Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take part in this debate, although my tone will be different from that of my colleague, who has an exceptional voice. He must surely be a mighty tenor. Since I do not have a lot of time, I will get on with my remarks.
I am extremely pleased that my party decided to use this opposition day to deal with the CIO. It is strange that this body would be called the Canada Information Office. What drew our attention, even though we are aware of the CIO's existence and we know that it carries on certain activities, is the desire to hide the funding provided to this office. What was behind it all?
The government did not want us to know that the “Heritage Minutes” produced by Robert-Guy Scully were funded by the CIO. This means that the government knew that the role of the Canada Information Office was not to provide information and that if it admitted that a journalist was getting funding from the CIO for its programs, that journalist would not be able to claim to be one for very long.
The fact is that today Robert-Guy Scully said that he was no longer a journalist. He decided to say so today, but some would say that he stopped being one some time ago.
That attempt to hide the use made of funds allocated for propaganda compelled us to search—and we are not done with our research—to find out to what extent the Canada Information Office is an unacceptable institution. I strongly support today's opposition motion, which reads as follows:
That this House condemn the government for having established the Canada Information Office, which gives lucrative contracts to those close to the government party for, among other things, the purpose of gathering, analysing and collating information about a large number of citizens, and that this House urge the government to close that Office.
We think the government must close the CIO.
I would like to add a few more arguments to the strong arguments put forward by my colleagues. I heard the members opposite say “But is it not normal to inform Canadians?” The departments inform Canadians. They all have budgets for that. The Privy Council exists and we know that it is quietly doing studies and surveys of Canadians and that it is keeping the government informed.
A large number of agencies which deal at arm's length with the government are also ways of giving publicity to Canada. I will give an example. The various regional economic development agencies throughout the country, with names like the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, or the Western Economic Diversification Agency, have continued to keep their names. In Quebec, the Federal Office of Regional Development for Quebec became—and I want members to listen carefully—Economic Development Canada.
This is rather odd, because the government agency that deals with economic development in Canada—we will get back to this some other time—or comes under the economic development department, instead of retaining a name with a connection with Quebec is now called Economic Development Canada. This is the only agency to do so.
Elsewhere, it is the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency or the Western Economic Diversification Agency, but in Quebec and only there, it is called Economic Development Canada. How much did it cost to change the letterhead, the publicity, the signs, and so forth?
We could do a study just of the period since this government has been in office, to count the number of “Canada's” written in large letters everywhere, including just across the Portage bridge in Hull. Then there was Via Rail's colour change and the addition of “Canada” and then the flag. I could mention others, because there are many such agencies.
What is the Business Development Bank of Canada doing? It has a publication that it sends out to all businesses in Canada, and there are 700,000 of them. How many copies of this publication are printed? It promotes Canada.
There are countless information and propaganda tools in Canada. There is something a bit special in seeing to what extent they have to put the mention “Canada” and the flag everywhere. The means are huge, nobody can question that. What was that CIO established for, as I have to remind the House, shortly after the 1995 referendum that we came close to win?
It is a tool that, as we found out, was not informing Canadians but informing the government about Canadians and Quebecers in particular. This week, thanks to the co-operation of people who wanted it to be known, we found out there were files on journalists. We were told that that practise had been given up for a year. But go and look for yourself. Files were kept on journalists.
This practise alone shows the true nature of that so-called information office. Some claim that analyzing journalistic practises for government departments is innocent. No, it is not. When we know how much the journalistic profession in Canada has deteriorated, when we know how much journalists are often unprotected where they work, when we know how much that situation can give rise to self-censorship, when we know how much that can influence journalists who want to be hired or have their contract renewed because they are casual employees, that alone is extremely serious. This is serious and clearly this qualifies the kind of information that so-called Canada Information Office wants to do.
Why then create the CIO when we have all those sources of information? There is another explanation besides the type of information they want to do. There is also the fact that they no doubt wanted to appeal more widely and more easily to private firms and thus, as was abundantly shown, to favour friends of the regime. That is how they were described in an editorial from the daily Le Devoir , using an expression that is well known in Quebec. We learned what “friends of the regime” meant under the Duplessis administration. One could say that the Duplessis administration has come back, but in Ottawa. Those who were most scornful about the Duplessis administration should worry about what is going on right now in this country.
The fact that the so-called information is intended for Quebecers should not make them less aware of it. Instead of focussing energies, resources and millions of dollars on trying to understand why, while they are quiet right now, an increasing number of Quebecers are convinced that the only solution for them is to organize themselves in order to control their future, the government should shut down the CIO.