Mr. Speaker, the motion that stands before us today is interesting because it highlights a problem that has existed for many years.
In particular, I would like to address the issue of disclosure of the salaries of the executives of crown corporations. The motion strikes at the balance between the right of the individual to his
own privacy and the right of the taxpayer to know where his tax dollars are being spent.
Allow me to quote from Hansard of November 21, 1983, just about 11 years ago to the day. Hansard records a question in the House of Commons on that day, a question that arose out of the tabling of a report detailing all the orders in council appointees by the government, a report that is still regularly published today. The report was 264 pages long. It gave the salary ranges, not the actual salaries, of all order in council, and by that I mean cabinet, appointees.
On that November day 11 years ago, a Conservative member asked the Deputy Prime Minister why salaries of the heads of crown corporations were not publicly disclosed. In his characteristic fashion, the Deputy Prime Minister replied: "The information that was tabled was in compliance with the law passed by the Parliament of Canada. Obviously with respect to public servants we have made public the range of salary. In this particular case, because it is impossible to find anything equivalent to a range, we have shown the maximum salary and the minimum salary".
I am not sure exactly what that means but in any case the former Deputy Prime Minister in perfect Liberal fashion avoided answering the question altogether. That member is of course sitting in the Senate today.
The answer more coherent people usually give to this question is that while the public has a right to know what civil servants are being paid, those who are heads of crown corporations work at arm's length from the government. They are not purely public servants and therefore they have a right to their privacy when it comes to personal information like salaries. In a grand Canadian fashion we have compromised and split the issue right down the middle by publishing salary ranges, allowing us to say that we know but we do not know at the same time.
It kind of reminds me of the question: "Why did the Canadian cross the road?" The answer of course was to get to the middle.
Almost immediately after the Conservative government took power in 1984, it began to publish more accurate salary ranges of the heads of crown corporations because they had been the ones asking the government to do that for some time.
Please notice that it did not publish the actual salaries of the executives either, but it published the ranges with one significant difference from the Liberals. The ranges it began to publish were much narrower than had been previously published.
We learned from another question in the House asked by another Conservative member, again in November 1983, that the salary range of 18 employees of Canada Post was at the time $63,000 to $228,000 a year. Given this range, appointees could receive a salary anywhere within that range, maybe $170,000 a year. That is a range.
That gave very broad anonymity to all 18 executives appointed to Canada Post in 1983. Today the situation is much different.
The salary range for the chief executive officer of Canada Post is more accurately stated at $255,000 to $319,000 a year. This still leaves the actual salary of the CEO unknown, but it gives such a revealing hint that there is very little left to the imagination.
In addition, most order in council appointees are given a ranking number, called a governor in council rating that falls between 1 and 11, each showing a progressively higher salary with a range somewhere between $20,000 and $30,000. The yearly reporting of order in council appointees called "The Governor in Council Appointment Guide" also gives a complete list of 15 CEO salary ranges of senior executives of crown corporations and a few other executives. The salary ranges given have about $30,000 between the minimum and maximum salaries for these positions.
Over the last decade and a half a trend toward greater disclosure has been established until we have today reached what I would call almost virtual disclosure. Although interest was high when salaries were fully veiled, now less is being left to the imagination, so interest in the topic I think is naturally waning.
If I were the CEO of a crown corporation I would argue that my salary has been virtually revealed and there is no more danger to the public from the small amount of secrecy that still exists. What is the harm in a little bit of secrecy?
On the other hand the taxpayer would argue what would it hurt to know the exact salaries? Since a trend toward greater openness has already been established over a period of years and since we already have full disclosure in all but name, since the privacy of these individuals with respect to salary is only a charade anyway, what is there to lose by revealing all? The taxpayer would feel that a corporation may well be at arm's length from the government in the legal sense, but the taxpayer is not at arm's length in any way at all.
Every time the CEO receives a pay cheque the taxpayer feels it directly in the wallet. The taxpayer would argue that he has a compelling interest in full disclosure, knowing the exact salary he is paying anyone, be it a clerk in a UI office or the chairman of CN rail. We have two opposing arguments with two competing interests. The question then becomes: Which group has a more compelling interest, the taxpayer or the one who serves the taxpayer either as a public servant or as an arm's length quasi-public servant?
In my former life I operated a contracting company with about 230 employees. As the manager of those employees I had to know their exact salaries or I could not have run the company. The requirement of full disclosure is not only important, it is necessary for the manager. Just let the listener try to run his or her own household when they do not know all of their expenses. It is, of course, impossible.
If full disclosure is necessary to the financial manager, it begs an important question. Just who is the boss of Canada? Is it the government or the people who elect the government? I would say that the people of Canada are the boss and they have hired this government for a short period of time to manage the public affairs for them.
The government is not the boss, it is the servant. It is impossible for the taxpayer, the employer of the government, the real boss, to adequately judge the performance of its servant without exact information. This applies across the board, not just to the salaries of chief executive officers, but to government information across the great span of the federal government.
As a matter of principle, the taxpayer deserves full disclosure of all government expenditures. By receiving employment from the public purse and by fulfilling some type of a public mandate through their work, an individual gives up his or her right to privacy regarding salary. We can see why this principle is so important.
Just a few days ago the CEO of Canadian National revealed that in addition to his salary of something between $324,000 and $377,000 he has received an interest free loan of $300,000 to mortgage his house. This practice of mortgage perks is longstanding. I would refer the listener to the 1981 report of Petro-Canada where we first got wind of this in which $16.5 million was listed as mortgages. Is there anything else that the president of CN receives today for instance?
How can the ordinary member of the public judge whether the taxpayer has received a fair deal without knowing the details of the remuneration? If I owned a company and I found out that my manager was hiding important financial information from me, we all know what I would do. I would require that manager to tell me everything immediately or I would find a different manager. The principle becomes much larger and much more important when the poor taxpayer begins to delve into the government books and finds out how huge the whole system is.
The governor in council appointment guide I referred to earlier now has well over 286 pages in it, not 264 as in former times. The guide has a list of political appointees, 51 pages long. There are 2,500 names on the list.
If we are to assume that each one of those persons receives $70,000 a year, which is a fairly conservative estimate, it means that the salaries paid to those political appointees amount to $175 million a year. If we consider that these employees receive salaries within a range that is perhaps $30,000 a year more, then the salaries build to $250 million and so on.
The electorate will never see this information because it is hidden. The Liberal government, I would propose, has carefully hidden it so that we will not be able to see who gets what.
When we move on to other sectors of government full disclosure is even more necessary. For instance, the Department of Canadian Heritage gives out $552 million in grants to 10,000 different groups every year. It is a shame. On August 18 I asked for that list. It is somewhere in the bowels of the department. I cannot get it. They will not give it to me.
To summarize my remarks today, the taxpayer has a compelling interest in full financial disclosure from the government. There are many aspects of individual privacy about which the public does not have a right to know. When it is an individual employed by the taxpayer to fulfil a public mandate in service to the taxpayer, the interest of the taxpayer to know outweighs the right of the salary to be held secret.
Disclosing where the taxpayers' dollars are being spent and just who are the beneficiaries are valid principles. Where the motion helps to accomplish this, I think I could support that.