Debates of June 6th, 2002

Main Estimates, 2002-03

[Peter MacKay, Progressive Conservative, Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough, NS]

Mr. Speaker, that is very telling. As the member says it is disturbing that a minister would make that kind of statement. However it is indicative of a sentiment that is growing. Individuals who have been the recipients of some of these contracts recently stated quite openly that one does not have to have a Liberal membership or make a donation to the Liberal Party but it sure does help.

There is this growing connection of money donated to the Liberal Party resulting in contracts being awarded. That is the problem. Nine years of that type of behaviour has led to a fat, arrogant and sassy government. What we have seen indicates that Canadians are crying out for a change. They will have to find an option. We are saying we are that option.

[Scott Reid, Canadian Alliance, Lanark—Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, you have my firm promise that I will be referring only to you in the course of my comments, tempted though I am.

I would like to refer back to the debate that occurred between the member for Toronto--Danforth and the Conservative House leader and to address one of the issues they had raised in their comments. The member for Toronto--Danforth suggested to the Conservative House leader that there is no distinction between a minister's position and that of an ordinary member and that ministers ought not to be restricted in how they represent their constituents and to what degree they work as ombudsmen on behalf of their constituents.

There is a fundamental distinction here. It used to be traditional for members of parliament to step down and seek re-election when they were becoming cabinet ministers on the understanding that they would be incapable of representing their constituents to the same degree as an ombudsman because they would have the power to represent the interests of their constituents over the interests of the people of Canada.

That was a practice which was abandoned in the early 20th century because we believed we had other protections that would ensure that ministers could no longer represent the interests of their constituents over the interests of the people of Canada who they were representing as ministers of the crown. I am afraid that we are seeing some of those protections being eroded.

More particularly and further to the point the hon. member was making, when the Prime Minister defended the solicitor general he was referring to the fact that the minister was representing the people of Prince Edward Island in his capacity as a regional minister. The solicitor general is a regional minister charged with the task of bringing home the goodies that are dispensed on a discretionary basis by the government to his part of the country in competition with various other regional ministers who have these non official but apparently extremely important portfolios. They are so important in the mind of the Prime Minister that they override their official functions. They override their duty to the crown and their duty to the people of Canada.

They bring home the pork and in consequence exercise discretion in such a way that they pay people in the area where regional ministers are official pork dispensers to hire members of their family to be in parts of their institution to ensure the pork will come to their institution when it is being delivered to the region. That is the fundamental problem and that is the distinction between ministers and ordinary members of parliament, be they on the government side or the opposition side, who are not in the position of power to disburse public funds.

Tonight we will be voting on well over $1 billion in government spending in the form of several votes on several different issues. Due to the vagaries in the way members of parliament submit their motions of objection, it turns out we will almost certainly spend the entire period of time debating the first motion. As it turned out the member for Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough submitted first and therefore we will focus not only on his motion but also on the item which he selected to put in a motion. The result is we will talk about the privy council.

I would like to go through the various votes that will come up tonight and point out the number of dollars involved in each. Under Vote No. 1, which we are debating, $101 million; Vote No. 2 is $3,423,000; Vote No. 3 is $426 million; Vote No. 4 is $110 million; Vote No. 5 is $325 million; and Vote No. 6, grants and contributions from the justice department in the amount of $399 million.

The item we are debating is not the largest item on tonight's agenda and for that reason my remarks will stray a little into some of the other areas other than the privy council. We cannot therefore just focus, as the hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister did, on a civics course essay on what the Privy Council Office does, informative as it is for those who are enrolled in civics courses.

To me what is happening tonight with these votes is symptomatic of a problem which affects so many votes in this place. We find ourselves debating whatever is first on the agenda and then we are simply unable to deal in detail with votes that come up later on the agenda, notwithstanding their importance.

I can give a couple of examples. When Bill C-36, the Anti-terrorism Act, was up for debate, the House got hung up on a motion that I had put forward when time allocation and closure was put in place. The motion was not outstandingly important and the result was that it got debated far more than it deserved and we never got on to the other items, many of which were important. Something like that is happening tonight. With Bill C-5 something similar has occurred.

