Debates of May 9th, 2005

Committees of the House

[An hon. member]

Oh, oh!

[The Acting Speaker (Hon. Jean Augustine)]

Order, please. I do not think the Canadian public would like to see what is happening here. We will check the blues and get back to the member. In the thrust of the back and forth, the Chair missed the expressions that the member has called unparliamentary.

We will now continue with questions and comments with a response from the member for Montmorency--Charlevoix--Haute-Cote-Nord.

[Michel Guimond, Bloc, Charlevoix—Montmorency, QC]

Madam Speaker, I will complete my sentence calmly. On April 4, Justice Gomery declared that the Bloc Québécois had not received any dirty money from the sponsorship scandal and had nothing to be ashamed of in this matter.

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Oh, oh!

[Michel Guimond, Bloc, Charlevoix—Montmorency, QC]

You ought perhaps to tell the Minister of Public Works and Government Services to cool down. I would like to remind this minister of flip flops of something. When he lost the Conservative leadership race, he converted to the Liberal Party out of spite, disgust or disaffection. His fellow party members should seriously question this minister's fidelity to their party.

If he had won the Conservative leadership race, he would still be on this side, so I do not want to hear any lectures from Mr. Flip-flop.

Second, regarding his reference to separatists, I would remind him that during the Montreal love-in, Canadian Airlines offered round trip flights from Vancouver to Montreal for $99. That amount does not even cover the cost of fuel and operation of the plane. Where did the difference between the price charged and the real cost come from? Once again, the secret Liberal fund. We have seen that.

Lastly, the minister delights in badmouthing the separatists, and complaining about us, so why not let us leave? We want to leave. We want to leave Canada. So let us. If Quebec is a millstone around the neck of the rest of Canada, as the member from Nova Scotia has said, then let us go. That is exactly what we want. We want no more to do with you.

[Louis Plamondon, Bloc, Richelieu, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to congratulate my hon. colleague on his relevant speech and arguments.

I have to say, however, that I am very disappointed with the Minister of Public Works and Government Services, who is not bringing his department under control and not realizing the terrible mistakes that have been made, particularly with respect to money laundering and the dirty money his party has received. Instead of announcing that he will be aggressively taking action in his capacity as the Minister of Public Works and Government Services, he has been parroting the same line for the past few months. I am very disappointed to see a minister act this way.

Moreover, the Bloc Québécois, as well as the Parti Québécois, have been accused of receiving dirty money, when the investigation conducted at the provincial level showed that $22,000 was donated by individuals working for certain firms, and the Parti Québécois immediately put the money in a trust account pending the completion of the investigation.

Why does the government not put the millions of dollars it received in a trust account, as the Parti Québécois did? In this respect, the Liberal argumentation is very shaky. To defend themselves, they are down to accusing a provincial party and a federal one, which had absolutely nothing to do with the sponsorship scandal.

I would like to ask my hon. colleague who made brilliant remarks earlier whether he is getting the impression that the Liberals are playing for time. They contend that we should not have an election. One year ago, they wanted to have one and did call one, arguing that enough was known about the sponsorships.

In their opinion, the people are not prepared to go to the polls. In that case, why did the Chrétien government call an election for no reason whatsoever three years and three months after it was voted in with a majority? The Chrétien government had the majority in the House, but called an election three times over ten years.

Did the government consult the public on whether it was appropriate to have an election?

[Michel Guimond, Bloc, Charlevoix—Montmorency, QC]

Madam Speaker, hon. members will have understood that, earlier, when I said the Minister of Public Works and Government Services had sought the leadership of a party, I was not referring to the leadership of the Liberal Party, but of the Conservative Party. He later crossed the floor to join the Liberals.

I want to reply to the question of the hon. member for Bas-Richelieu—Nicolet—Bécancour. He is absolutely right. In any case, this government no longer has the moral authority to govern. When he addressed the nation on all the television networks, the Prime Minister said he was sorry. He made a commitment to hold an election in January 2006. But that was just to buy time. People want an election now. Quebeckers want to punish this government.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Madam Speaker, I intend to use the next 20 minutes to try and calm the House down by being very boring. Perhaps that is some of the flavour that the House could use at this time.

In that regard, I will open my comments by addressing what we are supposed to be talking about, as opposed to screaming at each other. We are dealing with the first report of Standing Committee on Public Accounts on the audit and the financial management and the government's response to that, in particular with regard to the recommendations contained in that report regarding the Privacy Commissioner.

We all know of the abuse that went on and that was perpetrated by the prior privacy commissioner, both with regard to financial mismanagement and misuse of government funds and also with regard to the conduct and the way he treated his staff.

There are a total of 20 recommendations contained in the report. We have in front of us today the response by the government. In fact, the recommendations go some distance to deal with the abuse which we saw at that time. These are recommendations that I believe all members of the House from all parties accept as being needed in the sense of getting a proper response from the government.

It seems to me that we have heard from the parliamentary secretary today the government's response, enunciating that in some respects the government is accepting most of the recommendations, some of which have already begun to be implemented.

It is not a situation of which any of us can be proud. It was allowed to develop. We were not as diligent as I suppose we should have been as members of Parliament, as the conduct of the privacy commissioner got out of hand. We did get a hold of it.

I want to recognize the work that the public accounts committee did in preparing the report and the recommendation. They are recommendations that we should all accept and that the government or future governments should fully implement.

In particular there are recommendations with regard to the work that the Treasury Board should do. In terms of some of the response that we have had from the chair of the Treasury Board, I am a bit concerned about whether implementation will be carried out not only in actuality, but also in the spirit of those recommendations. I must admit I have some reservations that the chair of the Treasury Board has resisted, at least in spirit, the recommendations. This is something that again will have to be monitored both by the public accounts committee and by the House as a whole.

On the conduct of government officials, and some of this spills over to the issue we are dealing with in the sponsorship scandal, the conduct of the former privacy commissioner reflects an arrogance that also shows up in the sponsorship scandal. The recommendations in the report are also ones that hopefully would act as guidance with regard to the use of any funds being administered by the government or future governments.

The report has some very strong recommendations as to how people should conduct themselves, both in government, that is as elected members, and as individuals who are public servants. The attitude of arrogance that we saw from the former privacy commissioner is one which badly needs to be condemned. This attitude should not be emulated by any member here.

