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.