Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise on behalf of the official opposition in the debate on Bill C-17. I thank the parliamentary secretary for mercifully abbreviating his remarks.
I will say at the outset that the bill, as the parliamentary secretary has indicated, deals with amendments to two statutes. One deals with funding for the Canada foundation for innovation and the other deals with amendments to the Financial Administration Act, the FAA. Neither are related, but the government has decided to parcel them together in the one bill. Both elements of the bill are evidence of how the government approaches legislation in an inappropriate fashion.
Let me address the bill as it concerns the Canada foundation for innovation. It proposes to give statutory authority to an announcement already made by the Minister of Industry to increase funding to the CFI by some $750 million.
I think many of my colleagues will share this sentiment: I find it troublesome, to say the least, that parliament is constantly putting forth legislation to authorize spending that has already been announced as a fait accompli by the government, in this case by the Minister of Industry.
Rather than coming before the House of Commons to seek the authority of parliament before making public and political commitments, the government ignores the ancient prerogatives of parliament and abuses its executive authority. It makes announcements outside this place and then later comes along to say it needs parliament's approval. After 900 years of parliamentary struggle to give representatives of the House of Commons the power to scrutinize, reject or authorize the spending plans of the crown, this is what we are facing. This is just part of an endless pattern of the centralization of power, the abuse of power and the contempt of parliament, not just by this Liberal government, but its predecessor governments, that increasingly diminishes the prerogatives of this place to authorize spending.
The government might say that it knows for sure that it will get these things passed anyway. How does it know that? The last vote which I was at in this place the government lost. We cannot be certain that announcements made by the Minister of Industry will end up as authorized appropriations by this parliament. There is no certainty in that. To assume otherwise is to exercise a great degree of arrogance.
Also I found it troublesome that the Minister of Industry, that very thoughtful, reflective gentleman and that great contributor to public policy debate in this country, announced this. The Minister of Industry, that great friend of industry, through the Voisey's Bay debacle acted like the dictator of a banana republic by telling a private company that it could not, after having received all regulatory authorization, benefit from its private investment in a major capital investment in his own province. It is an embarrassment that he is the Minister of Industry.
When the minister stood up about a month ago and made this announcement of $750 million for the Canada foundation for innovation, he did so in a context that was completely without any reference in the federal so-called mini budget, the finance minister's political statement of last October and in lieu of a conventional spring budget. He announced nearly $1 billion in new public spending without any broader fiscal context.
We find this troublesome. The fact that he did so at the very end of the fiscal year, which ended this past week, is part of the pattern of spend it or lose budgeting, or March madness, of which this government is a brilliant practitioner. Departments know if they do not fully exhaust money which is on the table or which is available in a given fiscal year, it will be returned and will not be available to them to spend in future years.
The government tells us that this $750 million, and I look forward to questioning representatives of the ministry at committee on this point, will be spent over the duration of something like 10 years. I asked officials in a briefing whether the $750 million would be spent in 10 years. They said “No, something like 10 years”. What does that mean? It is nearly a billion dollars of tax money and the government is not even sure over what duration this will be rolled out.
One thing is for sure. The government wants to book it all in this current fiscal year as part of the well established practice, which has been much criticized by the auditor general, of trying to diminish the size of the surplus in any given fiscal year for political reasons. Then the government can turn around and tell taxpayers that it is sorry it cannot afford to give more real, meaningful tax relief because the surpluses are just not big enough. Year after year we hear this sad story, precisely because the surpluses have been overwhelmingly consumed by huge spending projects and the March madness represented by the announcement which found its way into the bill.
Major spending commitments ought to come before this place in a budget speech in parliament before they are announced by a hyperpolitical minister, like the minister responsible for industry. They ought to be authorized by this place in the context of an overall, long term fiscal plan.
Many private sector economists are agreeing with the official opposition in its assessment that the government's spending program is out of control. Its spending this year will be $35 billion higher than it was projected to be the year before last. That is discretionary spending. That does not include things like the increases for CHST. Spending is out of control.
We see that Canada is headed into choppy economic waters. Growth projections for the current calendar year have been on average cut in half from where they were when the minister's political statement came out in October. At that time he projected a 3.5% growth. We are now looking at an estimated growth of something like 1.5% to 2% this year. That will clearly have an impact on government revenues.