I wonder, Madam Speaker, if I could have the consideration of the other members of the House? If they want to carry on conversations perhaps they could move outside. I am being boring and if they want to leave the House, I would welcome them to do that and carry on their debate outside, if it could be so characterized.

With regard to the sponsorship scandal, some rules are being set out. I believe if we followed them across government agencies, departments and individuals, we would not see a repeat of the type of scandal we have seen.

The other point I want to address is this. The accusations flying about has led to the amendment as proposed by the Conservatives. We, as a party, are unable to support the amendment, and I want to address a few comments to that.

Speaking on behalf of my party, I want to be very clear why we are unable to accept the amendment and why we will vote against it. Part of it has to do with the process. It is very dangerous for the House at any time to give directions to any committee to the degree that has been proposed in the amendment. We have tried, and I believe we should be working more extensively on this, to provide greater independence to the committees, the standing committees in particular, and not direct them with the type of rigidity that I believe the Conservative Party is attempting to do.

We are trying to increase the democracy within the House of Commons and its committees and the amendment would have the impact of doing the opposite, if it passed and was carried out by the public accounts committee. We would be setting a dangerous precedent. On that almost procedural type of argument, we will be speaking against it.

Second, we will oppose it on the basis that we have made it very clear to the House and the country as a whole that we want the opportunity for the House to review, debate and pass a budget before an election. The content of the amendment and the intent of the mover and his party is to get the amendment back before the House at the earliest possible time for a vote and to treat that as a non-confidence vote. We believe the Canadians have made it very clear that they want this budget and the terms in it put in place and implemented. They do not want an election at this time, not until at least that event takes place. Seeing as the amendment is designed to end the sitting of the House and the government, we will, at this period of time, vote against it.

[Peter Adams, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak to this motion and perhaps return us to were we are.

I, for one, have the greatest respect for the role of committees in this system. I have been chair of two major committees, and I took both of those roles seriously. I like the fact that in recent years committees have been strengthened. That means not only the government in general but the House, I would like to think, take the role of committees more seriously. It is quite clear to me that the motion of the member for Edmonton—St. Albert's that the first report of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts be concurred in is one that we should support.

We on this side of the House take the recommendations of any committee, particularly the committee of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, seriously. On March 23, the government tabled its responses to the committee report in question. As that response shows, all parties concerned, the President of the Treasury Board, the President of the Privy Council Office and the Public Service Commission have listened closely to the recommendations of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts. As a government, we have taken action and we continue to take action to respond to the recommendations of the report.

First, the Treasury Board Secretariat hired an outside consultant to assess the management practices of the office of the Privacy Commissioner and propose improvements. The recommended actions in this study were shared with the office of the Privacy Commissioner.

Second, the secretariat commissioned a case study and survey of the office of the Privacy Commissioner's staff concerning why they did not report any wrongdoing under the Policy on the Internal Disclosure of Information Concerning Wrongdoing in the Workplace or why they did not seek the assistance of the Public Service Integrity Officer.

Third, the secretariat provided advice to the interim commissioner on discipline and recovery action.

Fourth, the secretariat helped identify new management staff and advisers for the office of the Privacy Commissioner.

These are the actions of a secretariat, which is taking the report of a standing committee of this House seriously.

Upon the release of the report of the Auditor General in September 2003, the President of the Treasury Board committed to a series of actions in respect to the office of the Privacy Commissioner. These actions covered a wide spectrum, including the performance management program for executives, classification of position, hospitality expenses, vacation leave cash outs, whistleblowing, travel expenditures and financial management.

However, our actions to enhance transparency and accountability have not been limited to the office of the Privacy Commissioner. The government is committed to responding to the demands of Canadians for open, transparent and accountable government, and our actions reflect that commitment.

I can give a few examples that I have given to my colleague. In December 2003 we re-established the office of the Comptroller General to strengthen financial management and internal audits. We have increased transparency by requiring that information on travel, hospitality, contracting and reclassification of positions be posted on the Internet on a quarterly basis. In this day and age, what could be more transparent than that?

We recently released the report on the most comprehensive review of Canadian crown corporation governance in 20 years. It contains more than 30 measures to strengthen oversight, management and accountability and, again, to increase transparency.

We have introduced the public servants disclosure protection bill to strengthen the regime for investigating wrongdoing.

Last, we have made improvements to the estimates documents to make it easier for Parliament to hold the government to account. I know that this change in the estimates documentation has been very useful in the standing committee on which I serve at the present time.

In budget 2005, this government reiterated its commitment to strengthening public sector management, including modernizing and improving the public service and strengthening governance and accountability. This is a long term commitment. We are making steady progress.

Let me talk about some of the specifics of the government's response to the report of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts. I would like to talk about the roles of the Public Service Human Resources Management Agency of Canada and the Canada School of Public Service, the portfolio partners of the secretariat.

Let me start with the agency, the agency with the rather long title, the Public Service Human Resources Management Agency of Canada. I will start with that agency and the subject of performance pay for executives.

The government recognizes the need to produce performance pay guidelines that are accessible, visible and based on the principle of sound management of public funds. In March 2005, the Public Service Human Resources Management Agency of Canada published the new performance management program guidelines for the year 2004-05. These guidelines set out the provisions relating to the performance bonus and they take into account the principle of sound management of public funds.

The agency also recognizes the need to increase the transparency of salary payments made within the framework of the performance management program. The agency now publishes on its website detailed results of the performance management program for all departments and agencies. Again, and I believe this very strongly, let me say that the more we can get the details of government out in public on these websites, the more efficient it is and the less likely it is that there will be slipshod management or wrongdoing.

Subject to certain restrictions in the Privacy Act, the following information will be made public, by department and agency: the total number of senior executives employed, the value of bonuses awarded, and the number and proportion of those who received a performance bonus.

Now I would like to address the recommendations regarding training for governor in council appointees. Again, we are talking about the recommendations of a standing committee of the House, the public accounts committee. The Canada School of Public Service has developed an orientation and continuous learning program for heads of agencies that addresses all of the required learning elements recommended by the Standing Committee on Public Accounts. The first offering of this program was on February 23 and 24 of this year.

