Madam Speaker, I rise to speak against Bill C-17 which has been introduced with a fair amount of rhetoric but very little substance.
I would like to quote from a news release dated Ottawa, March 16, 1994 which says that the twin "objectives of the bill are job creation and deficit reduction". I started to think about job creation.
When the Liberals won the election in October of last year, one of their first acts was to cancel the helicopter program and introduce their job strategy-job creation program which was to pave more roads and build a few more sewers.
Maybe we did not need the helicopter program but we certainly do need the experience, the research and the development in the high technology field. If there is anything that is going to bring this country out of the doldrums it is in and show us the way into the 21st century, surely it has to be the electronics industry rather than the paving industry.
We have in front of us the electronic highway that will be crucial to the development of the technological business of industry over the next many number of years. We very much stand to lose our competitiveness around the world if we do not invest in this high tech area. Yet the government has seen fit to cancel everything in that area and introduce a subsidized, government paid job creation program that is going to pave some more roads and build some more sewers.
We had the opportunity to develop a highway that would go at the speed of light and yet we think we are only going to build a highway on which we can only travel at 40 or 80 kilometres an hour. The electronic highway is the way of the future. It had vision. It had substance.
The job creation program that the government sees has in my opinion no vision, no real hope for 400,000 young people. It has no real vision for saying: "We have a program that is going to see you through school right through to your retirement. It will give you opportunity and prosperity". All it can think of is short term job creation programs to help them through the summer and carry on from there.
Six billion dollars was supposed to create 65,000 short term jobs. I understand that the Minister of Human Resources Development may be talking at a news conference at this very moment. As he said earlier today, he is going to announce a program to spend another $100 million for 10,000 young Canadians to see them through the summer. It is with no long term vision. That is what upsets me most about this bill.
I read in the Globe and Mail today that the federal government and the Government of Quebec are now at loggerheads over which will do the job training in this part of the country. Therefore the whole idea of job creation is stymied, put on the shelf. It has been delayed. It has been postponed. Young people desperately need the government to get its act together to do job creation.
The only job creation I see is that civil servants in Ottawa are at loggerheads with civil servants in Quebec City. That seems to be going on ad nauseam and it is not benefiting the country. It is not job creation.
If we are going to have job creation and deficit reduction, surely we must hold out the vision of lower taxation, lower deficits and controlling the debt. As we tell Canadians, they are going to be faced with higher taxes and more government spending.
There is no real incentive on anybody's part to invest in the real wealth creating jobs in this country. The government has to go back to square one and back to basics and rethink its whole strategy on job creation, job training, job motivation, building and creating wealth and prosperity. The bill is a very poor start.
The government also said in its press release that there would be a two-year extension of the freeze of public service wages. Many Canadians would be glad to have a freeze if their jobs were assured. Jobs are in jeopardy; jobs have been lost. Many people are now on the unemployment rolls and are asking what their futures are.
I would like to offer them some real hope that we are spending their tax money wisely, but I cannot even offer that. I am looking at the Ottawa Citizen article of April 9 written by Mr. Greg Weston and entitled ``Pink (Slip) with Envy''. He writes about the fictitious Bob who has been working for the federal government as follows:
No matter what Bob's rank in the bureaucracy, he will be given at least six months on the payroll to look for another job. During that time, he and other surplus people like him will have priority over everyone, everyone (except ex-political hacks) applying for similar positions elsewhere in the government.
They are going to shuffle the deck at taxpayers' expense and maintain some jobs that may or may not be necessary in the federal government. Poor people out there are working hard to pay their taxes while civil servants in Ottawa and elsewhere around the country feel quite cosy with their job security and will not be laid off. The writer continues:
In fact, under a deal worked out with the unions in 1991 the government has agreed not to lay off anyone without first making them a "reasonable job offer".
Again the whole concept is to recycle the civil service rather than make it efficient, responsive, lean and affordable. He continues:
Even when Bob is finally given directions to the nearest unemployment insurance office, he still remains at the front of the government line for government jobs for another full year.
Even if somebody who is qualified and on UI he plays second fiddle to our hypothetical Bob who is at the front of the line just because he used to have a federal civil service job. He is guaranteed to be the first in line for the next one that comes along. In conclusion he writes:
In the past seven years only 5,629 public servants were actually laid off. That is an average of about 800 a year out of the 230,000-odd people working for the federal government. Among those landing on the street, about 60 per cent spent more than six months on the public payroll doing nothing.
Is that the type of job creation program the government likes: people being paid by average Canadians who have to pay their taxes to keep people on the public purse for doing nothing? He continues:
No one seems to have any accurate figures on what all this is costing Canadian taxpayers, but the tab is at least $60 million a year just for the 1,700-odd bureaucrats currently floating around in surplus never-never land.
That article tells us that the government has neither addressed deficit reduction nor job creation in a positive and serious way. It is time government members heard from all Canadians. They are certainly hearing from Reform Party members on this side of the House that it is time they acted seriously and brought in some serious job creation programs. That attitude would create an environment or playing field for the private sector to create job creation programs.
While I still have time I would like to mention I am appalled the CBC is now going to be given authority to borrow money. Surely the country has enough debt. It is time to recognize we cannot keep borrowing money. We cannot keep giving every agency in the country the authority to borrow more money, off budget by the way, so the finance minister can tell us that the deficit is coming down. He has just passed the buck over to the CBC.
I will wrap up my speech by saying I am opposed to the points raised in the bill. The government should bring in something positive and concrete to do the job properly.