Debates of Feb. 25th, 1994

Francophones In The Armed Forces

[David Collenette, Liberal, Minister of National Defence and Minister of Veterans Affairs]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is discounting the changes that have taken place in Canada outside Quebec since the passage of the Official Languages Act twenty-five years ago.

There has been a great change in the rest of the country as a result of the passage of the Official Languages Act put forward by a Liberal government 25 years ago.

When the hon. gentleman starts inciting those comments and starts talking about Kingston, I would ask when the last time was that he went to Kingston, Ontario. Kingston, Ontario is a very sophisticated urban centre that is very sensitive to the duality of languages in this country.

I would invite him to go to RMC and see the French language instructors, see the French language students and ask them if they feel that Kingston, Ontario is inappropriate.

[Michel Gauthier, Bloc, Roberval, QC]

Mr. Speaker, once again I feel I must reassure the minister. I did visit Kingston, Ontario, and the military college as well only three months ago.

How can the minister justify his own statements and those of the Prime Minister to the effect that the problem of the integration of francophones in the Canadian forces has now been resolved and everything is fine, when someone like Mr. Liston, who is in the know and has experienced the situation firsthand, states the following, in referring to former staff college colleagues: "In the armed forces, they prefer francophones whose allegiance lies elsewhere than with Quebec".

[David Collenette, Liberal, Minister of National Defence and Minister of Veterans Affairs]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is quoting one former officer. Perhaps after this one-week recess, I will have found 20 or 30 former officers who disagree with the comments of the officer who was quoted yesterday and again today.

In other words, this is a typical case. I am not sick of the Bloc as individuals. Many of them are very nice. I am sick of their arguments. We have been listening for 25 years to these kinds of arguments. They can be selective. They can find one person to criticize this. I will find 30 who support us.

[Gilles Duceppe, Bloc, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of National Defence. I will not quote an individual but an internal report of his department, National Defence.

This report of which we obtained a copy and which was quoted in Le Devoir this morning shows us that merging the military colleges into a single institution will attract fewer students from the nine provinces and the territories, reduce the intake of francophone officers and reduce the level of bilingualism in the officer corps.

How can the minister seriously believe that he can protect the French fact in the armed forces when a study by his own department shows the exact opposite?

[David Collenette, Liberal, Minister of National Defence and Minister of Veterans Affairs]

Mr. Speaker, first, this is a report of the former minister, Marcel Masse.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[David Collenette, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

This is not a report of the Department of National Defence; it is a political report directed by the former minister.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member forgot to quote one thing.

He forgot to quote, again selective quotes, from the report. I will quote the first section dealing with the question of one of three colleges. The committee states that it believes that the one college system is the most likely alternative to the three college system. Does the member know why? It is because it is the

cheapest, the most effective and because of the facilities we have at Kingston. He conveniently forgot that.

[Gilles Duceppe, Bloc, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would ask the Minister of National Defence how he can explain that between 1990 and 1994, the percentage of bilingual francophone officers rose from 60 to 67 per cent-these are not separatists' figures, figures are the same in French as in English-while among anglophones during the same period, the proportion of bilingual officers declined from 18 to 17 per cent.

Does the minister still agree with the Prime Minister, who said yesterday that the situation had changed a lot in recent years, while studies from his own department show the exact opposite once again?

[David Collenette, Liberal, Minister of National Defence and Minister of Veterans Affairs]

Mr. Speaker, there has been some discrepancy in the last few years because of the massive downsizing of the military put in place by the former government. It took $14 billion out of the budget from 1989 right through to 1997. We have added an additional $7 billion worth of cuts. Obviously there will be variations of the nature that the hon. member mentioned.

I want to tell the member that by 1997 anybody aspiring to the lieutenant-colonel rank of the military will have to be bilingual. That means we are putting on notice anglophones who want to be generals or chiefs of staff that they have to be totally and absolutely bilingual.

We have been improving the situation in the last few years. The college was opened in 1952 for the simple reason that, yes, there was a disparity in terms of the language preference of officers. However, because of the events of the last 25 years, the Official Languages Act and the appreciation in the rest of the country of the duality of Canada with respect to the French and English language and culture, there has been a great improvement. That improvement will continue even with the centralization in Kingston.

As for the last comment, I certainly agree with the right hon. Prime Minister because he had it bang on yesterday with what he said. He embarrassed those members. They will find it tough to go home on the weekend and face the people of Quebec after the blow that he dealt them yesterday.

The Deficit

[Chuck Strahl, Reform, Fraser Valley East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Finance.

A Globe and Mail report today shows how the minister overstated the Tory deficit for 1993-94 and understated his deficit for 1994-95. This creates the illusion that the deficit is shrinking but in fact the real deficit is growing.

This seems to be a blind spot for successive finance ministers, both federal and provincial, who tend to blame their current deficit problems on a previous government. Canadians are growing tired of that.

Will the minister explain why he has misrepresented the facts again about the size of the deficit to the Canadian people?

[Paul Martin, Liberal, Minister of Finance and Minister responsible for the Federal Office of Regional Development -Quebec]

Mr. Speaker, I am a little surprised at the question. I can understand perhaps why the Globe and Mail showed such a lamentable lack of understanding of the accounting principles by which the Government of Canada operates, but I would have thought that perhaps the hon. member opposite would have.

Let me just go through this. That editorial talks about destabilization claims: "$2.4 billion stabilization claims already received from the provinces". We are required to provide for those liabilities once they are known, which we have done. A $250 million provision for the helicopter cancellation is entirely in accordance with public sector accounting principles. The reductions in the defence budget will save $7 billion, thanks to the actions of the Minister of National Defence. The voluntary departure incentives are known, and when one knows of a liability one must record it. On the acceleration of the income tax refunds, surely the hon. member would not say that we should delay those refunds and give the money back to Canadians simply to not have that money come into this year's effort.

