Mr. Speaker, on February 22 last, I put a question to the Minister of Canadian Heritage concerning the $350,000 in severance pay awarded to the Director General of the National Arts Centre following a putsch organized by the Mayor of Ottawa.
As a supplemental, I asked him whether it was true, and I quote:
that the person responsible for the placement agency in the Prime Minister's Office, Mrs. Collenette, is desperately looking for a new job in the federal public service for Mr. DesRochers?
The minister answered as follows, and I quote:
there is...an announced vacancy that is not yet effective but will become so a little later in the year.
What are we to make of the minister's response? He listened to my question and he answered it. I must therefore interpret it and draw a connection between it and my question. So, by informing me that there will be an opening later this year, the minister led me to conclude that the director of appointments in the Prime Minister's Office intends to keep this position for Mr. DesRochers.
If my interpretation of the minister's answer is correct, then we in this House have the right to wonder whether the Liberal government plans to replace all senior public servants with Liberals because, if it is so, we will be paying compensation for a long time. Let us just remember all the political appointments made by the previous government in its dying days.
I sincerely hope that, even though the answer was written in advance, the minister will reassure the House and make a commitment to take the necessary steps to address the problem of mismanagement in government agencies, which is extremely costly to Canadian taxpayers.
We have to remind ourselves of the difficulties encountered in 1987 in securing the appointment, for the first time, of a French-speaking director at the National Arts Centre. As Mr. Leroux, the Chairman of the Advisory Committee on Francophone Affairs for the City of Ottawa, mentioned, and I quote: "The dismissal of Mr. DesRochers is a step backward for the Francophone population which can no longer deal with the senior management of the National Arts Centre in its own language". Mr. Leroux resigned to show his disapproval, and we can expect further resignations.
Furthermore, the minister hides behind the managerial autonomy of these agencies to avoid responding to the real questions and the real issues raised by the Bloc Quebecois. If the minister wants to be responsible, he must tell us clearly without further ado what concrete measures he intends to take to address the problem of mismanagement in government agencies, particularly in the Canadian Museum of Nature and the National Capital Commission.
The minister must regain control of these agencies, ensure a more transparent form of management and, this time, answer the questions that are put to him with all the intelligence that I am willing to give him credit for, otherwise he could very well lose his credibility once and for all.