Richard Bélisle

[Municipal Grants, June 6th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, it is normal for the federal government to give grants to municipalities in return for their services to Crown corporations. To lift the freeze on these grants and continue to index them to inflation is only fair and should always have been done in the past.

The Minister of Finance tells us that the government expects to face severe fiscal constraints in its 1995 budget. His statement contains no surprise. Given the 1994 budget plan, all Canadian taxpayers will face harsh financial realities in 1995. What is really needed is a global and comprehensive review of the tax system and of all federal government spending, instead of what is being proposed today in the minister's statement.

[Canadian Economy, June 3rd, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, the prestigious bond rating agency known as Moody's has lowered Canada's foreign currency debt credit rating. Responding to the lowering of the rating, the Minister of Finance stated that the fundamental components of the Canadian economy are sound.

How can the Minister of Finance say that everything is fine when structural unemployment in Canada remains extremely high, when according to the OECD, the debt ratio of the Canadian public sector as a percentage of GDP increased by 82 per cent between 1985 and 1993, contrary to the average increase of only 21 per cent for all OECD countries?

It is not the current political situation in Quebec that is responsible for the repeated moves to lower the federal government's credit rating, but rather the sorry state of the federal government's finances, a situation which will not be resolved by the Liberal budget and one which has foreign investors worried.

[Committees Of The House, May 24th, 1994]

Madam Speaker, I have the honour to present this morning the second and third reports of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts.

In its second report, the committee examined the estimates of the Auditor General's office for the 1994-1995 fiscal year. Committee members heard testimony from the Auditor General concerning the role of his office and the funds allocated to it for the purpose of carrying out its mandate. The committee is confident that the Auditor General's office has sufficient resources to carry out its mandate during the current fiscal year.

With respect to employment equity, women account for 17.7 per cent of the employees in the management category within the AG's office, whereas the goal at the outset was to achieve a 15-per-cent representation. Therefore, the objective set has been surpassed.

As a result of sound management and an improvement in productivity, the AG's office has successfully reduced its expenditures for 1994-1995 by 6.3 per cent. You will agree that it has set an example for other government departments and agencies to follow in endeavouring to provide cost-effective services to Canadians.

The committee also examined and reported on vote 30 under the heading Finance in the Main Estimates for the fiscal year ending March 31, 1995.

[Pearson International Airport Agreements Act, May 9th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I take the opportunity given me by this debate on Bill C-22 to draw the attention of hon. members on the links between several, apparently unrelated, circumstances.

On May 4, the Globe and Mail reported that federal contracts to the private sector, which amounted to $2.9 billion in 1984-85, reached $5.2 billion in 1992-93, and will reach an even higher level in 1993-94. The largest item, $332 million, is related to the maintenance of the air fleet.

Strange coincidence when talking about the sale of Pearsonairport to private interests. The second item, $330 million in 1992-93, is for the management of foreign aid. This expenditure is important when you realize the problems and the complexity of managing CIDA, an agency which, following the Auditor General's report, is trying to prepare a management plan for its activities scattered, as we know, in 115 countries around the world. Federal contracts for the department of defence have gone up from $740 million in 1984-85, to $1.5 billion in 1992-93.

The budget for temporary employment has jumped from $52 million to $101 million in the same period, this means that it has doubled in nine years. What is more disturbing is that, still according to the Globe and Mail , almost half the 36,166 contracts signed in 1992-93 were awarded without call for tenders. I would like to quote Mr. Daryl Bean, president of the

Public Service Alliance of Canada who said in this regard: "Too often selected firms are friends of the government".

Mr. Martin's budget of February 22 is revealing on that subject. According to the minister's statement on that day, it is giving corporations a series of tax benefits in order to promote job creation.

Money for these tax benefits comes from the cancellation of the age credit and cuts in the unemployment insurance program. We are asking the elderly and the unemployed to make sacrifices. As the members know, these sacrifices were to no avail because of the interest rate increase which added further to the Canadian debt these last few weeks. The government is robbing the needy with one hand while giving to its friends with the other. What is it waiting for to cut tax credits and corporate funding, to impose a minimum tax on corporations and large fortunes, to go on with the broadening of the tax base that the minister is boasting about, to broaden it in order to include family trusts?

