Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to rise on this bill to create the Canada customs and revenue agency.
We have here yet another example of the style of management the Liberals adopted in 1993 after their return to power following the nine year reign of the Progressive Conservative Party under Brian Mulroney, Companion of the Order of Canada.
I will use this speech on the bill to illustrate how federal public servants, in the matter before us, may be vulnerable in the face of the policies developed by a government, namely those of privatizing and almost entirely eliminating the public service.
I would also like to make the following analogy, for our viewers, with the threat posed by the election in Quebec of a Liberal government under Jean Charest. We all know that the Quebec Liberal Party clearly indicated its intention, if the Liberals were to form the government in Quebec, to privatize on a large scale.
At the moment, what we fear federally could well happen provincially, if we were unfortunate enough to have Jean Charest's Quebec Liberals win the upcoming elections in Quebec.
On Thursday, June 4, 1998, one week before the long summer break, the Minister of Revenue tabled Bill C-43 to establish the Canada customs and revenue agency. It dates from the February 1996 throne speech, as the government announced its intention to set up a national revenue collection body.
This agency will, from the outset, be the transformation of the current Department of Revenue into a semi autonomous government agency.
It will have a mandate to negotiate with interested provinces and municipalities to collect all taxes in Canada. Ministerial accountability and parliamentary control would remain intact. The Minister of Revenue says he will remain fully responsible for administering the laws on taxes, customs duties and trade.
If that is the case, we might well ask why they are going to such lengths to transform a full department with one-fifth of all public service employees into an agency. What is the point of this agency? With the minister saying that few things will change, why set up such an agency, as I said a moment ago?
The answer is to be found in the remarks by the President of the Treasury Board, the member for Hull—Aylmer. I suspect there are a number of employees of Revenue Canada among his constituents who are watching us on television. I would hope that, in the next election, these people who live in the riding of the President of the Treasury Board will remember that this government and this minister have no interest in them as public servants. They are being left to the mercy of privatization and to be part of a semi-autonomous agency.
The minister is boasting here in this House almost of having the vote of the federal public servants. I hope that, for once, they will really make it clear to the member for Hull—Aylmer, the President of the Treasury Board, what they think of this agency.
The answer lies in the comments of the President of the Treasury Board, who says that the creation of the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency is an essential part of the government's commitment to modernize the federal public service. In the government's opinion, therefore, modernizing the federal public service is sort of like privatizing it; it means removing public servants from the effect of umbrella legislation such as the Public Service Employment Act.
This agency will employ about 40,000 public servants, some 20% of the entire public service, who will now be at the mercy of its board of management.
In a ten-minute speech, it is difficult to cover all the bases. I would like to take the opportunity to congratulate my colleagues on this side of the House, who worked very hard studying this bill, including the hon. member for Terrebonne—Blainville.
I would like to list the main reasons for rejecting this agency. First, we will have a mega tax collection agency that will enable the federal government to extend its influence to our communities. Moreover, with this agency, accountability to the public and to Parliament will be weakened. We also feel that the agency could be prejudicial to the privacy of Quebeckers and Canadians. This agency is a classic example of the building of an empire by Ottawa's senior bureaucrats locked up in their ivory tower.
The Bloc Quebecois thinks the primary reason for creating this agency is to conclude new tax agreements with the provinces, something which, incidentally, has not materialized. We also think that small and large businesses are not impressed with the new agency.
I see that the hon. member for Mercier, who is our industry critic and who pays very close attention to the concerns of small businesses, agrees with what I just said.
As we know, the business community was supposed to be the first to benefit from the agency. However, reaction to the new agency was mixed, to say the least. Organizations representing small businesses, including the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, were particularly suspicious of the enormous powers that would be concentrated in the hands of the agency.
A full 40% of the businesses that participated in a Public Policy Forum study commissioned by Revenue Canada see no point in having this agency. We are not talking about 2% or 3%, but about 40%. Forty percent of the businesses polled feel that the agency would increase or maintain the costs of their relationship with the department.
That is why we in the Bloc Quebecois are of the opinion that this agency will bring about new hidden taxes. Its supposed purpose is savings, but we believe it will bring new costs.
In fact, the agency is already wasting money even if it does not yet exist. We know that, even before gaining parliamentary approval, it is already costing the taxpayers money. Hundreds of departmental employees have already been relieved of their usual duties and assigned to design teams or other exercises serving the ambitions of senior bureaucrats.
Any public servant listening to us knows what we mean by senior bureaucrats in the federal public service. We do not need to spell it out. They know, for they live with it every day.
This costly diversion has also prevented the department from concentrating on its usual tasks.
One final point we would draw to the attention of this House is that this agency will be more bureaucratic than Revenue Canada.
I had the opportunity to meet in my riding an employee of Revenue Canada working in the Quebec City region, who made me very aware of the nasty effects and aspects of this agency. To protect him under the provisions of the Public Service Employment Act, I will not name him, but he and his colleagues know who they are.
The employees of Revenue Canada are concerned and anxious. They tell us that the declared intention is to create a headless bureaucratic monster that can go where it will and do what it wants. I am not sure this agency will look after the public interest.
In conclusion, Quebec does not support the desire of the federal government to centralize all activities related to the collection of federal revenues in a countrywide agency. We in Quebec already have our own department of revenue—