Mr. Speaker, in rising to speak about the motions that are before the House, I would like to reflect upon the entire bill and the new crown corporation that would be created.
What I see equivalent to a crown corporation is an entire new bureaucracy. The minister said it was not a crown corporation. It would be an entirely new bureaucracy that would need telephone lines, fax machines, computers, offices, furniture, expense accounts and all sorts of reports. It would be a huge new bureaucracy that would cost an enormous amount of money for taxpayers when the government already has in existence literally hundreds of organizations that could spend money on grants to deal with the issues which the bill deals with. It is a waste of taxpayer money.
It would be worse if Motions Nos. 1 and 6 passed because then it would involve provincial governments. They also would need extra staff, extra phone lines, extra fax machines and all the other stuff to make it work. The universities, other crown corporations and government departments have plenty of staff, many of whom are probably working on the types of projects that the bill would facilitate. There is no need to create an entire new bureaucracy.
If the Government of Canada was a corporation, the first thing management would be asked to do, if someone came with a request for this type of project, would be to look at the overall budget of the corporation and the aims of the corporation to see whether the project could be carried out using existing staff and facilities. That is exactly what we should have done instead of creating a whole new bureaucracy.
Second, if there was no way of doing it without setting up a new department within the corporation, the management would be asked to see if it could get rid of something else that had served out its useful time. Do we see a single facility disappearing? Do we see a single dollar being cut from the government expenditures? Not one dollar is disappearing. All that we see is another bureaucracy, another kingdom to be built that year after year will ask for more and more money from the taxpayers' purse.
Why are we doing it? For no other reason than we can because it is other people's money. We do not have to ask anybody. The minister can go ahead, ram it through, set up the new bureaucracy and, despite his assurances earlier, I have absolutely no doubt nor would my constituents that there will be a ton of patronage appointments for that new bureaucracy. You can bet your bippy on that, Mr. Speaker.
I have no confidence whatsoever that this new bureaucracy will achieve the aims that it is set out to do. It will turn out like the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, a totally unaccountable body that blows away $120 million a year with nobody able to obtain information about what it does and with no accountability. For years I tried to get information about specific grants that were given out by SSHRC. It is absolutely hopeless. I cannot get past the bureaucratic walls that are there to find out why it is wasting money.
The council gave away $2,267,350 for someone to work on the history of the book in Canada. Do members think they can find anything that was produced for that $2,267,000? It was a complete waste of taxpayers' dollars.
How about the $62,000 for an investigation of the motivations underlying undergraduates alcohol consumption behaviour? How about the $50,900 for cabarets, nightclubs and burlesque, investigating the subculture of erotic entertainment in post war Vancouver?
If there was even a slim chance that we could get information about the way this money is being spent, I would feel more confident about groups like the SSHRC and I would feel a little more confident that what would be created under the bill would actually produce something useful.
Let us look at some other examples from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. There was $515,000 spent for the impact of race and gender on social cohesion in light of globalization. There was $16,000 spent for an investigation of attacks on aristocratic behaviour in 18th century Britain. What use could there be to the taxpayers of Canada to blow away $16,000 studying aristocratic behaviour and the attacks on it in Britain in the 18th century?
These are small components of that $120 million that SSHRC blew away that could have better been used, even if it went to the roads in B.C. In the House three weeks ago I asked why B.C. was been completely cut off highway funding for five years. The $120 million could have widened the Trans-Canada Highway in B.C. There was $20,000 spent for a study of the changing mode of reproduction among the resettled forages of Kedah, Malaysia.
Is it any wonder that I get letters from my constituents complaining about the way this place blows away money?
I said earlier in my speech that we do it for no other reason than we can. If anybody in the House was asked to put in $10 or $20 to contribute to the $125,000 for the Tell Malada archeological project investigating the urban life in the semi-arid highlands of central Jordan, I bet nobody would put $10 in there. They would not be interested because it would be their own money. That is the big danger of this bill.