That is the word. I was going to leave that word until later but it is true. I am happy the hon. member is so accurate in his perception. He recognizes that all this is leading to incompetent management.
There is a fourth area in which we have no leadership. A good leader anticipates problems. If there was ever an indication there would be problems that could have been anticipated, this is one. It was no secret. The hon. member for Yorkton—Melville referred to a letter. The problem was laid out in black and white. What did they do? Nothing.
That is not the only thing. Did they know that the contract was coming up with grain weighers? Of course they knew. Notice had been given a long time ago. Did they know that there could be a development and an escalation to the point where a strike could occur? Of course they knew. Did they anticipate what would happen if a strike took place? Did they anticipate what would happen if it would shut down the whole system?
The only answer we received was the one this afternoon in question period. On the eve of the emergency debate, what did the President of the Treasury Board say? He said they had the right to associate, the right to organize, and that means the right to strike. Is that handling the problem? It is anything but. Did they anticipate the problem? If they did, they certainly did not do anything about it.
Leadership is lacking on at least those four dimensions. Let us look at management. Management is the ability to apply scarce resources—and we always have scarce resources—in such a way that we get the desired results. Let us look at the way in which the government has managed its scarce resources. We have a balanced budget. Guess what?
With great pride and pompous arrogance the Minister of Finance says “We have balanced the budget. We have managed the expenditures of the government. We have controlled and done all these things and now we have a balanced budget”. Did he tell the Canadian taxpayers that they are each paying $1,300 more so the budget could be balanced? It is the increase in revenue that made the difference.
Who balanced the budget? The Canadian taxpayer balanced the budget. That is who balanced the budget. The government is spending more money today than it did before. The management here is on the part of the Canadian taxpayer who is paying more dollars into the federal treasury and somehow still is able to manage. That is where the good management is. It is not on the part of the government.
Instead of managing effectively, the government and the preceding government created at least four examples of intrusion by crown corporations. We can talk about the Business Development Bank of Canada, the Canada Post Corporation, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation and the Canadian mint. There is a direct intervention into the marketplace, in direct competition with other businesses. The government takes money out of a successful businesses and brings it over to these businesses. This government, which has unlimited resources compared to corporations, pits its resources against them and expects them to compete successfully. It does not work too well.
This is how the government intrudes. I will never forget the day. I was a kid at the time. Our utilities bill was put in our mailbox by a high school or university student who delivered the bills on behalf of the utilities company. It was done at a very low cost to the utilities company. All of a sudden this big dictum came down that this was illegal. Canada Post must deliver those and the company would have to pay 45 cents, or 50 cents, whatever the rate was at that time in order to get those bills delivered.
It was an immediate increase in the cost to the utilities company to deliver its bills. The utilities company had to go to the utilities commission to say that it would have to increase its rates. The government had it worked out beautifully. Who paid? The consumer paid. What kind of management is this? We could get into all kinds of other examples.
The other area, which I think is the most fundamental of all of these, is good labour-management relations. A good manager has good labour-management relations. What seems to have happened here is there is labour on one side and management on the other. There seems to be this irony that surrounds these negotiations. On the one hand management says it wants to run the corporation at a profit. It wants to run the business efficiently. It wants to deliver the services and goods in a timely fashion, in an effective way and to do it smoothly and with a profit. On the other hand those on the labour side want to frustrate management in whatever way they can so that they can get the maximum out of it for them, for their way of living and things of that sort.
After they have fought they come together and say that now they have solved their problems they are going to work together. Before that they fought like crazy. How is it possible that we can have a situation where there should be co-operation and smoothness when the system we use to determine salary levels and working conditions is one of confrontation and antagonism? It is a system that is not working very well.
We have a beautiful example of it right now. It broke down. When it breaks down it hurts everybody. It hurts management. It hurts the supplier. It hurts the workers. Those workers are not going to recover what they are losing right now. It is to their own detriment that they get into these situations.
I wonder sometimes where the logic is. I want to ask a couple of questions of the Liberal backbenchers. Many people over there, and I know a number of them personally, are good business people. They have succeeded. They know what leadership is. They know what good management is. They know what good labour-management relations are.
What in the world happened? What did they do to their business sense? Did they dump it at the door when they walked in here? What did they do with the good sound leadership and the vision they had? Did they leave it somewhere? I do not understand how it is possible for these highly professional, highly skilled, well educated individuals, these highly successful business people in a number of seats across the way. Somehow that ability is not made part of the cabinet. It is not made part of the Prime Minister's leadership in this House. How can it be?
It defies anything within me that they suddenly turn off everything they know, everything they have experienced, everything they know to be wrong, to simply turn that all off and say, “Let us do whatever he says”. It is false, it is misleading and it is an insult to the Canadian people. They deserve better. We have leaders in this country. I do not believe for a minute that there is not leadership on that side of the House, but for some reason or another it is not being allowed to surface.
How can it be that a solid strong professional and a strong business person can allow himself to vote against compensating the victims of hepatitis C from tainted blood? How can that possibly be? How can it be when the logic of solid family relations is defeated by saying that it is okay to have an unequal situation with regard to those who work inside the home and those who work outside the home? How can that be? But it is.
What kind of a leader could not foresee the situation in Vancouver? I do not believe he did not foresee it. I do not believe the minister in charge of the Treasury Board did not foresee it. I do not believe the parliamentary secretary did not foresee it. They chose not to do anything. That is serious. That makes them responsible for the situation we are in. It also means they are responsible to solve it.
Is it possible to solve it? Absolutely. It can be done in a number of ways. The government can use a patchwork approach as it did before and legislate these people back to work, only to defer the problem to rise again some other day. That is not a solution. There are solutions.
Is the government going to choose the real solutions, or is it going to choose again to do something so we can go through all this rigmarole again and in the process hurt farmers, consumers, the other people who are employed, the managers, the transportation systems and the businesses involved? Does the government want to do that all again? Why? Why can we not have a Prime Minister, a cabinet and Liberal backbenchers who say that it is time to use some common sense and manage the affairs of this country in a manner that helps everybody? Why can we not do that? I am sure we can.
Instead what we have from time to time is an absolute standoff caused by the arrogance and pomposity that comes from self-imposed self-sufficiency. It is a delusion of grandeur.
It can be done. I challenge the parliamentary secretary who led his caucus on the banks so well. He did a wonderful job. He knew how to work with the people. He showed leadership. We have not seen that kind of leadership anywhere on the front bench of that side of the House. Yet he is not the leader in that party and he never will be the way things are going now because he has too much common sense.
What are we going to do? I challenge us to apply common sense, apply what we know to be true and get serious about the things that really matter to us as people.
This is no great big, heavy duty secret. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out what the mathematical formula is. We have to simply do what is right, help people to work together and make the conditions such that they can resolve their conflict in such a way that everybody is helped, instead of confrontation and an antagonism that builds which then takes years to heal and in some instances never heals. Why can we not do that? We can. All we have to is want to.
I challenge the parliamentary secretary, the President of the Treasury Board and the Prime Minister. Do they want to solve the problem in a permanent way or do they simply want to do another piecemeal operation which will only arise again in a different fashion and on another day?