Mike Scott

[Indian Affairs, February 9th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister said a few minutes ago that people find it difficult to find jobs when they leave this place and it is because they have made such a mess of the economy.

I can understand the minister having a difficult time understanding why things like this offend the taxpayers because members of his own caucus like to go on these kinds of junkets.

Can the minister tell this House what the goal of this trip is, how he justifies it? Is it just the case of the government looking for expensive new ways of appearing ridiculous, in which case it has succeeded admirably?

[Indian Affairs, February 9th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the minister of Indian affairs.

According to a story in today's Winnipeg Free Press , an aboriginal band in northern Manitoba is sending 53 band members to a conference in the Dominican Republic at taxpayers' expense.

Does the minister approve of this waste of taxpayers' money? Does he simply not know what is going on in his own department?

[Committees Of The House, February 9th, 1995]

Madam Speaker, I hope I will not be ruled out of order if I begin my speech by discussing principles. We do not hear much about them in this place. Sometimes we seem to forget that they are important. They are a road map for us. As Yogi Berra once said, if you do not know where you are going, you may end up someplace else.

As the Auditor General recently said somewhat less famously but no less accurately, if you do not have a clear idea what a program, law or policy is for and a clear set of criteria for evaluating it, you will not know if it has worked. Of course the Auditor General had in mind primarily the bonfire of the taxpayers, known as the federal budget. I see no less reason to apply his thoughts to the subject before us, Bill C-18.

Electoral boundaries, boy, there is a riveting topic. Bill C-18, electoral boundary reform, clause 19(2)(b)(i), there is a topic to put the manufacturers of sleeping pills into a panic. It may also seem like a topic that leaves no room for principle. It may seem like a topic to be settled in a smokefree backroom.

I take Mr. Berra's observations very seriously. I think that someone who claims not to have a political philosophy to be a

pragmatist is either a socialist trying to cover his tracks or is simply unaware of the ideas that motivate him or her.

Let us consider if electoral boundaries and in particular the provision of this act which says that in drawing those boundaries the various electoral boundary commissions shall consider "a community of interest". That is clause 19(2)(b)(i) as noted above.

Why is it in here? It is in here because of the implicit or explicit assumptions of my colleagues on the opposite bench about government. It is in here because of their assumptions about democracy. It is in here because of their assumptions about politics. It all comes down to the idea that the purpose of electoral politics is precisely to hold H.L. Mencken's famous advance auction on stolen property.

The purpose of creating ridings with a community of interest is to put people together who would have a natural tendency to combine together, to take from their fellow citizens through the political process. It is to create so to speak a level playing field for political plunder.

While this bill was being prepared I know that the members on this side of the House fought hard to get the government to change its formal definition of a community of interest. If we look at clause 19(4), we will find that the enumerated list of the elements of a community of interest is reasonably harmless by contemporary standards. Gone are the references to race and ethnicity.

By the way I certainly hope that the idea of gender segregated Senate elections is dead and buried for all time. I am not as sure as I would like to be that these ideas are gone. They may have taken out the words about ethnically or racially segregated ridings without abandoning the idea. It certainly concerns me that what we find in clause 19(4) is not exhaustive list. The commissions will consider these but they may also consider others.

There is a real danger that commissions will in practice try to create districts that are for instance overwhelmingly Indo-Canadian or overwhelmingly Chinese Canadian or whatever. I really hope they will not. I am really horrified by the idea that people can only be represented by people who look like them. I hope that no one believes that any of my colleagues are either more or less suited to represent their constituents because of the ancestry either of the members or of the constituents.

The idea that Sikhs, Indians, Chinese or Anglo-Saxons should all be segregated into one riding so as better to seize property for Sikhs, Indians, Chinese or Anglo-Saxons perhaps by electing a Sikh, Indian, Chinese or Anglo-Saxon as a member of Parliament is the most offensive particular manifestation of the notion that parliamentary ridings in principle ought to be united by people with a common interest so that they can elect someone like themselves. This suggests that people should be united in groups with people like themselves so that they can act to elect someone like themselves and really dive into the pork barrel. That is not what I think democracy is all about. That is not what I think politics is all about. And it is not how I think electoral boundaries should be drawn.

In my view the purpose of government is to protect the lives, liberties and property of its citizens. If we do not have a government that can fend off Atilla, we have nothing. The problem is, any government strong enough to protect our life, liberty and property from others is also strong enough to threaten them itself. This is the paradox of government and it is the solution of that paradox that has preoccupied serious political philosophers throughout time.

One of the devices that has evolved in British practice and in the Anglo-American political philosophy is voting for public officers. This is the vital point. Voting is a device for preventing government from getting too big, not a way of legitimizing what it does. The reason this is its purpose is that all citizens have the same fundamental interest: a government that respects their rights.

Canadians do not, or at least they should not step into the ballot box to commit an act of larceny against their fellow citizens. They step into the ballot box to render judgment on how well the government has protected their rights.