If I were to pick out the item that seems to me to deserve the greatest consideration among the various votes that are occurring tonight, I would probably say that it would be the grants and contributions, vote 6, in the order of just under $400 million in the justice department. I say that because there is a crisis in the country of confidence in the government, and as polls show, a crisis in the faith that Canadians have in their government not to be corrupt. It is based on the assumption, which is backed up by an outstandingly large amount of evidence, that when governments have the capacity to spend funds in a discretionary manner and when individual ministers have the capacity to allocate in a discretionary manner, and grants and contributions of course fall under this category, then we see the tendency for them not merely to bring the pork home to their region but the bring the pork home to those who might just happen to make contributions to their party or to their own campaigns or indeed in certain cases to their own leadership campaigns.

That is a serious problem. It is more than a serious problem. It is verging on a national crisis.

There are vast amounts of government grants and contributions in other departments, not just the ones we are voting on tonight. I want to give some examples tonight, taking the estimates for this year in three other departments: in the ministry of finance, $675 million in grants and contributions; in the human resources department, just shy of $1 billion in grants and contributions, $925 million to be precise; and in industry, $933 million in grants and contributions.

What this involves of course is money that is given out on a discretionary basis. I do not mean to suggest, and no doubt someone on the other side will insinuate that this is what I mean to suggest, that this is all in the form of grants and contributions to Liberal contributors. However, when we have this amount of money, we have a very large haystack in which more than one or two needles can be buried and of course huge opportunities for abuse.

We all know that these grants and contributions are recorded in the public accounts of Canada. How much does that actually mean? The Public Accounts of Canada list the various grants and contributions given out by the Government of Canada. To give an idea of what it means and how it is supposed to protect the public interest, let me quote from a recent article in the National Post , written by Andrew Coyne. He says:

An informed electorate, so the theory goes, should then be able to decide for itself [by reading the public accounts] whether politicians are too cozy with business or other interests, and punish them at the next election. It's perfectly simple, really. Voters have only to check the list of recipients of grants and subsidies in the public accounts, keep tabs on all untendered contracts issued by Public Works, sift through the files of the various federal lending agencies to see which companies have received government loans, scan the text of each piece of legislation or order-in-council, then cross-reference these with the list of donors maintained at Elections Canada, not only for the current year, but previous years as well.

Presumably we could do this through access to some kind of teleporting device into future political contributions as well. That is what we are up against.

To make things worse than that, we do not get access to all grants and contributions, only those over the amount of $100,000. Any grant or contribution up to $99,000 is completely off the public accounts.

That is a change, incidentally, which occurred during the lifetime of this government. It used to be any grant or contribution over $10,000 but then the rules changed. Why did they change? We were told that there was a problem with the size of the public accounts books being produced. They were getting too large so rules changed to save paper.

This change came through just about the time the Internet came into use and these things were being posted on the Internet. The argument was that too much paper was being used and it was expedient to make this change. It is expedient all right but not perhaps for the reasons suggested by the government at that time.

Is there an opportunity for needles to be hidden in these vast haystacks? There certainly is. The way these accounts are put together, there is not merely one big haystack out there. We have to go through elaborate cross-referencing and we have to have access to information requests to get this information which is not readily or quickly available. Having launched over a 100 access to information requests last year, I am well aware of the fact that they can be delayed, deferred or any number of tactics to deny information to the person seeking it, particularly when it is something worth seeking.

All these things are designed to ensure that there is a separate haystack for every needle out there. As a result, we only ever see what I would like to say is the tip of the iceberg, but actually 10% of the iceberg is actually shows. It is the tip of something much larger with much less showing. That is what is going on.

Here is the tip of the iceberg as it stands now. This is a partial list because I do have limited time. There is something fishy going on with the various Groupaction contracts. There is the new Groupe Everest contract. Media IDA Vision controlled 75% of government advertising contracts last year, when only 25% can be permitted to one company under the rules. There was the overspending on the promotion of the La FrancophonieGames, which has been raised so eloquently by our colleagues in the Bloc Quebecois.

There was a $101 million untendered contract for new jets for our ministers. The Cascade Data Services incipient scandal is emerging in which Cascade Data Services is receiving money when it has no website, no public telephone number and no address known to people who live in the immediate vicinity of its supposed location.

Faced with this situation and all this administrative convenience we have a serious problem. Even if it were the intention of MPs, and more particularly of ministers in the House, to try to be as clean as they possibly could be, the temptations and competitive pressure under such a system for a person to veer from the straight and narrow would be overwhelming, particularly anyone running for the leadership of the governing party when all their competitors are out there raising money with the potential to give favours.

I suggest the only solution is to raise the political costs to the actors who seek to become the leader of the Liberal Party to the point where it no longer pays to get involved in any kind of trading of favours. When this is done, there will be an elimination of any hint or threat of the misuse of public funds.

