Mr. Speaker, I am rising, along with the previous speaker from Lethbridge, to support Bill C-289. In doing so, I want to thank the hon. member for St. Albert for having brought the bill to the House. It is one of a series of bills he has brought forward to improve the financial accountability of Parliament.
I would also like to thank the hon. member for La Prairie for his support. He gives his party the kind of financial perspective we need in this House. As chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, he helps the cause of public finances in Canada.
In addressing the bill I would really like to ask a question. Do we do anything here other than provide the veneer of democratic decision making to what goes on in the massive leviathan we call the Government of Canada?
Historically our system did not begin in Parliament. It began with the crown. The crown would periodically call together Parliament in order to get Parliament's input into important decisions. The crown would do that because it needed tax dollars and felt that a process of consultation with both the Lords and the Commons would aid in getting their consent to raise tax dollars in the general governance of the country.
As British history unfolded, Parliament asserted more and more its rights, not only to give its approval and its input, but to control the entire process: to control the agenda, to select ministers, to ultimately provide responsible government and democratic control over the affairs of the crown.
The funny thing about this is that as time went on the process almost reversed itself. Gradually Parliament pushed the crown out as the governing force in British democratic countries. As soon as that happened, the government increasingly became a force very much independent of Parliament, until it is as we have it today, where estimates are presented in the hundreds of billions of dollars, approved by Parliament without serious scrutiny, almost on a ritualistic basis. We saw that here last week.
Auditors General have pointed out on many occasions, and in many different ways, that Parliament has lost control of the estimate process. The question will increasingly arise, particularly as we go through this period of governments cutting spending, cutting favours and the goodies which they give to the population, as to why people believe that this process protects their interests, protects their tax dollars and protects their financial interests.
We are talking about the estimates and a bill to expand the scrutiny of Parliament beyond the estimates. Previous to getting involved in politics I spent some time as a student and as a professional studying the history of federal government spending.
One of the things that really strikes us when we look at what has occurred since the second world war is the relative decline in non-statutory spending as a proportion of the total and the increase in statutory programs as the significant element in federal government spending. Thirty years ago about one-third of all spending was of a statutory nature. Today it is well over two-thirds, as previous speakers have pointed out. That is not simply due to the increase in our debt and the statutory interest payments, it is also due to the focus which we increasingly have on a small number of statutory programs, mainly in the area of social spending.
It is unbelievable to realize that this portion of spending is not at all controlled by the estimate process. It is only mentioned in the estimates. Information is provided, but it is not controlled at all. In fact, there is no formal review mechanism for Parliament on this 70 per cent of spending.
The parliamentary secretary commented, as he has before, on the question of the cost effectiveness of these cost control measures. I find it distressing that the question of cost effectiveness only seems to come up on cost control measures and never on the actual spending programs in the first place.
The hon. member for St. Albert gave us the example of the problem with the disability aspects of the Canada pension plan, which is a statutory program. I know in my own riding that we have recently dealt with cases where there are serious problems in program administration and in the attendant conduct and administration of the program. However, because it is a statuto-
ry program there is no regular review conducted through the parliamentary process.
The parliamentary secretary also mentioned the resources that it might tie up to review these programs. One fact that needs to be mentioned is that we are talking about a large number of dollars but a small number of programs. There are 11 major statutory programs. There are payments under the Farm Income Protection Act. There are payments under the International Financial Organizations Act.
There is the public debt charge program. There is the fiscal transfer program to the provinces. There are military pensions in the Department of National Defence; payments to the provinces for health and medical care; payments to the provinces for CAP, the Canada assistance plan; the old age security program; grants to municipalities and other authorities under the real property program of the Department of Public Works; post-secondary education payments; and payments to railway companies by the National Transportation Agency under the Western Grain Transportation Act.
These 11 programs account for 97 per cent of all statutory spending. In effect they account for over two-thirds of all federal government spending. They are the 11 programs for which the bill suggests there should be a mechanism to review on an ongoing basis.
It is a new way. It is a suggestion to deal with what are some fairly obvious difficulties. I hope no one in his right mind, even in the government, would hold up the way we have conducted the public finances of the country in the last generation as a proper way to do business.
We know from our background, wherever we came from, that we cannot run the Government of Canada as a committee of 295 people. We know generally what happens when committees try to run anything, but especially a committee of 295 people.
The bill suggests that Parliament use its authority, rather then just have vague political debates and vague political reviews, to set up a formal mechanism that properly evaluates the non-political aspects of major spending and that Parliament be provided with a formal way of reviewing the technical aspects. The inevitable political debates will accompany that.
I cannot see how that will use a lot of resources. I cannot see how it can possibly be ineffective in some kind of cost way. It would seem to me it is just a logical development now that the major programs occupy such a large percentage of our spending.
I know the hon. member for St. Albert is aware that adopting a bill such as this one would plug a very small hole in our boat. We have lots of holes. It is safe to say that we are not only taking in a lot of water. Our boat has been sitting at the bottom of the ocean for some time.
Maybe a bill like this one and thinking a little more constructively and innovatively in this direction would help us eventually construct the giant crane we will need to pull the financial boat up from the bottom of the ocean and get it back to the surface where it needs to be.