Madam Speaker, this government's approach to budgetary decisions is a patchwork quilt of interventionist policy that lacks the type of consistency required for sound economic policy.
We have proposed 19 amendments to Bill C-36. I want to ensure we have proposed these amendments in a very constructive non-partisan way because we want to make significant improvements to this legislation which will benefit all Canadians and which will be a credit to this House.
Two such amendments we have proposed would see both private and public institutions treated similarly by the millennium scholarship foundation. For instance, we believe private institutions require representation at the board level and at the membership level of the foundation. It is absolutely essential that students in private educational institutions across Canada have that kind of representation.
Private colleges and career colleges are growing across Canada because they represent the needs of the workplace. They are more sensitive to labour mobility and a lot of the facts of life of the late 20th century and the early 21st century in terms of the needs of Canadian employers.
For this millennium scholarship fund to not recognize the importance of career colleges and private educational institutions would be a travesty. One of our amendments calls for membership at the board of directors level and at the membership level of the foundation for representatives from career colleges.
Another amendment we have moved would allow students studying provincially certified programs at private institutions access to the scholarships as well. This is consistent with our belief that career colleges and private institutions and students studying at those institutions deserve to be treated with respect and deserve to be thought of with the understanding they are going to be making a significant contribution to Canada in the 21st century.
Each province currently has standards and criteria for funding for programs so we do not have to reinvent the wheel. We can simply rely on the provincial certification process which has worked extraordinarily well to date. The federal government need not reinvent the wheel or start a new bureaucratic process to do this. We can simply rely on the good judgment of the provinces.
Some of the legislation governing federal boards and agencies must provide a proper framework for accountability and transparency, and this framework is lacking in this bill. For boards and agencies functioning with taxpayer money there must be an accountability to this parliament and to all Canadians.
Transparency means that the stakeholders, ordinary Canadians and their representatives in parliament, have free access to information sufficient to enable them to judge the make-up of the board and the board's conduct of its business. Unfortunately the arm's length nature of the millennium scholarship foundation and the lack of transparency denies Canadians that access and denies Canadians the opportunity to judge whether the millennium scholarship foundation will meet the needs of ordinary Canadians.
Two and a half billion dollars of Canadian taxpayer money is going to a private foundation which would not be accessible through the Access to Information Act, the books of which will not be available to the auditor general. What the government is really doing is saying “here is $2.5 billion, do not worry about screwing up, you operate at arm's length and you are free to run your own show and the auditor general will not have access to your books anyway”. The auditor general is the Canadian taxpayers' watchdog in Ottawa and to deny Canadian taxpayers access and due diligence over the books of $2.5 billion of their money is a travesty.
It is debatable to what extent this foundation is at arm's length given that the government appoints a chairman and a third of the board. The other two-thirds are appointed by members who in turn are initially appointed by the minister. Most of the money will come from the federal treasury and yet this is considered an arm's length foundation.
The annual report is to be tabled in parliament. The auditor general questions exactly how arm's length the millennium foundation will be. In chapter 9 of last month's report he states: “It relates to what we would call the essential nature or substance of these types of entities. We will be examining this matter further and will report separately if significant findings emerge. Questions that we will address in this study will include whether, in substance or in fact, such entities operate at arm's length from the government”.
The auditor general questions the degree to which this will be an arm's length foundation and I think Canadians require greater accountability and assurances that this $2.5 billion is to be invested properly and will benefit all Canadians. That is why we call in our amendments for a greater level of transparency and a greater level of accountability for these funds.
We have also put forward an amendment that would require a five year review to be conducted by someone who is independent of the foundation. The Liberals do not care if this review is done by someone with close ties to management who would take a cursory look around and write a glowing report and then collect a fat fee for telling management what it wants to hear.
Canadians deserve better than that. Canadians deserve to have true accountability. We are offering government members an opportunity to redeem themselves in this instance by supporting some of these amendments and effectively ensure that Canadians will have external auditors who will do unbiased evaluations of the millennium scholarship foundation's activities without the bias or prejudice of appointment by the board.
I urge members to support this amendment so that all members of parliament can judge for themselves the success or failure of the millennium scholarship fund and its value to the Canadian taxpayer.
Another amendment we have put forward would allow the board to indefinitely block the release of unfavourable annual reports by simply refusing to approve them. Under the current legislation if a report comes forward that would be an unfavourable annual report the board can indefinitely block it from public viewing. That is unacceptable.
We propose that effectively any report or any annual report will be made available to the Canadian public after a reasonable period of time. Currently these types of negative annual reports can be shelved indefinitely, denying Canadians the access to information and the accountability and transparency they need.
There is also an amendment we are proposing which would require that some directors know something about investments. They are going to be given $2.5 billion. We do feel that they should know something about investments. Perhaps they will lend the money to the provinces, as was done with the Canada pension plan money resulting in the stellar performance that we have seen in recent years during a time when we have seen unprecedented growth in the equities markets around the world.
We believe that there should be criteria for the board members that include some knowledge of the investment industry and some knowledge of portfolio management. This can prevent poor returns in fixed income securities. It can also prevent high risk situations à la Orange county derivatives or shares in the next Bre-X.
It is increasingly apparent that the Minister of Finance does not have a particularly good relationship with the auditor general. I would venture to say that is probably one of the greatest understatements made in this House this year. The auditor general's accounting advice is routinely ignored by the Minister of Finance.
We are looking to provide the type of accountability through these amendments to this legislation which will provide ordinary Canadians with the accountability they need, independent of the auditor general and independent of the Minister of Finance. We need to ensure that this money is accounted for properly and that ultimately the millennium scholarship foundation results in the betterment of Canadian educational opportunities and competitiveness in the 21st century.
I do not have time to devote my speech to some of the other amendments, but we will have some opportunities later today. I urge all members to take a look at these amendments in a non-partisan and constructive way. That is the way they were developed and proposed.