Mr. Speaker, as I indicated during debate on the first group of amendments, this bill has a lot of merit and a lot of support from the municipalities in Canada, and we want to register that support. However, there are improvements that can be made to the bill.
We are now addressing the motions in Group No. 2 and I wish to address my remarks specifically to Motion No. 33, which is the motion dealing with the advisory panel. I would like the folks watching the debate this afternoon to be aware of exactly what this section provides. I will read clause 11.1(2) of the proposed bill. Clause 11.1(1) establishes an advisory panel and 11.1(2) deals with the mandate of the advisory panel. It reads:
The advisory panel shall give advice to the Minister in the event that a taxing authority disagrees with a property value, property dimension or effective rate applicable to any federal property, or claims that a payment should be supplemented under subsection 3(1.1).
The creation of an advisory panel of this type is a commendable move. It brings into existence a mechanism which would allow the minister to test his particular orientation and also that of his officials so they could look at the assessment being proposed and the amount of taxation being levelled against particular properties and make sure that the advice has the benefit of consultation and expertise. There are some very good reasons for that.
I will give an example. I referred earlier to the case dealing with the Halifax Citadel. In this case Public Works and Government Services Canada agreed to pay for part of the building, that part which was designated as shelter, but it was not prepared to pay the other part. I commend the department for recognizing that there is a difference, but we get into some difficulty in interpreting exactly how we go about making the determination as to where the shelter begins and ends.
The suggestion was made by departmental officials that this interpretation, which is essentially a civil one, should be done through the civil courts. That is not a bad suggestion, as I said earlier this morning. However, there is a better and a much less costly suggestion, which is the advisory panel. It could come to grips with this very nicely. Its members would be business people. There are some suggestions that there would be professional assessors on the panel and some legal people, so this could all be done with competence, by people who are well versed in this area. Let them do the work rather than going through the legal channels of the court system.
The Citadel is an immediate case that could come to the attention of this panel.
The other example is Sable Island. In this controversy the department has stopped payment altogether. It has simply said that it is not paying any taxes until it knows to whom it is supposed to pay the taxes. Who has jurisdiction in this area? Is it the province? Is it the federal government? To what degree are the respective groups responsible?
That of course would not be a problem for HRDC. It would simply pay, but that is not the case here.
I commend the minister for taking responsible action, but what I would like to do, and what the Reform Party wants to do, is to make sure that there are precautionary measures which would allow the minister to be sure that he is accountable and that these kinds of things do not disappear.
I want to refer to the amendment because I think it is important. What we would really like to do is add a section which would follow immediately after the provision for the establishment of the panel to ensure that the panel provides advice to the minister. The way the act reads now, the minister may accept that advice, he may reject it, he may simply ignore it, or he may amend it. What we are suggesting in the amendment is that where the advisory panel gives advice to the minister under subsection (2) and the minister decides not to accept that advice in exercising any power under this act in respect of the subject matter of that advice, the minister shall without delay provide the advisory panel and the taxing authority in respect of whom the advice was given with written reasons for that decision.
Why do we believe that written reasons are so important? I think there is a very good example that came out of the audit of HRDC.
I will refer to two lines of that report, which say that the original dollar value of the agreement was amended in one-third of the projects. That is one in three. These are agreements that came out of HRDC and money was given to these projects. The amount of money was reviewed, and in most cases it was revised upward. In 36% of these cases there were no reasons given for the change in dollars awarded. The people asked for an amount of money, they got more, and there is no documentation as to why those amendments were made.
There is another example. I will read directly from the auditor's report. When it comes to the monitoring or the overseeing of projects, “some program officers expressed the opinion that financial monitoring was not required if the results were achieved within the agreed budget”.
What that really means, or could mean, is that there is absolutely no accounting. As long as they did not spend any more money than they were given on a particular project everything would be okay. Whether the results actually were achieved is another issue. Whether they actually did not have to spend all the money on that project was not important either. If they provided an inflated budget and the HRDC people, or whoever was doing this, granted the full amount, and they actually achieved the results and only needed half of the money, or a portion of that money, then that was perfectly all right. That is irresponsible.
When people in a business have a budget for certain expenditures for equipment, installation or services that are provided for that business, and it will cost roughly $10,000 to do it, and then they discover as they go along that it really will cost only $8,000, what do they do with the $2,000? Do they automatically take that $2,000 and let it disappear, or do they apply it in another way and let it come back to be disposed of in a way that is most beneficial to the business?
There is no doubt in my mind that a private entrepreneur would take that money and reapply it and not automatically inflate the expenditures in that area to meet the allocated budgetary provision.
That is precisely what we are looking at here. That is one area.
The other thing we are looking at is to make sure that the minister, while having tremendous discretionary power given to him by the constitution, the law of this land, which is to protect the interests of the people of Canada, is accountable and transparent, and that the processes are such that they are fair and equitable to all concerned.
That would be good for the municipalities. That would be good for the provinces. That would be good for the minister. That would be good for the government. It is time we brought about some fairness and equity in all of these cases. Where a minister is not required to take a particular and specific requirement that he must pay, he at least must provide reasons for what he did or did not do.