In my remaining time let me suggest one way in which this sort of thing could be done so that we could improve the public access to the information that would raise the political costs for getting involved in the kinds of conflict of interests that we see emerging. I would suggest we eliminate the $100,000 floor for reporting. I do not suggest taking it down to $10,000 but taking it down to zero.

If a grant or contribution is given out, I suggest it would be recorded in the public accounts, period. Moreover, I suggest it should be placed on the government's website. I would suggest one step further. Being on the website, it should be placed in the form of a manipulable database so individuals can do a few experiments and see, for example, if there are any commonalities in the names of the individuals who are recipients. It can be manipulated by name of recipient.

I would suggest that would make a huge difference. It would greatly reduce the potential for hiding money from the public view. Moreover it would make access instant. It would substantially reduce the costs to those who are looking for this kind of information.

If this were done, I think we would see a tremendous increase in transparency. I think we would see a great reduction in the temptations for people, who perhaps might otherwise be the most honest people in the world, to get ahead in politics and in their search for the leadership of their party without finding any need to put themselves in either a conflict of interest or the appearance of a conflict of interest.

[Peter MacKay, Progressive Conservative, Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the hon. member with interest. I know he has a very deep and genuine understanding of the need for greater democracy, which is also very much a part of this debate and very much a part of the effort that has to be undertaken by governments of all levels to reinforce and reinstate some ethical standard and some public confidence.

I want to go directly to the question that I believe has raised the ire of Canadians when it comes to obligations that exist, perceived or real, and the response by government to in essence enter into a power buying arrangement wherein it receives something of benefit and in turn the obligation to support, either through electoral or through financial means.

What does the hon. member suggest we should do to ensure that there is greater transparency, greater openness, leading to greater public confidence in that regard? Part of it is the issues that I believe he feels very passionately about. That is increasing the sense that the general public has in a control, a mechanism in which it can participate directly between elections.

I would like to give the hon. member an opportunity to speak to that.

[Scott Reid, Canadian Alliance, Lanark—Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to speak directly to the point the hon. Conservative House leader has raised. However I just want to go back to a theme that came up in his discussions with the member for Toronto--Danforth.

This is an underlying theme I find in the government's defence of its practices and an attack that comes up frequently, in particular when issues of ethical government are raised by members of the Conservative Party and sometimes used when members of my party bring up issues of concern. Although not worded this way, the argument goes something like this: “Maybe we are crooks but you know what, look back at history, Brian Mulroney was a crook--

[Dennis Mills, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The member from Nova Scotia and I earlier had a constructive exchange. In no way, shape or form did we refer to any flaws that may be in the system as something that was justified. The member who just spoke suggested that we would shrug off something that was wrong and that is inappropriate.

[The Deputy Speaker]

Clearly this is not a point of order but in fact the member is engaging in debate. While I am on my feet, let me just ask members for their co-operation to be a little more judicious in the terms we use in the debate. If we can keep it at the level it has been thus far, it will serve us all well.

[Scott Reid, Canadian Alliance, Lanark—Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, perhaps the way I should phrase this is by not referring specifically to the exchange that took place here but more to the media strategy that goes on outside the House and which consists of saying that if there were any ethical dilemmas government members were caught up in, Brian Mulroney was caught up in them too. It does not seem to matter whether there are any facts to actually link Brian Mulroney to this kind of thing, the assertion is made anyway and therefore somehow it rubs off on members of that party.

I must say that personally I think the link to Mr. Mulroney is very unfair, but leaving that aside, the point is that we do it, they did it and, back there in the distant past, every other government did it. In the future every other government will do it so we are better off with the people we know and not the ones we do not know because we will never get above this standard. That is the kind of messaging we will see constantly from the government. That is also the messaging, incidentally, that explains the endless pursuit that has gone on by the government of Mr. Mulroney in the attempt to make up or discover dilemmas that do not exist. That was what produced the airbus scandal, among other things.

With regard to the specific question asked by my hon. colleague about the sorts of things we could do between elections, a few things come to my mind. I think it would be useful to give members of the public the opportunity to directly challenge members who have not been representing the public interest. This of course is the policy of recall that my party has advocated for a long time. We should give members of the public the ability to petition to have a byelection called in their constituency if their member is failing to do his or her duty to represent his or her constituents. That would certainly have an impact on the ethical conduct of members, not just members who are involved in misspending of public funds or misappropriations, but members who fail to represent their constituents at some other level or who behave in a manner that is simply unbecoming of a member of parliament. I think that would be a very useful measure. I would throw that out as one possible measure.

