Madam Speaker, I read Bill C-205 with care and tried to see how it would improve things at the moment for user fees. I must say I am still looking.
What is the intent of this bill? That was my question. All user fees—new, increased or expanded—have to be submitted to the House of Commons.
The definition of user fees is too broad. It applies to both the fees established by the governor in council and to all federal agencies, including crown corporations, whether we are talking about user fees for a good, a service, authorization, a permit or a license authorized by Parliament.
To have force of law, user fees must be approved by the House of Commons. Before the House approves them, a committee of the House has 150 days to study the proposed fees. The amounts of money generated by user fees should appear separately in public accounts.
I think this is going too far. In its present form, the bill is, to say the least, weak in form and content. It requires so much reworking, so many amendments, in order to clarify its implementation, that studying it at a later stage in our parliamentary process becomes unrealistic.
The government has made significant progress where user fees are concerned, but Bill C-205 contains just what is needed for chaos and disorder.
Charging user fees is good government. If the intention of the bill is legitimate, however, the reality remains that it would impose a huge burden on our parliamentary process on the one hand, and would make it impossible to operate certain crown corporations and agencies on the other.
This private member's bill would require separate authorization by Parliament to set or increase user fees and would introduce chaos into a system that works well at the present time.
The costs and associated delays associated with this bill would represent a serious threat to all government programs based on user fees.
The bill is so vague that it would apply to commercial prices set by crown corporations, and by so doing would hamper their operations.
In the case of crown corporations producing commercial goods and services, requiring the authority of Parliament for each of these user fees would completely gum up the works.
This bill would also make it impossible to maintain the confidentiality an organization requires in its dealings with clients. The result could be major damage to the point of making it impossible for many crown corporations to operate.
The same might also happen with programs. There are some 300 programs and categories of user fees listed in the Treasury Board Secretariat's report on user fees and many of these categories contain a large number of individual fees. They range from prices for firewood in Parks Canada campgrounds to fees for certifying drugs. There can be thousands of fee changes on a government-wide scale every year.
Imagine the administrative burden and the parliamentary bottleneck created by thousands of requests for changes in user fees. Imagine the additional workload for departments, government organizations and crown corporations, as well as for Parliament and parliamentarians.
Imagine, as well, the delays resulting from a clause in the bill authorizing the parliamentary committee to consider a proposed user fee increase for 150 days. And, to top it all off, the House would have to approve the committee's decision or recommendation. This would make it virtually impossible to administer user fee programs.
There is also every indication that departments would find it impossible to conduct the program review in a consistent manner.
Setting user fees would become a complicated exercise within the political process of parliamentary committees, which would become the prime target of intensive lobbying on the part of interest groups affected by user fee proposals.
While we feel it would be impossible to implement the bill, we are not opposed to some of its underlying elements. We agree that public accounts should provide more detailed information on revenues other than taxes. Unfortunately, the scope of the member's bill is too broad to represent only a minor change in public accounts.
We also support the idea of parliamentarians monitoring user fees. The fact is that user fees are mentioned more and more often in the reports on plans and priorities. Moreover, the legislation affecting the industry and health departments now provides that all user fees imposed by a minister must be referred, as part of a permanent process, to a committee of the House.
For these reasons, and for the reasons mentioned by my colleague, I cannot support the bill.