Mr. Speaker, it is with great concern and frustration that I rise today to express my indignation and my anger.
Indeed, since 1993, the Bloc Quebecois has kept trying to make this government realize that the duplication of jurisdictions between the federal and provincial governments costs a great deal to the various levels of government. With Bill C-43, which will create the Canada customs and revenue agency, the federal government is once again interfering, without consulting the provinces, in an area it has no business getting involved in. Clearly, this is further proof of the Prime Minister's insatiable desire to centralize everything.
But before going further, I would like members to take time to look and examine this super agency, this tax monster that the federal government wants to set up.
As per usual, since this government has made a habit of avoiding responsibility, of not facing the music and of avoiding any exchange of ideas, on June 4, one week before the House adjourned for the long summer recess, the revenue minister sneaked in Bill C-43, an act to establish the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency.
The establishment of this tax collection monster is a project that goes back to the throne speech of February 1996, in which the government announced its intention to set up a national revenue recovery agency. But already at that time, the Bloc Quebecois had opposed the establishment of such an agency.
More specifically, the agency will convert the Department of National Revenue into a semi-independent government body, with responsibility for negotiating with provinces and municipalities wishing to have it collect all taxes in Canada.
According to the Minister of National Revenue, the ministerial responsibilities and parliamentary controls will remain essentially the same. This means that the Public Service Staff Relations act, the Access to Information Act, the Privacy Act and the Official Languages Act will continue to apply. In addition, the minister says he will retain full responsibility for the administration of tax, customs and trade legislation.
In short, very little will change. So why create this agency? Why go to all this trouble, if nothing will be any different?
According to the President of the Treasury Board, and I quote:
Creation of the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency is an essential component of the government's commitment to modernize the federal public service.
I do not get it. Modernize by doing nothing. This stunt by the federal government is strangely evocative of the federal system in which we live. A huge bureaucracy, an ideology rooted in the past, with no vision: such is the federal system in which we live. The Canada customs and revenue agency is more of the same.
For the federal government, modernizing a bureaucracy boils down to privatizing public services. It means jeopardizing the jobs of 40,000 employees, or 20% of the entire federal public service, to whom framework legislation such as the Public Service Employment Act will no longer apply. Two years from now, this anti-union attitude will give the agency free rein to raise or lower employees' salaries, to hire or fire unilaterally.
Henceforth, these employees will be at the mercy of the agency's board of management. While we are on the topic, the board's 15 directors will be appointed for three years on the recommendation of the provinces, and will occupy their positions on a part time basis.
The chair, the commissioner and the deputy commissioner will be appointed by the Governor in Council for a renewable term of five years. Great jobs, these, for the party's political buddies.
This is how the government treats its employees, to say nothing of its recent treatment of the thousands of women in the Public Service with its reluctance to give them pay equity. If I were in the shoes of the 40,000 Revenue employees, I would be very much afraid. With this government, a person never knows what low blow can suddenly be delivered. Each day brings its surprises and its trip-ups, courtesy of an immoral and heartless government.
We could also speak of the employment insurance fund, or of the unemployed who have paid into it and cannot even get their own money back from a government that is literally ripping them off. I could go on and on about this.
I was absolutely astonished, when I read this bill, by the lack of accountability there will be for the agency executive. This agency is a classic example of empire-building by senior mandarins ensconced in their ivory towers in Ottawa. This is a classic example of bureaucratic empire-building.
The role and responsibilities of the commissioner of the CCRA would make him a kind of czar of taxation, a super bureaucrat invested with massive powers but more or less without any need to report to anyone.
By removing the CCRA from the daily monitoring of his office, the minister is putting himself at risk of having his bureaucrats put one over on him. The CCRA would, moreover, more or less have carte blanche over such matters as contracting out property management, equipment management, and information and technology management. With only limited outside monitoring, there would be a greater risk of patronage and abuse of authority.
This is inconceivable and unacceptable. Clauses 47 to 49 are explicit about the agency's lack of accountability. The agency submits an annual business plan to the minister for recommendation to the Treasury Board for approval. The plan would set out the objectives of the agency and its strategies to achieve them.
The minister must cause a summary of the plan to be tabled in both Houses within 15 days of his approval. Parliament has no opportunity to question the agency's decisions once they have government approval. Where is accountability? Where is the transparency in this process?
According to the minister of revenue, private enterprise and the business community will be the first to benefit from the agency, but that is far from confirmed.
Organizations like the Canadian Federation of Independent Business reacted rather coolly to the massive and centralized power in the tentacles of the super agency. No less than 40% of the businesses that took part in a Public Policy Forum study commissioned by Revenue Canada indicated a lack of interest in the agency. More than two thirds of them felt that, after the new agency is established, the cost of dealing with the department as currently structured would increase or remain the same.
And what is the government opposite doing about the provinces' ability to determine their own budgetary policy? Quebec will not give in to this centralizing government. The Bloc Quebecois and its members are reasonable and responsible. They will certainly not vote in favour of this bill.
The federal Liberals' centralizing view of the affairs of state is totally unacceptable. We are in favour of a single tax collection body, but it should be Quebec's Department of Revenue, which is already collecting the GST. This department is fully accountable to Quebeckers.
For all these reasons, and for many others that I unfortunately cannot go into, because it would mean sleeping here tonight, the Bloc Quebecois will be voting against this bill. What we are calling for is the withdrawal, pure and simple, of the bill and the repeal of all its clauses.
It is such a pity to see that, once again, closure is being invoked on a bill as important and as controversial as Bill C-43. Several of my Bloc Quebecois colleagues, as well as colleagues from other parties, wish to speak to the bill. It is very sad to see that this government, which is introducing bills in the House, does not even have the decency to defend them.