Mr. Speaker, the bill is undemocratic. This is the second time today that I find myself standing and talking about legislation that is undemocratic. That is the direction of the government.
I want to paraphrase a famous phrase because I do not remember the words exactly. Winston Churchill once said that democracy was very hard work but that it was the best governance system that we had. If we choose not to work hard at democracy then we will lose it.
The bill once again displays a malaise coming from the government in terms of how it approaches very important initiatives. There is nothing more important in what we do in this institution than to look after the revenue that is collected from taxpayers and purportedly spent for the greater good.
It is difficult to accept legislation that deals with two unrelated things. It was unnecessary. If we had dealt with the Canada foundation for innovation initiative separately, we could have approached it in a very professional manner. We could then have dealt with the rest of the bill, which would have been the appropriate way to do it.
I conclude that the government is using this as a political instrument. It would like the opposition to vote against it because then it could say that the opposition is opposed to the Canada foundation for innovation. That is absolutely not the case. We are opposed to the way that this came about.
In 1997 the Canada foundation for innovation was included in the deficit as if it were a liability even though the foundation did not exist at the end of that year. The government chose to include the $800 million as a liability. It was a total departure from previous accounting policies, practices and principles for the third year in a row, and in contrast to public sector accounting and auditing board guidelines.
The auditor general was very kind as he called it inappropriate accounting and a parliamentary oversight. Inappropriate accounting is a very strong criticism to come from an auditor and parliamentary oversight is very kind indeed, because we are still doing it. That criticism, which should be of major concern, is being ignored. It is being ignored deliberately and not just in this instance.
What do we have here? We have the Minister of Industry making an announcement of a $750 million spending initiative. We are not sure whether it is over ten years, or ten years plus or minus one or two, or some other factor. The government wants to set it all up as current liability and that is inappropriate accounting.
The government has now gone from the days when it was trying very hard to balance the national books, because we had a crisis in the making if we did not, to a position where we are spending $35 billion more than we did the year before last. Thirty-five billion dollars out of Canada's budget is a very steep increase. A lot of it is going out in end of fiscal year spending sprees that are not subject to the normal course of scrutiny which happens when we have a budget in the spring with all that goes into the preparation of the budget.
We have ministers near the end of the fiscal year making spending announcements prior to any parliamentary or legislative authority and operating under the assumption that they will get whatever they want out of this place because this place is just a rubber stamp. That is the way the government treats this place and that is very destructive.
Instead of bolstering, boosting and creating a progressive dynamic democratic institution, we are going backward. It happens time and time again. We have not had a government committed to democratic principles for a very long time.
There may be some historical reasons for that. We were a much more homogeneous country early in our history. We have always been a country with a small population in a large land. Governance was easier and it was more consensual. We were also a very centralized country, whereas today it is very clear that we are becoming less centralized because we are getting a lot more economic growth from outside central Canada.
When I was a young man we were taught that our major city was Montreal, Toronto was second, Vancouver was third and Winnipeg was fourth. Things are very different today. At least three of the top five financial cities in Canada are in western Canada. There has been a complete rejockeying of positions in cities like Montreal and Winnipeg.
This has changed the dynamics of the country much faster than our central bureaucracy or federal governments up until now have recognized. We need a government that works hard to make legislative initiatives and other initiatives fit into a modern, progressive and democratic model. Unfortunately that is not happening.
Our party would like a simple amendment to be made to the legislation. We would like to have the auditor general oversee on an ongoing basis the Canada foundation for innovation. That is not in the legislation. Unfortunately that is consistent with where the government is coming from. We would make that amendment to the bill and I would hope that government members would support it.