Debates of Oct. 27th, 1994

Department Of Canadian Heritage Act

[Mike Scott, Reform, Skeena, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to add to what some of my colleagues have had to say here today on culture and heritage.

I have a deep appreciation for Canada's culture and our heritage. I have many generations of ancestors in Canada. They started out in the maritimes and came to British Columbia over a period of 150 years. Contrary to what some might say or think, I believe that Reformers and Canadians in general have a deep

appreciation of our heritage. I believe that Canadians for the most part like art, films, and books. They like many of the things our minister of cultural heritage is promoting.

Most of us express our desire and enjoyment of our culture and art through our personal decisions. We make decisions as to what we are going to buy, which art for our homes and which books to read. We visit art galleries when we choose. In general through the marketplace we express our appreciation with our money in the forums where we feel that it is appropriate to do so.

The operative word here is marketplace. The marketplace is the proper place to determine whether art is saleable, whether it is desirable and whether the people who are creating it should be supported.

What we have in Canada is government directed heritage and cultural policy that ignores the market altogether. The government funded cultural community needs taxpayers' money to survive because it cannot convince people to buy its products on their own. It is not successful in the marketplace.

If writers want my money and the Canadian taxpayers' money they can write books that Canadian taxpayers will buy. If artists want my money they can create art that I and Canadian taxpayers will buy. If film makers want my money they can create films that I will pay money to see and they will therefore be successful.

These people do not need to convince me to buy their art or their books or pay to see their films. They can go to Ottawa and convince the government to fund their projects and their initiatives and I as a taxpayer along with millions of others from coast to coast who do not agree with the kind of products these people are producing are forced through a coercive taxation system to support it in any event.

This is why we have a National Art Gallery that is full of goofy paraphernalia that common sense Canadians would never ever buy. We have so-called treasures in our National Art Gallery. I come from the construction industry. People in the construction industry tell me that the notorious painting "Voice of Fire" could be created in about one-half day by a couple of good painters.

[An hon. member]

Three minutes.

[Mike Scott, Reform, Skeena, BC]

Three minutes with a spray gun. Yet the government has been spending millions and millions of dollars to acquire these goods and put them in our National Art Gallery. We have at times hung paintings and writings on the walls of that gallery that some Canadians would indeed believe to be bordering on pornographic. They would not let their children have these at home, yet they are confronted with them when they visit our National Art Gallery.

Why? Because the elite have determined that this is good for us without our consent. They take our tax dollars to support these artists when clearly Canadians never would.

The Reform Party and I say it is time to get the government out of the business of heritage, out of the business of culture and let the marketplace establish what people want and what they do not want.

It is very simple. If somebody produces something that has value and is desirable, Canadians will buy it. But when we have people who can go to the government, get grants and be funded through a coercive taxation system with no regard for whether Canadians actually want this paraphernalia, we are going to have what we have right now, a tremendous waste of Canadian taxpayers' money and a collection of what I consider to be, and I think many people consider to be, nonsense in our National Gallery.

[Vic Althouse, NDP, Mackenzie, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I am generally not considered an expert on culture and the heritage department. I am a farmer from Saskatchewan. However I do read. I do write. I do look at art. I do watch plays. I do watch television and all the things that all Canadians do.

In this discussion we should remind ourselves that cultural pursuits are an expression of all of society and they have always had difficulty being recognized for what they are trying to do.

We have heard a number of speeches this morning stating that if the market will not support it then it should not be produced. Yet when I look back at my very modest understanding of the history of artistic endeavour, I see a great many works that are now considered to be the epitome of that genre of art. It would not have been accepted by the market in the day it was produced. It was very controversial and yet because the state or the church was determined to pay the artist to do the work and support the artist in his or her endeavour it was produced.

People asked why waste money painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling, paying an artist for the years and years it takes to produce that stuff. When it was finished the population was agog because Michelangelo had painted some of the people without as many clothes on as they thought there should be. While the church and the Pope had financed the project, they did succumb to popular pressure and have him come back and paint over some parts of it.

