Madam Speaker, a week or so ago I asked the President of the Treasury Board to explain the increase in the estimates where the budget for the Treasury Board was being increased to accommodate 10 additional executives at a cost of $3.5 million.
The reply we received from the President of the Treasury Board, from Hansard of March 2, 1995, page 10272, was totally inadequate:
Let me tell you, Mr. Speaker, that overall the executive ranks in the public service have been reduced over the last four years by some 26 per cent.
When I asked a supplementary question because it seemed to me he did not have the grasp of the question, he responded:
Mr. Speaker, I do not know from where the hon. member gets those figures. There is no increase in the staff at Treasury Board.
I beg to differ. The estimates, part III, page 2-43 under activity resource summary quotes management for the Treasury Board, 1994-95 forecast, at 75 full time equivalents at a cost of $6,294,000. The estimates for 1995-96 are for 85 full time equivalents, an increase of 10, at $9,811,000, an increase of $3,517,000.
These quotations are from the estimates prepared by the President of the Treasury Board and tabled in this House by the President of the Treasury Board. Yet, when we ask him a question about his own department, he unfortunately does not know the answer.
The President of the Treasury Board is going to be laying off 45,000 civil servants. These are real people who have families and careers. Their futures are being dashed. At the same time, while these people who perhaps are at the lower end of the civil service scale are being turfed out on the streets, albeit with pension plans and severance packages, we now find out that the Treasury Board is hiring 10 more people at an average cost of $350,000 each.
I do not know what the President of the Treasury Board has in mind with 10 executives at that price. However, if he has anything else in mind other than hiring executives, then there is a total distortion of the facts in the way they are presented here. If he intends to hire 10 more executives, surely he owes this House some justification as to why he intends to pay each of them $350,000.
It is disgraceful that these figures are being presented to us at the same time as the government is downsizing the civil service. We as Reformers have said that you start at the top. You cut at the top. You have no moral authority to cut at the bottom until such time as you have cut at the top.
Therefore, I think the President of the Treasury Board should cut that out of the estimates now so that there is no increase in the executive ranks of the Treasury Board.