Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak to this bill presented by the Liberal member for Durham. I feel in this particular instance he is definitely on the right track. As this is a private member's bill I can personalize it and strongly emphasize how much I support the general thrust and intent of the bill.
The bill will require that the estimated annual cost and the cost per capita of every new government program be published as soon as the bill that authorized it is introduced in Parliament or the regulation that implements it is issued. The auditor general's opinion on the estimate is also to be published.
When a bill would come to this House at second reading stage there would be a requirement for the government to present to us the costs and economic impact of the bill. The actual requirement is that the government would have to explain the economic impact so that all members of this House and all Canadians could understand the nature of the bill. This has to be a tremendous improvement over what we are doing now in this House of Commons. I will use two examples to illustrate areas that would be improved by this bill: the tobacco bill and the disability aspect of the Canada pension plan.
The tobacco bill is being hotly debated and hotly contested. It is a tough issue. There is a fine line between trying to impose regulations and steep taxes on this legal substance-it is legally allowed to be sold-and restricting the impact of this substance on the health and welfare of individual Canadians, especially the young people because of its highly addictive qualities.
We have debated this bill. The tobacco industry and related lobbyists have said that the advertising and sponsorship provisions in the bill and the restrictive nature of the sale of cigarettes will force them to reduce their funding.
The Minister of Health has not provided us with any numbers on the economic impact on advertising or sponsorship. He has raised the taxes by $1.50 per carton. He said that he could not go any higher, that the committee had advised him a greater tax increase would encourage the smuggling trade. Some of these numbers should have been given to us, for example the extra revenue the tax increase will generate.
Why is it that cigarettes can be sold in B.C. for $44 a carton with a high taxation level, which encourages east to west smuggling? When people are in Toronto they go to the huge warehouses and buy cartons of cigarettes for $19 each whereas in B.C. they pay $44. They will spend $500 to save $500. It pays for the air fare. If they bring $1,000 they can really save money.
When bills are presented, these things are not being explained to us as members of Parliament. If this type of explanation were given, a bill like the tobacco bill would not be debated just on the basis of emotion, the emotion of addiction, the emotion of what it is doing to youth, the emotion of something that supposedly is bad but nevertheless is legal. The bill could be discussed with some balance; the emotional arguments would be balanced with the economic arguments.
The government has been trying to introduce the tobacco legislation for 14 months but has not been able to. People have been dying from smoking cigarettes. But when the health minister suddenly introduces the legislation, it has to be passed now, before Christmas. It has to be fast tracked because people are dying and that is all we are concentrating on.
If a bill were presented along with its economic impact it would have to have a more thorough review at the departmental and ministerial levels before it even got to cabinet. If cabinet were to approve the bill with its financial ramifications, it would then be presented to us on that basis. That would make a big difference for all parliamentarians. Then we could make a proper balanced decision on these bills.
I read the member for Durham's opening speech on this bill. He said that many members of Parliament end up voting just to go along with their party line, but they do not really understand what they are really voting for and why they are voting the way they are.
I am currently a member of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts. We just finished reviewing chapter 17 on CPP disability. In his report the auditor general indicated that management is a problem in the civil service. I am not saying nor is he saying that it is mismanagement. The problem is undermanagement.
There is not enough leadership, not enough guidance. There are not enough rules for the people in management to carry out effective control of the programs they are in charge of. There are not enough effective controls to say yea or nay to certain people on disability. The rules are archaic. They have been added on since 1970. It is an abomination.
Some of these people in the bureaucracy need help. As legislators, we are the ones who are standing in the way. We have now given them the tools to work with so all they have to do is say no or yes to people and there are a lot of complaints. This type of bill would enable the presenter to make the proper changes and talk about the financial impact.
An overall review is necessary in our CPP, which we are doing, but it is also needed specifically in the disability area. Since 1993 the department has done 24,000 reassessments of long term disability claimants and found that 34 per cent of them no longer qualified but were still receiving benefits. Fortunately, over half of that money will be recoverable and the government will get some money back.
It is a serious matter. There has to be a mechanism in the rules which states that we must present a cost benefit analysis of a bill or changes to a bill so that everybody understands not just the kind of society we are trying to create or the caring we want to show the people in Canada but also the economic impact along with the emotional impact.
It is important for us as legislators to give those in the civil service the tools to work with so they can do a proper job in effectively controlling the public purse strings. It is becoming far too easy for politicians to stand up and say that they just blew it. If that is what we say, then we are not assuming our responsibilities to pass good and effective legislation that will make spending more visible, that will make the cost of government more apparent that will be in the best interests of every single political party in the House and all Canadians whose tax dollars we suck out of their pocketbooks. We must know who spends it, who is accountable for it and how wisely the money is being spent, which is what Bill C-214 does.
We could amend the bill a little by adding a sunset clause where it would be compulsory at the end of the fifth year to check out the viability of each of the programs to see if they are successful in achieving their desired ends.
On the auditor general's opinion on the estimates, which is also to be published, I disagree a little bit with my colleague from Durham in this area. The job of the auditor general is to audit after the fact and not predict before the fact.
The auditor general's job in auditing is to match the intent of government legislation and the intent of programs with the success or failure of achieving the objectives, which is what he is doing now. I believe that is something he can still do. He would be doing the value for money audits but for example, it would have been so much easier had the Minister of Health presented all the financial implications of the Tobacco Act.
There is also the Endangered Species Act. How much is that going to cost? What is the impact of that act? There is hardly a member of Parliament here who knows what the impact of that bill will be. Why has that not been presented to us by the minister?
We have a right to know how the money is going to be spent and who is going to have to pay for it. Things like that are very important, very critical and very crucial. I commend the member for Durham for bringing forward a private member's bill like this one.
This is what is going to happen with this. The President of the Treasury Board has said: "We must equip ourselves with better systems for evaluating the actions of government so that we can genuinely answer for actions first and foremost to our fellow citizens who are both clients and taxpayers". He is not showing his support for this bill. He is staying neutral because he says it is a private member's bill. He says it is the job of the standing committees to ask those questions about what a bill costs and what money is going to be spent.
My colleague from Lloydminster in a prior speech has pointed out how effective standing committees are in getting that kind of information. The minister says: "A cost analysis is given to cabinet confirming the financial impacts in a confidential memorandum". If it is already being done, then share it with the Canadian public
and the House of Commons. It should not be any big deal for the minister to support this.
I would just like to conclude with one comment by the member for Durham. I like this quote and will give him credit for it: "The forces that would turn government back on the road to fiscal irresponsibility are at work today", and they are still out there. "They ponder how to spend annualized surpluses, even though the debt stands at over $600 billion. This legislation will serve as a check on these forces".