Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to this bill. Although it seems fairly innocuous there are some questions that will be raised in committee and should be raised here, similar to the questions we recently raised with respect to the bill concerning the Export Development Corporation, again referring to the comments by the hon. member for Burnaby--Douglas about the total lack of environmental standards and the standard for human rights being absent. There are no requirements for these issues that are so important in our country and should be important in other countries as well. We will be raising those questions.
As the hon. member and previous speakers have mentioned, the Canadian Commercial Corporation is almost invisible. Very few people know about it. The fact of the matter is that in the last year it has helped almost 2,000 small and medium sized businesses do business with other countries. It has 90 employees and operates with a fairly small base of capital, about $25 million.
The amendments proposed seem to be very reasonable, but like it is with so many bills I often wonder what precipitated these amendments. Why suddenly are they required after 55 years of having the Canadian Commercial Corporation Act in place? Why do we have these changes?
Perhaps the very distinguished parliamentary secretary could answer these questions for me by explaining whether it was a cash crunch that the corporation recently experienced that caused these changes to the act. Was it that the United States could not, did not or chose not to pay? Were there complaints from the exporters that generated these changes to the act? Or was it Treasury Board? Does it want to divest itself of the responsibility for supplying the capital? Does it want to divest it to the private sector? Or was it the auditor general's report, which was extremely critical of crown corporations and castigated the government for mismanagement and poor governance in every way?
I will in fact refer to the report, if I may, and report some of the comments made by the auditor general with respect to crown corporations. Recently I was involved with the Department of Transport's auditor's report and I thought it was really bad. I thought it was something any government would be ashamed of, but I think this report may be even worse. I will read to members some highlights from the report with respect to the auditor general's criticisms about crown corporations, which is what we are talking about here today, and about changes to the government's outlook on crown corporations. I will read some quotes that I have highlighted.
The report states:
Crown corporations...have more autonomy to manage than most other government entities—
They are more powerful than governments in many cases.
Many chairs and CEOs are not satisfied with the mix of skills and capabilities of their boards. They do not like their boards. Why? Who appoints the boards? The government appoints the boards. The chairs and the presidents do not even like them. They say they are not capable. There are “gaps in skills and capabilities” that “undermine the board's effectiveness”, says the report. Another comment states:
Only 34 percent of Crown corporations have completed profiles outlining their requirements for director skills and capabilities.
Imagine: 34% define the job and the rest take the appointments of the government.