The school will conduct regular course assessments to ensure that the continuous learning requirements of agency heads are being met. It will also make available information on the number of appointees trained as well as any changes made to the program itself.

The Privy Council Office will further support the learning needs of newly appointed agency heads by offering a mentoring program.

Crown corporations have a different governance regime than agencies do. Therefore, there are several components of the orientation and continuous learning program for agency heads that do not apply to the chief executive officers of crown corporations.

The Privy Council and the Treasury Board Secretariat have tailored a two day orientation session on corporate governance for newly appointed chief executive officers and directors of crown corporations. These sessions focus on: duties and responsibilities of directors; values and ethics; principles of corporate governance; and public policy environment and accountability framework for crown corporations.

In addition, the CEOs of crown corporations are offered personalized bilateral orientation sessions by the Privy Council Office and other central agencies.

I would like to point out how thoroughly this addresses the recommendations that were in the report of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts.

These are just some of the actions this government has taken in response to the reports of the Auditor General and the public accounts committee.

We want to offer Canadians the best public service possible. We are working to strengthen trust, accountability and the value for money that Canadians receive from their government.

I appreciate the work of the public accounts committee in helping the government to strengthen public sector management and I am pleased to support this motion.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Exploits, NL]

Madam Speaker, I wholeheartedly agree with my hon. colleague's comments about the level of transparency we are striving for; one of the main reasons I entered politics was to do this. I always thought that the best way to governance was through efficiencies and transparency and I commend my colleague for his comments.

I want to touch upon recommendations 17 and 18 and the Canada School of Public Service. This intrigues me. The school has developed an orientation and continuous learning program for heads of agencies. I notice that there are three modules and the agency outlines how it plans to do this. I find that this does play into the fact that we are achieving more transparency in this program. I would like my hon. colleague to comment on that, please.

[Peter Adams, Liberal, Peterborough, ON]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the comments and the question from my colleague from Newfoundland.

Recommendations 17 and 18, which are the training of appointees recommendations that our public accounts committee made, are critical to this process. We want the most effective people in these agencies we can possibly have, and for all governor in council appointments we want really top class and well qualified people, but even the most well qualified person outside of the appointment needs training when he or she receives the appointment. The committee made recommendations for that.

I have mentioned the orientation and continuous learning program for heads of agencies. This is designed to address the learning and training requirements identified by the committee. If I may, I will give some sense of it. This is not material that I have actually memorized, but it will give hon. members a sense of this program.

There are three components to this. Module one deals with how the government operates. It includes values, ethics, disclosure and briefings on the Privacy Act and the Access to Information Act, both of which are very important. It includes principles and processes of parliamentary government, federal agencies and the budget process, business planning, expenditure management, and relations with Treasury Board. Thus, module one gives us a sense of how these appointees are going to be trained.

Module two deals with how government manages, which includes the management accountability framework we now have, financial management, human resources management and communications.

Module three is relationship management, which includes lessons learned by former and current heads of agencies, a discussion of the governor in council appointment process itself and the services offered to it and to them by, for example, the Privy Council Office.

There will be regular assessments of these courses to ensure that the continuous learning requirements of the heads of agencies are being met, because naturally the things that I have mentioned change all the time as a result, for example, of actions in this chamber.

At the same time, information will be made available, as I have said, on the number of appointees and any changes made to the program. In answer to my colleague from Newfoundland, that will be made publicly available on websites.

[Christian Simard, Bloc, Beauport, QC]

Madam Speaker, I will try to pick up where the member opposite left off. He was talking about the transparency of this government in the budgetary process and in all the good things it does.

In my opinion and in the opinion of every Quebecker and every Canadian, what is transparent here is that the government has put morality aside and is trying to stay in power artificially through all kinds of manoeuvres. I refer my colleagues to the article by Chantal Hébert in today's issue of Le Devoir . The article is entitled “Governance and Shenanigans”. The Liberals are resorting to all kinds of shenanigans to cling to power. We are hearing all sorts of stories involving these people, stories which could unfortunately turn out to be true. There are rumours of confidence votes being bought. We want to have that vote because the government no longer has the confidence of the other parties.

The government has stooped to the point where it is negotiating aid to Africa to stay in power or to get an extra vote when populations that have been neglected until now are still suffering. To get an extra vote, it has decided to help Darfur, which is necessary, but it is doing it in a cynical way. What a shame. What discourages us all from politics, or at least what has shaken my faith, is asking myself if I am a member of the same Parliament as this Prime Minister and this government. The government is exchanging a response to basic needs that so far had been ignored for votes that will help it stay in power. It is doing that to secure the support of the Conservatives and to avoid meeting its obligations.

Even Bono, the singer, a friend of the Prime Minister's, was disappointed with the government's reluctance to honour its commitments. I think that the foreign affairs critic for the Bloc Québécois will certainly agree with what I am saying. Instead of respecting the obligations of a rich country such as ours and devoting enough money to foreign aid, the government has totally ignored foreign aid by not including it in the last budget.

Piecemeal, small time, this government is transparent in its laxity, its cynicism and its poor politics, which is discouraging to all voters. This approach is not ethical, as we can see. The government is preparing to hold an umpteenth election with dirty sponsorship money rather than act on the request of the majority of the House and implement what, in environmental terms, is called a precautionary principle, a matter of logic. If there are serious allegations, and I think they are, even though the Minister of Public Works and Government Services keeps playing the same tape, the many and serious allegations warrant a minimum of $2.2 million being put in a trust fund as a precautionary principle. This way, the government would show it is responsible and not mocking the money of taxpayers and low income persons, who are law abiding and pay their taxes.

The government must act with integrity and high moral standards. This government seems incapable of doing so. In order to keep itself in power, it plays leftist and pulls the wool over the eyes of the New Democrat Party, which is dreaming in technicolour. The alliance is wrong. It is a catching bargain, through which the government will seek not a majority, but rather virginity, false morality, a social cast, after seeking a rightist cast through its $13 billion investment in national defence. This government is continually sniffing about everywhere, in the worst spots, just to satisfy its thirst for power and remain in office, it and its corrupt machine, built over nearly a century in this country.

Public disgust will come out at some point. I think we can feel it here. We want an election to give expression to the disgust of Canadians and Quebeckers over this government's actions.

