Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to respond on behalf of the Reform Party to the minister's first report on strengthening government review.
It is interesting to note that the first review, which the minister has said he takes great pride in tabling, is the result of the work done by the public accounts committee. It tabled a report last year calling for this review. There were eight specific, strong recommendations to help the government do its job better. We know the government is trying. Quite often we give them a failing grade but at least we see that they are trying.
Looking at the report I noted this. He said: "What did we learn? First of all our research showed that public service employees really do understand the importance of review". I hope so because it meant that 30,000 of them were out the door.
During the last election, the Liberals said that they were going to create jobs, that they were going to create an infrastructure program and spend $6 billion of borrowed money.
The President of the Treasury Board admitted before the committee that $6 billion only created 8,000 full time jobs. We have now found that the government is spending another several billion dollars to move 30,000 civil servants on to the street and on to the rolls of UI.
Canadians are going to be out $10 billion and we are also down about 20,000 jobs at the same time. We need program evaluation to do things properly. Unfortunately, by looking at the report that was just tabled-we have not had the opportunity to examine it in detail-it seems to me that this is the same old review rather than a proper evaluation of the programs of government, reviews that the auditor general has said focus primarily on efficiency and tinkering with the system rather than a full blown evaluation to save money.
Take an example. I am not going to give the government the credit because it was actually started under the previous government, when the department of transportation decided to do a review of the Atlantic freight rates assistance program. This program had been started around the turn of the century and codified around the 1920s. This was to subsidize freight being moved from Atlantic Canada westward into Quebec and Ontario.
By 1993 it was costing us $100 million a year in subsidies. When an evaluation was done it was found the subsidy was going into the hands of these poor people called Irvings and McCains and so on in Atlantic Canada. It was all set up by trucking firms owned by these large companies inflating the cost and the subsidy they were collecting. We found out the subsidy was providing no public policy benefits to the people of Canada, yet we were paying $100 million.
Program evaluation reviews can do the job properly if they are focused and done well. However, the auditor general tells us that the government is cutting back on its commitment to reduce $11.8 million, in I think it was in the 1992-93 contracting to look at evaluation of programs. It cut back $8.5 million, a decline of 28 per cent while we listened to these wonderful words of the President of the Treasury Board telling us how reviews are doing a great job.
Page 26 of the report is about UI. The minister says: "Studies include over 20 projects, assessing many aspects of the UI program", which continues to keep people unemployed while we wait for the Minister of Human Resources Development to bring down the big review to find out how we can save billions in the program.