Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak on this issue. Many of the questions raised here today are exactly the same as those raised by my constituents and continue to be raised by them.
They are wondering: "What is going on in Ottawa. What are they doing there? What is this government doing? We are wondering what substantive legislation is being considered". When I tell them that the government has brought a bill forward that reorganizes the department, they ask me: "What is that going to do for us? What does that mean?" They ask questions like: "Does this mean that the bureaucrats are going to keep shuffling the paper from one side of the desk to the other?" I say: "I guess it means that they are shuffling bureaucrats. What they are doing is very often unknown".
They would like to know how this improves their situation in Canada. They ask: "Is this going to save money?" We ask the government the same thing. Is this going to save money? We are met with stone silence. The government is not saving money. In fact it is entrenching government spending in ways that will make it more difficult to change in the future. Then they ask questions like: "Does this reorganization make the government
more accountable to us? Will we have more control over the way it spends money in the department?"
I ask the government: Does it do that? The government is silent because it does not. It does not give the people of Canada more control over what happens at the CBC or how these grants that my hon. friend has just listed are given out. In fact it makes it more difficult for taxpayers to have control over how this government spends its money.