[Paul Forseth, Canadian Alliance, New Westminster—Coquitlam—Burnaby, BC]

Mr. Speaker, a lot of our debate has been around transparency and having the Canadian electorate understand what is being done in its name. I am holding this huge book. It is parts 1 and 2 of government expenditure plan main estimates for 2002-03. Basically it contains the documentation of the total government plan. It says “The expenditure plan overview, the Minister of Finance budget plan of December 10, 2001 sets out the government's expenditure plan that amounts to $172.9 billion”. That is what we will be giving final approval on tonight with a few snaps of our fingers. That is how much will be put through and approved.

The way many government members have been carrying on lately, it seems as if they think it is the government's money. It is not the government's money. The government does not have any money of its own. It takes money from Canadians, stirs it around and gives a little bit of it back, some in services and some in transfers. We need to be mindful of the larger issue here of what this whole operation is tonight. What we are debating is $172.9 billion represented in the book.

I would like to ask the member if he has other plans or ideas of how what is represented colossally here can be more clearly transmitted to Canadians so they can truly appreciate what is being done in their name.

[Scott Reid, Canadian Alliance, Lanark—Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, there is a systemic problem that produces the kinds of dilemmas that we get here. It is indicated by the vast amount of money that my hon. colleague just cited.

When government is this large and involved in the economy in so many ways, not just in the overtly public aspects of the economy where we all understand what is involved in running, for example, the Canada pension plan or the various other large programs, but when it is involved in these vast capacities in the private part of the economy, then the potential for a conflict of interest becomes almost overwhelming, almost unavoidable.

Everybody depends upon some form of government largesse to get by. When that is discretionary, as of course it often is, and sometimes it must be when a program is designed in a certain way, the result is that we have in a sense one giant conflict of interest between the public and the private sector. There is no clear dividing line between where the private ends and the public starts. This means that the government can choose winners and losers.

Once the government decides that player A will be the winner and player B will be the loser, inevitably both sides will lobby the government in whatever way they can. They may lobby privately, which is the problem we have been addressing in the House over the past few weeks, but they can also lobby publicly and try to launch campaigns in the media to sway the government one way or the other. We see this most distinctly in the procurement for military goods, which is an area that is definitely unavoidable, but we also see it with other kinds of procurement.

When we have this kind of extensive government involvement in the private parts of the economy, I am afraid there is no solution. The obvious overall solution is to roll back government's involvement and say that government should be involved in providing those services that we would describe as welfare state services on which there is a consensus in this society, and not in doing other things beyond those services and the maintenance of law, order, defence and the other basic functions of government.

[Ghislain Lebel, Bloc, Chambly, QC]

Mr. Speaker, Privy Council is currently seeking approval of a budget that will be increased by $101 million.

I cannot help but think— I am drawn irresistibly to it—of the 101 dalmatians, those little puppies with their 101 or so spots, either white ones on a black background or black ones on white, I do not know which it is. This government's record is spotty, too. I will explain.

As we know, the government has reduced its deficit, which was $44 billion when it first took power. It has been eliminated, and we are now in the black instead of in the red. Year in and year out, although this year was not quite as good as last, it manages to accumulate an operating surplus of $6.5 billion to $7 billion, maybe $10 billion. We do not know because of the finance minister's unfortunate propensity to underestimate his revenues and underestimate profits, net benefits or surpluses.

[An hon. member]

Concealing them sometimes.

[Ghislain Lebel, Bloc, Chambly, QC]

Concealing some, of course. He put them into scholarships right and left, and into trusts.

[An hon. member]

Into foundations.

[Ghislain Lebel, Bloc, Chambly, QC]

There was some put into foundations. The situation has always been hard to grasp, a bit like a bar of slippery soap.

Now, for the spotty record I was talking about. Hon. members will see where I was heading. I have a whole thick collection of spots here—the sponsorship business.

However, before I get to that, the business of sponsorship and of blotches—the spots on the dalmatians, on the ministers and on the Treasury Board—I would just like to bring to the attention of the taxpayers that this government has indeed decreased its deficit and increased its revenues. It had to get the money from somewhere. It has also accumulated a surplus, but from where?

This government has always been good at making cuts that affect others, but not itself. With a snap of the fingers, it has sucked up $30 billion from the fund of government workers, to which it has never contributed a red cent.

However, in public service collective agreements, certain deductions were counted as part of the salaries. They went into the fund. Then, at a certain point in time, the decision was made to appropriate the surplus generated.

