Mr. Speaker, the day Public Works and Government Services Canada becomes really open, really very clear and transparent will be a day of celebration for me.
I am very pleased to take part in this debate on Bill C-52, an act to establish the Department of Public works and Government Services. As I said earlier, until just recently I had the privilege of being the Official Opposition critic for this department and as such I had the opportunity to discuss matters with its hon. minister.
I would like to share with you today what I know about this department and what changes should be made to make it more transparent, more open and more accessible to all taxpayers who wish either to receive information on its activities or do business with it.
I understand, when one is in opposition one tends to exaggerate-I was there, and maybe I did exaggerate a few times. I will try not to do it now. I will give my total, sincere and deep commitment to do my best to improve the openness of this department. I understand that there is room for improvement, but I intend to do everything I can to increase the degree of openness and try to answer honestly the question of my colleagues, including the hon. member who just spoke.
All of us in this House will agree that, either way, these are legitimate demands on the part of the taxpayers and they should not be ignored in a cavalier fashion. This bill should ensure that the various demands of the taxpayers can be met, but this is not the case. The only thing the enactment does is to merge two former departments-a process which incidentally was initiated by the Conservatives-as well as various government agencies.
Section 5 of the bill states that this new department shall operate as a common service agency for the Government of Canada, and its activities as a common service agency shall be directed mainly toward providing the departments, boards and agencies of the Government of Canada with services in support of their programs.
Basically, this department is responsible for the acquisition and provision of goods and services for all departments of the Government of Canada. It negotiates, buys and rents an impressive number of goods and services for other departments. Last year it negotiated 170,000 public contracts. That is rather impressive.
As the member of Parliament for Laurentides and parliamentarian responsible for taxpayers' money as well as a taxpayer myself, I want to know everything there is to know-and I mean everything-about the tens of thousands of government contracts negotiated by this department every year. It is the taxpayers' money that the government spends; it is therefore accountable to them for its use.
Unfortunately, there is nothing in this bill about how these contracts should be accounted for in all the relevant information made available to the public. The government sticks to its old ways and continues to be secretive. This government refuses to make information readily available. That is very clear, but also quite sad. It shows mainly that the government is scared to death, scared of getting caught spending the taxpayers' money improperly.
By leaving out of this bill a provision to divulge automatically all information in contracts, the government perpetuates the widespread opinion that the department still indulges in patronage, and awards thousands of contracts under the pressure of lobbyists, friends of the government, or people who contribute to the funding of the old parties. Failure to take action to change this general opinion could prove in part that it is well founded.
To leave the minister and bureaucrats free to conceal or to divulge information clearly indicates that the system does not meet the basic expectations of a democratic society. Letting the minister decide whether Canadians should know how their tax dollars are spent seems contrary to the transparent and open government that Liberals have been promising since they crossed the floor.
The Liberal government is no better than its Conservative predecessor, that it once denounced so vehemently. Members opposite are backing down. They have lost the backbone that made them so brave when they formed the official opposition and during the election. The members opposite are going back on the commitments they made in their red bible. Transparency and openness no longer figure in their vocabulary. First it was the red bible, now they dress in red and follow their great leader, the Minister of Public Works, Santa Claus personified, the main purveyor of government contracts who keeps his secrets to himself and silences his little elves gathered round him, across the aisle.
This bill is nothing but a formality, an insipid document which again hands taxpayers over to the minister and those in high places under his control. With this bill, the government is saying to taxpayers: "The minister spends your money but this is none of your business". To use an expression made famous by our illustrious Minister of Transport: "If you taxpayers want to know to whom, and how, contracts are awarded, use the Access to Information Act".
Why make it so difficult to have access to that information? In recent months, I have tried to pressure the minister into setting up a rational system to disclose contracts awarded. I even tabled a motion asking the minister to disclose, on a monthly basis, all government contracts awarded. Such a system could even be established for all departments awarding numerous contracts. The minister replied that this monthly disclosure was unnecessary, since all the information is already available and ordinary citizens can find out anything they want about government contracts. How insulting from the minister! This answer shows that the minister has no respect for us. It is wrong to claim that
the information is available and accessible. As evidence of that, I have specific requests for information on contracts awarded to entrepreneurs in my riding which have remained unanswered for more than two months now.
What is even worse is the fact that recently all Bloc Quebecois members were refused access to a list of government contracts awarded in their respective ridings during the last year. This refusal from the minister and the Liberal government to provide that information to members is, in my opinion, a very serious violation of their right to information.
Indeed, how can an elected member, even if he is a minister, deny other elected members the right to know what is going on in their respective ridings? This behaviour is totally unacceptable and is exactly why people continue to believe that politicians and civil servants award contracts only to friends of the government and to contractors offering the biggest bribes.
The minister must explain why he refused to provide the Bloc members with the information they asked for. For the time being, he argues that it would cost $160,000 and that he is not equipped to provide the list of contracts required. Come on, with everyone talking about the electronic highway, no one can seriously claim that it is impossible to collect, code and release this information according to some specifications.
With all the computer equipment the government buys, I think it is a bit far-fetched to try to make us believe that all that work is still done by hand in the department.
I also think that this amount of $160,000 is part and parcel of the administration and operating costs of the department. I do not see how these costs can be considered as additional expenses.
Given the minister's refusal, we believe he is trying to hide something. He knows full well that his department is not known for its integrity and transparency. He also knows that the department does not distribute federal funds fairly among the various regions and provinces. The federal government must play fair and distribute Canada's wealth so as to support development in each and every region of the country.
However, statistics clearly indicate that the federal government supports some regions more than others. For example, the city of Ottawa alone received almost 99 per cent of all contracts awarded by the government in 1993 for the Ottawa region, while its twin city, Hull, across the river, made do with a meagre 1 per cent.
That is a harsh reality for those who believe blindly in this supposedly fair federal system. Federalists and centralists will surely find reasons, legitimate or not, to explain these statistics indicating such an extraordinary concentration of contracts.
In the view of the Bloc Quebecois, this imbalance could be corrected if all contracts were made public. Thus, small and large contractors would know which goods and services the government needs. And knowing this, they might want to do business with the government. Moreover, all this information would force the government to show greater fairness in the contracting process. Furthermore, the government should even support and help potential suppliers in neglected areas, thus creating growth and jobs where they are urgently needed. Is job creation the main goal of the federal government or not?
It is about time that the government show some openness in the allocation of contracts, not only in the department we are talking about today but in all departments. There are means to achieve this and the Bloc is proposing some.
Ministers across the aisle always beg us to suggest new ideas and new ways of doing things. Well, here they are.