It is indeed working very well. But when we talk about government agencies, I think of Equifax, a company that makes the headlines every three weeks or so. Equifax gathers information for anyone who requests it. It is a sort of collection agency. No so long ago, Equifax sold information to organized crime gangs out to do certain people in. Equifax could not care less, figuring it gets paid to provide information; what it is used for is not its problem. This came out in court recently. Organized crime gangs out to kill an individual simply asked Equifax to gather information on this individual, so they could trace him, catch him and do him in.
That is the kind of ethics these agencies have. This is sad. The Liberals should realize this because, in four years, they will certainly be gone. And the next government will not be a Bloc Quebecois government. That much is sure, because this is not our goal.
The government which will be replacing the present one here in this House will probably hold the same line. Perhaps then they will be the ones who are stuck. Perhaps then they will be the ones who will pay for it. This is a short-sighted policy. They do not see any further than the end of their noses.
They are placing their fates in the hands of agencies. Yet there are political and social risks to this approach. The social risks need to be looked at. Some, I know, will take it very badly to have money collected from them by people who have absolutely no vision of a just and equitable society, people for whom all means to an end are justified, that end being to collect taxes and probably get a commission for doing so. Whether the taxes collected are actually owing is not important, all that counts is the cut for collecting them.
Probably 20% of the federal public service, which was the object of a social consensus, is also being chopped. People said “The government must assume its responsibilities and someone neutral will do this. We will voluntarily submit to the authority of that neutral entity, the public service”. But now we are starting to see the buddies of the regime, the PM's friends, being brought into the picture, and not for the first time.
I see my colleague, the hon. member for Jonquière, nodding, and she is right to do so. Every day, I receive notices of appointments to boards of directors, in agencies such as Atomic Energy of Canada Limited or Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. For the fun of it, I took a look at the big book on financial contributions made to political parties. Without exception, the names of all those appointed to these boards is in the big book that lists those who made contributions to the Liberal Party of Canada, for example last year. This is getting to be a concern. People make contributions to the Liberal party in exchange for political appointments.
During the last parliament, we passed a bill to prevent double dipping, that is to prevent those who are entitled to a public service pension and who are sitting as members of parliament, or those who are former MPs and have a job in the public service, from getting two incomes. This is what we call double dipping.
But we should take a look at what is going on at the Department of National Defence. There are at least eight or nine former generals or high-ranking officers, who are retired from the Canadian forces and collecting a full pension, which, incidentally, does not compare with the small pension a member of parliament gets after two terms. These people are hired as consultants by the federal government at $180,000, $200,000, $225,000 and even $250,000 a year. People get treated very well when they are friends of the Liberal Party.