However without the backing of the state or the church-in that case the church was collecting money from all of the population-without a firm commitment to that artist, we would not know Michelangelo ever existed. He is still considered to be one of the greatest painters and sculptors of all time.

That is just one example. We have many in Canada to which I am sure people in the artistic community could point. Because most of my friends of the Reform Party are from western Canada I would just mention the name William Kurelek .Without some assistance from Canadian governments we probably would not realize that William Kurelek was a great talent in his own right. He was considered kind of a nut case by his colleagues and the people who knew him, but some people in the artistic community convinced others he should receive financial support, so we got the paintings that he produced in his lifetime.

We tend to think that Heritage Canada is only supporting experimental art and playing with new ideas, that they support exotica or things that are quite foolish. We have heard quite a lot of some of those perceived to be foolish things. Not being terribly modern and culturally aware, some of those seem a little foolish to me as well, but we have to be prepared to make those kinds of experiments if we are going to move forward as a society.

As we have only eight to ten minutes each to speak I do not want to spend too much time on this, but we should remind ourselves that some of what Heritage Canada does with its grants and its money is quite mundane. If we pulled back all the support the department gives, even my friends in the Reform Party would up on their feet crying about the interference that had been precipitated by the pulling back of those funds.

As an example, I have in my community a second newspaper that started up in the last few years which portrays a very right wing point of view. My friends in the Reform Party would love the editorials. Basically the reason for the newspaper is to put those editorials and those opinions in front of the general public in that community. Because this lady has these extreme views she has trouble getting advertisers to support the paper.

She wanted to set up a second paper and keep it going. She had started one up in a neighbouring community which was in danger of folding so she took over the management of it again. I got a call from her to say she was having trouble getting the postal subsidy needed to keep both newspapers going. This comes from, guess where? Heritage Canada. As I recall it is about 88 cents per paper per week. The paper cannot operate and cannot circulate this other opinion in those communities without the support of Heritage Canada.

While she is an avowed believer in letting the market be determined, she was very concerned as well about the duality of these arguments we get into and the fact that she might not be able to get a grant from Heritage Canada because she was starting up a second paper and policies were changing. This in effect would be a restriction of freedom of speech. Freedom of speech is only one forum of the freedom of expression our societies and the tribes we have come from feel is the root of our existence.

If we are going to have freedom of expression it has to go beyond just producing newspapers with a point of view. It ultimately has to include putting paintings on ceilings, even though it was thought to be a stupid place to put a painting, and living with the kind of criticism that even that glorious work in the Sistine Chapel got when it was performed. Sometimes backing off from criticism has happened, with a little paint here and there to cover up what the general public is opposed to and making adjustments but not by withdrawing all support from society in general.

I hope in opposing the restructuring of Heritage Canada that some of my friends in the House do not mean that all forms of support would stop. Even as a group, we are not wise enough to recognize a potential talent or a product of the artistic mind that will fly and be famous for centuries.

One time as a farm boy I was able to get to Paris for a day or two and go through the Louvre. There are many works I remember of course. Everyone sees the "Mona Lisa" and wonders at the Dutch masters and the works of the French, the Spanish and the Italians. However, the one thing I personally admired was some of the sculpture in stone from the early Greek period. Some of this stuff weighs thousands of pounds. The art is so great it appears as if these winged creatures will take off momentarily. They look as light as a feather, they are ethereal. They almost look like lace, but they are stone and weigh thousands of pounds. Nobody knows who did that work. But we still have it and we still admire it.

Some time thousands of years ago, some king or priest or bishop or whoever helped to finance this work of art. It was probably criticized by a few people in the street or maybe all the people in the street as a waste of public funds for keeping this poor sculptor in food and drink for the time it took him or her to produce it. Nobody knows who produced it and yet millions have appreciated the thought and the expertise and the feeling that went with it.

