Madam Speaker, I was quite interested in my colleague's comments concerning partisanship in committees and in the House. However, I was quite disappointed that he spent seven out of ten minutes on partisan rhetoric. He was taking potshots with comments that had absolutely no foundation whatsoever. There is no truth to them whatsoever.
He then moved on to personally attack members of the House of Commons, some of whom are the finest leaders the country has had over its history. I do not want to spend my 10 minutes responding because it would take me a lot longer to respond from this end if I am to put the points on the line.
I want to go back to the motion before the House. It states:
That, in the opinion of this House, the government should have a standing committee of the House of Commons hold public hearings on every proposed procurement of goods or services by the Canadian Armed Forces valued at more than $100 million, in order to ensure that the procurement process is transparent and fair to all concerned.
I just want to refer members to a comment made to the standing committee on defence by a witness, Joseph Haddock, director for International Business (Canada), Sikorsky Canada Inc., on the issue of contracting out. He said that he was a veteran for over 29 years in the U.S. navy, that he was quite experienced and that he had been involved firsthand in the procurement aspect of the defence industry in the United States. He moved on to make a comment specifically on the whole issue of the public process of holding hearings. He said:
First, on a positive note, Canada's process appears to me to be simpler than the U.S. system with regard to the budgeting process. In the U.S. the multitude of congressional reviews and political manipulation of planned budgets wreak havoc on planning and execution, both from the government's perspective as well as industry's.
This gentleman's comments before the Standing Committee on National Defence and Veterans Affairs speak volumes. It is a golden statement which sums up what I would probably say in response to the motion proposed by my colleagues from the Reform Party.
I sit on the public accounts committee. I assure the House that when the auditor general senses there is even the slightest bit of a problem or perceived problem, and not necessarily a wrongdoing, he is out there like a hawk with his crew digging through thousands of papers. He goes through every single contract in any government department, crown corporation or agency that is involved. He never gives up until he gets to the bottom of a story. We already have an ombudsman who is always on the lookout to protect the interests of the public whenever he senses there is a potential problem.
Some of the finest public servants on this planet work for the Government of Canada, in the Department of Public Works and Government Services, the Department of National Defence and the Treasury Board. They go through the fine print of contracts that are for $100 million or more but even those that are less, to ensure they meet the objectives set out by the Government of Canada to ensure transparency and that the public is getting its money's worth and a return on its investment.
Certainly setting up another parliamentary committee to cross the country every time we have a project of $100 million is going to invite partisanship. It is going to invite regionalism and conflict. It will open the door for possible political pressure and political lobbying of all sorts. It will not serve the public interest.
Why do we want to create another bureaucracy when we already have a multitude of agencies that do exactly the kind of thing my colleague wants to do? There is absolutely nothing preventing any member of the House or any member of a committee of the House from inspecting or bringing in the head of an agency, a deputy minister or a minister to appear before a committee to answer questions with regard to a contract.
I would say this government, this society and this country enjoy the finest when it comes to the public tendering process and to dealing with the public purse. As a parliamentarian I am proud of what the Department of National Defence and the Department of Public Works and Government Services are doing in the field in conjunction with Treasury Board. I have every faith they are doing a fine job, far away from political interference, public pressure and regional interests that might come into play from time to time with major contracts.
Certainly I am not going to hide the fact that if a company in my constituency was bidding on a $100 million contract and a parliamentary committee was holding hearings across the country on the project, you bet I would make submissions to the committee saying that the company was doing a great job and it would do a fine job if it got the contract. That is the nature of the beast.
As politicians we have a responsibility to protect the interests of those in our constituencies who create jobs. I am right to do that. But if every one of my colleagues is going to do the same thing I am doing, we are going to create confusion if not chaos in the political process. As well we are going to put that specific committee in an extremely awkward position. At the end of the day, when somebody has to make a decision and the yeas and the nays are given, somebody is going to be happy and somebody else is going to be unhappy, just like everything else in life.
To that extent, if it is not broken, why fix it? The system works. It works effectively and efficiently. It is transparent. It is one of the finest systems in the world. Let us protect the integrity of the system. Let us leave the political interference out of it.
I will be voting against this motion when it comes before the House.