Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for York North.
I listened with interest to the hon. member for Fraser Valley East. The Reform Party has moved this debate along quite a ways today. We started off with the hon. member for St. Albert saying that the 271 governor in council appointments were a poor choice and in fact do not exist. The hon. member for Fraser Valley East said it was a good thing. We can see that there is a great dichotomy within the Reform Party itself.
The member talked about his fresh start campaign. I was shocked to watch this unfold on television the other day. My campaign buttons and material in the last federal election said we were the fresh start team. In fact, everybody was met at the door for the fresh start campaign in 1993. That gives us an idea of what kind of imagination the Reform Party has. It thrashes out old ideas. We
are on the fresh start team. This is the fresh start team on this side of the House.
The member for Fraser Valley East talked about their vision of Canada. There has been debate going back and forth this evening on that subject. The conclusion is the Reform Party would like to lead us into a cheque book government. In other words, up here in Ottawa all we would do is collect money and send cheques to the provinces. That would leave us with some limited responsibilities in international trade, the coast guard and so forth, but not much of a government. That is not a vision, that is a fragmentation of the country. It would lead us into a country of ten separate governments.
I had a discussion late last week with pharmaceutical companies which told me that Canada is very much like the European Union. Drugs must be approved by the federal government and then it takes another three years to have them approved by the provinces. There is a cost to the consumers of Canada. It is one of the reasons drug costs are so high.
Under the Reform Party's administration we would continue to have ten strong decentralized governments, creating ten duplications across the nation. We should be moving in the other direction.
Bill C-49 basically attempts to standardize remedial and disciplinary measures in certain tribunals of Canada and to standardize chairpersons in administration tribunals. It also winds up seven organizations and downsizes another 13 organizations.
The object of the exercise is not to make the government smaller, although that is one of the results of some of our downsizing efforts; the object of the exercise is to do two things, to make government more efficient and to make government more affordable to the taxpayers of Canada.
The taxpayers of Canada are telling us in no uncertain terms that government is too big. It is too big and unresponsive to their needs and concerns.
This bill is a focus on how our government is reacting to the very real concern of the average Canadian. It does reduce certain tribunals but, more important, it begs one question. The question is who are the customers. Are the customers the bureaucracy or the public?
The bottom line is by also dealing with the concept of remedial and disciplinary action, the government is addressing a very real and important issue. People want to see that governments are responsive. They do not want them responsive to bureaucrats but instead to their concerns.
The current issue with tribunals is that it is very difficult to remove people from tribunals for wrongdoing. Indeed, it takes a legal process and it also has to go before the exchequer court of Canada. This bill will make that system a lot easier.
There is nothing worse than having a tribunal with people on it, possibly giving erroneous advice and making erroneous decisions. We want the ability of government to be able to replace those people. It is that issue that this bill is addressing.
That is very important because throughout government people are asking how government is responding to people. There is a great parallel to this, small and medium size businesses.
Small and medium size businesses have had to learn to work smarter. They have had to learn that the customer is very important. We have to satisfy the needs of the customer. To not recognize that is basically not to be in business at all.
Governments in some ways, while not a business, have to act a little more like them. They have to be more responsive to the needs of people. Let me give an example.
In my riding I have Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation. When I first got elected I went around visiting all the federal institutions in my riding and those that service my riding to see what they were doing.
I was surprised that a lot of them did not have Canadian flags and we are working to make sure they now have. One organization struck me in particular, Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation.
It had just implemented a total quality management system. This was totally unlike most other parts of government because it required a response time. If somebody phoned, it had to return that call within so many minutes.
If it was an application for a mortgage loan, it had to be answered within a certain timeframe. There were timeframes for everything it did. The people were very rejuvenated about what it was doing. It was very happy and very focused on executing programs that people liked. It recognized that the customer was the general public.
I have been very happy to work with those people in delivering some of their programs to some of the people in my riding. The point I am trying to make is that Bill C-49 addresses that issue. It allows the government through its various boards and directives to replace people if they are not in sync with best interests of people generally.
This gets us back to accountability in government. Generally speaking, people want the government to be accountable to them. They are asking for a more clear, transparent system of government.
Once again, this legislation deals with that issue. Remember that one of the things we are doing here is reducing the cost of government by upwards of $5 million per year. That may seem like a small amount of money but it is part of the process.
We are doing two things. We are reducing the cost of government and making it more efficient. Just because we are making government smaller does not mean we are making it worse. The bottom line is that we can deliver these programs a lot more efficiently using technological advances that we have before us and at a lower cost.
The services that governments once did can continue at a lower cost and with fewer individuals involved in the process.
I notice from time to time the opposition has said that we have not done anything in terms of cost reduction. Forty-five thousand civil servants have been shed from this process. CN is no longer a federal government owned organization. Some of my colleagues mentioned the CBC. All of these are real things that affect people. People are demanding better service at less cost.
I say to the Reform members and others that we are reducing the cost of government but at the same time making our program delivery more efficient.