Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the time to debate this reorganizational bill today.
I must start by mentioning what some of my colleagues have already brought to the attention of the House. I should bring to the attention of those listening to this debate and watching on television to the crisis within the department, starting right at the top.
In Quorum I read a couple of days ago, although I do not remember the exact quote, where the minister said that we would now see a whole new way of protecting Canadian culture. A couple of days later we find out that the whole new way of protecting that culture involves personal letters from the minister on behalf of friends to the CRTC, an independent quasi-judicial body.
That whole new way of protecting Canadian culture will not wash in the House or with the Canadian people. It did not wash with past ministers who tried that. We are probably seeing the first serious case that at the minimum the ethics commissioner should investigate. Preferably the honourable thing will happen here in the next few hours and we will see a minister step forward with his resignation. It is unfortunate but I think to clear the air this will be necessary.
What is the cultural background of the country? We on the foreign affairs committee, of which I was member for a few months, found this to be a very controversial issue. Some would bring up the idea that culture is a personal thing, that it follows our actions, that it is a legacy and the heritage we pass down to the next generation. Other people would argue that culture only thrives when the government is behind it and spends money on it and forces it, when the government regulates it and decides which culture is good and which is bad.
The Bloc Quebecois brings the issue up very forcefully that the Canadian federal government has very little reason to be involved in promoting and selecting the culture Canadians would enjoy.
This is not a job for the federal government. The federal government's job is to protect against discrimination, to ensure that people are not discriminated against because of their ethnic background, not persecuted or prosecuted unduly because of their choices.
If individuals, lower levels of government, the provinces and other people and private organizations want to enhance culture, then by all means that is where it should be done. For the federal government to spend billions of dollars on what its idea of culture should be does not wash with the Bloc Quebecois and it does not wash with me and the Reform Party. Culture is not something a bureaucrat can choose from.
The Canadian film board has put forward several pieces of questionable, dubious trash and these are now available to the school boards. I told witnesses who came before the committee: "If you ever got out of the cloistered halls where you are making these decisions and to Fraser Valley East where I live and told the citizens there who do not understand this difficult issue that what they need is a government grant to the Canadian film board to show how lesbian relationships are the way of the future and that this is an excellent thing to promote, the citizens would want to do the old tar and feather routine". They would say that if somebody wanted to put out that film, by all means. There are probably thousands of those films put out every year. Is it the job of the federal government to support that? The answer of course is absolutely not.
We are going in the hole financially-in many ways in the country but financially especially-$110 million per day. How can a government that says it is trying to wrestle the deficit and debt to the ground continue to spend money on discretionary spendings when some priority items in the country are not being funded properly?
It asks students to take on more student loans because it has run out of money for them. There is still money for the Canadian heritage society and every other boondoggle in the country, but no more money for students.
We tell the provinces that they are going to have to cough up a bigger percentage of the health care costs, but we still have money to expand the museum in one of the minister's departments next year. We do not have any money to increase the basic pension requirements but we have money for the CBC to the tune of $1 billion a year.
People are rejecting that wholesale, as they well should. The other day I told members a story and I know how much they enjoyed it; we had laughs over that story. I would like to tell
another story. This one is not quite so funny but it is a true story. Again it is a very personal story involving my father.
My father was born into a community that looked after its own cultural background. It was a Swedish community back in the prairies in Minnedosa, Manitoba. Many a happy hour I spent back there visiting my aunts, uncles and other relatives. It was basically a Swedish community. It did the Swedish thing. It still has pickled herring and a few things from the Swedish past. I enjoy some of the heritage on that side of the family.
My dad's dad, my grandfather, died when dad was only six years old. Really the cultural things became very important. The community things, the family things became very important because that is where my father was raised. He had no father. In those days he had to pick up the support where he could. He got the support from the community.
When my dad was 17 years old and the second world war was on, he left that community and went to Winnipeg to enlist. He was only 17 years old. He was not old enough legally to sign up but being a big, strapping boy from the prairies and probably well fed-maybe underfed, I do not know-he looked the part but the enlistment guy told him he could not sign up and that he needed his mother's signature.
Dad took the forms and went out around the block to the back of the building, forged his mother's signature, went around to another door and came back in and enlisted as a 17-year-old.
There is a whole other story that goes with that but the point about the cultural thing in this is that dad never talked much about the army days. He spent a couple of years in. He did not have to go overseas and he made it through those war years okay, but the thing that stuck out in his mind and the only thing that dad talked about was that he did not think he did a very brave thing. It was what millions of Canadians were prepared to do.
The form on which he had to forge his mother's signature asked what ethnic background he was. This was back in 1943. Dad said that he just put a big line through there and said: "I am Canadian. That is what I am. I am not a hyphenated Canadian. I am not less a Canadian. I am not a half Canadian or anything else. I am a Canadian".
When people have a strong sense of their Canadianism, what they are, they do not need government subsidies. My father certainly did not. People in my community certainly do not.
An hon. member over here mentioned a case a while ago about someone playing a piano who looked up and said: "Does anybody happen to know this song?". Out of the crowd came about 40 or 50 people singing it in German. I do not even know what the song is because I do not speak German but they sang a song in German. Then the crowd went back out, proud of its heritage.
In Vancouver there will be the Chinatown festivities and so on. There will be the dragon dances and all that kind of thing. That has been going on for decades and decades without government help. When culture is part of a person they say: "I am a proud Canadian. I happen to have some of my background, my traditions, my heritage".
Members will find Canadians say: "I do not need government support for that. I am a proud Canadian. I have my own culture. It is my business. The government should not intrude into my life or dictate what I can watch on television or listen to on the radio. It is my business. Stay out of it".
When there are billions and billions of dollars involved, it is time that the Canadian government decided what its priorities are. The priorities are not in this heritage department. The priorities are health, pensions and the best education for our next generation. It is not the boondoggles that we see time after time in the Canadian heritage department.
I am disappointed to find that in this reorganization plan there is not a bottom line that reads: "This department will be severely curtailed". Unless that is in there I cannot believe that any reorganizational plan will be an improvement. The first reorganization of course as I mentioned earlier should be a change in ministers. Then we would see how Canadian heritage should be maintained in the hearts and lives of individual Canadians.