Certainly, transparency is an issue. This government's scam is transparent, as are its dishonesty and the pity it inspires as it begs for every vote, buying them or promising embassies. The Liberals promise voters that, if they vote Liberal, they will be helping the people suffering in Darfur and the Sudan. But they threaten not to if they do not vote for them.

This sort of behaviour is disgraceful. This government is disgraceful, it lacks morals. It is prepared to buy all the votes, by almost any means. According to the allegations and statements from Gomery, these members, in a pseudo-democratic debate in front of everyone, are showing us the spectacle of a derailed and panicked government. That is why we must be able to vote and express this anger.

How can we trust these people to invest in social housing? How can we trust them to respect and implement the Kyoto protocol, when they can only compromise? I feel sorry for the poor NDP team that sold its platform to the Liberals who will use it for one campaign. This is known as the adopt and discard approach. The Liberals will adopt it for their campaign and, if they are elected, they will throw it in the garbage along with the party that subscribed to it and which will pay a huge price during an election.

I have a lot of respect for the NDP in terms of its social values. Unfortunately, we will never share the centralist fantasy of that party in constitutional terms.

In the committee, I also had respect for sincere individuals who are being royally misled by a prime minister and a government team with a real thirst, not for justice for all nor respect for the jurisdictions and emancipation of local and provincial communities and Quebec, but for staying in power, like some sort of insatiable vampires. It is a disgrace.

With regard to this debate, we will realize that it is time to vote and to turn the page on a government team that lacks the moral fibre needed to claim to govern. Everyone in this country deserves better than the disgraceful shenanigans we are witnessing.

[Derek Lee, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Madam Speaker, I was not going to make a comment but in the latter portion of the hon. member's speech I think he betrayed his real intent.

I can understand a member on the other side rising and slagging or criticizing the government. In a sense, that is what opposition members do. They are not all one trick ponies but we have a few around here today.

I can understand why the hon. member might criticize the government in this scenario. I am not saying that the criticism is all justified. I am just saying that I can understand that an opposition member would do it. However it is so politicized that he stopped slagging the government and began slagging another opposition party for the only reason that it decided to try to accomplish some of its priority objectives around here. That is the most politically imbued, sodden position one could take around here.

It is hard to believe that he could forget about all of the terrible things he says are going on. He blames it on the government but then takes the time to slag the New Democratic Party. To me that simply says a thousand things about the political nature of the debate here. It is so political we cannot even get to the substance.

I will pause there and leave the comment hanging. I am sure the member will stand and talk more politics, slag some more, slag again and keep going. He can be my guest. I thought I would make the comment.

[Christian Simard, Bloc, Beauport, QC]

Madam Speaker, I think that the member opposite wandered astray. He must think that he is in the business of selling cars, and used ones at that. That is the kind of morality that is involved. We are in the business of politics and proud to be in that business. I am being criticized for being political when I am a member of Parliament. Perhaps the member does not know what clean, healthy politics is. That is the kind of politics the Bloc Québécois practices.

Now, to paraphrase an American president, if he cannot stand the heat, he should get out of the kitchen; if he does not like the rules of politics, he should not run again. He is unable to reply to my arguments, except in vague terms. He did not even notice that I actually had rather good words for the New Democratic Party, although not too many for their strategy. With such a strategy, which benefits only the bigger fish of the two, that is, the one that eats the other, that party risks becoming, by its own doing, a political species at risk. Unfortunately, it is possible that nobody will remember that the Layton-Martin agreement, between the leader of the NDP and the Prime Minister was—

[The Acting Speaker (Hon. Jean Augustine)]

Order, please. We refer to members in the House either by their title or by their constituency.

[Christian Simard, Bloc, Beauport, QC]

Madam Speaker, I was referring to the name of the agreement, and that is its name, naturally. It is a compound name, the name of the agreement. True, it may not deserve its own name, nor having a lot of time and thought focussed on it. But that is its name.

So the leader of the NDP was on the losing end with this agreement. Unfortunately for him, his party members are going to suffer as a result, because they are going to become pseudo-leftist Liberals for the time it takes for one campaign. We all know that the Liberals pass themselves off as leftist when campaigning, but then govern on the right, by taking the money of the unemployed—a huge amount of money moreover—or the money that belongs to seniors—I am thinking here of my colleague from Saint-Maurice—Champlain. So that party has balanced its budget at the expense of the least disadvantaged.

This is a government that is going to invest heavily in the armed forces, that is going to govern in such a way as to generate huge surpluses which will be concealed so as to put them into the debt without debate. It will hide the $3.4 billion surplus at CMHC while 1.7 million of our fellow citizens are experiencing housing problems.

So this is a government that governs blithely on the right, listening to its little friends, its little lobbies, and using its little strategies, and, in an election situation, flirts with its NDP friends, who are always falling for their tricks.

I think that the same thing happened in a minority government in 1974—I may be off a year or two—where they lost half of their members following this type of agreement with a bigger and more cunning fish—

[An hon. member]

And more voracious.

[Christian Simard, Bloc, Beauport, QC]

Yes, more voracious. I thank my colleague. So they fell into the trap. I think that Quebeckers will not do the same with such an empty election promise. In June 2004, we heard such promises, for example the promise to put $1.5 billion in social housing, another promise that was broken.

With a knife to its throat and afraid to lose power, the government leans a little to the left, then leans a little to the right, then does a little something underhanded, like buying a member's vote. When I say buying, let us be clear. Following representations to the Prime Minister, there are promises of supplementary funding for Africa, when the government did not have the moral dignity to provide such funding when it should have done so. The government is trying to buy the vote of an independent member by promising aid to Sudan. Just that is enough to skew the process and, just for that, we should kick these people out of office as soon as possible.

[Derek Lee, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am certainly not in a position to continue the debate of the previous speaker. I am kind of shocked that a member would regard the situation in Darfur as just a political issue, a location where there is what we regard as abject lawlessness, where men, women and children are being killed.

Notwithstanding the efforts of the African Union and the United Nations, more has to be done there to protect what life there still is in Darfur. Thousands and thousands of people are huddled around in camps because they are at risk of death or being maimed or raped if they move.

I do not accept that the Darfur issue around here is purely an issue of party politics. I regret that the new member is falling into a pattern of regarding the debate around here as just politics. I am not sure Canadians will be tuning in much longer to hear the political rhetoric.

