moved that Bill C-96, an act to establish the Department of Human Resources Development and to amend and repeal certain related acts, be read the second time and referred to a committee.
Madam Speaker, I am very pleased, along with my colleague from Portage-Interlake, to move second reading of the bill that provides for the formal foundation of the Department of Human Resources. This is the last of the 10 reorganization bills and with its passage the major reorganization of departments that began in 1993 will be complete.
The bill primarily deals with administrative reorganization. As members know, the new department brought together portions of several other departments: the former departments of employment and immigration, health and welfare, secretary of state, and Labour.
At the outset I say the bill makes no significant changes to the statutory elements of the legislation that established these founding departments.
The bill does not change the powers of the federal government or the provinces. It gives no new powers. The mandate conferred in the bill is clearly limited to the matters over which Parliament has jurisdiction. That is literally what it says in clause 6.
In other words, the programs and structures included in existing legislation have simply been put together in this new bill.
The Bloc objects to clause 20 because it allows the minister to sign contracts with agencies and institutions other than the provinces. But this is not new. This has not changed.
For instance, the bill includes agreements on older workers with the government of Quebec and the other provinces. Under this agreement, the government purchases annuities from financial institutions.
All the legislation does is allow us to continue to provide assistance for older workers by buying a series of annuities from financial institutions in full co-operation with the provinces. Frankly, the attempt to raise fears and create the impression that this is some form of new intrusion is simply another example of blowing smoke, which we have seen so rampant over the past several weeks.
Why then is the legislation important? Why bring together four or five departments into a singular instrument of government? I think the vision that underlies the reorganization of the department is captured in the name itself, Human Resources Development. It tries to bring together all the different elements, instruments, programs and policies of the federal government into one coherent
approach to the fundamental issue dealing with individual Canadians. In a sense it is a single drawer out of which a number of tools can be brought to try to tackle and focus on the concerns and issues of many Canadians as they go through difficult times of personal, family and community adjustment at a time of incredible changes in society.
This is not a defence of the status quo or what used to be. It is an attempt to try to provide a new, innovative way of doing government. One of the great singular difficulties we have, as we well know, is to get people to begin to think differently about how government can relate to individuals, communities and the country. The old ways simply are not relevant to the kinds of conditions we now face. That is one reason the government has undertaken to provide a new set of instruments, brought together with a single focus of policy. It really gives us a foundation on which the role and participation of the Canadian government can tackle the real deficit problem in the country, which is not just the fiscal deficit but also the human deficit, a deficit as corrosive and undermining to the well-being of individuals as anything we face on the fiscal side.
The singular challenge we face, regardless of political opinion or jurisdiction, is how to give Canadians the ability, the resources and the support they need to manage sometimes very painful and difficult transitions as the economy changes into a globally integrated economy, as we try to cope with the major impacts of new technology and the impacts on the workplace, where job requirements and qualifications change in an instant. This almost revolutionary transitional sweep is affecting not only Canada but every country in the world.
The time has come for all levels of government-federal, provincial, and municipal-not to engage in the old fashioned warfare of whose turf we own, but to find ways of working together, find ways of bringing together our combined resources. The attempts to try to stake out what one jurisdiction should do versus the other oftentimes leave out one major problem. We are still talking about the same people who are interested in their family, their job and their community and simply want government to help, not hinder or in the way but provide the resources they need.
The real fear and the real uncertainty gripping the lives of people is how to cope with unprecedented change and how to make something of it that can be positive and constructive. There are those in our society and I suppose there are people in the chamber who would like to roll back that change. Like King Canute, they would like to stop the waves from coming in. That is bound to frustration.