Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to participate in the debate on Bill C-53.
The debate we just listened to reminds me very much of the failure of federal spending. It is no different on job creation from what it is on cultural matters. If federal spending created jobs, every Canadian would have two. If federal spending helped on some of these cultural matters, people would not be voting by turning off their television sets when it comes to a lot of the programming on CBC.
Bill C-53 is one multifaceted attempt to right every perceived wrong in the government's quest for political correctness. It is a continuation of hyphenated Canadians and funding of special interest groups which in the final analysis has hardly promoted unity and has only been a drain on the public purse.
Nowhere in Bill C-53 can I detect any change in this litany of throwing money at something we are desperately trying to understand. It seems that government thinks it can buy peace and unity by entrenching more rights and latitude for special interest groups. When are we going to become Canadians rather than a mishmash of individuals with a particular axe to grind?
While I am on that topic of special interest groups, it might not be as bad if more members of the special interest groups were beneficiaries. Too often a few greedy, self-serving individuals who head up the leadership of these groups are the main recipients.
I am told that one individual who is paid a $60,000 a year salary to head one of these groups, a person in their thirties is nearly a millionaire. Is this where the funding for some of these groups is going: membership at the Rideau Club, first class air travel, cottages in the Gatineau?
Bill C-53 will not correct this injustice but will only entrench it further. One has to simply take a cursory look at the 1994-95 estimates for Canadian heritage. Every conceivable special interest group is on the payroll. What is the effectiveness of these programs? Is there demonstrable success to parallel their mandates? Are they accountable or merely sinkholes of largesse? My Reform colleagues will chronicle the misplacement of funding in this debate.
I would now like to turn to an element of responsibility of the Department of Canadian Heritage as contained in Bill C-53, specifically Canada's Metis. The department mandate states that the programs for Metis are designed to help the Metis define and participate in the resolution of the social, cultural, political and economic issues affecting their lives in Canadian society. A common feature of the program is that projects are community based and are initiated and managed by aboriginal people.
I can count some $40 million directed at those programs. Is it being used on what is intended? Is it accountable? One does not have to do much research before one's antennae beam on specific examples where accountability is questionable. I refer to the Metis nation of Saskatchewan.
Last March and April headlines in regional Saskatchewan and national newspapers screamed out headlines of mismanagement of funds, accounting anomalies and refusal by Metis leaders to co-operate with audits. At one point over $1 million was unaccountable. No one questioned the legality of the Metis in this circumstance; they did question accountability and proper management of funds.
It seems in government quests to keep everyone happy, we make the cheques and never ask another question. When someone stumbles over some anomaly regarding procedures, we get the whitewash. The bureaucrats and some antsy national Metis council officials get on the damage control mode. This is not good enough. Bill C-53 does not improve on it. What the cloud of uncertainty over the Metis Society of Saskatchewan did was create a splinter group of concerned Metis citizens. It seems they too felt that those Metis leaders handling the funds at the local level did not have the capacity to do it and it reflected badly on the members. Bill C-53 does not address this; it entrenches further mismanagement.
In preparation for this debate, my office called a few departmental people, research officers appointed to and in these debates, and naturally talked to others interested in this subject matter. Is it not interesting that I still do not have a bottom line on funding through Heritage Canada to the Metis. I really do not think Bill C-53 will contribute to enlightening the House any further on this issue.
Other newspaper headlines suggest that Metis leaders are ignorant of public trust, that funding provided through Heritage Canada for programs and activities of Metis groups, often for worthy undertakings, may not be trickling down from the Metis leaders in charge of disbursing funds. It is simply not good enough to concentrate control of funds with the leadership. It would be better to have these funds administered by a council or committee made up of all strata within the Metis society.
The very thing I speak of is what prompted the RCMP investigation of the handling of funds by the Metis Nation of Saskatchewan. I ask how window dressing the plethora of multiculturalism undertakings into the department of heritage will solve this disbursal and accountability of funding for Metis societies.
Bill C-53 merely complies with political correctness and assures a supply of government funds to be doled out by sometimes incompetent individuals.
I would be remiss if I did not touch on one other aspect of funding that should trouble us greatly. What Bill C-53 manages to accomplish is to again ensure continued funding for the industry that has been created around the Metis societies. Make no mistake about it, this is an industry unto itself, secret, paranoid and accountable to no one.
There was an instance this last spring in the midst of investigation into the Metis nation of Saskatchewan that funding cheques were still being issued to the same individuals under investigation, so-called representing a specific Metis society. What kind of power and control do these individuals in this industry have on this government? Instead of codifying more programs, which in the Saskatchewan Metis experience have caused disunity, not harmony, we should be drafting accountability guidelines for these bureaucrats handing out the largesse and establishing disbursal guidelines for these Metis bodies.
I am not breaking any new trails here. I have asked a series of questions of the minister of heritage, the Prime Minister and the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development regarding the Metis and aboriginal funding. I have attempted to enlighten this administration about who is really getting rich. With the current method, rank and file Metis are not the recipients. Bill C-53 will ensure it is business as usual.
Mr. Jim Sinclair, president of the Native Council of Canada, in testimony before the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs stated in April of this year that he would welcome his books being audited by the Auditor General, not the Secretary of State now Heritage Canada. There has to be an arm's length relationship when it comes to the auditing function. Again Bill C-53 ensures that Heritage Canada will continue to audit itself. I call it vertically integrated bureaucratic control. It should be eliminated by the government.
The federal interlocutor for Canada's Metis, the Minister of Natural Resources, is another participant in the process. She indicated that the federal government is prepared to assume 50 per cent of the cost of establishing and maintaining a registry of the people of the Metis nation.
We had a census in 1991. Why would the federal government want to encourage further racial divisiveness by committing to a racially based census? Surely such an undertaking is another instance of the potential for more misunderstanding of the government's uncontrollable urge to create special rights for various groups within our society. Does anyone know how to say no?
At the same time that the federal interlocutor is committing to this census, the Metis leadership is proposing a national legislative assembly, a capital in Batoche, a flag, an anthem, an emblem, Metis and Canadian citizenship and Metis law making authority. Does the minister want to encourage all this by providing funding for an as yet undefined census based on racial characteristics where the proponent has a vested interest in inflating the membership qualifications as much as possible? What is the federal interlocutor of the Metis doing by committing funding to create another group on which to confer special rights?
Either the Minister of Canadian Heritage through Bill C-53 is the minister responsible for Metis or he is not. Clearly responsibility for Metis is outside the purview of the minister of Indian affairs. It should also be outside the purview of the Minister of Natural Resources. Why do we need two ministers responsible for the same issue?
We have a litany of funding and accounting problems in not only the Metis society in Saskatchewan, but there are problems in other jurisdictions as well. This is what Bill C-53 should be addressing.