To be so careful with our dollars and cents that we lose all common sense has to be something we avoid. I hope for just a few political moments, we will let common sense prevail and not just follow public demand. The public demand to stop spending is always there from the taxpayers' side of our psyche. We also must remember we have more than that in our individuality and in our group consciousness and in our group needs. We

must recognize that this also includes recognizing freedom of expression and supporting it.

[Grant Hill, Reform, Macleod, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am surprised that this is a bill of such profound importance as I detect from the opposite members.

I wanted to rise on Bill C-53 with a specific interest. The interest is this. Why would the bill come to the House now? I would like to ask that rhetorical question. Why is the bill in front of us now?

I have listened to my Liberal colleagues speak very eloquently about a fairly major review of much of the government's operations. In my view the bill would fit very well into a fairly significant review of those operations.

I looked actually for the department to give some specific recognition that there is some controversy here. The controversy has been heightened by the minister's actions. Those actions might provide a lightning rod for the Canadian public in terms of his department.

Why now? Why would the government bring in a bill on multiculturalism before a major program review? I am not sure I can answer that. I ask for some advice from my colleagues across the way.

I listened just a moment ago to an eloquent discussion of how the elites in our society should be the ones to provide our cultural heritage for us. I reject that allegation. I listened to how a king, a pope, a prince, someone with tremendous recognition of value looked after the artistic community, looked after the needs, wants and wishes of the artistic community.

I reflect on the individuals in our society today who are pushing the cultural agenda. Who are those individuals? They are individuals who have been elected to public office. Were they elected to public office to produce artistic works, to decide what had merit?

My constituents did not elect me to do that. They elected me to provide some very specific leadership on issues that had nothing to do with culture, nothing to do with language. They asked me to come to Parliament to bring common sense to the debate here. I do not see common sense well displayed by individuals who say that the government should be the provider of cultural direction. Elites should not decide what is good for the public. The public should decide.

What will the bill not do? If I am going to criticize a bill, I would like to criticize the things that it will not do and look for some positives. It will not streamline the department. I see no indication that there will be less administration nor do I see any indication that it will downsize the department. I do not see anything in the bill that will save the Canadian taxpayer money and why would I want to see those things happen? Why would I care if the department were streamlined, downsized and fiscally responsible?

I want that because I have come here hoping that our health care system can be saved. I have put a very high priority on our health care system. Looking at the health care system throughout our country I ask: What is happening to it? I see streamlining and downsizing. I see a decrease in administration. I see hospital beds being closed. I see surgical operating room time being diminished.

I look at those things and I ask: Where is the priority in our country? Where is the priority that would allow a government to put this department, no downsizing, no streamlining, no decrease in administration, ahead of the health needs of Canadians?

I look at the proportion of dollars that the party in government puts toward health care. I have watched those funds drop in the last 10 years. Federal government funding has gone from some 30 per cent of health care dollars down to 22 per cent and I am sorry to report it is still falling. That is wrong.

If there were a prioritization of issues for the government, the department would not have high priority. It should not have high priority when we face the financial situation we are in today. I call for and plead the government to change its priorities, to actually reverse the momentum toward things like this that do not have long term significance, that will not help the patient with cancer and will not help the mother with a problem pregnancy. It will do none of those things.

Where do I come from in a personal cultural sense? My own background is one-half English, one-quarter Irish and one-quarter Norwegian. I had a very close relationship with my Norwegian grandma. I actually lived with her when I went to university.

She expressed in a very interesting way how she maintained her Norwegian background by saying: "I maintained my Norwegian background by my honesty. I did not come to Canada to become a mini-Norwegian here; I came to Canada to become an honest citizen of Canada". She had a cute little poem which is the only thing she reflected upon about her own particular ancestry. She decried the idea that somebody should help her look after her culture. "I am a Canadian. I am a Canadian who came via Oyen to Edmonton to be just that, a Canadian".

I look at what I consider to be the scandal facing the government today with this department and its minister. For those watching on television, comments are coming from across the way that there is no scandal here but I would like to reflect on one precedent of scandal.

