Madam Speaker, I am very honoured to rise and debate an issue in the House that is of importance to some members.
I would like to first congratulate the member because quite clearly he has thought about something that is important to him and he put together a private member's motion. He submitted it and it was drawn. Therefore I congratulate him for having his motion drawn. That is something for which I am still waiting.
The House knows that we now have the list where everyone's bills or motions are drawn, so I can no longer say that mine has not been drawn, unfortunately. Of course I am at about spot 194 and I have a suspicion there will be an election before my number comes up, be that as it may.
With respect to the elements of the motion, I want to begin my speech by stating unequivocally that I cannot support it. I would like to explain my rationale because I did think about this quite a bit. I was assigned to look at this one for our party, and I was pleased to do that. I have very good reasons to be opposed to this and I will go through them one at a time.
First, as was mentioned across the way, I believe this really opens itself up to interference. I think of this example. There are many voluntary and very fine charitable groups in my riding, as I believe there are in every riding in the country. I choose which ones I want to support. I get many requests and for some of them I write a cheque. The House knows that we now do not have such a fund, so therefore when I write the cheque, it comes out of my own personal money. Actually it comes out of my wife's account. No, I am kidding, she actually draws on my account from time to time. It really is our money that pays for it.
I want to give an example of a group that I have never supported at all. The members invited me to their fundraiser. They said, “Mr. Epp, as a member of Parliament, you're very presence here will help us to have a successful event”. I smiled, thanked them and I could hardly believe it was true. I guess when we have MP after our names some people hold us in higher esteem. That is good and we need to work on ensuring that it continues to be true.
I went to the function. It was a fundraiser, so it had a silent auction. I walked around and I have no idea why but I put a bid on a DVD player. I do not have a television or a stereo that accepts an output from one of those things. My equipment is 40 years old. I am never home to use it anyway. Therefore I put a bid on it, never realizing that my bid, the first bid, would also be the last bid, so I got in a really nice box a DVD player for which I had absolutely no use but it was a good donation to that group.
I brought it home, and one day I mentioned this to my family. My son said that he would be quite willing to assist me in my dilemma . Now my son has a nice DVD player and the group, which was a private school, has an additional $150 that it would not have had otherwise, but I was quite happy to do that.
Should we be using taxpayer money for this kind of thing is one of the questions here. I think not. The taxpayers entrust money to us to support government programs. I think there ought to be criteria for programs that are eligible for funding. If those criteria are met, then those people should receive that funding. If those criteria are not met, they should not. It should not depend upon who one's friend is.
Each one of us have personal preferences when it comes to charities that we choose to support. I do not think it is right at all for taxpayers, who come from all groups, to have to put money into a pot and then have to depend upon one person to use that money and to reallocate it.
I am rather surprised that the member from the Bloc has suggested this, for a couple of reasons. First, I am surprised that the Bloc would want to have a federal intrusion into a provincial matter. Most social programs, such housing, hospitals and all these things, are under provincial jurisdiction. If the Bloc wants to keep the federal government out of this, why not just handle it inside the province?
I heard a member say “my money”. That is the next argument from the Bloc that surprises me. Public accounts notwithstanding, which show this not to be true, the Bloc members contend that they are sending more money to Ottawa than they receive back. I also, by the way, would counter that the public accounts do not actually reflect that as a fact, but that is what they contend. Therefore they would be better off if the federal government did not do this. They then could keep their money in the province. They could do way more with it than if they send it to Ottawa and only receive part of it back.
I have couple of other things to mention in this regard. As members of Parliament, we should concentrate on serving our constituents in two main areas, the first being in the legislative area. We ought to come to Ottawa, debate and vote freely on bills and motions that produce the best laws for this country. That should be our first priority.
Our second priority should be to assist our constituents when they run into trouble with various government departments. Those are the criteria on which we should be judged come election time: Did we do a good job on that?
If we were to introduce something like this, people would be making voting decisions based upon whether or not we were approving money for them out of this fund. I do not want that. I do not want to be judged on the fact that I was given a finite amount of money to give away, to the best of my ability, to whoever asked and then more people asked and I had to say “Sorry, there is no money left”, and they would say “Well I am not going to vote for him again, he does not care about us”. I do not want to introduce that. It is a false criterion to evaluate at election time.
The last thing I want to talk about is the fact that Alberta, provincially, has such a program. In fact, it has two programs: one is the community initiatives program and the other is the community facility enhancement program. Both of those programs are ways that the Alberta government uses to redistribute to the communities money that it gains by the lottery corporation, by its gaming taxes and the royalties it gets. That is partially how it redistributes that money. I have actually been in meetings where people have been almost fighting with their MLAs about who will get the money and who will not. I think it is really bad.
Again I will come back to my previous point. There ought to be set criteria. If people meet them, they get the money. If they do not, they do not get the money. It should not be based upon who can be the best friend or the best lobbyist.
I am also concerned about the fact that the motion says “the government should make available to Members a support fund for community activities”. In other words, it would go to the members and then the members would have it to disburse.
In Alberta, notwithstanding what I just said and notwithstanding the fact that the MLAs' recommendation, as everybody knows, is the primary criteria for whether or not the money is expended, if we look at their criteria, they are very specific on which non-profit groups can get it, all the details on how to apply for it, and there are rules on maximum payouts and even maximum amounts for which they can apply. They must have matching money that they earn and all of these things are taken into account.
With all due respect to the member for Saint-Jean, I appreciate that his private member's bill was drawn and that he stimulated the debate tonight, but I will not be able to support this motion. I will continue to help charitable organizations with my own money when I make that choice and that gives me much greater freedom.