Mr. Speaker, I would like to start by pointing out that the Bloc Québécois is in favour of this bill. Today at report stage, it is not a question of whether or not to create a Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness but rather the unavowed yet obvious desire of the federal government to trample over areas of provincial jurisdiction.
In committee—as has just been said—we reached a decision. We might have expected this government, which loved to pay lip service to the principle of enhancing the role of MPs, to respect the work and role of those same MPs particularly in committee.
I think it is extremely idealistic wishful thinking to believe that the government was going to stick to the principles it has been making so much of in recent months. It has been claiming these principles, crossing its heart: that this democratic institution needed to have its true role and importance restored to it, that MPs needed to feel they had more of a say, more of a role. Yet, as the old saying goes, the leopard can never change his spots.
The government has found nothing better to do, during the report stage consideration of a bill that has just come back from committee, than to slough off everything that committee has done, in its usual arrogant way. “We are the ones who possess the truth. We have decided that the MPs on the committee were mistaken, that they were wrong, and so, despite the points of view they defended in committee, we are going back to the original version, the right one. We are right, so we are going to reimpose our original point of view, and who cares what members in committee may have said or thought during the committee deliberations. That is all there is to it.”
Like I said, this is the same arrogant, disrespectful, haughty, and condescending attitude the government takes towards not only the public in general, but also elected representatives in the House. What is happening here today is distressing and sad.
We had hoped the government would be true to its principles and respect the point of views of parliamentarians. But it seems that was not to be.
To go back to the substance of the debate today, we are being told we should reinstate in the bill the reference to the minister's duties and functions, that being an indirect reference to his or her constitutional responsibilities. The government does not want to spell out what it means by “duties and functions” of the minister because vagueness leaves room to manoeuvre. It is talking about the duties and functions of the minister, but we should understand here that it is referring to the constitutional duties and functions of the minister.
The parliamentary secretary did not hesitate to tell in committee, “The minister will not act in a way that is unconstitutional.” More on that later.
But I would like to quote one of the officials who appeared before the committee during the clause by clause examination of the bill. He told us:
If this sets a precedent in how this minister's powers ought to be interpreted, a court, in interpreting another minister's powers in legislation that didn't have such a reference...that would be a question that would have to be explored in terms of how you interpret statutes.
Mr. Pentney made that remark because, in his opinion, the original wording of the bill, which the government seeks to reinstate today by talking about the duties and functions of the minister, suggesting that they are constitutional duties and functions, was a much more positive way of saying things, rather than be more specific and write “with due regard to the powers conferred on theprovinces and territories”.
Consequently, according to him, we wanted to say the same thing. Curiously, a little later, he said that even if we said the same thing, the courts could interpret it differently.
So, as would say the former mayor of Gatineau, it seems that there is something fishy going on. If both formulations mean the same thing, why then are they suggesting, as Mr. Pentney clearly does, that the courts could interpret them differently? If the two formulations mean the same thing, why is the government concerned that the courts could interpret them differently? We believe there is cause for concern because the government is concerned. If the government wants to go back to the initial wording, it is surely because, as I said a moment ago, it wants to cut itself some slack.
For that matter, I would like to come back to the affirmation of the parliamentary secretary, who said the minister would not violate the Constitution. With great respect, I would say that the government violates every day its own Constitution. It infringes constantly on the powers of provinces, of Quebec and of the territories. Indeed, the Bloc has shown that 44% of the government's budgetary spending for 2002-03 was in areas of provincial and territorial jurisdiction, and not its own.
In this respect, I would like to quote one of the conclusions of the Léonard committee report. I can see the hon. member for Joliette who also worked on this committee. It was established by the Bloc Québécois to study federal government spending and the ways it accentuates the phenomenon of fiscal imbalance.
The Léonard report said that if intrusive spending is compared to truly federal spending, excluding debt servicing, the federal government now spends more in Quebec's fields of jurisdiction than in its own fields. That says a lot.
The federal government spends almost more money in other fields of jurisdiction than in its own. The results are obvious. The federal government has been withdrawing from its own jurisdictions, perhaps because it thinks they are less visible and it wants more visibility. It wants the citizens to be more aware of what it is doing, which means that it invests more in fields that affect them more directly. I think it is part of the federal government's unhealthy desire to sell itself, make itself look good and advertise itself.
Although we agree in principle with Bill C-6, the fact remains that this bill gives the Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness a number of powers that infringe on those of the provinces. Therefore, it is important to make it clear in the bill that everything must be done in complete respect for provincial jurisdictions and in cooperation with the provinces and territories in order to prevent the federal government barging in and dictating its orders in fields that do not normally belong to it.
I am thinking, for example, of emergency preparedness, public health, the establishment, maintenance and administration of prisons and reformatories in each province, or of strictly local natural disasters. Certainly, when there is a disaster, federal assistance is appreciated, but it must be requested. I will close by mentioning the administration of justice.
For all these reasons, we shall oppose the government amendment before us today.