One precedent when the Liberals sat in opposition is as follows: The member for Sherbrooke, the Minister of Justice at the time, made a phone call to a judge. Members sitting on the government side today called for that minister to resign. They called for his resignation because of a conflict of interest. A minister calling someone whom he had direct responsibility for was a conflict of interest. The minister resigned. He did not

want to resign. It would have looked better for him if he could have said: "I did not intend to influence the judge, I was just representing a constituent". I think that was one of the comments I heard.

[Jim Silye, Reform, Calgary Centre, AB]

This morning?

[Grant Hill, Reform, Macleod, AB]

Yes, it came to me clearly. And where do we sit with this scandal today? A minister writes a letter to somebody under his direct responsibility. He owes his job to the minister. I see a straight line relationship there. Most Canadians can understand that.

The minister has a direct responsibility, a direct understanding of that responsibility. The minister should follow the precedent that was established when the Liberals sat in opposition and called for the resignation of a minister.

[Peter Milliken, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Read the letters.

[Grant Hill, Reform, Macleod, AB]

Now I hear there was a second letter written which obviates all responsibility. I would ask for a report on how soon that letter was written after the first.

[Jim Silye, Reform, Calgary Centre, AB]

Six months later.

[Grant Hill, Reform, Macleod, AB]

Six months later could be called a covering of the backside.

[Jim Silye, Reform, Calgary Centre, AB]

As soon as they knew the media was on it. As soon as the media got word of it that letter went out.

[Grant Hill, Reform, Macleod, AB]

Indeed that was my understanding. Should the minister resign? The Canadian people really should decide that. I wish there were a direct, specific mechanism for ministerial recall as well as member of Parliament recall.

[Jim Silye, Reform, Calgary Centre, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to address Bill C-53, the reorganization of the Department of Canadian Heritage. I have two suggestions to make on this bill.

First, the minister, or the new minister, should consider eliminating funding for multiculturalism to achieve a savings of $30 million to $40 million. Multiculturalism is creating divisiveness in the country. It is creating confusion and it is creating prejudice in the country. I will come back to this point shortly. The second suggestion is that the Minister of Canadian Heritage resign.

Going back to my first suggestion on multiculturalism, I am a first generation immigrant of Hungarian parents born in Vöcklabruck, Austria. We came here in 1951. I was close to six years old. I am proud of my ethnic background. I am also proud to be Canadian today. The fact that we came to a new country, that we had to learn a new language and that we had to learn to get along with people were all things which helped develop and build my personal character and my outlook on life.

Some of the rules we had back then were a lot better than the rules we have today. Many of the rules back then still allowed for some prejudice, still allowed for some confusion, still allowed for some divisiveness, but overall for all intents and purposes immigrants were welcomed into the country.

Our current program of immigration which I do not want to dwell on leads to multiculturalism and the funding for the immigrants here. The various ethnocultural groups get funding to represent their specific ethnic groups and they are not even reaching out to the people they purport to represent.

There was a food fair in Ottawa about three or four months ago. Various ethnic backgrounds and cultures were represented. I attended because I like to see various heritages and cultures. I like to try foods from different parts of the world as well.

As I was circulating and meeting people visiting the various booths I came upon two different ethnic groups, one from Columbia and one from Asia. As I talked to them I revealed that I was a member of Parliament but I did not tell them that I was also an immigrant. During the course of our conversation I asked if they were associated with any of the ethnic groups and they said no. I asked if the groups were helping them and they said no.

The family who came here from Columbia worked part time. They picked up any job they could. They went back to school and got themselves re-educated as engineers. As a matter of fact both of them work for the government. They have three children 8, 10 and 11 years old, who are presently going to school in Ottawa. They are picked on and called names. The blatant discrimination is obvious. The rest of the kids in school have the impression they are being treated differently, that they are getting something they should not be getting.