It also cut jobs in the public service. Overnight, it decreed that there were 15,000 too many public servants working for the Government of Canada. I remember the minister at the time, Marcel Massé, presented us with a project to cut 15,000 from Canada's public service. And 15,000 jobs were cut.

In the meantime, government spending still had not been cut, and was never cut, or not by much. The government built up its revenues. The economic turnaround resulted in increased revenues. This did not hurt anyone, quite the opposite.

However, the government never trimmed the fat from its operations. It kept on living the high life. And today, we have seen what happened to thousands of seniors who should have collected the guaranteed income supplement.

[An hon. member]

Three billion dollars.

[Ghislain Lebel, Bloc, Chambly, QC]

They simply did not get it. I am told that these senior citizens are owed some $3 billion. These are people who, for the most part, are also sick. However, this government again cut from the transfers to the provinces, who deliver health care.

This government has always been good at cutting in the jurisdictions that do not belong to it, but not for itself. Quite the opposite, today, we are being asked to increase funding for its privy council, its propaganda machine. We know that Communications Canada is a part of the privy council.

Restraint and cuts, they do not happen there. Reduced budgets and more modest budgets, they do not apply to this government.

On the contrary, this is a growth period for the Prime Minister's Office and the Privy Council Office.

Now they want $101 million from us. This is money that Canadian workers struggled to earn and that is deducted from their pay.

A study reported this week that Canadians have lost 10% of their purchasing power in the past ten years, whereas in the case of Americans, for the same period, it has increased. Canadians are therefore 10% poorer than they were when the party opposite took office. They have more than feathers to put in their cap. They have made gaffes. They are covered in spots, like dalmatians.

Now, they have the gall to demand an increase of $101 million. Why? It is pretty easy to imagine that it will go to maintaining the Langevin building, across the street, which is full of officials working for the Prime Minister—

[Jocelyne Girard-Bujold, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Advisers.

[Ghislain Lebel, Bloc, Chambly, QC]

—advisers of the Prime Minister, who take polls day in and day out to measure the Prime Minister's popularity.

It is money spent almost exclusively on polishing the image of the Prime Minister, to his exclusive and personal advantage. I would even go so far as to say that he will happily dip into these $101 million, perfectly legally, for the next leadership race.

A few months or weeks before the evening of the convention, he will be showering people with grants hither and thither for causes such as the Auberge Grand-Mère and a bunch of similar things. Then there will be a whole lot of delegates supporting him. He will, with public funds, contribute to his re-election as party leader.

This approach may be legal, but it is immoral. Even his troops must be concerned, since he is not starting out on the same footing as the other contenders.

Let us talk about the ethics counsellor. The Prime Minister is not crazy. He wants to reduce treasury board's operating budgets to the maximum so that he will have more money to waste. We therefore have an ethics counsellor who reports exclusively to the Prime Minister. He is a personal employee of the Prime Minister, a member of his political staff.

But the Prime Minister does not want the ethics counsellor's salary—all it is is one salary—on his pay list. He has him paid by Industry Canada. He then saves that salary.

The Prime Minister has used these budgets to go all the way to the Federal Court of Appeal to challenge the access to information commissioner, who asked him to table his agenda book. Someone had asked the Prime Minister to table his agenda book in some dispute and the Prime Minister refused. He took it all the way to the Federal Court of Appeal, apparently, and the issue is not sorted out yet. He is going to use this $101 million to pay his lawyers and his expenses.

But the propaganda tool known as the Canada Information Office, 1-800-O Canada, reports to the privy council. Public Works and Government Services Canada also comes under this office, as do the sponsorship budgets, which belong to Canada.

[An hon. member]

The dalmatians' spots.

[Ghislain Lebel, Bloc, Chambly, QC]

The dalmatians' spots. This is where they originate.

I have the pile here, but it is not complete. It stops at May 8. Since May 8, there have been several more scandals. But I found so many scandals up to May 8 that I am not worried about finding more later, when I have had a chance to get the rest of the material, the up-to-date budget. I will find some for sure, because it is crawling with them.

I will focus on one of the spots. We all know that a certain company apparently did a project for the Canadian government, drafted a report, and charged $550,000 for it. That report was never found, absolutely never found. We have seen what effect that had. The auditor general got involved, and could not turn it up either. She found this worrisome and passed the file on to the RCMP. Her reaction was “We seem to have been duped here. We paid $550,000 for a service that was never rendered. We never received anything for our $550,000. To put it succinctly, the work was never done”.

