Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to lend my support to Bill C-43, an act to establish the Canada customs and revenue agency and to amend and repeal other acts as a consequence.
I asked to speak on this because I want to talk a little about the finance and administration aspects of the proposal to create this agency.
The Canada customs and revenue agency, while acquiring many new powers and responsibilities in areas such as human resources management, will still be a department from a standpoint of financial management. That is a very important aspect. What is happening is that a government department is becoming a government agency. Yet the controls and the many other aspects of it are identical to what was in place as a department.
It will operate under the authority of the Financial Administration Act. It will be governed by the policies and procedures of the Treasury Board and the receiver general with respect to matters of financial management and the treatment of public money. The agency's financial statements will also be prepared in accordance with standard government accounting practices.
The budget of the Canada customs and revenue agency will still have to be approved by part of the government's overall expenditures management system. It will be subject to the normal Treasury Board approval process and will be subsequently approved by parliament. That is very important for Canadians to understand.
Parliament will continue to receive the same level of detail from this agency as it does from Revenue Canada and although the board of management of the agency will be responsible for determining terms and conditions of employment at the agency, the overall human resource cost will still have to remain within Treasury Board approved financial levels.
To repeat, although the human resources component will be centred within the agency, the same scrutiny and criteria will be applied.
The obvious question about the new agency is what about the new sources of revenue such as user fees? I think it is an area of concern to Canadians whenever they hear user fees.
The simple answer is there will be no change in the way user fees will be prescribed and administered. I think Canadians should be assured by the fact that there will be no new user fees as a result of this change, that the fundamental reasons for this change are directed at efficiency, productivity and cost effectiveness.
Overall, user fees that are charged now represent less than 1% of the department's overall budget and the new agency will continue to charge these user fees. It is not the intention of the agency to convert into one that is totally or even considerably reliant on this form of income.
The idea is not to take more money out of the pockets of Canadians but rather to return it to them in the form of lower costs for compliance and through other forms of savings. The agency will be funded in a way that Revenue Canada is funded today, namely by parliamentary appropriation.
One possible new source of income for the agency could be some form of financial arrangement with a province or territory to administer a particular program or to institute a new process or procedure.
This is where the composition and skill of the board of management which is proposed under the act will come into play in terms of negotiating appropriate financial arrangements for new programs and services.
Provinces and territories will obviously invest their money where they can achieve real savings from central administration of a program. Program results will have to be monitored, including, most important to Canadians, levels of service.
The new one time costs of moving the agency status will be included in the overall cost structure of the agency so that Canadians should be assured that there is no significant additional cost in establishing this agency and that it will be done within the overall cost structure being proposed for the agency.
Finally, it is anticipated that these costs will be minimal relative to the overall operating budget of the existing department and will be offset with planned savings of the new organization.
We are dealing with transferring a function from a department of government to an agency of government. We are dealing with the concepts of accessibility, responsiveness, reliability of service, efficiency and effectiveness.
The two main points are that this agency will more effectively co-ordinate federal and provincial revenue collection programs, reduce overlap and duplication and therefore reduce costs and reduce taxpayer costs of complying with the tax laws.
The second theme is that it will modernize its internal management to be more responsive to the needs and requirements of Canadians. This board of management will ensure a client oriented approach and still maintain accountability to parliament.
In brief, I believe this fairly and accurately reflects the intent and the effect of Bill C-43 with regard to this new agency. I hope all hon. members will support conceptually the principles being offered here.
I really would like to make some comments with regard to the previous speaker's statements about the Senate of Canada, certainly an area which has been under much scrutiny for many years. I would like to pose for him some facts I have thought about quite a bit, about what happens if we did move to an elected Senate.
I think it is interesting that although the Senate is an integral part of parliament, the concern about whether it is an elected body and whether it is able to discharge its responsibilities continues to come up. It is a subject of debate. I would pose this as a rhetorical question.
If there was an election, as there was previously in Alberta and which I understand cost the Alberta taxpayers $2 million, there would be a significant cost of conducting the election which would be borne ostensibly by the taxpayers through taxpayers dollars.
As all hon. members know, senators do not have constituency offices across the country. They do have offices here. If they were elected and had a constituency, would we have to provide constituency offices for them as well as the support staff and all the other costs associated with it?
Another question I have is how we would differentiate between the responsibilities of members of parliament and senators if they are elected from within the same geographic area. Since there are 301 members of parliament and just over 100 senators, it means a senator's geographic area or population coverage would be three times that of an MP. Would that mean that the senator would have to handle three times the workload that we handle right now? I am not sure whether it is really possible. Those are some of my thoughts.
I know it is an important aspect but I think at this point with regard to Bill C-43, the important thing is that we do have a parliamentary system and we do have a committee that is going to deal with this. All members will have an opportunity to debate again at report stage and third reading as well as to have input on other aspects through the committee process.
To dwell on the possibility that the Senate is somehow going to act in some particular way, this is our system of parliament. One way to deal with it is to complain about it. The other way is perhaps to do something about it.
I am going to end my comments because I have a feeling there may be a question.