Mr. Speaker, I am thankful for the opportunity to speak to Bill C-24 this afternoon in the House.
I want to thank my colleagues for the fine work they have done this afternoon in speaking to this bill, an act to amend the Salaries Act and to make a consequential amendment to the Financial Administration Act.
I will start, as my colleague from southeast Calgary just did, by saying that as we near the end of the session sometime this week, I want to wish a merry Christmas and happy new year to everyone in my constituency, as well as all Canadians, all members of the House, and the support teams who keep us safe and work for us on a daily basis in the House.
It is pretty important that opposition members speak out about what we hear in our communities and parts of rural Canada. My colleagues from urban areas have spoken on this already. The government has now brought forward a bill that would create eight new Liberal ministerial positions. A number of my constituents wrote to me and called me to indicate that they do not want me to support this bill. I will provide several reasons. One of them is what I just said, the eight new Liberal ministerial positions being formed, five of them being ministers of state roles filled in the 2015 election, plus three Liberal ministers yet to be named. It is a bit of a stretch, but I will get to that later.
Bill C-24 would also amend the Salaries Act to allow for equal pay for all ministers, ensuring that ministers with more junior portfolios are paid the same as ministers with larger and more senior positions. I have always felt there should be equal pay for equal work involved in all ministers' portfolios, but, as described by the government itself, junior ministers do not have the same responsibilities as senior ministers because they do not have any new responsibilities. It is a bit of an oxymoron for the government to want to provide someone with more salary, but not expect the person to do any more work than what was being done in the junior minister position. That is one of the clearer drawbacks in this bill.
There were five ministers of state in the House for a number of years, but they were paid at a different level. This bill would create three new ministerial positions. The Prime Minister could obviously have put new ministers in place when he announced his cabinet in the first place, and Canadians question why he would have to put that clause in a bill like this.
I had experience with regional development agencies when I was in provincial politics and as a farm leader, before I became a federal MP four years ago. The government has placed the responsibilities of six former ministers in the hands of one minister, who is in Mississauga in this case, the Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development. I am all for innovation, but feel strongly that innovation should, at least in a supportive manner, go to regional ministers that we had for development. My colleague from southeast Calgary has indicated that western economic diversification was one of those portfolios. That situation was adept in having action on the ground. When there are ministers in various parts of Canada, as I said earlier in my question, we do not necessarily end up with a minister in every province, but certainly one in each of the regions in Canada. I believe we would have British Columbia, the Prairies, Ontario and Quebec, and the Atlantic provinces.
They would be much more in tune with the things that are happening in their areas by having someone designated strictly for that. That would be their responsibility. It would be a full-time job in those areas, but the government has indicated that those roles were not as demanding as some areas.
There is concern about our finance minister these days and his credibility. I believe that many of the portfolios, such as international trade, are the things Canada is known for on the international stage. We had a government that had great credibility in finance, under former finance minister Jim Flaherty. I would like to point that out as an example of how when governments change, credibility can be undermined as well.
We need to be very careful when we are looking at the establishment of new ministries, as the government has done, and then saying that it will develop three new ministers. It does not know what they are going to do yet. There are no portfolios, but it has put them in the bill. As I pointed out earlier, it did not need to have those in the bill.
The Liberal dominated committee that studied Bill C-24 did not hear from a single witness about the plan to scrap these regional development ministers. It was not an acceptable kind of politics. That was the government's claim. If the reason it is pulling this back is that it did not like the politics, the Liberals may want to listen to some of their own colleagues and the things they have said about the bill. A lot of the Atlantic folks in ACOA were upset when this portfolio was taken over by one minister in Mississauga. A number of them spoke out. I quote from a committee report:
Generally, centralized decision-making is viewed unfavourably as impeding the agility of programs. The Subcommittee was asked to advocate for regional decision-making in order to better address regional needs.
The subcommittee of the Atlantic members caucus came together, and this was one of the recommendations. This comes from a May 15, 2017, report:
Long processing times dilute business growth, and create inefficiency and uncertainty.
Some businesses have had to obtain bridge funding while waiting for ACOA funds. These circumstances are disruptive to business development.
We have certainly seen how the government has been very disruptive to business development. It has provided uncertainty. There are only 20 days left to the end of the year. The Liberals backtracked all fall on the small business taxes they announced in mid-July. They tried to hoodwink people into thinking they were actually going to do something for small businesses, when all they are really going to do is the same thing they did with the Conservatives' climate change plan. It was so bad, they adopted it as their own. I believe we had strength in that plan.
We had strength in our economic plan. We had strength in the development of our small business plan to reduce taxes to 9%. This is a government that said it would do that, but it froze them in its very first budget at 10.5%. Now it is coming out after a lot of pressure not just from us but from the public, opposition members, our colleagues in the New Democratic Party, and others as well. The Liberals finally realized that they had to further emphasize the work that was still needed to make sure that they did not negatively impact small businesses in Canada any more than they already have. What they have done is leave complete uncertainty, three weeks before the implementation date of January 1, 2018, about the small business tax.
I want to close by saying that there is a complete lack of transparency. Having three future mystery ministers is unacceptable. There is a need to create ministerial equality in these roles, but it has to come with the performance of the ministries that are being asked to do this.
I will leave it at that. It is unheard of for a government to give lip service about wanting to improve these areas and then demonstrating a complete lack of accountability when it comes to the implementation of a number of these bills, such as licensing marijuana, never mind not having looked at the accountability and the enforcement of it. It was the same thing with the small business tax.