I would like to get back to the motion even though it has been radically altered to conform to the Conservatives' plan here. I will speak to the main motion through the amendment if I can, as difficult as that may be to do.

The original motion had to do with the committee report that looked through the financial circumstances surrounding the Office of the Privacy Commissioner. That was what I would call a three-headed monster at one point in time. It was a matter that I, as a member, worked on for awhile. It seemed to me at the time that the Office of the Privacy Commissioner had been spun off like a satellite. It was out of touch with the normal accounting processes that were in place around here. As it was spun off, as it carried on its work on behalf of Parliament for Canadians, there was an obvious reduction in transparency and very reluctant accountability.

I just want to make a note here that the Privacy Commissioner was and is an officer of Parliament, not a functionary of the government, not a civil servant nor a public servant in that sense, but someone who serves Parliament as an officer of Parliament. In that regard, it is Parliament that would normally carry the can on accountability. It is Parliament that authorizes the money for spending and it is Parliament that should be providing the management vehicle, in this case not the fault of the former privacy commissioner. In a sense, Parliament and, a bit more broadly, the government, did not have its act together.

A whole list of issues come to mind now as we look back 10 and 20 years. As the parliamentary component of governance has grown, we have not grown the management infrastructure there. Even today we are working on the funding mechanism for officers of Parliament and other issues.

In this particular case, when problems became apparent it was up to Parliament to ferret out the facts and find out what was happening so we began our work. It was not easy to do. For that period, I sat on the government operations committee which was an all party committee. All members worked hard and eventually we succeeded in finding out enough information that allowed us to bring the matter back to the House, in the end as a contempt matter.

It was a difficult thing to do but at the time it was acknowledged that there were three other offices of Parliament that could bring some expertise to bear: the Office of the Auditor General, the Public Service Commission and the Treasury Board. Those three bodies responded at the time and responded very aggressively on behalf of Parliament, on behalf of the taxpayer, in an attempt to regularize what was happening in the Office of the Privacy Commissioner.

The same thing happens in the corporate world. When people do funny things with money they do not write a press release. They hide it. They bury it. It is actually quite difficult to find these things when they are going on. I say again that it happens in government, in business and probably in families but we need to have the mechanisms and the transparency that will allow us to find these things.

I want to acknowledge the work of the Auditor General, the Public Service Commission and the Treasury Board in responding to both the report from the government operations committee and the report of the public accounts committee. Both these parliamentary committees were active and busy in trying to essentially fix what was broken and clean up what was, in light of the size of government, a small problem but every dollar is worth a dollar. This was a small department.

In thinking back to the years 1993, 1894 and 1995 it was a time when under program review the government attempted to reduce the expenses of government. I was not working in that area at the time but the government decided to reduce the number of comptrollers. We are getting back into very boring territory but the comptrollers are the people who essentially oversee the spending directly. They do not actually write the cheques but they make sure everybody is following the right procedures when money is spent. The number of comptrollers was reduced. I fear that the reduction, with the objective of saving money, actually ended up costing us a lot of money.

However over the year it might be interesting to see just how much misspending, unfortunate spending, regrettable spending and improper spending there was over the period with the reduced number of comptrollers. The government has now decided that there will be more comptrollers. We are investing in a whole new mechanism of comptrollers. It will take a couple of years to get them all back in place but that I am sure will provide for better public spending.

A lot of us use the airport parkway. I can recall that in about 1991 I was sitting in opposition. I see a member opposite who was actually sitting in government then. As an opposition member I used the parkway to the airport. The National Capital Commission, which maintains that roadway, decided at the time to replace the shoulders right up to the pavement of the road with grass much as exists in the Gatineau parkway. It is a lovely parkway road up in the Gatineau. The NCC wanted to do the same thing on the way to the airport on this side of the river.

The NCC loaded all the gravel on the shoulders for about four kilometres or five kilometres on both sides of the road and then brought in lovely new loam soil. It was put down at the side of the road. It looked like a garden getting ready to happen. It then brought in sod and put it down. It was looking pretty good for the first couple of days. It took them some weeks to do this. It was a big project. I do not know how much money was involved but it was a lot.

Son of a gun, drivers actually did not stay on the paved road. A lot of them pulled off to the side which put tire marks and ruts into all the lovely new grass and soil that was probably imported from some place in Manitoba. After a while it started to look like a grass parking lot after a rainstorm.

I felt bad about what had happened because I was looking forward to having a parkway as lovely as the one in the Gatineau. Son of a gun, if the NCC did not change its mind and along came the bulldozers. They pulled up all the sod and the soil and got a new kind of gravel from somewhere else and laid it down on both sides of the road for 4, 5, 6 or 7 kilometres. Someone made a bad decision, which is what that was all about. It was not necessarily a stupid decision or a corrupt decision. The NCC wanted to make the road look better. However it probably cost us $10 million or $20 million.

I was in opposition at the time so I poked around a little bit but in the end the money was spent. That is an example of how in government things can just go wrong and money gets misspent. In the private sector people might actually be fired. The private sector might actually tell its employees that the project was so dumb that it could not keep them around anymore and they had to get out.

In government, however, it is more of a collective decision. There is usually not one person involved. I can assure the House that the government did not write a press release when that roadway was finished a year or two later. I was so embarrassed I just wanted to forget about it.

That is not being partisan. It does not matter which party is in government because when the stuff goes bad it goes bad. It is not political dollars. It is taxpayers' dollars.

In any event, that takes us back to the current motion. As we all recall, the motion was to concur in the public accounts committee report on the subject of the financial management of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner. The motion has now been converted into a non-confidence motion that would bring a vote at some point in the House.

It seems like every avenue we try to go down we just end up coming back to the same old politics. It looks like it is going to be that way. All the opposition wants is a vote. The two opposition parties on that side of the House seem to think that they will win the vote. They do not know whether they are going to win the vote but they want to have a vote. They think that if they win the vote it will trigger an election, which it may do. However the government has to be defeated on a confidence motion that is a real confidence motion, not a fake confidence motion.

