Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Okanagan Centre.
It seems that when people put together a budget, and certainly it should be no different for a government, a budget should be reflective of a plan. As we take a look at the affairs of the government day after day we see they are disorganized, in disarray. Most of all we have a strong sense of disappointment that the Liberals are effectively betraying the trust given to them by Canadians in the 1993 election.
None is anymore true than in the case of the heritage minister. The heritage minister has been going around Canada making verbal droppings of different ideas that she has. She has no organization, no plan and no idea of what will be happening next. Let me give some examples.
Before she came on board, this has been a problem within the department of heritage right from the word go. Probably the most classic example would be the so-called Juneau commission that was examining the affairs of the CBC, Telefilm Canada and the National Film Board.
It started off in May of last year with the idea of having its report complete by September. It did not complete the report by September. It said it would be completing it by November. We were rather curious to see how many dollars it had already consumed to the end of its original report period. It had consumed over $900,000 in that period of time.
The committee went past its November deadline and said it would deliver its report in January. Again we went to access to information and we discovered that the $900,000 had ballooned to $1.6 million. Within that $1.6 million was an entry for $60,000 for the three commissioners. I think it was instructive that in the original set of numbers of $900,000 there was no money for the commissioners, no money at least reported at that point, and suddenly out of the $1.6 million there is $60,000.
Then the committee came forward with its report in January, and what a report it was. It was absolutely brilliant, saying that Canadian who chose not to watch the CBC and who get cable would really enjoy paying an extra cable fee, an extra cable tax to cover the costs of the CBC which they did not want to watch in the first place. Or if they did not want to get cable, maybe it would be a good idea if we were to charge them some kind of a levy or tax on their video rentals. Apart from the fact that it really did not accomplish anything we know the report is going to end up on the shelf and nothing is ever going to happen to it, and what did we pay? We paid $2.75 million for that report.
What was particularly instructive was how the heritage minister's friends made out, the cultural elite who were doing the report. In the first instance in September there was no mention of any fee for the commissioners. In November there was mention of $60,000. In January when this wonderful tome finally came forward, it cost the Canadian taxpayers $300,000 for the part time work of these commissioners.
We dug a little further and of course we were making noises about the fact that it did not seem right that these people should be getting $100,000 for about seven or eight months of part time work. One of the commissioners suddenly piped up and said: "Oh, I did not take anything", which makes it even worse. Now there are two commissioners digging into the pockets of Canadian taxpayers for $150,000 each for seven months work. Not bad work if one can get it I guess. That is typical of this government. It takes care of its friends and keeps on going through these reports but it does not have any plan.
When the heritage minister took over the portfolio what happened with respect to Radio Canada International? Radio Canada International performs a valuable function for Canada. It has approximately 125 employees and its budget is approximately $16 million. It is of interest to note that in order to get the short wave
out, almost $1 million of the $16 million is consumed in hydro power alone. It is really quite an enterprise. However, it has 125 loyal employees who were told in November last year that their services would no longer be required as of April 1.
The heritage minister loves to do these little droppings all over the place. She said that we were going to save Radio Canada International, which was good news. Except she got her portfolio in the latter part of January and then she had to figure out where the money was going to come from.
She went to the CBC. We are going to be talking about the CBC in just a second. She ended up taking $8 million from the CBC. Then she scavenged around with a tin cup and came up with another $8 million for a total of the $16 million.
There is no plan. Radio Canada International is still in the state it was previously. Radio Canada International has a reprieve of one more year with absolutely no idea of how it is going to be kept on the air or how it is going to keep this valuable service going.
It has been my position as Reform Party heritage critic that we have to look at privatizing and look at other ways of funding valuable functions like Radio Canada International other than from the pockets of taxpayers, other than going into debt. However there is no plan.
I should note that members of the staff and management of Radio Canada International are to be highly commended for staying on the job doing their work and keeping the faith while the minister kept them waiting for a full five and a half months from the time they were told they were no longer needed. Only two weeks before they did not know where their next mortgage payment would come from, she said she had scrounged around and had come up with some dollars.
What about the CBC? The minister is particularly noted for what I call her Canadiana. She loves to say that she is going to give us a much more wonderful Canada. I must admit that along with a lot of Canadians I am becoming increasingly sceptical of whether the government will be able to do what it says it will be able to do. What the government says and what it does very frequently do not match up.
An example is the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation which the Reform Party has said should be privatized. The Liberals have said out of one side of their mouth they are going to keep the CBC as a public broadcaster funded with public funds, but they have already cut $227 million. They now have to find $150 million more by 1998. It is no wonder that without any kind of direction or a mandate the unions today are in a position of being able to take a strike vote the week of April 22, next week.
A report from Canadian Press today states that if no deal is reached between the CBC's three unions and management a strike or lockout involving 7,000 employees could happen as early as May. They are presently fighting over the issue, as it were, of contracting out, in other words, how much information or programming will be done in house by these unions for the CBC.
This question cannot be resolved because of the lack of direction of the heritage minister and the lack of direction of the government. This is the reason I and many Canadians are so sceptical that the government will be able to do what it says it is going to do.
Last Friday the minister announced a $10 million program. I should explain that this comes out of a $120 million slush fund set up by the finance minister. This $10 million program is called Young Canada Works. It theoretically is going to put 1,900 people in the age bracket of 16 to 30 to work. It is going to involve high school and college students. Of those 1,900 it would be fair to speculate that this summer about one million people are going to be looking for work. That means one person in five hundred is going to be able to take advantage of the program, but how much of a program is it?
Let us make it clear. The Canadian Museums Association in a news release it also put out over the weekend expressed some happiness that this was in place. However, the association should know that the Deputy Prime Minister, Canada's heritage minister, has no idea where the funds are coming from for any of its projects either. What she has basically done is she has slipped her hand into this $120 million slush fund and has come out with $10 million.
This is going to be shared with other institutions. It is going to be shared with Young Canada Works in both official languages, Young Canada Works in national parks and historic sites, Young Canada Works for urban and aboriginal youth, and Young Canada Works in heritage institutions.
The point of my submission is that this government has no plan. The minister is out of control. She has no idea of what she is doing. This budget and the way the minister is administering her heritage department is disgraceful.