Madam Speaker, it is with pleasure that I rise today to support the motion that the House call for the establishment of an independent commission of inquiry into the mismanagement of grants and contributions in the Department of Human Resources Development.
I will be splitting my time with the hon. member from Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough.
We in the PC Party are supportive of this motion. The PC Party filed a dissenting report to the HRDC committee report. The committee report did not ask for an independent public inquiry.
At this juncture, with all the controversy over the HRDC debacle, Canadians have lost confidence in the Department of Human Resources Development. It is time for an open and transparent process and inquiry to re-establish that trust between the department—in fact between the government and the Canadian public, who have clearly lost confidence in the ability of the department to manage this very important part of public policy in Canada.
As the information commissioner, John Reid, said “Governments have no money of their own. They are trustees for our money and trustees for the various programs and activities they undertake for us”. Clearly, the government has not acted as an effective trustee of the public money, in this case HRDC.
The whole disclosure of the crisis within HRDC did not come about as a result of the government seeking greater transparency, openness and accountability. It came about based on the minister being dragged, kicking and screaming, to disclosure by the House. In fact, the opposition has worked collectively and effectively to ensure that light was shone into the dark space of HRDC to ensure that Canadians were aware of the degree to which public trust between Canadians and their government, in terms of the management of public money, had been broken by the government.
The government has been working assiduously to minimize the impact and degree to which the HRDC department was out of control. Clearly it had not maintained an accountable system to manage these funds. Overall I see no reason why any member of the House, on the government side or on the opposition side, would have difficulty with a full and transparent public inquiry into the HRDC department's difficulties in managing public funds.
Clearly, on looking at the history of HRDC and what we know now versus what we knew even a few years ago relative to employment support programs, there is some recognition that many of the programs and the types of involvement which were thought to be appropriate by individuals involved in public policy to develop and grow employment are less effective. On looking at these programs in hindsight, we have seen that the record of actually creating long term sustainable employment for Canadians by HRDC and many other direct government employment creation agencies has been littered with the corpses of failed programs and initiatives and poor investments.
Even the Minister of Finance in a speech a few months ago said publicly that government should not pick winners or losers and should not make direct investments in business. Far too often when the government gets involved in direct investments in individual businesses, the reasons behind those investments have little to do with economics or job creation. In many cases they are more about rewarding political friends or trying to help a minister or an individual member maintain his or her status in the riding.
We have heard of significant investments that were made. I believe there was $500,000 to Wal-Mart. We have heard of HRDC money going to companies to effectively move them from one riding to another with no net gain in employment. The focus of HRDC investment should be on investing in job creation.
Quite frequently when the political processes get involved there is a tendency and temptation for the political elites on the other side, particularly on the front benches, to interfere and to push money toward one cause or another that would directly benefit themselves and their colleagues in the next election.
There is a consensus among people involved in public policy today that quite possibly the best way to develop and grow employment in Canada, particularly in terms of the new economy and the knowledge based industries, is not by pouring government money into specific businesses at the whim of the governing party. Instead it is to reduce the tax burden for all Canadians by focusing on areas of the new economy and looking at the taxes that impede progress and productivity most significantly in the new economy. They would be capital gains taxes and corporate taxes. Also Canada's middle class must be readjusted and redefined through significant personal income tax reform. Those are the types of efforts the government should be pursuing in developing policies to actually create jobs, employment and economic growth for Canada in the new economy.
The government needs a creativity boost in addressing some of these issues. Largely the government has coasted since 1993 on the policies of the previous government. It has not addressed some of the very important issues in the context of the new economy and where we are today.
It is time for the government to look at the old style solutions which have not worked that effectively in the past, clearly are not working in the present and most certainly will not be successful in the future. It should take some political risks, do the right thing and develop some vision. It should have a vision implant or something like that.
If the government were to look at these issues realistically, perhaps it would not be so defensive about protecting its slush funds. It could face the electorate with some interesting, innovative policies and defend them on their own merits and not base them on slush funds to buy people's votes outwardly with their own money.
We support the motion. We hope all members will speak in support of the motion.
There cannot be public policy change unless there first is enough transparency and openness to realize what we are indeed trying to fix. The inquiry process would identify more clearly than has been identified previously the real problem within HRDC. It would shine a greater level of public light on this significant negative issue which has faced Canadians and embarrassed them for several months.
Another issue the government needs to address in the context of providing greater levels of economic opportunity to economically depressed areas is a re-engineering of Canada's equalization system. Our current equalization system treats recipient provinces like single parents on social assistance who actually want to get a job and when they do get a job they end up making less money. That is the single parent analogy. When recipient provinces of equalization pursue economic development activities that are focused on realistic, long term sustainable industries, they end up taking in less money and ultimately hurt themselves by pursuing more active and innovative economic approaches.
The government should be studying very seriously the issue of equalization. It should work with the provinces to develop long term strategies where recipient provinces could use tax strategies and research and development strategies to become have provinces within a very short period of time. Maybe that would achieve more than what has been achieved by equalization or HRDC in its current sense.