from coast to coast. With this policy of multiculturalism the government feeds and channels large amounts of money to individual groups in our society to keep us separate and apart, yet at the same time hoping we will all come together. I find this mind boggling. If we can offer any advice to this government then surely it would be to abolish this whole idea of multiculturalism and start talking about Canadians being equal from coast to coast. Everybody is the same.
It goes on to the arts including the cultural aspects. These are nothing new and surely we could review and save many millions of dollars.
The public accounts were tabled this morning. I have not had time to go through them. I will. I have not had the time. I have had only had a few hours and there is a large amount of money, $165 billion, spent by this government last year. We will be going through that. We will find there are many instances where this government is wasting taxpayers' money ad infinitum. We can quite easily tell the Minister of Finance where he could cut.
I remember several months ago in this House we raised the point that the Department of Heritage gave a $10 million grant-I beg your pardon, it was a smaller grant-to a conference in Vancouver that was racist. Because of the fact that we raised the issue the minister of heritage withdrew the grant.
We are paying these ministers to do the job and I do not think they are doing the job. They bring no policy. They bring no fresh ideas. Therefore I find that this whole idea of reorganization to accomplish nothing is totally abhorrent and a waste of taxpayers' money.