Mr. Speaker, it is with pleasure that I rise today to speak to the motions in Group No. 1 respecting Bill C-43.
The issues are quite complex. The government claims that there will be savings of $171 million to $285 million in compliance costs and also savings of $97 million to $162 million in administrative costs due to this new revenue agency. That is assuming that all provinces opt in. That is a very big assumption. The government has not succeeded, for instance, in convincing provinces to sign on to the HST or the blended sales tax, with the exception of a few provinces in eastern Canada.
The Canadian Federation of Taxpayers believes that there will be no major savings from this new agency. The federation is certainly well-versed both in terms of tax policy, tax enforcement and also in terms of pointing out inefficiencies in government. I would suggest that is a very significant criticism of the government's plan to create this revenue agency.
We should be focusing, in a very holistic way, on the simplification of the tax code. We should be working toward a fairer, flatter, less Pavlovian tax code. We should be looking at simplifying both business taxes and personal taxes such that Canadians do not have to hire professional accountants and lawyers to deal with their own government. Instead the government is focusing on the logistics of the administrative aspects of tax enforcement. I believe that this is a misdirected effort at this time.
This revenue agency, the way the government is going about it, is inconsistent with general trends of federal-provincial relations. Provinces want greater autonomy. Quebec, for instance, is not interested, and Ontario is indicating that it may want its own agency. Ontario is looking to gain greater authority over its tax levers and over the enforcement side of it.
It cannot simply be said that the provinces are going to sign onto this. There has not been dramatic indication from the provinces. I would argue that without that commitment in advance this simply should not go ahead.
The government says that it will create this good agency and the provinces will at some point understand what a great agency it is and what a great service it can deliver and they will want to sign on. I am very skeptical, as are members of my party, that that will occur. The provinces certainly have not bought into the government's blended sales tax to the extent they were expected to. Although, we have to commend the government on its flip-flop on the GST. It certainly has come a long way in terms of its support of consumption taxes today as opposed to where it was in 1993. But hypocrisy is only half a mortal sin and I guess we cannot pillory the government too far on that.
I am concerned about the appointment process of the board of directors which will be responsible for this agency. I know that the government is saying there will be federal-provincial co-operation and that, in itself, will eliminate or reduce the potential for patronage. That is the same assurance the government provided, for instance, with respect to the Canada pension plan investment board, and yet, of the 12 members of that board, six are prominent Liberals. In fact, five were significant contributors and one was a former Liberal MP.
The fact is that the process is tainted. The board that is responsible for the appointments has representatives from each province, but that board is chaired by a prominent Liberal, Mr. Phelps. He gave a list of 20 names to the Minister of Finance, and the minister chose 12 people from the 20. I suggest that it is no coincidence that 6 of the 12, 50% of the board responsible for the Canada pension plan investment process, are prominent Liberals.
Members opposite will say there is no patronage. But it is interesting to note that only .2% of Canadians contribute to the federal Liberal Party, and yet 50% of the people on the Canada pension plan investment board are prominent Liberals. So when they say there will be no patronage in the appointments to the board of this arm's length agency, I am very skeptical and for good reasons.
Questions we have to ask are: Why can the benefits being promoted by the government in Bill C-43 not be achieved within the framework of the department of Revenue Canada? It was mentioned earlier that it is the largest government department.
The government indicates that human resources issues are part of the stumbling blocks, including the difficulty in attracting and keeping high quality people, as well as pay issues within the public service. I would say that this would suggest a systemic problem within all of the public service that requires a holistic solution and not the stop-gap, knee-jerk, crisis management kind of approach that this government is taking.
The auditor general speaks to the general government-wide dissatisfaction with human resources management in his report on matters of special interest. The auditor general says that dissatisfaction with existing human resources management is also reflected in the interest among government officials in alternative service delivery mechanisms. One of the driving factors has been that present staffing, classification and compensation systems are too unwieldy and inflexible. The government needs to ensure that the rush to get outside the system does not divert attention from fixing the system.
Many of the human resources issues need to be addressed throughout the public service. This is a prime example of an opportunity for the government to address them, starting with the largest government department, Revenue Canada, which represents one-quarter of the public service, 40,000 to 46,000 employees, depending on the time of year. We should start actively developing a meaningful, holistic, long term approach to the entire public service.
The public service has unprecedented low levels of morale. We are dealing with a public service that is absolutely devastated by the fact that the government has yet to agree to the human rights tribunal ruling on pay equity.
Government members speak in code, but sometimes when they are talking about the public service they refer to the unions as being part of the problem, although they may not say that directly. However, union issues are dealt with in the private sector. There are many proponents of the free market system which recognize that unions play a very important role in that free market system. Without unions representing workers there would probably be a need for a large government department to look after those issues. Ultimately, that would be far less effective and unwieldy.
If companies like Chrysler Canada and General Motors can work with unions and achieve efficiency, productivity and advances, why cannot the Government of Canada? Why can the Government of Canada not lead the way in terms of human resources development, as opposed to leading the way in ignoring issues within its own human resources? Why is it seeking alternative service delivery instead of fixing the problems in its own departments?
If we created incentives within all of our public agencies and departments, incentives that recognize and reward excellence as opposed to encouraging mediocrity and punishing excellence, and if we introduced market incentives within the existing agencies, we could achieve economies without necessarily creating new agencies.
One of the tragedies in recent years with the government's policies toward the public service and with politicians making gratuitous attacks on it is that we have a public service that is extraordinarily demoralized.
There are people who study public administration and learn many of the same types of skills required for a business administration degree, but they study public administration because they want to be a public servant. They have a public ethic. They want to work for the betterment of society and for the people. We have to recognize that and ensure that we have a system which encourages excellence, both in terms of attracting the best and the brightest, and also keeping them.
My colleague from the Reform Party referred to the potential of this agency becoming an IRS type of agency and I concur with that risk.
The issues raised by the member from the New Democratic Party are relative to the agency and the risks to workers and their job security. Keep in mind 25% of the public service is in this. These are significant issues. I am not convinced that the government has made a good case for why we should support this agency.
If the government cannot address these human resources issues, for instance, or if it cannot address why the advantages of this agency cannot be achieved within the existing structure of Revenue Canada, then I suggest the government has a significant deficiency in its human resource management.
We need more consultation with Canadians. I suggest the finance committee or a subcommittee travel throughout the country and consult with Canadians and discuss any matter of the gravity and importance of the new Revenue Canada agency proposed by the government.