Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have an opportunity to add to this debate, I hope in all humility, on the motion brought forward by the hon. member for St. Albert. I commend him for bringing the motion forward. I have the utmost support for what he is attempting to do. He has been a long advocate for greater fiscal responsibility in the House and in the country. The fiscal thistle that he is, as Chair of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, reflects his natural proclivity in this area.
I have an initial problem with debating the motion to concur in a report that was first presented to the House of Commons in the 35th parliament. We are now in the 37th parliament. The original motion that was brought forward was transported back to the agenda of the 36th parliament which refused to deal with it. That is hardly what the new Minister of Justice so often refers to as “in timely fashion”.
Few members now in the House were members of that original committee that wrote the report. Fewer still had an opportunity to hear evidence and, dare I say, even fewer have taken the trouble to seek out the report and read the evidence.
These objections could have been overcome if this motion would cause the government and the House to exert greater control over the scrutiny of spending. Sadly, this is not the case.
The search for better ways to examine the estimates and the scrutiny of public spending, as well as the performance of the bureaucracy, is hardly new. Regrettably, over the past four decades the House has not properly discharged its fundamental constitutional duty to properly examine government spending plans.
What is worse, we have willingly surrendered the procedural and constitutional tools needed by the House to examine the rightful influence over ministers and departments and government. In return for the supine attitude of members of parliament gaining predictable summer adjournments and the government getting unfettered access to the dollars and borrowed dollars of Canadians, the blunt reality is that members of the House of Commons are not willing to do the hard and complex work of leading estimates, becoming familiar with the overall activities of departments and then taking the time to demand answers to their questions or solutions to their grievances. The government caucus as well is only too willing to shut down any examination that makes it uncomfortable.
Look at the sad record of the government and the House, for we are all responsible for this shame. Departmental estimates of the multi-billion dollar annual expenditures routinely get less than 90 minutes of soft speeches in committees before the Liberals close the proceedings. Some departments do not even get that. Members of the House all know that the rules and the calendar will automatically approve the estimates.
The government thinks it is being accountable by making the minister available for a single meeting for an hour. We all accept this, tugging at our forelocks, pleased as punch to be in such august company for an hour. Yet we have the power to demand their attendance and to demand that they answer questions in full. We have the power to do the tough work that needs to be done. However, we act like mendicants, waiting for a crumb to fall from the cabinet table.
What is even more tragic is the Liberal backbenchers have been so pummelled and cowed into submission by the cabinet and the whip, they fail to realize that the estimates process is the only time when they can get ministers on the public record to sort out the problems of their constituents and to demonstrate to the Prime Minister that they know as much or more in the department as does the minister.
There are some members who are the exception to that and I commend them. They are few and their efforts are far between. I will be the first to admit that there are some members on the backbench that know a heck of a lot more about how the public should have its money spent responsibly than some of the ministers.
This means that year in and year out the annual expenditures of the Government of Canada, this year in excess of $165 billion, receive less attention than that afforded to the smallest town council in any of our constituencies.
We were reminded earlier this year by the Speaker's ruling that this government passed this year's main estimates in a way that is inconsistent with the standing orders of the House. The government trampled on the rights of all members of the House, and the majority of the members on the government side think that this is just fine. They wanted their vacations, they voted themselves a pay increase and moved on. That is not good enough.
We are not acting as prudent stewards of the public purse. This has been the case throughout the explosive inflationary spending history that has been created and the obscene debt load that is now borne by the country.
The current Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance during the Trudeau era liked to denigrate the Mulroney administration's financial record, but let us be intellectually honest.
When the Conservatives came to power in 1984, they inherited a $38 billion deficit and skyrocketing debt. Moreover, the Conservatives then went about putting in place a fiscal plan during extremely difficult economic times that resulted, in the very least, in efforts to control and bring down the deficit and that happened. The much hated GST tax was to be cancelled when this government came into office but the government has continued to pour money into the public purse which has allowed us to create these surpluses.
Arguably, we do not hear the Minister of Finance and Prime Minister crowing about the surplus with great aplomb now that they realize there is a deficit in things like our military, in our internal security and in many of our social programs. The surplus does not seem quite as rosy as it did a short six months ago. Yet, this all came at a huge cost to the Conservatives of the day who were willing to spend political capital as a way to accomplish greater fiscal responsibility in government.
The finance minister of the day, whose political biological clock is ticking quite loudly, has again been very silent when it comes to how that surplus should be handled today.
There is a deeper and even more dangerous consequence to surrendering the purse strings. The House of Commons has castrated its ability to demand answers from the government of the day. We cannot hold up spending, so we cannot demand and get answers to tough questions. Since we no longer hold ministers to public account, it is easier for the Prime Minister and those in his immediate circle, the PMO and the PCO dictatorship, to seize the reins of government.
Benevolent dictators are still dictators. We need a new Magna Carta. Until the House takes back the power of the purse, there will be no checks and balances on the new King Johns of the 21st century or peut-être roi Jean. All of us should be alarmed by the accretion of power in the office of the presidential prime minister. Congress counterbalances American presidents. There is no counterweight to the presidential prime minister when the House has predetermined that he shall have unlimited access to the treasury. Our principal instrument of parliamentary power, the right to deny supply and thereby to set into train the dismissal of the administration, is now in ruins so long as the House neglects the business of supply. It is for this reason that I am unable to support this motion.
Around 1994 the committee looked at the business of supply. In typical Liberal fashion, it concluded that something needed to be done and it wrapped itself in the language of fiscal responsibility and then did what this government has done so many times. It did a U-turn. It did an Olympian-style back flip.
Instead of looking for ways to save dollars or restrain spending, the government invented a new way to spend money. In recommendation 14 it states that committees of the House should be able to reallocate approximately 5% of monies within an estimate. That sounds innocuous does it not? In principle, it violates the doctrine of the ministerial responsibility and the spending initiative of the crown. Parliament does not govern. We have the right to probe and discomfort those who do, but when we attempt to run the government, we undermine the foundations of our authority and force the removal of a minister or a government.
We cannot hold a government responsible for decisions when we attempt to join them in making basic governmental decisions. Ministers and governments are responsible to the House. If they are not acting in accord with the wishes of the majority of the House, the House can force their removal. They ought not to be able to take the 5% buy-off route proposed by this report.
Ministers should not be kept in office under a system of putting in the fix in the House of Commons. Under this system, a recalcitrant minister could remain in office and the House would re-jig an estimate to meet the wishes of the House. The dynamic tension at the root of the power of the purse is compromised by this proposal.
What would be the real effect? Members of parliament are by nature spenders. This recommendation would claim for private members a new privilege, what the American politician, John Randolf called “That most delicious of all privileges; spending other people's money”.
Calvin Coolidge is reported as having observed “Nothing is easier than spending the public money. It does not appear to belong to anyone and the temptation is overwhelming to bestow it on somebody”.
In conclusion, I urge the House to put parliament first and to get serious about real scrutiny of estimates. That means taking away artificial deadlines and making ministers appear in committees of the House. It means unpleasant confrontations and it means we will need to be parliamentarians rather than social workers.