This is what I mean by divisiveness and the confusion we are creating. The intent of the program although it may have been honourable and worth while has certainly deteriorated to a point where it is not helping the ethnic groups that come here, it is hurting them.

I really believe that funding to learn English is unnecessary. Funding to have them retain the language of the country they left is a complete waste of money. I still speak Hungarian. There was a 10-year period when I never uttered one word in Hungarian but I have retained and still remember quite a bit of it. I am not as fluent as I should be but I am proud of the fact that I can still speak it, that I am bilingual and do not speak just one language.

Multiculturalism is not so much to save money but it is also to start to respect immigrants who come here, to work with them to fit into our society. Just throwing money at groups and organizations is not necessarily the best way of doing it.

Some of the rules we apply to immigrants should be revisited. Some of the rules we had in the 1950s and 1960s could probably be reintroduced. Perhaps the government would like to strike a committee. It likes to strike committees; it is up to about 25 now. Perhaps it would like to strike number 26 and look into ways and means of improving multiculturalism and immigration and looking for ways and means not to just throw money at people but to help them fit into society through better mechanisms.

The second suggestion I have for the Minister of Canadian Heritage is that he resign. The gentleman has had this position for a year. When he took his cabinet position he was told the same thing all ministers of the crown are told when they swear an oath of allegiance to uphold to the best of their ability their responsibilities. They are briefed on what is proper behaviour and proper conduct. They know full well when they accept that job what lines they are not supposed to cross over, what constitutes conflict of interest and what constitutes impropriety. They are told all this and they accept the job knowing that if they commit a serious mistake, they have no choice but to resign.

Using ministerial stationery the minister wrote to CRTC chairman Keith Spicer last March asking him to "give due consideration to an application to start a 24 hour Greek language radio station". The minister also asked Spicer to keep him abreast of developments adding: "Please do not hesitate to contact me should you require additional information". The full letter was tabled earlier today.

I would like some more information. I would like to know how the minister can rationalize what he did in this situation versus what he was told he could or could not do. Was the minister not listening when he was being sworn in? Was the minister not listening when he was told what the proper rules of conduct are for a cabinet minister and what he has to do to pull himself out?

I am sorry but there is no way the actions in this matter are not examples of the worst kind of incompetence and impropriety. It is my humble opinion-and I feel the House should really speak out on this today-that he should do the honourable thing, not only apologize to the Canadian public, not only apologize to his peers as he did today. He has shown he is incapable of listening to instruction. I know financially he is incapable of handling that huge budget with all the areas that fall into his department.

I feel I have no choice. I know I am supported by a lot of members of our party and other members. Perhaps even members of the government would feel they could have a better minister running the Department of Canadian Heritage than the current minister. The man should not only reorganize his department but he should just resign and get out of the way.

[Ted White, Reform, North Vancouver, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the Ministry of Canadian Heritage is a fine example of how governments just get into people's faces, how they interfere in other people's lives. The ministry of heritage spends its entire time trying to force Canadians to accept a piece of art work, French language training in B.C., particular activities in the sports arena and so on.

My colleague from the NDP a little earlier in his speech mentioned that he does not feel we are in a position in the House to make judgments about the appropriateness of particular art works. Yet the old line parties in the House certainly felt completely competent to try to force the Charlottetown accord on the people of Canada.

There is a new approach needed in the House which pays a lot more attention to individual Canadians and what they want out of their government.

I have an example here of how the government, the ministry of heritage, is trying to force its way on the people of B.C. In B.C. fewer than one-half of 1 per cent of the people speak French at home. Yet the minister of heritage is sponsoring a court case in B.C. to try to force the province of British Columbia to install a francophone school board. It is absolutely an outrage.

A francophone society in B.C. set up a task force to study the situation. The minority language education task force report regarding francophone school boards for school district No. 22 got a total of 696 individuals and 467 of those replies were negative. The report completely ignored the negatives and decided based on what appeared to be about 223 unsigned form letters in French that there was an overwhelming demand for a French school board in B.C.; 223 form letters and it decides there is this overwhelming need for it.

