Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to this group of proposed amendments. We have some difficulties with some of the clauses of the budget implementation act. Some of the clauses give arbitrary powers to cabinet to make decisions.
I reminds me a little of earlier in the bill of some of the powers given to the Public Service Commission, for example, where it is allowed to appoint people without competition. Arbitrary powers are never a good thing to give out.
Under the powers of the Public Service Commission, members will know that over the next three years the government will be spending some $41 million to, among other things, recruit new public servants from designated groups under the special measures initiatives run by the Public Service Commission. At a time of substantial layoffs it is a huge amount of power given to a commission to recruit people at the cost of tens of millions of dollars, when we are laying off 45,000 others. It seems a little ridiculous to me. It is obviously unfair to be hiring new workers at a time when thousands of surplus ones are eager and willing to work at any of the jobs.
It is particularly an insult to hard working civil servants who have spent many years working in a position only to come to work one day to find that their desk has been cleaned out and a fresh new face is in the office doing their work and the job they are fully qualified for, but they lost it because another person was hired under the special measures initiative or the employment equity program.
That is the kind of arbitrary power we do not think the Public Service Commission should have. We believe that arbitrary powers giving cabinet or in the case I am talking about, the Public Service Commission, the ability to bypass merit or the regular way of doing business, to hiring, promoting, firing and so on, is not a good thing.
We need checks and balances on government. The bill gives too much power to a select few people. The power I mentioned the Public Service Commission has under the bill is typical of that. Other clauses in this transportation area give the cabinet in our opinion too much power but I will leave it at that.