In his 1993 report, the Auditor General denounced the federal government's permissiveness when dealing with resource-based companies. As we all know a legal dispute that has been going on for 14 years between the government and these companies cost the Consolidated Revenue Fund some $1.2 billion.

The whole question of federal contracts and taxation of corporations and shareholders leads to considerations about political party financing and transparency in the central government's management which have not been exactly the strong points of our new government since election day, last October 25. While the Bloc Quebecois has adopted the principle of financing by the public, the Conservative and Liberal parties always objected to such a financing system and still receive their funds from both companies and individuals.

We only have to consult the list of big donors of the traditional political parties, it is in the public domain. We can see that those two parties are like two peas in a pod as far as election financing is concerned.

Both Liberals and Conservatives have big donors and Canadian banks are among the biggest. During a recession, these institutions always make record profits, pay very little tax in the end and can only profit from an asset sale to private investors or the buying of lame ducks from private sector by the government. The banks know that the federal government cannot in theory, even if in theory only, go bankrupt, so they will always be eager to finance the government's buying or selling of assets. Lending institutions can only benefit from the proliferation of asset transfers they have helped to bring about.

Mention should be made at this time of one Canadian lending institution which took the liberty of intervening in the debate during the Charlottetown referendum. Like other corporations, it now prefers to operate behind the scenes and avoid public discussions. Lending institutions are always connected with federal contracts and with major government transactions such as the sale of Pearson airport, the only truly profitable airport in the country.

Obviously, all of the aspects of this deal are interconnected. In planning to compensate the Conservative and Liberal investors involved in the aborted deal to purchase Pearson Airport, the Liberal government is merely returning the favour to those who contribute to the campaign coffers of the old parties. These investors took a business risk. If they had made windfall profits, would a bill have been introduced to tax these too easy or fantastic profits? Obviously, the answer to that question is no. Why then pay compensation to investors at the expense of the average taxpayer? If this agreement had been concluded between two private parties, one would not have received any compensation at all. Why then use taxpayers' money to compensate private investors who took a normal business risk which ultimately did not pan out?

The same phenomenon occurs when a call for tenders goes out. Bidders often incur administrative charges and professional fees in preparing their bid. Obviously, the contract can be awarded to only one bidder. Are all of the other bidders compensated for the expenses they incurred? No. Why are there always two standards, one for the private sector and one for the government? Is it because most of the principal stakeholders in this deal have ties to the Liberal and Conservative parties?

Consider the $1,000 a plate fundraising dinner held in Westmount during the last election campaign. A number of those closely connected with the sale of Pearson Airport were in attendance. Consider as well the $300 a plate benefit dinner held last week in Montreal which attracted a crowd of 1,600 people. We can safely say that a number of those in attendance were very interested in Bill C-22 and in the compensation to be paid eventually to investors in the deal.

The Bloc Quebecois objects to any form of compensation being paid to investors and therefore, I will vote against Bill C-22. To quote the excellent legislative summary prepared by the Research Branch of the Library of Parliament, "pursuant to clause 10 of Bill C-22, the Minister of Transport may, with the approval of the Governor in Council, enter into agreements to provide for the payment of such amounts as considered appropriate in view of the cancellation". We are opposed to clause 10. Why should compensation be paid to some people if they were able to take advantage of their relations?

We ask the government to legislate as soon as possible to control the activity of lobbyists as it promised to do in the last election campaign. Why do the Liberals not change Bill C-44 on lobbyists that the Conservatives passed in 1988? According to the report of the inquiry by Mr. Robert Nixon, whom the present Prime Minister charged with reviewing the Pearson Airport affair:

The exact amount of money received by the lobbyists is not known. According to the real estate developers' sources, it would amount to $1.5 million over 18 months.

Mr. Nixon also questions the excessive rate of return granted to the airport tenant. He also mentions the role of patronage and pressure groups in this transaction. The role of lobbyists in this affair went beyond what is usually expected. The investigator tells us that lobbyists were directly responsible for the reassignment of several senior officials and the request from some other officials to be replaced.

We ask the government to get to the bottom of this transaction and to hold an independent public inquiry which alone can reassure disillusioned taxpayers. Is this another promise in the red book that will remain a dead letter or be postponed indefinitely? When does the government intend to keep the promise mentioned in the red book during the election campaign of a code of ethics for ministers, senators and members of Parliament, political staff and public servants, to provide a proper framework for their relations with pressure groups? The openness and accountability of government are at stake.