What happens? The Canadian people now are forced to pay for a court case that will probably go all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada at immense expense for something that we just do not need. If ever there was an example of a way that the government could save money at a time of fiscal restraint it is right now in this case.

There is another example in today's Toronto Star . The headline: ``Amateur Sport is a Living Corpse''. It gives an example from its investigation that the bureaucracy and politically motivated agendas are swallowing up as much as $70 million of the budget for amateur sport.

The prediction from the report in the Toronto Star is that the entire amateur sport situation is going to collapse into disarray that will be incapable of winning medals by the turn of the century. Instead of the money getting to the people who need it, the sports men and women on the field, it is going to the

bureaucracy. Is that not typical of what happens in Indian affairs?

Enormous amounts of money get lost in the bureaucracy of the Canadian heritage department. The entire department is a disgrace. The minister should resign. Let us get rid of the department and apply the money elsewhere in government.

[Randy White, Reform, Fraser Valley West, BC]

Mr. Speaker, what a pleasure it is to speak to Bill C-53.

My, my, my, what a surprise. I thought we were through with all of this patronage with the new government and we are right back to where we started from, all the things we believed in year after year in the country and we are back to where we started.

Lots of times we are asked what the difference is between Liberal patronage and Conservative patronage. The answer is there really is not any difference other than the Liberals have more of it.

Here we are already a little over a year into their term as government and let us have a look at what kind of patronage we are talking about. There are three Liberal Party hacks given jobs to age 75 with the Senate. It is who you know and who you support with this same old traditional party. That is what it is all about, is it not?

One of the recent occurrences I had in my riding was chasing a fellow by the name of José Salinas Mendoza who skipped out due to the incompetence of the immigration department. One of the interesting patronage appointments there which is so indicative of the government is a fellow who was working on the Liberal campaign in 1993 who just happened to donate some money to the party, who just happened to be appointed to the refugee board, who just happened to be a lawyer for José Salinas Mendoza.

How does the government figure all this out? How does it get so convoluted and so entwined in its own party politics, in its own rhetoric, that it keeps appointing people to these kinds of things?

Let us look at our latest boondoggle by the minister of heritage. We have actually caught him in the act of a minister supporting an application for an individual in his riding. How blatant can one get? The reason this is blatant is that these appointments are going on without the community out there, without the people of Canada getting a grasp on exactly what is happening with these political parties; without the people of Canada complaining about these three Liberal Party hacks in the Senate, without the people of Canada complaining about refugee board appointments, about parole board appointments, about immigration adjudicator appointments. We cannot stop this.

Today we are going to ask if we can probably put an end to it by showing the government that the minister should step down. If he could step down maybe the Prime Minister might be looked upon by the bulk of the Canadian people as being forceful, as being a leader of integrity, one who believes in the importance of receiving and approving applications and appointing people to government positions on the basis of merit, on the basis of their qualifications, and not on the basis of whom you know and to whom you donate money.

I have a long list of failed Liberal candidates who donated to this party over here and it looks like a who's who on the list of patronage. I guess that is just how to do it. That is the reward, that is the pie in the sky if you support this party. Maybe you will get the plum, the biggest plum of the Senate, and then you get all these other paid plums down from the Liberal Party. They are all there.

One of the Liberal members wants me to read the list. I have not the time to read the list, it is too long. I only have 10 minutes.

Heritage is something we want to preserve. In the year 2010 and the year 2020 one would presume that we would want to preserve the heritage of 1994. I have to ask: Are we proud enough of what is going on in the country today with the government to preserve it?

I think as we go along with the government we are going to find that when the Reform Party government is in we will not need that department of heritage down the road in the year 2020 because we will not be very proud of what the government is doing today.

The real heritage in the country is where our people come from, what we are preserving of our language and our culture, our parks, all of that kind of heritage. I am not very proud of what is going on with the government today.