Back in 1964 in an apparently quixotic campaign for the U.S. presidency, Senator Barry Goldwater spoke to this issue. He would not, he said, engage in the politics of plunder. "If I am attacked for neglecting the interests of my constituents" he said, "I will reply that I understood their interests to be liberty, and in that cause I am doing all that I can".

I regard the interest of my constituents, whoever they are, as being fundamentally the same as the interests of all Canadians: a government that protects them from force and fraud and otherwise leaves them free to conduct their business as they see fit. For that, we need not communities of interest but ridings that treat all citizens as equals. That is why on behalf of my constituents and liberty I will be voting against this bill.

[Government Organization Act (Federal Agencies), February 8th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, it has long been the position of this party and of myself personally that the Senate can be an important place if we adopt the principles of triple E. As long as it is a haven for patronage political appointments it will never be regarded with any credibility by Canadians anywhere.

[Government Organization Act (Federal Agencies), February 8th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to respond to the comments of the hon. member by saying that he is trying to insinuate that there are really not many political patronage appointments being made.

Yet we sit in the House week after week asking the Prime Minister why he continues to make political appointments. He keeps shrugging his shoulders and saying that there are only Liberals in Canada, there is nowhere else to go.

I cannot believe the arrogance of that response. It will come back to haunt this party and the Prime Minister. It is indicative of the fact-everyone who sits in the House knows it-that virtually all of the important political appointments that have been made since the government was elected are patronage appointments. They are going to friends of the government. They are going to Liberal hacks and insiders. Canadians are starting to get the message. The media is reporting it. It is going to come back to haunt the government much as it came back to haunt Mr. Mulroney and his Progressive Conservatives.

[Government Organization Act (Federal Agencies), February 8th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I find myself in rare agreement with my colleague from the Bloc. I appreciate his remarks.

I think what he is getting at is essentially what I was trying to say in my intervention. The government is trying to display to Canadians that it is doing something but when you get beneath the surface, it is not. It is really sad when Canadians not only are expecting but are hoping against hope that the government really is going to do something.

They understand it is crunch time. They understand that it is time to pay the piper. They are saying: "Let us get on with it. Let us face up to our problems in this nation and let us overcome them". The government is telegraphing false hope.

I think that is what the member is alluding to. We do not see real systemic change. What we see is window dressing.

[Government Organization Act (Federal Agencies), February 8th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to respond to the hon. member's comments by stating that the minister has been in the House for a long time, not always on the government benches. He is part of a government that began its administration in the late sixties with a vision of "we can help Canadians because we are all knowing and all powerful and able to solve all Canadians' problems for them. All we need is their money and their co-operation. If we do not get their co-operation we will force it down their throats".

This vision was expressed by the Liberal Party and has been around for some two and a half decades now. It has failed miserably. The consequences of that failure is what we are dealing with today. Yes, the Conservatives had a hand in it too. The Conservatives are culpable because they had an opportunity to do something about it in 1984. They looked it in the eye and walked away from it.

It is a creation of the Liberal Party. It is a creation of ministers such as the one I was referring to. It serves the Canadian people to understand not only how we are going to deal with our problems but how we got here in the first place and the bad ideas that brought us to the brink of debt and ruin.

[Government Organization Act (Federal Agencies), February 8th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, if we are going to try to get our deficit and our budget under control we are going to have to engage in some bold new thinking. We cannot go on the same old way. We cannot go on making the same old assumptions. It really is true that as Tony Robbins expressed, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result.

The Progressive Conservatives certainly proved it with their refusal to tackle program spending. What they did was considered insane either politically or in terms of the national interest.

Apparently the Liberals were too busy scoring partisan points to notice what had happened, let alone why. Look at the minister's social policy review. Having helped create our impossibly expensive social programs, having made many extravagant promises that drive our welfare state, the minister set out to produce sweeping reforms without changing his approach. He failed.

While we all feel a little pain at his embarrassment, even humiliation, in failing so spectacularly and so publicly in the most important assignment of his long and sterile career in politics, those of us on this side also feel a certain annoyance that the minister, given such responsibilities, was unable to rid himself of old and discredited ideas about the proper role of government.

The idea the minister did not have and the idea that the Minister for Intergovernmental Affairs did not have are one and the same. They did not ask whether the programs we are spending too much money on are working. They just assumed everything was fine, but we were not quite efficient enough.

The programs are not working. What we need is bold and original thought. We need clearly expressed yardsticks for measuring their success. If they are not working we need to shut them down.

Actually, as I stand here and say that it does not sound all that clever or difficult. I wonder why the minister did not think of it, or the Prime Minister, or the President of the Treasury Board. If they had they would have noticed something, not something small and subtle, not a little tiny point of light in the distance. They would have noticed a huge, roaring fire, consuming money in amounts that are literally astronomical, and for nothing that we can see that we want.

I refer to our social programs. They consume two thirds of non interest spending by the federal government. They consume more than $80 billion a year. In a country that is unimaginably rich by historical standards, these immense social program expenditures are taking place side by side with the apparent disintegration of our society. We spend billions on poverty relief but apparently poverty keeps getting worse. We spend billions on health care and our spending grows geometrically. Yet waiting lists lengthen, equipment deteriorates and our politicians go for treatment in the United States.

