Madam Speaker, I am pleased to have this opportunity to speak again to Bill C-43. The member for Winnipeg Centre said that this bill is like a Trojan horse. I echo his comments and the comments of other members of opposition parties who are very united in their concern about and opposition to this bill. It is a sad day for parliament. We faced a closure vote this morning and we can see that this bill is being rushed through by a slim government majority.
There are questions that need to be asked on behalf of the Canadian people. What is the imperative for having this bill in the first place? What is the imperative for rushing this bill through the House by forcing a vote to meet the government's interests? Those questions have not been answered. That should concern Canadians because the subject of Bill C-43 is the creation of a new, privatized mega agency. That should concern every Canadian and every member of this House.
In the past two years during which this proposal has been contemplated a massive sales job has been undertaken by the minister, by the government and by senior bureaucrats to try to sign people onto the proposal. We see today that as of yet not a single province has signed onto the agency. The reality is that there is not a single binding letter of intent from any province to sign onto this new agency.
We have heard from those who work at Revenue Canada. They know what this agency would do, what its problems would be and presumably what should be done. We have also heard from the professional sector and even from the auditor general. From this we can see that there are problems.
It is becoming increasingly clear that Bill C-43 is not the answer. We have raised this continually in the House. In fact, Bill C-43 is taking us completely in the wrong direction.
As my colleague from Winnipeg Centre has pointed out, Bill C-43 will amount to what is probably the largest act of privatization that this government has undertaken. We are looking at the transfer of something like 20% of public service workers. Forty thousand people will be affected by this transfer.
Many of us have heard some of the concerns that have been expressed by the people who work at Revenue Canada. I really believe that their concerns should not be taken lightly. In fact, we should be listening very closely to the issues that have been raised.
What are the issues? First, there is the issue of privatization. I believe that the government has not yet made the case to the provinces, to the House of Commons, or to the Canadian people as to why this privatization should take place. There are very serious concerns about the lack of accountability that will be caused by setting up a super agency that will not have the same kind of relationship with members of parliament that we have seen in the past.
We have to remember that we are talking about one of the core functions of the Canadian government, a function that sometimes people rail against and get upset about, the collection of revenue and taxes. Nevertheless, it is very much a core function. For that very reason I believe that it is incumbent upon us to fight tooth and nail to make sure that this parliament retains a relationship and accountability with this core service instead of allowing it to be let loose, allowing it to be privatized.
Information that came out recently in the auditor general's report is actually very damning about the bill which is before us today. Some of the comments that the auditor general made in his report about Revenue Canada, in particular about the international tax directorate, tell us that only 52% of the directorate's staff at Revenue Canada headquarters are in permanent positions. The auditor general goes on to say that “Because of the complexity and significance of international tax issues, we are concerned that frequent staff movements may prevent the directorate from maintaining the experience and skill levels required to provide an appropriate level of service to taxpayers and to manage the risks to the tax base that are inherent in international transactions”.
The auditor general continues in his conclusions and recommendations to state:
If parliament approves the establishment of the proposed new Canada Customs and Revenue Agency, the Department will become a separate employer and assume most of the responsibility for human resource management currently shared with central agencies. In the absence of a comprehensive human resource plan and strategies linked to the Directorate's business plan, the establishment of the new agency will not in itself resolve the problems outlined in this chapter.
He goes on to say: “It is important that the analysis, planning and implementation of needed human resource initiatives be carried out as soon as possible”.
I think this is a very serious issue that has been raised. We have been told by the government, as it tries to sell this new super agency to parliament, to the Canadian people and, indeed, to the provinces, that we will see increased efficiencies, that we will see improvements, that we will have a better service and so on. However, it should concern us when we see this information coming from the auditor general.
We find out that there has been a high turnover in staff and that, in actual fact, Revenue Canada has lost billions of dollars in revenue because it has not been able to attract the kind of personnel at a very high level to do the very complex audits which must be carried out.
This issue, which was been flagged as far back as 1991 and again in 1996 by the auditor general, has simply not been addressed by Bill C-43. In actual fact the government has lost a potential $2.5 billion to $3 billion in revenue since 1995 because it has refused to pay adequate salaries to attract the highly trained professionals who would perform these very complex audits. This year alone we lost a potential $1 billion in tax revenues from some of the largest corporations because these audits have not been carried out with sufficient frequency because the personnel is lacking. Even Revenue Canada has acknowledged that it has lost about $500 million in tax revenues in the Toronto area alone because of the shortage of 500 tax auditors.
This is directly related to the obsession of the government with cutting the public service, cutting out these kinds of key positions and now it is going further down the slippery slope toward privatization where we as members of the House will have less and less control and accountability over what this agency does.
The opposition has tried to put forward amendments to prevent this bill from going forward which is a reflection of the increasing and mounting concern around the proposal of the government to move in this direction and to ram this proposal through.
Again I say to the minister and to the government if this proposal is so good and so beneficial then why is it that not a single province has signed on. The answer is that we know there has not been a sign-on because there are serious questions that have not been answered. It is time for the government to acknowledge that the bill should be stopped and reviewed . We should return to what the auditor general said and look at the real issues and address the problems contained within the department.