Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in this House to speak to Bill C-43, introduced by the Minister of Revenue, which aims at nothing less than the creation of a coast to coast Canada customs and revenue agency.
Although the Bloc Quebecois recognizes the need to improve the administration of tax laws and to simplify their application, we find fault with four points of the government's vision in trying to have this legislation passed.
First, we find fault with the bill's centralizing vision in creating this agency. We also criticize the delegation of the minister's responsibilities, which are his under the terms of Revenue Canada measures. We must also criticize his weakness with respect to senior Revenue Canada officials and the anti union attitude taken in creating this agency.
First off, we should explain to our viewers what the Canada customs and revenue agency constitutes.
On June 4, 1998, a week before the long summer recess, the Minister of Revenue tabled Bill C-43 in this House. It concerned the establishment of a Canada customs and revenue agency. When we look more closely at it, we see the bill was mentioned in the February 1996 speech from the throne, when the Liberal government announced its intention to set up a national revenue recovery agency.
In reality, this monster will be nothing less than the transformation of the present Department of Revenue into an agency independent of the government, which will have a mandate to negotiate an arrangement with the provinces and the municipalities so interested for the collection of taxes in Canada. According to the minister, the creation of this agency will change absolutely nothing, but we are not so sure about that.
According to the minister, departmental responsibility and parliamentary control will be maintained in their entirety and the Minister of Revenue will remain entirely responsible for administering legislation relating to taxes, customs tariffs and trade exchanges. He also says that the Public Service Staff Relations Act, the Access to Information Act and so on and so forth, will still continue to apply.
What the minister says is that nothing will be any different after this agency is created. The Auditor General of Canada will continue to examine the agency's operations and report on them to parliament.
We say that this is wrong, It is a sneaky manoeuvre, and nothing could be further from reality than the minister's predictions that this nothing will change.
We have to be realistic. If the minister were being truthful, one would have to wonder why he was putting so much effort into converting an entire department which employs one-fifth of the employees in the public service into an agency. Why, when it comes down to it, expend so much effort if nothing is changed? Why not leave things as they are?
The answer is clear, and comes right from the mouth of the President of Treasury Board: “Creation of the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency is an essential component of the government's commitment to modernize the federal public service”.
Now we can see, the cat is out of the bag. While claiming its purpose is to modernize the public service, the government's real intent is to privatize it. The Liberal government is claiming to promote a modern public service, but it is in fact trying to have public servants excluded from the scope of framework laws such as the Public Service Employment Act. Such is the minister's objective, such is the goal being pursued in creating this agency.
The Canada customs and revenue agency will hire 40,000 public servants. This means that 20% of the federal public service will then be at the mercy of the agency's board of management. The agency's directors will certainly earn more than the department's senior officials currently do, but it will be at the expense of support staff, file processing clerks, and in fact most of the employees, because they will not be protected.
The concerns that we just raised are based on a number of reasons. Let me point out some of the numerous inconsistencies found in Bill C-43.
The agency is under the authority of the Minister of Revenue. However, under clause 8, the minister may authorize the commissioner or any other person employed or engaged by the agency to exercise of perform on the minister's behalf any power, duty or function of the minister under any act of parliament.
In short, this means that the agency will be in the hands of a super-bureaucrat who will be neither elected nor accountable to parliament.
I want to make a comparison with the millennium scholarship foundation. As members know, Bell Canada's chief executive officer, Mr. Monty, was appointed as head the foundation. He will manage a budget of $2.5 billion, to be distributed to students in the form of scholarships and loans, and he will not be accountable to the House as to how the money will be managed. The government is trying to pull the same stunt again by creating this agency.
The agency has authority with respect to general administrative policy, organization, real property and determination of the terms and conditions of employment. It is clear where the problem arises and this is where money will be saved; on the backs of front line workers in order to pay the higher ups.
The agency must develop a program governing staffing, including the appointment of, and recourse for, employees, but no collective agreement may deal with matters governed by the staffing program.
This is the fate the federal government has in mind for one fifth of its current employees. Obviously the agency is nothing more than an attempt to crush unions.
I am having trouble making myself heard and I hope that those listening at home can hear me.
While it is true that the bill promises a certain flexibility in subsequent clauses, once the harm is done and duly done, the government will wash its hands of the whole affair. Who will be responsible?
We are looking at a government that refuses to assume its responsibilities. We are also looking at a minister whose complacency is equalled only by his government's lack of responsibility. We are looking at a government that is striking an unprecedented blow to unions. We are dealing with a government driven and blinded by a centralizing vision which has not been seen since the worst years of the intellectual mentor of the current prime minister, namely Pierre Elliott Trudeau.
For all the reasons I mentioned, the Bloc Quebecois will not support Bill C-43. We have no amendment to suggest. Rather we demand that the bill be withdrawn or that every clause be struck out. Quebec has always opposed the federal government's desire to centralize all activities linked to tax collection within one Canadian agency.
We have our own revenue ministry which collects all provincial taxes in the province, on top of looking after the federal GST since 1992.
Therefore we suggest that all activities related to tax collection in Quebec, either federal or provincial, be transferred to the Quebec Ministry of Revenue.
I remember our first electoral campaign. We were fighting against overlap, duplication and federal centralization and we won.
We say no to this bill.