We are paying 5 per cent of payroll into the Canada pension plan yet it is an unfunded liability and has reached half a trillion dollars to date. Half a trillion is a five followed by eleven zeros.

Meanwhile, the President of the Treasury Board, to save us all from bankruptcy, has decreased the board of directors of the CBC from 15 to 12. Were they spending over $12 billion each? Perhaps the government will tell us every little bit helps. I am here to say that it does not, not enough. I am here to say that Ralph Klein was right when he said: "You have to go hunting where the ducks are". The ducks are in the social programs, not in the board of the Canadian Cultural Property Export and Import Act, and that is where we have to go hunting.

When the minister spends as many months and as much political capital as he has to eliminate the post of secretary of the Canadian Film Development Corporation, it is that many months and that much political capital he cannot spend on changes that would really matter.

I do not know whether hon. members opposite ever watch Yes, Minister or whether they are too busy living it. However, they should watch it because it is not just funny, it is very accurate. In one episode when the minister is criticising his permanent secretary, Sir Humphrey Appleby, for the amount of bureaucracy that exists, Sir Humphrey tells him quite rightly that it has nothing to do with him, it has nothing to do with the bureaucrats. The reason there is so much bureaucracy'', he insists,is that the Parliament keeps creating programs and they all need to be administered''.

The total cost of administration for the federal government is $20 billion. The deficit is close to $40 billion. We would have to shut it all down twice to balance the budget. This bill does not come close.

I realize that to make a real dent in the deficit, the government would need two qualities it does not possess in any great quantity: courage and imagination. Even the Republicans in the United States have found that what the public wants to hear is that they are cutting bureaucrats, not programs. To say that is to take the easy way out. It is not the bureaucrats who are causing the deficit, it is the programs. Before one can say that, one has to be able to think it and that is where the active imagination comes in.

Many members opposite have been in politics a long time. They do not realize that the ideas that were once bold and new have gone stale and timid in the decades since. They do not understand that "government knows best" has been tried and it has failed miserably.

However, I put it to them directly that when one is looking at a roaring fire that is consuming some $40 billion a year and one responds by changing the definition of a peace officer under the laws governing the International North Pacific Fisheries Commission, one is totally missing the point. One had better take a step back and take a good hard look at the overall structure of government and then one had better be willing to tell people openly and honestly what was found. The government has to tell the people that Ralph was right. It has to tell them that we have to go hunting where the ducks are and that they are in big social programs, not in the board of trustees of museums. Then it has to cut them.

Let us have a rousing "nice try" for the minister but let us be clear that he failed. Maybe it is time that he stepped aside. Maybe it is time that the human resources minister and the Prime Minister stepped aside and let a party that truly knows and truly has the vision to resolve these problems take control.

[Government Organization Act (Federal Agencies), February 8th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I think it would only be appropriate since I am approximately halfway through my remarks that I be allowed to continue.

[Government Organization Act (Federal Agencies), February 8th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to offer the minister a hearty nice try on his Bill C-65. The bill is

an act to reorganize and dissolve certain federal agencies. This is good. It would be a lot better if it were just a bill to dissolve certain federal agencies.

I represent a riding with a major sea coast and my constituents will sleep better knowing that the Canadian Salt Fish Corporation has been dissolved. I also cannot express anything but pleasure at the knowledge that the National Film Board has been reduced from eight to six members. I hope it will not find itself unable to make appalling decisions due to its short staffing.

I want to say with a straight face that I am confident that the President of the Treasury Board experienced real difficulties in getting the civil service to agree to these cuts. I mean no sarcasm by saying this.

In Mr. Martin Anderson's book Revolution: The Reagan Legacy he describes his own bureaucratic battles to get rid of the board of tea tasters within the U.S. executive branch. He failed. I think the minister deserves credit for what he has done. Let us have a hearty nice try for him and then let us get serious.

How big is our spending problem? How big are our debt and deficit problems in Canada? The Liberal government appears recently to have noticed that its own lust for big government coupled with Progressive Conservative incompetence has saddled this nation with an on-book debt of over $500 billion and an unfunded liability in the Canada pension plan of about a like amount, and we continue to have annual deficits in the range of $35 billion to $40 billion.

For years the established political parties laughed the debt off: "We are creating assets. We owe it to ourselves. What is a billion? We have a culture to create". Whoops. I will tell you what a billion is. It is a one followed by nine zeros. It is so much money that if you spent $1,000 a day since the birth of Christ you still would not have spent a billion dollars today. As a matter of fact you could go on for approximately another thousand years. If you spent $20 a day since the dinosaurs vanished, you still would not have spent $500 billion. What I am getting at is that it is a lot of money even by the standards of this government.

How much has the minister saved us? How long has it taken him to save us that money? It was Albert Einstein who once said it is impossible to solve a problem by thinking on the same level that caused it. He was right. If we are going to try to eliminate our deficit and get our budget under control we are going to have to do some bold new thinking.