Mr. Speaker, we are addressing Bill C-58, a bill to amend the Public Service Staff Relations Act and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Act. At first blush it appears to be just an innocuous housekeeping bill. However, this morning it became evident that the purpose of the bill is solely to avoid paying bilingual bonuses to the RCMP which resulted from the Federal Court of Appeal ruling in the Gingras case.
At the time of the court decision the government said it had no choice but to pay the bilingual bonus. Not only is this untrue as it could have appealed to the Supreme Court but it is also misleading to Canadians as the government has now brought in this legislation as an attempt to quietly circumvent the court system.
I give the bill the label of good news, bad news. It is good news in what it will do with regard to bilingual bonuses. It is bad news in the manner in which it is being brought into being and things that have been quietly put aside in the past.
The Liberals were aware of the potential problems this case could create back in 1990. The Commissioner of Official Languages in the 1990 annual report wrote: "The distribution of this bonus was also brought into question in 1990 when the Federal Court ruled that an RCMP officer was as much entitled to it as a public servant. If the appeal court decision does not reverse this judgment we may see other federal employees in the armed forces or in some crown corporations claiming the bilingual bonus, all the more reason to reform this rickety structure, especially in a period of budget cuts".
The Liberals were also well aware of the reasons for the judgment in that 1990 Federal Court ruling. At that time the court stated: "The exclusion of the staff of these two agencies which are covered by the Public Service Staff Relations Act constituted illegal discrimination under the rules of administrative law". That is the court talking. The Liberals knew this. They were sitting in this House, but they waited more than a year after coming to power a year ago to act on this problem.
In April of this year in this House I asked the Prime Minister to heed the strong recommendation of the Commissioner of Official Languages and eliminate the bilingual bonus. At that time the Prime Minister stated: "I do not think the commissioner has made a strong recommendation". That is what he said, there is no strong recommendation, therefore we do not have to do anything about it.
Before I quote the present Commissioner of Official Languages from his last report I would like to quote previous commissioners on this very issue.
In 1983 the commissioner at that time stated: "Six years and let us say almost a quarter of a billion dollars into the game, any question of the real contribution that the bilingualism bonus might be making to federal language programs has pretty much
been lost from view". There is now nothing to prevent the cost climbing to $50 million or more except that a short, sharp government decision to stop this nonsense now before it does any more harm". How prescient the commissioner was in 1983 saying that because that is precisely the cost, $50 million a year, of bilingual bonuses today other than those of the RCMP.
To go on with comments of other official language commissioners, in 1986 the commissioner wrote: "There was at one point in 1985 a hint that Treasury Board was looking for ways to curtail whatever part of bonus spending might frankly be considered superfluous such as payments to middle and upper managers whose bilingualism is adequately compensated in other ways. It may be that the board is still looking and we encourage it to do so".
Let us move on to 1987 when the commissioner's report contained the following statement, and the Liberals sitting in this House were privy to all of this: "The bilingualism bonus as an instrument to encourage more active work related bilingualism among public servants is not well attuned to present needs. It falls like heaven's rain indiscriminately on the just and unjust alike which is not how bonus incentives are supposed to work".
Similarly at the risk of being boring in 1988 the commissioner stated: "Since the bonus no longer has the incentive effect that justified its creation, we can only repeat our recommendation that Treasury Board review the value of the bilingualism bonus".
That brings us to 1989 when the commissioner wrote: "The awarding of a bilingualism bonus may originally have been a positive measure but over time it has proven to be more of an obstacle to a fair linguistic designation of positions and a source of inequities within the public service".
I have already stated the concerns of the commissioner in his 1990 report so we will fast forward to 1991. That year the commissioner applauded the updating of the bilingualism bonus confirmation process but added: "This updating clearly cannot be called a reform of the bonus system, a system whose disappearance we, like many others, continue to hope for. This bonus which originated in 1966 as a 7 per cent supplement to the salary paid to secretaries truly has nine lives".
The commissioner's 1992 report states: "We are far from sure that this bonus paid to 59,900 public servants constitutes a necessary encouragement to the effective use of both languages. We can only reiterate the recommendation we have made so often that the bilingualism bonus be gradually eliminated".
Finally, everyone will be pleased to know the commissioner's comment from last year: "Unfortunately, with regard to the issue of the bilingualism bonus, it is obvious that the commissioner's repeated recommendations still have not been followed. This year approximately $50 million was once again spent without any assurance that the payment of such a sum was necessary to ensure Canadians of the availability of quality service in the official language of their choice. Given the present economic circumstances, we are more than ever convinced that the bilingualism bonus should be eliminated in the interest of the public finances as well as that of the official languages program. It is high time for the government to take this problem in hand".
That is the recommendation of the commissioner that the Prime Minister said was not a strong recommendation. I do not know how much stronger he could make it based on years of precedent recommendations by other language commissioners.
It is interesting that while publicly the Prime Minister has shrugged off these recommendations, his government today quietly tries to slip through this innocuous legislation which will at least partially achieve what so many commissioners have strongly advocated for more than 10 years.
Let us have a quick look at what the rationale was regarding this bonus within the RCMP in years gone by. Back in 1977 R. H. Simmonds who was the Commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police gave as his rationale for not paying the bilingual bonus that members of the police universe who are compared to the RCMP in the amount of pay and benefits received do not receive the bonus and the equations between these groups should remain the same as much as possible.
The Commissioner of the RCMP also said in that year: "The payment of a bonus was seen as a divisive element in a cohesive organization as situations would be created whereby members of equal rank and responsibility working side by side could receive differing remuneration because of different advantages toward learning a second language, perhaps even at public expense".
This was the evidence, part of it, that has been picked up on by various language commissioners over the years.
From my own experience in the Canadian forces I am well aware that members who are bilingual, and this applies to the RCMP as well, already have an enhanced opportunity of promotion with the accompanying increases in remuneration. The bilingual bonus therefore is in effect an additional payment. I might add as well that most members are bilingual because of language training at public expense.
So I ask, in view of all of this background, in view of the evidence presented, why is the government not proudly proclaiming its attempt to cut wasteful spending? Could it be that it is afraid of publicly slaying the sacred cow, which is official languages, no matter how small a knife the government wields?
I congratulate the government on its attempt to right a wrong, but I condemn the government for wrapping this initiative in a cloak of secrecy. Why not tell people the truth? The Federal Court of Appeal ruling in the Gingras case means taxpayers will have to shell out roughly $30 million in retroactive bilingual bonus payments.
The government should say: "We do not agree with this decision. Therefore we are enacting this legislation to prevent further annual payments of nearly $3 million." This is the truth of the legislation and the people of Canada deserve nothing less than the truth, especially from a government that claims honesty and integrity as its guiding principles.