Madam Speaker, this debate is on a tripartite motion by the Leader of the Opposition. The first element goes to internal management of the Human Resources Development department. The second relates to ministerial responsibility as a constitutional principle. The third relates to the particular minister actually holding the office of minister. The last two questions are related a little.
It might be worth noting that the present minister was Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development until as late as August 1999. I had the opportunity of negotiating at great length with her on native land claims in British Columbia as late as August. Most of the matters under discussion occurred or had their origins and were completed well before she entered into office. The issue of ministerial responsibility in the particular case thus has a certain artificial quality to it.
On the general issue of ministerial responsibility, we might say with some disappointment that the debate in the House has not been very edifying or very useful. It is a principle that developed in the early 17th century constitutional struggles in Great Britain. At that time there was a clear constitutional dichotomy between prerogative power and legislative power, and most of the principles were developed in that context. They apply with difficulty to a situation of fused governmental power. The parliamentary executive was developed in the 19th century and continued to the present.
Again, what one might call the modern concept of ministerial responsibility relates to the period of constitutional laissez-faire and limited government and probably has little practical relationship to the sort of problems we face today in a period of big government with very large spending power on the part of the government and very large departments of which we have two or three within the present post-war Canadian governmental system. In a certain way it surpasses the capacities of ministers to administer without considerably more sophistication in the administrative processes and structures available to them. It is perhaps a little disappointing therefore that so little has been said in follow up to the principle of ministerial responsibility and what it means in terms of concrete changes and modernization of governmental structures and processes.
I noted with interest the present minister's immediate responses to the situations that have been discussed in the House in the last two days: the internal changes which are being made without constitutional amendment and intensified staff training on administration. They involved the introduction of the principle of accountability of managers for the results of their programs; disciplinary action if gross mismanagement or fraudulent activities are revealed; the creation of a new audit group; the review of all active files by April 30, 2000; and ensuring files are complete before the contract is signed and that all requests for payment are accompanied by a check list containing necessary financial information. These are good steps and we welcome their introduction.
I think we should ask members of the House, both government and opposition but I think with particular reference to opposition members, what exactly they did or saw as their function as members of the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development. These are all-party committees. The agenda is subject to consensus formation. The opportunity to ask for files and to review them is there.
I find it interesting that there seems to have been an absence of information on the part of members when specific issues have been raised of grants made to their constituencies. They do not seem to have been aware of that fact, and one wonders why.
The responsibility of a member of parliament or a member of a committee is to keep oneself appraised of the details of administration. It is always within the power of a committee to demand production of files or to demand the appearance of officials. With certain of the committees of parliament this is a fact of life. Some of them have been quite robust committees and quite rambunctious in the process.
I note with particular interest the surprise of the member for Vancouver East, a very much respected individual, that a total of $37 million in grants went to Vancouver East. As a resident of Vancouver I cannot think of a better area of the city to receive $37 million. I might even wonder whether that is enough. But, again, are members of parliament not utilizing to the full their role as members of committees or their role of individual members? In other words it is a case, as Bentham said, of judge and company, in this case government and members of parliament. There is more than one party involved in this whole process.
Every file that comes to my office, infrastructure, millennium grants and the like, is scrutinized closely. I have a subcommittee within my parliamentary offices and we go through them in great detail. We rank the applications hierarchically and I think it has been one of the factors in enabling us to present cases to ministers and to others for grants. I think that is part of the responsibility of a member.
Years ago I gave evidence to the McRuer commission set up by the Government of Ontario. James McRuer was a great chief justice of Ontario and was concerned with complaints of administration of grants and other programs within the Government of Ontario.
Chief Justice McRuer asked me to appear as a witness and to present evidence on this issue. Is there a crisis in government? Does it affect individual rights? Could we have advice on structures and processes of government? I repeat these simply because I think they are germane to the problem of the growth of big government in Canada, the phenomenon of certainly the last 25 years, the big spending governments, when we have accepted social responsibility for the welfare of citizens in health care, education and related matters.
At the time the McRuer commission was set up there were a series of debates in universities and elsewhere. Professor Hayek of Road to Serfdom was predicting the end of democratic government because administration was becoming so complex. Professor George Keeton, who was a top English jurist at the time, wrote a book, the Passing of Parliament . Parliament was disappearing simply because of the strains on executive government.
The obvious conclusion was that the post-modern British derived system of the parliamentary executive was not responding as well to these problems as other systems that have the separation of powers like the United States and other countries have, and to a certain extent like Great Britain had in the early 17th century when the great constitutional struggles on ministerial responsibility emerged.
The United States set up a commission under ex-president Herbert Hoover, the Hoover Commission on Government. It recommended substantial reforms within the United States system, which I brought to the notice of the McRuer commission.
In a certain sense the pro-active concern of the Canadian parliament under all governments in the last 40 years with the Quebec issue at the expense of other and larger constitutional administrative law reform issues has hurt us in taking effective action in advance of problem situations, situations such as we face today.
One of the recommendations made to the McRuer commission was the establishment of a uniform administrative procedure code applying to all government departments. A second was for a specialized Conseil d'Etat administrative tribunal having jurisdiction over all governmental operations. A third was personal liability of civil servants and others for misconduct, including gross negligence in the administration of their operations, personal liability, civil law damages and the like if that is necessary.
The present minister proposes recovery of misspent funds. It is a step in that direction. I recommend to the House, if we can carry this debate constructively further and if all parties would agree, that a priority should be a general overall structural review of administrative processes in government.