Mr. Speaker, it is an honour for me this morning to enter the debate on Bill C-46. I am particularly pleased to see the minister's parliamentary secretary here but very disappointed the minister himself is not here to enter the debate on Bill C-46.
I wish to enter into the debate by indicating that the bill which apparently is simply to streamline and to create jobs, as has been indicated by the parliamentary secretary, is nothing of the kind.
There was an opportunity in presenting the bill to the House to show some leadership in this vast and extremely powerful economic arm of the government. Based on the content of the bill that leadership opportunity has been ignored. I hope to show that there is a need in Canada as never before for the portfolio of the minister of industry to provide the leadership and direction from which Canada could benefit so much.
In so doing, I wish to draw attention very briefly to the development of the particular department. C. D. Howe ran much of the former department of trade and commerce during the fifties essentially as minister of defence production. Much of the development in the fifties and in his direction to that particular department was as a result of the contacts he had made with various industries during World War II.
Walter Gordon followed C. D. Howe. He wanted to create a department of industry in the early sixties. Eventually he was successful in doing it. Mr. Gordon was an interventionist and a protectionist and he wanted the department of industry to further those goals. His proposal received a rough ride in cabinet at that time and from the existing department of trade and commerce. Eventually the department was established but had no clear direction or vision of what it was supposed to do partly because according to some observers Mr. Gordon really wanted to be the minister of finance and did not want any advice from the Economic Council of Canada which was trying to develop a strategy for the economic development of Canada.
In 1968 industry, trade and commerce was established as a merger of industry and trade and commerce under Jean-Luc Pepin. It is also worthy to note that at that time a parallel development took place, the development of regional economic expansion. These were years of difficulty involved in integrating industry on the one hand, trade and commerce on the other, and DREE on the other side. Organizations and reorganizations occurred within industry over the following decade, always searching for a focus and cohesion that seemed to elude them.
In 1978 the ministry of state for economic development was created, another new name. Out of the government's desire to co-ordinate economic and industrial strategy which had always been eluding it under the efforts of ITC it noticed the only thing that changed was the name. It was the ministry of state for economic development.
In 1982 the industry, trade and commerce department was scrapped under the reorganization of government initiated by then Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. The trade commissioner service was moved to external affairs and the remainder of industry, trade and commerce was merged with DREE, the department of regional economic expansion. Out of that department the new name was generated, the department of regional industrial expansion. The ministry of state for economic development was renamed the ministry of state for regional economic development and was given responsibilities for that area.
Almost all officials involved in the reorganization undertaken under a veil of great secrecy were from the privy council office. Even some of the ministers and deputy ministers directly involved in the reorganization were not involved in the discussions with privy council establishing a new department. Again, confusion and turf wars among the various component entities of DRIE prevailed.
In 1987 the government announced the creation of the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency and soon after western economic diversification. The rest of DRIE became over the next three years the department of industry, science and technology. During that three-year period the privy council office provided no direction or very little direction for the creation of the mandate for the ISTC and the department was left to find its own direction. While the ministers did attend some of the meetings they did not provide any particular direction.
The election of 1988 and the following free trade agreement negotiations interfered with the further development of the mandate so the department wandered for three years before it was officially created in 1990.
In review, the core of the department of industry has been a long history or succession of organizational changes and name changes. Each has been without focus, lacking in vision or coherent strategy, and producing interior confusion and strife for the various entities. Attempts at meshing the different philosophies have produced a department which attempts to implement mutually exclusive mandates: that of national industrial development on the one hand and that of regional, economic and industrial strategy on the other.
That history continues in the bill. The incompatible strategies of regional and national economic expansion continue without change.
Shortly after the minister took on his portfolio he said that he had four goals he wanted to pursue while he carried out his mandate: small business, tourism, the information highway and the promotion of exports. In his first major piece of legislation the minister does not articulate a clear vision of the department in any of these areas. Neither does he solve the incompatibility between regional and national strategies.
The minister had the opportunity to make a difference, to provide a direction, to determine and clearly set goals for his department, to re-establish confidence in government and politicians which the parliamentary secretary so ably said he was doing and he did not, to provide a fresh new voice for the people fiscally and democratically, and to set out a vision for the department of industry in Bill C-46, an act to establish the department of industry and to amend and repeal certain other acts.
What did the minister do? The minister has missed the opportunity to act, accepted the Tory leadership in re-organization, essentially changed nothing major, accepted their direction, accepted their philosophy and accepted their goals. He changed nothing of consequence. The minister accepted the principles that guided the writing of the act. This represents more of the same. There will probably be no more confidence in the government than there was in the previous one if that is the kind of leadership we are to get.
What are the two big themes the minister could have effected? The first is quality of treatment: treat all the regions the same way with no special considerations for any one part of Canada over another. The second is the intrusion of government: get government out of the economy as much as possible and let the market preside.