[An hon. member]

And this was not the only instance.

[Ghislain Lebel, Bloc, Chambly, QC]

It takes quite a lot of nerve to do that. First of all, it was not a sponsorship. Besides, a $66,000 commission was paid to a company that did not do the job it was paid to do.

To compare this situation with something that people will readily understand, say I buy a car. The dealer does not deliver it, although I have paid for it. What is more, I have paid him 12% as a reward for his excellent service. That is what happened in this instance.

Another thing has come out today. The RCMP is the state police. The Mounties are paid by the state. Their pay comes from the government, from a fund set aside for public service salaries, for RCMP employees. Their 125th anniversary came along and they wanted to celebrate it in a big way. I cannot fault them for wanting to celebrate 125 years, it only comes around once, and is good for Canada's image. We are all familiar with the sight of a Mountie standing beside his black horse, its reins in his hand, a Mountie wearing wide riding breeches, tall boots, gloves and his hat, holding a lance with a little flag on it. We have no objections to that.

But it would have been just too simple to say “Here is $1,168,000. Have a great party”. A middleman was involved, one who had no need to be there. He got the $1,168,000 to pass on to the RCMP. He took his cut. He was entitled to 12% of the $1,168,000, which comes to about $130,000.

The Prime Minister could have made cuts there. He would not be forced to come to us today for another $101 million. He should take a look at this big document. It is appalling all of the scandals in here. Just in here alone, he could find the $101 million. The $101 million that he is asking for tonight is all in here. He did not think to cut these expenditures. It is not is style. His style is cutting from others, no cutting from his own needs and lowering his own expectations.

There are countless examples: amounts of $289,000 or of $550,000. There is one entry for $293,000 for Chicoutimi's outdoor expo. The people who went to this expo packed up their folding panels, put them in a trailer and set it up in Chicoutimi for $273,913. Then they packed up the trailer again and drove across to Rimouski, and that cost $293,478. Then they went to Shawinigan and that too cost us a pretty penny. Then they visited the Quebec City agricultural fair for $273,913.

If we were to look at this whole document, we would see that it is appalling. It is appalling and sad.

Yesterday, or today, there was talk of a CD-ROM. A CD-ROM was published for $125,000; we never did learn the name of the client, they refused to tell us. Yet, this is public money.

One hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars was paid for a CD-ROM and 12%, or $15,000, went to Groupaction. Unfortunately, the same name crops up. That is what is says here. Then, $3,750 was paid for the person who cut the cheque for $125,000; $80,237 for who knows what--it says subcontract; $319,000 in professional services for a grant of $125,000

Then, someone had the nerve to charge $525 for Lord knows what--other costs. Nobody does anything for free here. On top of that, they have the gall to charge $80 for travel.

[Jocelyne Girard-Bujold, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Unbelievable. This makes no sense whatsoever.

[Ghislain Lebel, Bloc, Chambly, QC]

All this for a grand total of $544,087.

And there are single mothers; there are 1.5 million children living in poverty in Canada. The Prime Minister does not only have feathers to put in his cap, he has spots. Spots like my dalmatians, and this is one very spotty record. One and a half million poor children in Canada, for several years now, as we have noted. Small children who go to school on an empty stomach.

The Prime Minister should look after people and not behave like some sort of ethereal monarch who transcends a nation, not to say the world. He should have a bit of compassion and pity for the poor, for those less able to cope than he, for the sick, for those less talented than he is at making politics work for him and building a career as he has done all his life at the expense of taxpayers and of the less fortunate, who sometimes move a little more slowly, because we are not all race horses.

He has no pity for these people. One might even say the Prime Minister detests them. He must not like them very much to have the nerve to come to us this evening asking for a $101 million increase in the Treasury Board budgets. If only he would put this money to good use.

I saw the minister of intergovernmental affairs. He looked ridiculous not so long ago at the Standing Joint Committee on Official Languages. He promised us a plan for bilingualism in Canada, a plan to restore the official languages, using the Treasury Board's budgets; he has still not delivered anything. He has done nothing so far. He is sidestepping the issue and he does not seem any closer to producing anything.

We are talking about $101 million to throw into the kitty so that the Prime Minister can parade around like the cock of the walk, grandstanding all over the place. What he is doing is exploiting the poor, exploiting Canadians, exploiting workers who work their fingers to the bone just to bring not even half their pay home.

[Paul Crête, Bloc, Kamouraska—Rivière-Du-Loup—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

That is a good part of the fiscal imbalance.