Mr. Speaker, as my colleague has said, this panel will very often be made up of friends or of candidates defeated in the last election. The panel will advise the minister, but it is the minister who will have the last word and make the decisions. It is not, therefore, surprising to see so much conflict between the federal and the provincial or municipal levels of government.
Another point that raises questions is all that is not included in the definition of “federal buildings”, for instance: a ) any structure or work that is not a building designed primarily for the shelter of people, living things, plant or personal property or, for greater certainty, any structure, work, machinery or equipment in..., b ) any real property developed and used as a park and situated within an area defined as “urban” by Statistics Canada, as of the most recent census of the population of Canada taken by Statistics Canada, other than any real property acquired pursuant to the National Parks Act or the Historic Monuments Act or any real property that is occupied or used as a park and has been prescribed to be included in the definition “federal property” pursuant to..., c ) any Indian reserve, except for that part of the reserve
(i) that is occupied for residential purposes by an employee of Her Majesty in right of Canada who would not, but for that employment, live on that reserve...,
Follows a whole list of real property the government reserves for itself, perhaps because of the Constitution. However, I think the government could have used this bill to try to put some sort of order in all of this.
Why does it not pay for the services provided this real property? According to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Works and Government Services in her speech at first reading, and I quote: “The government is provided with direct and indirect useful services in exchange for payments in lieu of taxes”. So they recognize that it is really to pay for the services they receive.
Where is the statement found in the bill's summary I read earlier about improving the fairness, equity and predictability of payments?
Why does the government not pay its due to the provinces and municipalities, since we know that, in 5 years, it will have taken $95 billion in surplus away from the provinces and the municipalities? This kind of money is certainly not growing on parliament hill. This money came from the unemployment insurance fund, from cuts to transfers to the provinces, and from higher provincial taxes because of a lack of indexing, not from parliament hill.
The government should have given this money back to the municipalities and the provinces, because they need it to manage and pay the services provided to federal properties. Again, it would have allowed them to balance their budgets.
Instead, the federal government keeps accumulating surpluses and investing the money in new programs it will eventually drop. But the provinces and municipalities will have to pay for and keep providing services which, some day, the federal government will simply drop.
The Prime Minister recently boasted about having surpluses and not knowing what to do with them.
This bill provided the Prime Minister with an opportunity to do something with these surpluses, if only he had given time to the municipalities to come and meet their members of parliament and if he had agreed to really pay for services provided to the federal government by the municipalities.
The Prime Minister had a golden opportunity to return the federal surpluses to the provinces or municipalities, where they are most needed.
In conclusion, we disagree on three major points, namely the discretionary power, the bogus panel that the government will set up merely to exercise its discretionary power, and the whole part concerning real property, properties for which the government could have transferred money to the provinces and municipalities. However, as I said earlier, just because some clarity has been put in the bill and openness was demonstrated on a number of points, the Bloc Quebecois will support the bill.