The amendment to the motion that we are debating here says that we will take that committee report, which was a good committee report, and we will gut it. We will drop everything in it, send it back to the committee with magic words about non-confidence and we will get the committee to re-report that. In other words, we will send the report back with a little grenade, get the committee to report the grenade back to the House and then we will vote on this like a time bomb. That is pretty cynical procedure.

I actually have to allow the opposition the right and ability to do that because the job of the opposition is to test the government. I just regret that it seems to be almost 100% of the stuff we are doing around here now is this testing, because there are still some good things happening around here. The opposition will not agree with that but I am seeing it. If we read our newspapers carefully we will see it. The government is still accomplishing things and that is because the government is not what is in the House.

The government is made up of all those civil servants who are spending about $150 billion, $160 billion of taxpayers' money. They are out there doing the good work. The government and its ministries develop policy. All that is good stuff, unless we are talking about the NCC roadway that I mentioned earlier. Maybe the government is not 10 out of 10 all the time, but there is a lot of good stuff happening.

Canadians had a very good weekend as we opened the new war museum and paid tribute to our veterans. I felt very good about that. That was a non-partisan piece of governance and I thought it went very well for the country. No one here would argue with that, I am sure.

We have this very partisan, 10 out of 10 delivery of landmines here intended to, at least at this point, cause a vote. We will have a vote. I will be one of the 308 members. Just for the record, I know there are 308 MPs. One is the Speaker and one of our seats is vacant. We are waiting for a byelection in Labrador. I am hoping the new member will be from the party that I know best, the Liberal Party.

However, the voters in Labrador will know what is best and I will have to accept their judgment, whatever that is. There will be 306 of us who will have a chance to vote. I am hoping that the vote will not be on the motion we have cynically floated by the House today. I am hoping it will be on a matter of substance and a matter dealing with the budget.

There is a tonne, a list this long of things in the budget. Maybe not every Canadian agrees with everything in the budget, but there are a whole lot of good things in there, dealing with infrastructure for our cities, early learning, and reinvestment in our armed forces. The record here is replete with discussion on the budget.

Regrettably, we are not discussing the budget now, but that debate must be imminent. I am encouraging the government House leadership to get to a debate on the budget as soon as we can. When that debate is near the end, then we will have a vote. That vote will be a confidence vote not because we make it that but because a money bill, a budget vote, is a confidence vote.

In the meantime, I have some work to do. My colleagues on this side of the House have work to do and there are probably some members in opposition who have work to do. I am hoping they will get a chance to do it with all the political rhetoric going on because it has not helped the House too much. The rhetoric is getting so sharp that some of us are getting awfully distracted. I admit I get a little distracted at times by the sharpness of the rhetoric. It is not necessary to be that sharp. We could probably do a little better.

I am hopeful that colleagues on both sides of the House will have a few more days, a few more weeks or, who knows, a few more months to make this Parliament work. That is what my constituents want me to do. I will continue to do that, but I know we will have a vote coming up. I am getting ready for that as are members opposite. On this side we are planning to win that vote.

[Marcel Gagnon, Bloc, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

Madam Speaker, I was listening very closely to the speech that was just delivered to the House. I must say quite honestly that I had difficulty following it. At one point, it was a matter of building roads, transporting gravel and all sorts of other things, but I do not know exactly what the hon. member was trying to say. I do not know whether some of my colleagues managed to grasp the meaning of this speech.

Nevertheless, my colleague spoke of wasting time. A good example of this is the time he wasted delivering his speech, since he did not really know what he was talking about.

In the beginning he said there was no respect for aid to developing countries. I was a little insulted by that. What about the work the Liberal Party has done for developing countries? Over 50 years ago, Lester B. Pearson, who was a Liberal, won the Nobel Peace Prize. He gave the United Nations the idea that developed countries should give 0.75% of their GDP to developing countries. For that excellent idea, he received the Nobel Peace Prize. That was 50 years ago, but Canada still has not reached half the amount it should be giving to developing countries.

The hon. member said there is a lack of respect toward aid to developing countries. I would like him to talk about what his government has done in that respect.

[Derek Lee, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Madam Speaker, I was certainly being critical of one of the member's colleagues who seemed to be deprecating the current discussions on assisting the people in the Darfur region of Sudan and turning it into a political football.

The member also made some comments about Canada's heritage in peacekeeping and our work with the United Nations in international development. As I recall, Lester Pearson received the Nobel peace prize for his efforts in peacekeeping as opposed to international development. There was a serious problem in Gaza at the time, the Suez crisis, and Canada made a serious and positive contribution toward its resolution. Mr. Pearson won the peace prize for resolving that issue.

Since then, Canada, like most of the developed countries, has been a contributor, sometimes more and sometimes less, to international development. The standard he referred to, .75% of our GDP, is an often sought after standard, but we are not there yet. I do not even know whether we are half-way there yet. We are committed to increasing our percentage of GDP. So we know what kind of dollars we are talking about, Canada's GDP has just gone over one trillion dollars. This is a moving number. It is a lot of money.

Canadians are committed to international aid. They want to do it responsibly. There is a large amount of money in the budget, including a significant investment in our armed forces. That money will not go toward international aid, but go toward international peacekeeping.

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Defence]

Madam Speaker, I heard with interest the comments made by the member from the Bloc Québécois and my friend from the government.

I want to correct something because the member from the Bloc is quite mistaken. I want the public to understand that what we have recently done as a government on the issue of aid development is very innovative. What we are doing for the developing world is truly extraordinary and dynamic.

We are focusing the amount of aid on a fixed number of countries. That means the former 100-plus countries we focused on are going to be lowered in number. We are doubling the amount of aid that we are putting in. This is the important thing that the member across the way should understand. The Government of Canada is doubling the amount of foreign aid within the next three to four years. We are even doubling the amount of aid within that envelope for Africa. Within that is something very exciting which is going to meet seven out of eight of the millennium development goals through the Canada Corps.

What is the greatest challenge in developing countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa? It is the lack of capacitives, a lack of doctors, nurses, teachers, engineers to build roads, hydrologists, and agricultural experts. There is an absence of that. What is Canada doing? Through the Canada Corps, we are mobilizing a professional core of individuals who want to work overseas to increase these capacitives. That is truly exciting.