Many economists suggest that in the second quarter of the year, which we are now entering, there will actually be a flat, if not negative growth in Canada. We have a dollar which is teetering on the brink of a near record historic low, having lost 25% of its value under the tenure of the government. Our dollar is now declining against that famed currency, the Mexican peso. The government's reaction is “don't worry, be happy” and that it does not need to bring forward a budget, as is the convention in the House, this spring or even next fall. When the Prime Minister decides by fiat that he is going to deign to come before parliament with a budget he will do so and not before then, notwithstanding that the entire economic landscape has changed dramatically since this government's political statement in October.
Instead of coming before us with a framework to control spending in light of these new realities what does the government do? It presents piecemeal major new spending programs which have not been accounted for in the overall fiscal framework and which have no recognition of the new economic circumstances in which we find ourselves, through the nearly $750 million proposed in the budget.
While we have great consternation about the manner in which this is handled, the amount of spending and the lack of a budgetary authority for it, the official opposition does in principle support the policy objectives of the Canada foundation for innovation. We believe that Canada needs to greater investment in both the public and private sectors in research and development, particularly with respect to hard applied sciences. We have long been an advocate of this kind of policy.
It has been widely remarked that Canada's expenditures and investments in research and development are significantly lower than the average in the OECD and the G-7. This is something we need to correct. Toward that end the Canadian Alliance policy states:
We will appoint a Senior Advisor on Technology with private sector technology experience to report directly to the Prime Minister. We will bring the best ideas in business, government, and universities together to facilitate the transition to the new economy and position Canada as a global leader. We will increase support to Canada's research granting councils and appoint a chief scientist of Canada to co-ordinate science activities in all government departments and ensure that science, not politics, prevails.
We also committed further to that in our election platform an increase in funding for research and development to the various granting councils of some $500 million, an amount far exceeded by the bill before us today. While we believe it is important that both the public and private sectors invest more in R and D, we think that must happen within the context of fiscal responsibility. That means every dollar must be watched with great care.
Another concern that my colleague, the member for Calgary Southwest and critic for science and technology for the Alliance, raised was the manner in which these public moneys were allocated through granting councils, such as the CFI. He interrogated the Minister of Industry on this point at the industry committee, that the government had no clear and impartial framework for granting moneys out of foundations such as the CFI. Also, there was no clear certainty that grants would be done in a completely non-political way and strictly on their merits, as pointed out by the auditor general.
There is no proper reporting on the administration of the grants at research institutes and universities, nor does parliament get proper feed back on the results so we can see what bang taxpayers are getting for their buck.
These are all things that need to be changed. The government constantly comes before parliament or its committees with new ideas about spending on science, technology, research or development. There is a proposal now for major new funding for astronomy. There are various other projects on the table, all which have been dealt with in a piecemeal fashion.
We in the official opposition, and I think my colleague from Calgary Southwest will later speak to in this bill, believe there is a need for a broader framework for funding of science, technology, research and development rather than the kind of political piecemeal approach which we have before us in this bill.
Let me turn my attention to the second section of the bill with respect to the legislation affecting the Canada pension plan investment board and its adherence to the Financial Administration Act.
I find it quite humorous because there are two things that happen in the bill. First, clauses 4 and 5 of the bill clarify the borrowing authority that departments, crown corporations and agencies have. They clarify what we all know ought to be the case, and thought was the case, that parliament delegates to the Minister of Finance the authority to borrow certain sums and he has the delegated authority to authorize or reject borrowing requests from various departments, agencies, boards and commissions.
It turns out that due to typical legislative errors on the part of the government, there are a couple of departments that are not covered by this convention, or legal tradition, of delegated borrowing authority. The Department of National Defence, apparently, had obtained a legal opinion indicating that it had the power to borrow money on its own without any authorization from the Minister of Finance or authorization by parliament. The legal officials in the defence department and the justice and finance departments had a great brouhaha over the past year about whether or not defence department bureaucrats could borrow money without proper legal authorization by this parliament and the minister.
How could we have let that situation get out of control? It is quite conceivable that they could have gone out, done so and contravened a long standing convention of parliament, which is a restriction on the borrowing authority. Because of the government's incompetence and oversights it has taken years to finally come forward with this amendment to tighten up and clarify the delegation of the borrowing authority saying that bureaucrats cannot charge money on the public credit card and tell taxpayers to “pick up the bill, see you later”.
Today it could happen. After this bill it will not be able to but this has stood for far too long without correction on the part of the government.
Then we get to my favourite section of the bill, clause 6. It is really quite marvellous. The government House leader is so proud of his legislative prowess. The problem is that he so often brings bills before this place that are riddled with drafting errors. I spoke about this in debate on Bill C-22. We were making all sorts of corrections to legislation to correct mistakes made in drafting errors in bills brought before parliament by the government.