Debates of June 21st, 1995

Government Organization Act (Federal Agencies)

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Some hon. members]

No.

[The Deputy Speaker]

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Deputy Speaker]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Deputy Speaker]

In my opinion the nays have it.

And more than five members having risen:

[The Deputy Speaker]

The recorded division stands deferred. This also applies to Motions Nos. 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 12, 14, 15 and 16.

The next question is on Motion No. 13. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Some hon. members]

No.

[The Deputy Speaker]

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Deputy Speaker]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Deputy Speaker]

In my opinion the nays have it.

And more than five members having risen:

[The Deputy Speaker]

Pursuant to Standing Order 76(8), the recorded division on Motion No. 13 stands deferred.

[Ken Epp, Reform, Elk Island, AB]

Motion No. 2

That Bill C-65, in Clause 4, be amended by replacing lines 13 and 14, on page 2, with the following:

"the Corporation consisting of two directors, not including the Chairperson and the pres-".

Mr. Speaker, once again we have the challenge of persuading the government members since they outnumber us. In the next few moments I will try to persuade them to our point of view.

This motion specifically concerns the CBC and its board of directors. We are all aware that Bill C-65 reduces the number of directors from 15 to 12. We have the horse headed in the right direction and somebody will have to slap its rump so that it gets going.

To go from 15 to 12 directors, we barely started doing it. We want to be a little more dramatic in our cutting of the CBC board because we feel the functions it performs could be efficiently carried out by two members, a chairman and the president.

It is unfortunate we do not have full freedom in the House to do whatever we want. Maybe that is okay, it helps to limit us from bizarre decisions. The amendment we would have really liked to make would be that CBC be privatized or sold to private interests.

We think it is time CBC make money for the country, that its shareholders should make a profit and should all pay some taxes instead of taxpayers funding the broadcasting organization.

In saying this I am certainly not speaking against the CBC. I am one of many Canadians who enjoys the CBC and certain parts of its programming. It is not all bad, it is not all useless. It has a lot of very good public service time. Some of its musical programs are excellent.

We object to its being such a sinkhole for taxpayers' dollars. CBC radio operates without commercials and I guess we could argue that if we listen to other radio stations we pay for them through the products we buy. We indirectly pay for the advertising costs those producers incur by advertising on other radio or television stations.

CBC television, on the other hand, has ample advertising. It has such a large share of the market potential. It was in there ahead of the game and taxpayers funded a great deal of hardware for it. They gave it the inroad into many markets not originally viable financially.

Why in the present day of modern technology with very efficient and excellent ways of communicating electronically with people can this organization not now be turned around and made into a profit producing organization?

As long as it stays under government control with government subsidization most likely this will not happen. That is why we favour privatizing the CBC. We believe good solid entrepreneurs could turn it into a real money making machine.

A person who started a small television station out west told me a few years ago that having a television station was like having a printing press to print money. It was very lucrative 20 years ago. He has had difficult times more recently.

We want to support a substantial reduction in the size of the board of directors. If we had had the total freedom to do what we wanted we would have reduced them to zero with the recommendation to privatize. However, we were told that would be outside the limits of this bill and would be ruled as an illegal amendment. So we compromised. We knew we already had them going in the right direction by reducing the number of members from 15 to 12, so we should just take 10 more off and we would be down to two and that would do the trick for now and would give a very clear message as to the direction in which we would choose to go.

We also want to indicate that the CBC, as other crown corporations, must get the message very clearly that they have to become more efficient. They need to operate with lower costs and wherever possible with as large a generation of income as possible. That is the message that goes along with this amendment. It reflects the Reform Party's position that we ought not to be taking by coercion money from Canadians via the medium of taxation in order to fund a particular point of view. We believe that the marketplace would carry that through.

It has been enlightening in the last little while to find that the CRTC has been giving approval to some types of broadcasting companies that before this would not have been considered. So there is that move anyway, and we feel that this would hasten it.

We are the stewards of the money entrusted to us by the Canadian taxpayer. Consequently, in promoting and encouraging support for this motion we are simply strengthening that message. I urge all members opposite, who by their majority have the power to determine how things will be, to think very carefully and do the right thing here.

We know that the deficit and the debt need to be cut. The CBC, with its access to the Canadian taxpayer dollars of over a billion dollars per year, has to undergo a very rapid restructuring.

With that, I simply urge the people to support this amendment and get the show on the road. Let us get that horse moving.

[Richard Bélisle, Bloc, La Prairie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, representatives of the Canadian provinces would greatly appreciate being consulted about the appointments to all agencies mentioned in Bill C-65.

