Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to Bill C-65 which makes an attempt at reorganizing and dissolving certain federal agencies. The one I will be talking about is ACOA.
The attempt in the bill is to reduce the number of board members from 18 to 7. I want to talk about whether or not that is truly effective. Another thing I want to talk about with respect to the bill is patronage, about which we had a long discussion yesterday.
My hon. colleague from Burin-St. George's said yesterday that there will always be patronage. Whilst the Liberals main-
tain that there will always be patronage, perhaps there will be people whom we know to be competent who should go into certain jobs. I call into question whether or not patronage is appropriate in some positions. I have for a long time been rather outspoken about patronage appointments to the Senate. The Reform Party has been rather clear about a triple E Senate, which is elected, effective and equal.
We have seen time after time Liberals and Conservatives putting their friends in the Senate where they are paid until age 75 and live rather well on the backs of the taxpayers. It is time to give up on those kinds of patronage positions which give your friends truly a more advantageous position in life than those who are equal and even perhaps more qualified for the positions.
Look at the recent Senate appointments which fly in the face of the vast majority of Canadians. There were five Senate appointments made by this Prime Minister to the Senate. One of them indeed was a sitting member of Parliament. I question the anti-democratic move of doing that. This individual was elected in his own riding and now the Prime Minister just fetches him out of it and says: "I am going to run one of my buddies in here and see if we can get him in as well".
That flies so much in the face of what people believe. I cannot believe this government is reproducing what the Conservatives did. And the Liberals yelled and screamed about that when the Conservatives were the government. Even the Governor General's appointment is basically patronage today. That speaks for itself.
I have had a great deal of experience with refugee boards which are again political appointees. They make a pretty good salary and make what really amounts to life and death decisions. Some of the decisions have been far from credible. Some of the individuals on those boards are far from credible and do not meet the qualifications, skills or abilities in some cases.
Yet we still have patronage. Members from the opposite side say patronage will always be. I have to question the logic of that. Many people are questioning the logic of it and what we get is more patronage.
I have to question the patronage in parole boards. I have to question the patronage of immigration adjudicators, the patronage in harbours, boards, commissions across this country. Why can we not publicly advertise for these positions and take people based on their qualifications, skills and abilities?
There is a recent patronage appointment that we complained about two days ago. We would have complained about it again today but we could not get it on in question period because we only had five questions and it was number six.
Let us look at the individual who was most recently appointed to the CRTC. The Prime Minister stood up in the House yesterday and talked about that very position. He talked about the need to look at people for skills and abilities and so on.
When we checked on that appointee we found there were problems. In fact the Prime Minister said himself that if we found certain problems with this perhaps the government would not make that appointment but it has made the appointment. We find problems with it. If we really dig deep in a lot of these positions it sways, it gets away from skills and abilities and qualifications. That is wrong for government.
We have to look at the damage that creates in the parole board, in refugee boards, and so on. We have to look at the victims and the common ordinary citizens who by the way never get this opportunity unless they have been a member of a Liberal campaign committee and so on and so forth. What opportunity does the average law-abiding Canadian citizen get for these kinds of jobs? It does not happen.
Let us look at the cost of these positions: $85,000 and $90,000 for some of them. Why not advertise for these positions? Why not do what any other corporation does? Crown corporations do it.
I really want to talk about ACOA. It is my favourite thing to look at in this country. I was glad to hear the minister today announce that he is doing away with grants altogether. I would not give the minister much credit for that. The announcement was made subsequent to when we disclosed all of the bad grants in ACOA. While it is nice that the minister did that we will take credit for it in the House of Commons and throughout this country.
Now to reduce the ACOA board in members only is actually laughable. Just think about this. The minister says that what is going to happen is that ACOA will no longer give grants. It will basically be giving loans. They will not be forgivable loans but repayable loans as far as I understand it from yesterday's discussion. It is venture capital basically.
FBDB does the same thing. Why is it we are just reducing the number of boards? Why can we not just collapse this organization, get rid of its administration and allow FBDB to do the job?
I asked that question yesterday of the member from Halifax. On December 8 I asked a question in the House about FBDB versus ACOA. I did not get a satisfactory answer from the minister so I asked the same question last night in what we call the late show. I put the question clearly and distinctly.
What I received from the member for Halifax who answered the question was a two minute speech, your basic Liberal rhetoric on issues about ACOA, but it did not answer the question. Therefore, I am going to come back to that and I am
going to ask it again and again and again. Hopefully the member for Halifax will not be answering because I do not think she knows much about it.
The question has to be: Why are we reducing the number of board members in ACOA? Why are we not eliminating ACOA? What we are doing here in C-65 is surface scratch. One does not have to go very far with this Liberal government to look at surface scratch. One only has to look a little at the Young Offenders Act.
The majority of people in this country are concerned about the Young Offenders Act. They talked, we talked and many people talked about lowering the age, about advising citizens out there of sexual offenders and so on. The Minister of Justice came up with a ridiculously weak, limp act for young offenders.
Gun control was the same thing. In trying to address crime the government went to gun control. The budget was the same thing. The Liberals did nothing on the budget last year and they are still spending money like Mad Hatters over there. We demonstrated that today in some of the ridiculous research grants.
Bill C-44 did all but nothing in immigration because in the final analysis they will not be removing the bad guys anyway. That is what I call surface scratch.
When somebody brings in a bill like Bill C-65 which states that the number of board members is going to be reduced from 18 to 7, I ask what is wrong with these folks across the way? Why can they not go out and do the job fully? Why are we surface scratching?
We have to look at a new vision here. There are a lot of documents now that mention a new vision. In his book the leader of the Reform Party talks about a new vision. Lots of documents refer to a new vision in Canada.
What we have here is a traditional party entrenched in an old vision. So old is that vision that when they tried to come up with something new in HRD with the social programs, it collapsed. They stand in here today and have the gall to try to tell people that is what they want. We heard it all across the country. They said that is what they want, no change, which is exactly what they received with this government because this government lacks vision. It is vision that we need.
Bill C-65 is not a new vision, it is traditional. They are talking about saving money but it is surface scratch. There is hardly any money in this.
If you want to get rid of an organization, get rid of ACOA and save some money. The administrative travel expenses within ACOA are a national disgrace. It is all over the country. Everybody knows about it. There is nothing touched in it. They just reduced the number of directors.
Let us not talk about surface scratch here. Let us talk about new vision. We had an admittance yesterday that the Liberals have practised "corrupt patronage". That is a quote in Hansard and came from a Liberal member by the way. I believe it was the member for Burin-St. George's.
I would agree with that. You only have to look at some of the patronage appointments. I will refer to the Globe and Mail . I think everybody across the country has read this by now and are shaking their heads about patronage appointments.
Look at this: A tax court judge was an MP. Here is an individual, former provincial candidate in Mississauga, southern Ontario. Here is a fellow, a candidate in Quebec in 1993, one from Calgary Northeast and a three time candidate in Edmonton. On and on and on it goes. It cannot be a coincidence that all of these past candidates in 1993 have the skills, abilities and qualifications for the job. That cannot be the case. This is clearly padding your friends and it is totally wrong.
In 1992-93 ACOA wrote off in excess of $53 million. I would like to ask members opposite what the difference is between a repayable loan that is written off so that the borrower does not have to pay, and a grant.