Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to speak to a bill that has to do with community benefit. Community benefit is extremely important to small rural communities.
Some members come from ridings similar to mine, ridings covering a lot of land, often with a hundred or so small municipalities. When the federal government chooses to invest locally, hire local companies and workers, or purchase materials locally, it can make all the difference for these communities, especially those that are fighting their decline every day. Many of those communities have lost infrastructure over the years. Accordingly, it is worthwhile to focus on as much community benefit as possible.
Although I support the principle of my colleague's bill, I think that some points could be improved or clarified. That is why I want to share my thoughts with him. If he chooses to present amendments to his bill in committee to improve it, he will have some possible solutions to make it more effective.
I want to emphasize that when it comes to community benefits the bill says:
The Minister may, before awarding a contract for the construction, maintenance or repair of public works, federal real property or federal immovables, require bidders on the proposal to provide information on the community benefits that the project will provide.
Note that it says “may”. It is not mandatory. The circumstances are not defined. One of the problems I see with the bill is that it is not clear on whether the bidder is required to provide such information. It depends on what side of the bed the minister wakes up that morning. If he gets up on the left side, he will require that information, but if he gets up on the right side he will say it is not necessary. That is a problem. If we do not define the criteria describing the circumstances under which it would be appropriate to require the information, then we have a big problem. Then we end up with another bill that gives more power to the minister and we do not want that.
When stable, reliable, well-known criteria are adopted, we avoid the problem of wondering why one project had a community benefits analysis and another project did not. That is one of the first problems I see with this bill.
Once an analysis is underway and the minister has asked about the community benefits, we have no idea how that information will be used. Is it just a potential piece of information for the minister or his team at Public Works and Government Services? Will this really add points on the project evaluation grid? That is a problem. The minister is asking for something without any real criteria on which to base the request. What is more, we do not know whether the information requested will actually be considered when the time comes to determine which project to choose. It is a problem.
This is about more transparency for governments, but in the end, disclosing why they want to know about community benefits or why not is discretionary. Choosing to factor something into the analysis or not is discretionary. We have to consider that. I think it is interesting, but I would not want people asking for that information for basically no good reason. If, ultimately, community benefits are not factored into the decision to approve or reject a proposal, then why bother asking for that information initially when it only complicates things?
The member opposite really should explain that better if he wants to improve his bill.
Furthermore, there is no way to know if there is any obligation to keep these promises. Unless someone makes an access to information request about potential community benefits for each project according to various bidders, there is no way of knowing. However, since these are private bids, I am not even sure whether that information can even be obtained under the Access to Information Act. There is no obligation to disclose whether promises were duly kept.
Imagine that a number of companies have analyzed the benefits that their project would generate and that one company is chosen. Under the bill, the minister could ask for a report in order to find out whether the work generated community benefits. That report would have to be tabled in Parliament before the end of the fiscal year. However, we would not know whether the community benefits that were created actually correspond to the list of potential benefits that was submitted. We would not know whether the bidder was actually meeting its obligations in terms of community benefits. We would not know whether the the bidder conducted a serious analysis of the potential community benefits or whether it merely exaggerated the community benefits a bit to increase its chances of being awarded the contract. That could also be a problem.
I believe that, when we ask about the potential community benefits, we need to ensure that we closely monitor the situation and that commitments are kept. Community benefits have an important impact on the economy, particularly in small communities. When there is a major construction project, the small restaurants and services nearby often reap the benefits. We also need to be able to maintain a certain expertise and fully understand the regional characteristics related to the project.
The problem I see with this bill is that the various parts are not connected. It is not a continuous process. Bidders are asked about community benefit, but once the project is complete, no one makes sure that this benefit truly exists. Furthermore, the minister is not required to ask about community benefit once the project is complete.
The same is true of the report to Parliament. There is a problem with continuity, from the bidding stage to the results stage.
I hope that my colleague has taken note of my comments, since they can help him improve his bill when it is sent to committee.