I would like to mention here two of those representatives to whom I wrote recently. Ken Rostad, the Alberta minister for federal and intergovernmental affairs, had this to say: "We appreciated greatly being informed of the suggestions you made in this debate concerning consultation with provincial governments".

Let me quote also Mr. Stephen Kakfwi, the minister of intergovernmental and aboriginal affairs of the Northwest Territories: "We do not oppose this fundamental principle of consultation. If your motions recognize territorial governments for the purposes of consultation, the Northwest Territories government could support those motions".

These quotations speak for themselves.

Concerning Motion No. 2 moved by the hon. member for Elk Island, I have to say we do not support it, because it involves reducing from twelve to four the number of directors on the CBC board. We all know that this kind of board is often a haven for political friends, and that real decisions are made by the chairman and the president and chief executive officer under the approving eye of the minister. Bringing down to four the number of board members, as in the case of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, would risk turning it into even more of select club where, between friends, they would decide on the allocation and use of taxpayers' money.

We have to change that practice and ensure better provincial representation, better representation for Quebec. The number of members on the CBC board of directors has to be kept to twelve, with a fair representation for Quebec.

I would also like to take this opportunity to make a few comments on the three other motions put forward by the hon. member for Elk Island. The Bloc Quebecois is in favour of and supports Motions Nos. 10 and 11 put forward by the Reform member. The Bloc wants to maintain a National Archives of Canada Advisory Board, and to ensure that a committee of the House of Commons composed of two members from the government party and three members from opposition parties be authorized, as required by Motions Nos. 10 and 11, to select seven out of the ten members of this advisory board. That is the price for openness, and we will thus prevent the government from politicizing the operation of this National Archives of Canada Advisory Board.

One could wonder how this kind of advisory council, with such a technical mandate, could have any political influence.

In April 1986, the federal government ordered the destruction of a large part of the archives kept by the Canadian Unity Information Office, which would have helped to determine the rather obscure role the federal government played in the 1980 referendum campaign and the full amount of funds invested beyond what the Quebec legislation allowed.

Nevertheless, since the documentation has been destroyed, we have estimated that the federal government spent about $17.5 million on the NO campaign during the 1980 referendum. An advisory board partially composed of members from opposition parties might have avoided the destruction of these archives, which was done only for partisan purposes, to hide the role Ottawa played in 1980 and the excess amount the federal government invested at that time.

To conclude, I just want to add that we are in favour of amendment No. 8, put forward by the Reform member, which provides for Emergency Preparedness Canada to submit an annual report to the House of Commons.

Three of the four motions moved by the hon. member for Elk Island seek to give Parliament better control over the management of government operations and to allow opposition members to monitor more closely the operations of the National Archives of Canada. We support Motions Nos. 8, 10 and 11.

If Bill C-65 is passed, Emergency Preparedness Canada will come under the Minister of Defence. Emergency Preparedness Canada will no longer be a separate agency for budgetary purposes. Why then should a service under the Minister of National Defence have to table a separate annual report in the House of Commons? We agree that Emergency Preparedness Canada should be accountable to Parliament and the best way to ensure that this happens is to have the agency table in the House of Commons an annual report which would then be directly examined by Parliamentarians. So, we support this motion put forward by the hon. member.

[John English, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to President of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada and Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs]

Mr. Speaker, I welcome the comments of the member for Elk Island on the excellence of CBC programming. I share his views in that respect.

The difficulty with this motion by the member for Elk Island is that the proposal to reduce the CBC board of directors from twelve to two plus the president and the chairperson to form the board would in effect render the CBC's programming excellence that we just heard complimented operationally dysfunctional.

Secondly, there is a more technical reason why this amendment cannot be supported by the government. The statutory committee structure of the CBC board of directors would be rendered redundant. Under the Broadcasting Act the corporation has to have two permanent committees on English and French programming, plus an audit committee of at least three directors. With a board of two directors of course these committees would again be operationally dysfunctional. Therefore a subsequent amendment to the Broadcasting Act would be required. Naturally that is a separate exercise from this bill and one we did not intend in the presentation of this bill.

Finally, the regional representation would be dramatically affected. With only two directors it would be impossible to recognize all of Canada's regions and diverse interests and therefore it would completely undermine regional representation.

It is therefore impossible for the government to support this amendment.

[The Deputy Speaker]

Is the House ready for the question?

[Some hon. members]

Question.

[The Deputy Speaker]

The question is on Motion No. 2. All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Deputy Speaker]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.