I just want to look at a bit of heritage and talk about some of the taxpayer dollars that have been going into the pet projects of governments like this one, from departments of the minister of cultural heritage.

Let us look at some of the simple little dollars that were spent and what they were spent on. A couple of hundred thousand dollars to study religious and historical practice among northern Malagasy speakers is important to the Canadian taxpayer, is it not? That is the kind of money these people spend. Those are taxpayer dollars being spent on their pet peeves. It does not make any sense at all.

Twenty-one thousand dollars was spent on experimental studies of interactive gestures. We can imagine what kind of interactive gestures we have for the government. It should study a few of those.

Let us find the bureaucrats who want to spend $58,000 from the department on an experiment of what it is like to work for the Dominion grocery stores. There is an important issue on which to spend taxpayer dollars. What do you have to do to pay $58,000? In the country today you probably have to earn $120,000 minimum. For anyone out there who made $120,000, or any family out there that made a combination of that, the grant that was spent on what it is like to work for the Dominion grocery stores is one whole year of that family's total income tax.

Whoever authorizes such grants as this should be fired. There is no question in my mind. If that were my organization and I found that kind of waste they would be gone. They would be history.

[Jim Silye, Reform, Calgary Centre, AB]

It is other people's money. They spend it like it is water.

[Randy White, Reform, Fraser Valley West, BC]

Let us have a look. Here is an interesting dollar spent out of a department, $10,800 to finance a poll-this is just to finance the poll; we have to find out what people think of it-to find out what Canadians thought about Christmas lights. Really, that is important.

[Jim Silye, Reform, Calgary Centre, AB]

On or off?

[Randy White, Reform, Fraser Valley West, BC]

"On or off" my colleague says. That is another study. It is only $10,800 to find out what they think about Christmas lights so maybe we can spend another $10,000 to find out what they like if they are off, and another $10,000 to find out what they are like if they are on, and if they are different sizes. The government could think of all kinds of ways to spend our money.

Although we sort of jest about it, it is kind of sick to think about what this government is doing and the government before it because there is no difference between the Conservatives and the Liberals.

[Jim Silye, Reform, Calgary Centre, AB]

Just the colour.

[Randy White, Reform, Fraser Valley West, BC]

I do not know if the Montreal Museum of Humour is still in business.

[An hon. member]

Toast.

[Randy White, Reform, Fraser Valley West, BC]

I hear it is toast. It probably has not made enough money but I know it had $3.3 million given to it a few years ago and that was not enough of the taxpayers' money to keep it profitable perhaps so maybe we should have given it some more. I do not know how the bureaucrats are thinking these days.

We gave $46,000 of your taxpayer money to assist artists in the presentation of music in non-traditional spaces. We really have to wonder about the logic behind this kind of thinking. Why would they give any money at all in a grant like this one? The topic is so stupid it defies any kind of logical conclusion. Perhaps we should meld that with another interactive gesture and see what we think of it.

We know Hurtig Publishers gets lots of money, or had lots of money. I do not know about recently but I know in the past it has.

Under bilingualism there is grant after grant. I asked a question in the House in the last session about the $5,000 grant to the Canadian Kennel Club. This is very interesting. I received an answer that it is all right, that it is only $5,000. That is taxpayers' money. I got a letter from the Canadian Kennel Club and it was really unhappy with the question I asked because it felt it should have the money to support its bilingualism program of whatever it was.

In the letter it told me it had a budget of around $4 million. I wrote back to it and said: "Wait a minute here. If you have a budget of $4 million why do you need $5,000 of taxpayers' money? What is the purpose?"

The real idea is that most of these organizations if not all of them do not need the money. It is being made available by governments like this so that they can spend on it for whatever reason and much of it is very much unaccountable. Do we want to preserve the ideas of the government?

Do we want to support the government? It is like supporting that other government from Jurassic Park. That is what it is. If the government keeps spending money the way it is doing and blowing it out the door it too will join Jurassic Park just like its brothers.

[Garry Breitkreuz, Reform, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

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.