Mr. Speaker, I know I only have a few minutes, but I will get right down to business. Bill C-17 is about innovation.
I would ask the government to allow innovation to start at home in this House. I have been here for seven years and never have I been in an environment where we have seen the death of innovation like this. Every member of parliament has had their rights to speak out freely destroyed and innovation has been choked off. If MPs try to be innovative, they are forced to put their ideas through an interminable series of committees where their ideas are chewed up and destroyed. At the end there is nothing more than pablum, gruel and useless stuff that does not challenge the status quo.
The press cannot speak to MPs. It is directed by parties as to who it can or cannot speak to. The individual MP cannot be innovative.
If the public wants to know why their MPs are having a very difficult time being innovative and challenging the status quo, it is because they are not allowed to. They are ostracized if they do. We should be dealing with issues like reforming health care and saving pensions. We should be putting forward new ideas to improve our environment. We should be putting forward new ways to deal with federal-provincial issues, defence issues, our role in the world, innovation that prevents conflict, innovation that enables people to get jobs and innovative ways to reform our tax structure. We should be dealing with large issues in the House. That is a pox on all of us if we do not do these things.
The bill before us is about creating a Canada fund for innovation and spending $1.25 billion. As my colleague from St. Albert mentioned very eloquently, why not allow the fund to be audited? Why not allow the auditor general to look at it? Why leave it up to the government? We know that if governments were allowed to dispense funds through such a mechanism, those funds would not be spent wisely. This has to be done in a different way.
There is a model to do that. The government wisely created the Canadian Institutes of Health Research which works well. It is a public-private partnership. It is at arm's length from the government. It has and will be audited. The institute provides public scrutiny for the disbursement of funds. It is innovative. It allows dynamism and flexibility. That is what this fund needs to be.
It not that we do not support the notion of being able to fund and give our Canadian researchers the ability to innovate, it is the manner in which this fund will be disbursed. That is the problem. It is a matter of accountability and transparency. The government is sorely lacking in foresight if it thinks the public will watch $1.25 billion of its money be given away without having an opportunity to scrutinize it.
There are other things we need to do to allow innovation. First, we must decrease the tax structure. Second, why not put into the tax structure our ability to create foundations like the United States has done? This will enable us to tap into a huge pool of funds that could be used and dispersed according to what the foundations wanted. It will provide researchers and non-governmental and charitable organizations an enormous pool for innovation.
We should allow individuals to donate to non-governmental organizations and innovative groups that do research like the Canadian Juvenile Diabetes Association or the Heart and Stroke Foundation. We should allow individuals the same tax write-off that another individual would receive if they donated to a political party. What is the difference? Why not allow a person who feels compelled to donate to the Canadian Cancer Society the ability to have the same tax write-off as somebody who donates to the Liberal Party or the Canadian Alliance? This is simply an issue of fairness and equitableness.
While the government has been removing funds from these organizations, why not allow the organizations to have the ability to provide for themselves?