That means we will be able to increase the capacitives on the ground. We will teach people in foreign countries how to be doctors, how to be nurses, and how to provide health care. We are going to provide them with the technological capabilities and organizational abilities to have the infrastructures. We are going to give them the basic tax structures, work with them to develop an independent judiciary, develop the map for economic policies that will enable these countries to mobilize the extraordinary resources that they have within their own country's borders.

One of the greatest tragedies of sub-Saharan Africa is that it has 40% of the world's natural resources, but it is the only place in the world where the numbers of the poor are increasing. HIV-AIDS is eviscerating the economies of these countries killing more than two million people a year.

What is the Canada Corps going to do? My colleague from the government has articulated that we are going to put money that the Bloc should understand will go directly into increasing capacitance on the ground in these areas to break the poverty cycle. It will enable these countries, with good governance, to use these resources and pour these resources for the benefit of their people, which is truly exciting.

Canada will be at the forefront of that and at the G-8 summit in Scotland it will be one of the cornerstones of what we are going to be putting forward.

Is it not more important to ensure that taxpayers' money will be spent wisely rather than simply increasing the amount of money we have? Is it not more important that we ensure that taxpayers' money will be spent wisely and effectively first before we increase the amount of money up to the .7 that the member put forward?

We are trying to ensure that our resources are going to be spent wisely first, focused and effective, and that we have a gradual ramp up in increasing the amount of resources we have.

[Derek Lee, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Madam Speaker, that is a lovely leading question, but the answer is of course, yes. International aid is one of those areas where we can shovel a lot of money. Three-quarters of 1% of our GDP is $7.5 billion because I just did the calculation. That is a great deal of money to be sending abroad where there is not necessarily transparency and accountability.

Therefore, before the money moves into development aid and helping people and countries build, there has to be groundwork, infrastructure and frameworks along with the expertise. My colleague has just pointed out the essential need for that to be there before we start to move the money.

The doubling of our resourcing is wonderful. We just cannot do it tomorrow. It will happen next year and the year after, and the year after. We will do it carefully. We rely heavily on non-governmental organizations. We call them NGOs and they are essential in our delivery if we are going to find new and better ways to do this, and better our efforts to get more bang from our bucks.

[Shawn Murphy, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to rise today and speak in this debate. As a lot of people have figured out, this is a rather strange motion that is presently before the House. I find it almost weird.

The opposition has dragged up a previous report of the public accounts committee. I should point out that I am now and have been for three or four years a member of the public accounts committee. This report has some age on it. It dealt with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner. The opposition wants to make an amendment to this report and send it back to the committee, I suppose. The Leader of the Opposition, in what I consider to be this very unhealthy and unnatural quest for power, has sought and received the alliance or the partnership of the Bloc Québécois.

Before I speak to the motion, I do want to point out that I do find this a very unhealthy alliance. It is not a Canadian alliance, this partnership that we see developing before our very eyes.

We have all attended marriage ceremonies and we have all heard the priest or the minister ask whether or not there is any reason why two parties should not be joined. I have never heard anyone respond that they should not be joined.

But in this case, I am going to stand in the House and I will say to this House and to all Canadians that these two parties should not be joined. It is an unholy marriage. It is an unholy marriage and one that I find offensive to Canadian values, one that I am sure will offend each and every Canadian listening to this show here tonight.

I will deal with the motion itself. First of all, I want to point out that the Office of the Privacy Commissioner is one of five offices that report directly to Parliament. The most common one, and the one that members of this House and Canadians are most familiar with, is the Office of the Auditor General. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner is similar. It reports directly to Parliament.

To go back to the Office of the Auditor General, it has approximately 500 employees. The Auditor General operates with a budget that is now in excess of $50 million. Again, though, that office does not report to the Minister of Public Works and Government Services or to the Minister of Industry. It reports to Parliament.

It is the same situation with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner. That office reports to Parliament. The incumbent Privacy Commissioner is an officer of Parliament. He or she, whatever the case may be, works for Parliament, not for the Government of Canada. No minister within the Government of Canada can tell either the Auditor General or the present Privacy Commissioner what he or she can do.

However, as Canadians would expect, those offices and the administration of those offices have to comply with certain rules and regulations, especially in dealing with financial matters. The two most prevalent are of course the Financial Administration Act and all Treasury Board guidelines. No one would expect anything less.

However, there was a previous Privacy Commissioner, about which there are some well known facts, and let me note here that the Privacy Commissioner's office is not a great big office like the Auditor General's, but it does fulfill a very important role for all Canadians. That office was not being managed in a manner that met Treasury Board guidelines or the terms and conditions of the Financial Administration Act, and it certainly did not meet the test of financial probity that Canadians would expect of an officer of Parliament.

On this matter, we are really talking about a motion of the public accounts committee, but I should report what a lot of people in the House are fully aware of. A lot of the heavy lifting, a lot of the real work, was actually done by another committee, the government operations and estimates committee. It was the committee that probed into the administration of this office, and again I will say that this office is not a department of government. It is an office of Parliament.

That committee found wrongdoing, but it did not find it easily. It was a very lengthy process that required a lot of work, time and effort by all members of the committee. I sat through at least two of the meetings. It was a committee that really worked well.

I believe there were 16 members at the time, all of whom came together because the committee was being given false information by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner. It took a lot of investigative work to get to the right information and finally the committee did. The committee members then wrote a report, which very quickly, as we all know, led to the dismissal or resignation of the Privacy Commissioner.

I want to point out and highlight again that this office had nothing to do with the Government of Canada. The person was an officer of Parliament.

Before that, the issue had actually come to the public accounts committee. The committee probed into the whole issue and wrote a report. That is quite some time ago now. What actually happened was that the Privacy Commissioner was either dismissed or resigned before he was dismissed. A new Privacy Commissioner was appointed. The whole office was revamped or reorganized. I assume that the office is now being operated in a manner that meets all Treasury Board guidelines and all the terms and conditions of the Financial Administration Act, along with the certain condition of financial probity which all Canadians would expect to see.

Really, it is an issue of problems developing in that office. The office was investigated properly by an all party committee of the House, which did an excellent job. When one looks at the report and sifts through the evidence presented at the hearings, one sees that it all distills down to the fact that the real problem was not with the lower level employees or the administrators of this particular office, which, I will say again, was rather small compared to government standards. It basically arose from the then Privacy Commissioner himself. Once he was replaced, it very quickly became a well run office.

