Mr. Speaker, I should like to take this opportunity to pursue a question that I asked of the minister responsible for ACOA last week.
I asked him if he would explain to the House why he cut millions of dollars from a national defence program set up to help Atlantic Canadian communities hurt by base closures.
The Department of National Defence transferred the $30 million program to ACOA because the regional agency is believed to be in the best position to deliver such programs in Atlantic Canada. The ACOA minister has turned around and slashed $10 million from the program.
When I asked the minister to explain the cuts, the parliamentary secretary to the ACOA minister said that the government would take my concerns under advisement.
That is not a good enough answer for the people's whose lives will be affected by the minister's actions. Maybe the reason the minister cannot offer an explanation is that he knows there is no way to justify what he has done. He is playing with people's livelihood. Even members of his party are appalled by his antics. The hon. members for Dartmouth and Moncton, just to name a couple, are on the record in their opposition to the ACOA minister's actions.
The Minister of National Defence has said:
The $30 million is for base closure. The $30 million was given by defence to ACOA for base mitigation. Thirty million will be spent for base mitigation.
The money was given to ACOA in trust to help people hurt by the base closures imposed by the government. It was supposed to help hard hit towns and cities attract industry to replace lost armed forces jobs and military spending, which is known as permanent infrastructure in the communities.
The Prime Minister made a commitment to help these communities. It is not ACOA's money to take away, even if the finance minister has asked ACOA to make cuts to its own budget.
In fact an editorial in an Atlantic Canadian paper put the minister's actions in very clear light. It said: "If your father gave you $30 for your brother, you would have no right to keep $10 for yourself because your father also asked you to cut back on your own spending".
The same is true of ACOA and the minister responsible for ACOA. ACOA was asked to do a task and does not have the right to redefine the terms of that task after the fact. However, it seems the minister believes he does not need to answer to anyone, at least not to the people who will suffer at his hands.
The minister has cut the ACOA board, which is supposed to represent all of Atlantic Canada, and has put the focus of the board in his own riding of Cape Breton-East Richmond, known as the Cape Breton Enterprise Board. According to reports, he has handed out over 183 projects to his riding, totalling at least $15 million last year. He did that before he announced a change to the ACOA funding to allow for repayable loans.
The minister has refused to tell the Saint John Telegraph Journal the findings of a 1992 company by company job survey for ACOA, even though the federal information commissioner ruled in the paper's favour. Perhaps the minister believes that taxpayers do not have a right to information paid for with their dollars.
I placed a question on the Order Paper about the financial assistance provided to each federal riding and Atlantic Canada by ACOA on October 4, 1994. That was 172 days ago and I have yet to receive an answer.
Does the minister responsible for ACOA believe he should be accountable to anyone? Does he believe he should be accountable to Canadian voters who are also taxpayers? If he does believe this, then he would not only explain to Atlantic Canadians why he cut $10 million from a fund designed to help communities hurt by base closures, but he would also tell them how he plans to rectify the situation.