Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to the President of the Treasury Board. What he said raises many questions.
Apparently the government has established a system to control expenditures and to improve budgetary preparations and consultations, and is well on its way to providing satisfactory program evaluation. The newspapers, however, are still full of examples of poor expenditure control, and I would like to quote a few.
For instance, millions of dollars are lost annually because the system for issuing paycheques at the Department of National Defence does not work properly. Will the situation be remedied this year? Will the controls that have been put in place be able to correct this situation?
The other point I would like to make is that in many departments, especially at the senior executive level, the same structures still exist that were there before the government started reducing subsidies to industry.
The President of the Treasury Board mentioned the fact that these subsidies had been reduced, and industry, provided everyone is treated the same, is all for it. Has the government embarked on the requisite downsizing at the level of deputy ministers, consulting services and the bureaucracy, considering that, although there is no more money for subsidies, people are still being paid to run programs that no longer exist or are no longer operational? Has anything been done about this?
There is one more sector that intrigues me a great deal, and that is tax expenditures. Last year we saw a document that gave an overview of tax expenditures entitled "Tax expenditures 1995". I would like to quote a few examples from this document, where it says there is no information available on the subject. It means the government is unable to indicate the impact of these tax expenditures, which makes it look pretty silly. Here are some examples.
By the way, these are not mere details. These are important issues that are connected with tax fairness. For instance, deferred capital gains or transfers between spouses. They cannot tell us the real impact of this measure.
Non-taxation of certain non-monetary benefits. Here again, they cannot tell us a thing.
Taxation of realized capital gains. Imagine all the capital gains that have been realized, and they are unable to evaluate the impact of such a measure.
I will quote just a few more, before concluding. The non-taxation of incomes of Indians on reserves. Today, they cannot indicate the impact of this situation.
Non-taxation of donations and bequests. I will conclude with an item that will be a contentious issue in future debates, the fact that the Senate refuses to be accountable for its budget to the House of Commons. Some nerve. The members of a non-elected House who are not accountable to the public for the results of their work are actually saying they do not have to account for their budget. Will this $43 million really be used for practical purposes? Is there no duplication of the work done by members of the House of Commons? Have some practices not become obsolete?
These are the kind of questions the government should answer. Especially on this point, I would appreciate the opinion of the President of the Treasury Board who has shown a concern for genuine expenditure control. I think the government should set an example in this respect for the Canadian public.