What we have done is exactly in accordance with the recommendations of the public accounts committee and exactly in accordance with the Auditor General's recommendations. I am sure the hon. member opposite would rather have us follow the dictates of the Auditor General than the dictates of the Globe and Mail .

[Chuck Strahl, Reform, Fraser Valley East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, if the minister follows all the dictates of the Auditor General we will all be much happier, I am sure.

However, we have another concern. The finance department largely with the same group of economic forecasters as with the previous government missed the mark last time by about $10 billion in the budget projections.

Can the minister assure Canadians that this group of economic forecasters will not be out by a similar amount in this upcoming budget?

[Paul Martin, Liberal, Minister of Finance and Minister responsible for the Federal Office of Regional Development-Quebec]

Mr. Speaker, there are really two answers for the member.

First, as a partial answer to the hon. member, at the request of the deputy minister and senior members of the Department of Finance an outside accounting firm is essentially looking at the forecasting methods of the department.

However, there is something else. It really is not fair to blame the existing forecasters within the department. The department essentially takes a consensus of the economic forecasts within the country. What the previous government did was take the median line optimistic forecast to do its forecasting. In this budget we chose to take the median line pessimistic forecast of the consensus of economic forecasters.

Reorganization Of The College In Kingston

[René Laurin, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Mr. Speaker, according to the information given by the Department of National Defence, a portion of the staff and students of Saint-Jean will be transferred to Kingston. These changes are over and above the relocation of teachers and several courses given in French in Saint-Jean.

Since the Minister talked about costs a few minutes ago, what will be the costs, first, of reorganizing the College in Kingston in order to increase its capacity and, second, of enabling it to fulfill its new role and new mandate as a bilingual teaching institution?

[David Collenette, Liberal, Minister of National Defence and Minister of Veterans Affairs]

Mr. Speaker, the transfer will not cost much more.

Simply, the facilities at RMC were built many years ago in the early part of this century and were designed for a much larger armed forces. There is all kinds of room to centralize the three colleges at Kingston. We may have a slight problem in terms of dormitories, but we feel that can be arranged with some of the other facilities in and around the Kingston area perhaps by moving some of the senior students out into apartments. However, that will not be a great cost.

Comparing that cost with trying to centralize everything at Collége militaire royal de Saint-Jean, that would be prohibitive. We are in the business of trying to save taxpayers money, not just for people in Ontario but for people in Quebec and for all Canadians because this government governs on behalf of all Canadians from coast to coast.

[René Laurin, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Mr. Speaker, is the Minister telling us that the decision to close the Collège de Saint-Jean was taken hastily, without even knowing the financial implications of the reorganization of the College in Kingston?

[David Collenette, Liberal, Minister of National Defence and Minister of Veterans Affairs]

Mr. Speaker, there have been studies in the department for a number of years on the need to consolidate a number of facilities. We have done this with other bases across the country. The colleges are no exception.

I said in French a few minutes ago that the report quoted is not a report of the department. It is a report which was commissioned by the former minister who had a fixation about Quebec getting its fair share of the pie. It is true there has been a lower proportion of expenditures on defence in Quebec as a result of historical trends. However, we tried. We admit that.

[An hon. member]

Not enough.

[David Collenette, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

It is in the budget documents. We are not lying. The fact is that after the changes we announced this week in the budget, the proportion of defence spending in Quebec goes up 3 per cent, more than many of the other provinces in the country.

Governor General

[Myron Thompson, Reform, Wild Rose, AB]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Acting Prime Minister.

In reference to the question I asked yesterday regarding a Canadian representative who vacations in Arizona, it is reported that the various Challenger flights back and forth from Arizona to accommodate this person's vacation schedule cost taxpayers $707,000 since the beginning of the year.

Will this government act to end this irresponsible use of government jets?

[The Speaker]

The question is set in fairly general terms. It was directed to the Deputy Prime Minister. I would presume that one of the ministers, perhaps the Minister of National Defence, would like to address himself to that.

[David Collenette, Liberal, Minister of National Defence and Minister of Veterans Affairs]

Mr. Speaker, if the hon. member had read the defence document in the budget he would have noted that we intend to look at ways we can divest ourselves of the Challenger aircraft to transport the Prime Minister and the Governor General for security reasons without

having these continual complaints from the opposition about using these aircraft.

If we can do it more efficiently, we will. I do not think it is appropriate and part of our parliamentary tradition to criticize the Governor General or Her Majesty the Queen in the House of Commons. I hope he will not be raising these questions this summer when Her Majesty the Queen visits Canada and we transport her around.

[Myron Thompson, Reform, Wild Rose, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I do not believe anyone is questioning any individual. As representatives of the Canadian people we have the right and should question the spending of tax dollars. That is what I am doing.

No one is questioning the need for security. The issue is that of the abuse and privilege demonstrated by the use of these government jets as a holiday shuttle service.

Will the Acting Prime Minister or this government rein in the flights of these snowbirds?

[David Collenette, Liberal, Minister of National Defence and Minister of Veterans Affairs]

Mr. Speaker, again a member of the Reform Party from western Canada has taken a very indecent shot at the head of state, the Governor General. That is to whom he is referring.

It is well known that the Prime Minister and the Governor General have to take these flights for security reasons. To call the Governor General a snowbird, somebody should demand an apology on behalf of the Governor General.

[The Speaker]

The Chair of course is always prepared to entertain questions if they are of a broad enough nature, but when the inferences get a little bit too localized, hon. members should try to phrase their questions in such a way that they bring in a broader perspective. I would ask all hon. members to please do that.