That committee did its work and the public accounts committee did its work. It filed a report. Again, this is something that is past us. There has now been quite a bit of time spent on it. I am quite perplexed and bewildered and confused as to why this issue is being debated, discussed and talked about in the House right now.

I assume that this is perhaps more of the games being played in the House. It is unfortunate. I thought that after the weekend break we would come back here on Monday, get back to business and accomplish some of the initiatives that Canadians want us to do.

I must tell everyone in this House and every Canadian watching this show that I feel it is unfortunate we are here debating this motion. I think Canadians out there are certainly shaking their heads now about this very unholy marriage, as I call it, between the opposition Conservatives and the Bloc Québécois, which has resulted in this motion.

As the previous speaker has alluded to, very correctly, this is just another game that we are seeing here in Ottawa now. It is unfortunate and it is distasteful, but again, we have a Leader of the Opposition who has this unhealthy and unnatural thirst for power and this is just one of the things we are seeing as a result. We are probably are going to see more tomorrow.

It is probably fair to say that tomorrow there will be another motion put forward by the Leader of the Opposition. If he can get the support of the Bloc Québécois, which I assume is quite prepared to support him in his quest here today in this House and in front of all Canadians, if he can get the Bloc's support to come together in this alliance, I assume we are going to have another motion tomorrow, and we will have one on Wednesday and we will have one on Thursday, and we may or we may not have one on Friday.

If I may continue on this whole issue, this situation we are dealing with in the House, I returned to my riding last weekend and spoke to a lot of people there. If I may summarize, what they told me is that they do not see any need for an election right now. They find this alliance as unhealthy and as distasteful as I do.

Back in June of last year, they told me, they collectively, as Canadians, elected a minority government and they as Canadians expected the members of Parliament who were elected to come to Ottawa and work in their best interests. They told me that this is not what they are seeing at this point. On that, I do have to agree with them.

They also told me that they are pleased with the last budget tabled by the finance minister. I believe it is fair to say that it did meet the expectations and the objectives of Canadians from coast to coast to coast.

It has been supported by a vast majority of Canadians, including at one time, I should add, the leader of the official opposition. It did contain the initiatives, the programs and the policies Canadians told us they wanted to see fulfilled. In the last election, which was held in the latter part of May and the early part of June last year, that is what they told us. That is what they have told us since then. It is my belief that we did respond when that budget was tabled just recently here.

We have talked about some of the initiatives that were in that budget. They have been repeated in the House. It will be very unfortunate for Canadians if this budget dies on the order paper because of the games we are seeing in this House at this very point in time.

One of the initiatives that is very near and dear to the heart of the people in the province I come from is the $5 billion fund under the new deal, as it is called, for cities, towns and municipalities. This is something that they have been waiting for. Cities, towns and municipalities have been lobbying for this. They have been talking about it for years. This initiative, announced in the last budget, was very welcome to all the administrations, to all the elected officials and, I should say, to all the residents who live in these cities, towns and communities right across Canada.

Another initiative, which a lot of people are concerned about right now, is the early childhood development funding announced by our Minister of Social Development. There were some funds put in by the Government of Canada under the early childhood development agreement which went a certain way in this regard. Again, Canadians were telling us, and I believe they were telling every member of this House, that the Government of Canada had to do more in this regard. This issue was so fundamental to the education of our youth that it was incumbent upon the Government of Canada to do this.

I could go on and on. The budget is very comprehensive. It basically adds a lot of funding to the social programs that Canadians wanted the government to fulfill, and that has been done.

The motion is so ridiculous and weird that it is difficult to get up here and speak to the it. I think anyone who is watching this and reviewing these proceedings can see right through it. It is just a charade. It is a game. It is an abuse of the House and it hijacks what we are supposed to be doing.

I should be here talking about other issues that are important to Canadians. I could talk for hours about everything that is in the budget and about some of the programs that have been announced since the budget. However, I am getting short of time.

I was party to preparing the report. I thought it was a good report. We tabled it with the House, although I should point out that it was not our committee that did most of the work. It was the other committee that did an excellent job on this. This issue was dealt with by the House. I have to give credit to all the members of the committee who worked hard on the issue. It was a very difficult situation. The issue we are talking about right now was dealt with several years ago.

What we have right now is an abuse, a game. I believe the Canadian public watching these proceedings, this sideshow, can see right through what the Leader of the Opposition is attempting to do to the House, to this institution and to the people who live in Canada. I would urge all members to firmly vote against the motion.

I appreciate the time allowed to me to debate this very unpleasant motion that is being brought upon the Canadian people.

[Ken Epp, Conservative, Edmonton—Sherwood Park, AB]

Madam Speaker, there have been times in my observation of the member opposite who spoke in the last number of years when I have had small glimpses of hope for him and some respect. However, his speech today was such a disaster when we think about what he was saying. He was saying that this Parliament should not ever have confidence in the government. All we want is to ask is this. Is there confidence in the government? There certainly has been no confidence in the government by the Canadian people in the last little while, judging by the things I have heard, and Parliament is supposed to reflect that.

Parliamentary procedure has always provided that the government has to have the confidence of the House of Commons. Now It does not and it is running scared. The hon. member is trying to twist it to make people think it is the Leader of the Opposition who has messed things up around here.

I invite him to stop to think about what led us to this place. It is the deal the Liberals have made with the NDP, which puts our economy at tremendous risk because of the unplanned, totally willy-nilly spending that they have embarked on of some $5 billion or $6 billion. It is a weekend deal, written on a napkin. There is no thought given to what ramifications that will have on our economy and to the well-being of our country. How can we support a government that goes down that track?

We are simply saying, let us ask the question whether Canadians and this Parliament have confidence in the government. The Liberals made the deal with the wrong people.

The Liberals got around 36% of the votes cast. That is around 20% of eligible voters who voted for the Liberals. Now they say that they will jam down their throats something that the majority of them clearly do not want. They have used a parliamentary procedure, taking away our supply day motions. What will they do? Anybody that is put into a corner will try to solve the problem. The Liberals have created the problem and now they are trying to cast the blame on someone else.

That is despicable and I invite the hon. member to get up and apologize for his ill-advised speech and say that the Liberals will do better from now on.