Madam Speaker, it is my pleasure to address the government's response to the report of the special joint committee reviewing Canada's foreign affairs. This review and the work with the committee was certainly rewarding and enjoyable for the most part, but when it comes to the minister's response I am somewhat disappointed.
I was very interested in looking at the government's response to the Reform Party's dissenting opinion in the final report. In this dissenting opinion Reform raised many important issues and areas of concern. We also made several constructive recommendations specifically intended to assist the minister in developing his program review. In other words, the Reform members of the special joint committee participated actively through eight months of meetings in the hope the minister would care about what we had to say.
Our dissenting report represented the issues and ideas we felt had to be addressed by the government, but to my very great surprise the government report has no section on our concerns. In short, our views were totally ignored.
When the final report was released we were suspicious when our dissenting paper and that of the BQ were included in a separate volume along with the lowly appendices. The government vehemently denied it was trying to marginalize our views and it claimed it was simply easier to include our paper in a second document because it was cheaper and easier to print two small documents rather than one large one.
What seemed to be a lame excuse at the time now seems somewhat more sinister. Clearly our views were not important enough for the government to consider and this document proves it.
Realizing there was no section on Reform's views specifically, I checked to see how the government was dealing with the recommendations we believed to be of particular importance. Again we were very disappointed.
In the area of fiscal responsibility, which was our number one priority, I could not find a single spending cut or suggestion of cuts. While there was some acknowledgement that Canada faces tough economic times, there were simply no cuts, period. Even worse, there was a commitment to eventually increase our aid budget to 0.7 per cent of GNP, although the Liberals do not say when. This is misleading to NGOs, foreign governments and Canadians, and just impossible to achieve so why say it. If we were to do this today it would mean spending a couple of additional billions of dollars of borrowed money each year to finance this scheme. As Canada's economy grows and our GNP gets bigger, the target will only continue to get higher and higher as the years pass. Clearly this is not a realistic goal given Canada's $40 billion deficit and $550 billion federal debt. The taxpayers expect more accountability from the government than ever before.
Another issue Reform very much hoped to see addressed involves CIDA. Reform and many Canadians want to give CIDA a true legislative mandate to increase its efficiency, accountability and transparency. A definite selling job has to be done to the Canadian public if we are going to continue to promote the ideas of CIDA. Unfortunately the government report rejects even the watered down recommendation in the special joint committee's report.
The main problem with the true legislative mandate is that the government would no longer be able to use CIDA's $2 billion budget as a slush fund into which the minister or Prime Minister can dip their fingers when it is time to dole out goodies to the international community. Heaven forbid that the minister should go to a country in Africa, Latin America or the Middle East without having some multimillion dollar gift from the Canadian taxpayer to herald his arrival. That apparently is one diplomatic tradition the government is intent on keeping.
In the government's response to the chapter on culture we were again surprised that the government, in a time of fiscal restraint, was willing to dole out cultural export subsidies to promote Canada's culture abroad. I guess this should not have come as too big a surprise, considering some of the recent grants doled out by the Minister of Foreign Affairs.
It strikes me as highly ironic that a government which has, to its credit, pursued freer trade world-wide and called for the reduction of other types of subsidies, would then go on to support cultural subsidies. Not to mention that when we are cutting back on social programs here, does it really make sense to be spending hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to, for example, send the National Arts Centre orchestra to Europe so that, to quote the minister: "European audiences will again have an opportunity to experience the creativity and quality of its music". It does not seem to make sense.
Reform would have much preferred to see a creative, modern partnership develop between the business community and the arts, facilitated by the government. In this way the strength of Canadian culture could be promoted to the fullest. How much better this would have been than the Liberal solution of big government.
As an aside, if the government does as good a job of promoting Canadian culture as it has done with our economy, then the musicians and artists of Canada had been look out.
Last, the government report makes a lot of hay about how great its consultation process has been. It claims to want to have real consultation with Parliament and parliamentary committees. What does the record show? I remember in the fall when parliamentarians were called for a special parliamentary debate on peacekeeping in Haiti. The government wanted to know what to do. Or did it really want to know what to do?
The main problem with the government's consultation was that I had already read the government's firm plans in the morning paper. So much for the consultation process. We can go through the former Yugoslavian debate, through peacekeeping. The announcements are made prior to us even debating in the House, so what validity do they have?
The report also goes on to indicate that the government will have future forums to help Canada's foreign policy to continually evolve, once again through consultation. While this sounds very nice on the surface, the Reform Party's concern is that only university professors, the friends of the Liberal Party and other elite will ever get invited to these. While we would love to be proven wrong, we will wait and see what happens to ordinary Canadians.
I suppose the way this whole process started is an indication of that. If we take a look at who was at the Congress Centre, I think it proves my point. If the government is really serious about continuing the consultation process, then I hope it will invite the Canadian grassroots. Maybe then it would find out what the people really want. If it did this then maybe it will also consider drafting a new government report, one that address the specific concerns of ordinary Canadians, a report that is up front about what will be funded and what will be cut.
I feel the government is as out of touch as it was in 1992 with the referendum and with many other issues that occur today. The report should give specific plans which the government will implement in a timely manner, not when economic conditions permit or any other such nonsense. Finally, the report should deal with the issues of greater efficiency, accountability and transparency for the good of all Canadians.