In conclusion, for us in the Bloc Quebecois, in future, Pearson Airport in Toronto should be run by a non-profit airport authority, like the airports in Montreal and Vancouver.

[Auditor General Act, May 3rd, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, if Bill C-207, which is a private member's bill tabled by the hon. member for Ottawa-Vanier, is passed, it will allow the Auditor General to report to the House as often as he deems necessary.

Moreover, the Auditor General will be able to table a report to the House as soon as that report is completed. This procedure is already in effect in the British Parliament in London, where the Auditor General routinely tables some 40 reports every year.

In early 1993, the Association des diplômés de l'École des Hautes Études Commerciales de Montréal presented a brief to the Committee on the Budget and Administration, which had been asked by Quebec's National Assembly to review public services financing. In its brief, the Association recommended that government programs be automatically reviewed at regular intervals, and that effectiveness studies of government initiatives be released as soon as they are available.

If the federal government allowed the Auditor General to report to the House as often as he deems necessary and table any report as soon as it is completed, it would comply with these two recommendations of the Association des diplômés de l'École des Hautes Études Commerciales de Montréal.

Right now, the Auditor General publishes a report once a year, in which he mentions cases of mismanagement, inadequate financial commitments and tax losses. In the two weeks following the report's release, the media draw public attention to the Auditor General's findings. Some cases described as real horror stories are then forgotten until the next report is published, a year later.

The tabling of reports throughout the year would help maintain taxpayers' interest regarding the way their country is managed. Government management would become more transparent. After all, transparency is what the Prime Minister promised us during the election campaign.

In its twelfth report, tabled in the House on May 28, 1986, the public accounts committee said that, sometimes, comprehensive audits are completed several months before the tabling of the report. The committee added that since these audits can take up to two years, some of the findings may no longer apply once the report is sent to the committee.

The benefits of tabling several periodic reports have already been demonstrated in a number of parliamentary regimes, including England, Holland, Germany, Sweden, Australia and New Zealand. Canada should be quick to follow the example of these countries. The public accounts committee would be better able to fulfill its role as Parliament's auditing committee responsible for the sound management of public funds. The federal government would save hundreds of millions, even billions, if reports were tabled sooner. The Public Accounts committee would be able to look at the Auditor General's recommendations in a timely fashion, and ask that appropriate remedial action be taken as soon as possible after an audit.

Several periodic reports would also help the Auditor General to plan his office's work for the year more astutely. The resulting savings in resources could lead to a greater number of audits conducted with identical resources at a time when the Auditor General's budget is being cut, like those of several other departments.

Given the government's annual budget of over $160 billion, is this not reason enough to give the Auditor General more latitude in his auditing operations? The public accounts committee would have more recent reports available and would be able to expedite its work while the officials being evaluated were still in office. As Chairman of the public accounts committee, I have too often heard deputy ministers and heads of agencies, when plied with questions by members, give one of the following answers: "I was not there at the time" or "That happened under the previous administration".

This bill, the purpose of which is to allow the Auditor General more latitude and room to manoeuvre, has been introduced in the House on several occasions in the past, but without any success. I will come back to that a little later.

The Bloc Quebecois supports this bill, as does the Reform Party. When in opposition during the previous administration, the Liberals also supported this bill. Why then, now that they are in power, are the Liberals reluctant to support the efforts of their colleague from Ottawa-Vanier to ensure greater transparency and to allow the machinery of government a faster response time by allowing the Auditor General to report as often as he deems necessary and to report studies to the House immediately upon their completion?

I wish to congratulate the member who sponsored this bill and assure him that I will vote in favour of Bill C-207. What I find deplorable, Mr. Speaker, is the lack of strong support for this bill from the government and the Liberal caucus. If the government

supported the member for Ottawa-Vanier, we would be dealing with a government bill. We have been told that the Liberal caucus is divided on this issue and that the government is being pressured by senior officials.

This is an example of a double standard. Now that it is in power, the government is keeping mum and letting a member take the initiative, hoping that the bill will die on the Order Paper , as was the case with Bill C-262 given second reading on October 19, 1987 and Bill C-288 given second reading on July 18, 1988.

Inaction has become this government's trademark. Let us leave things as they are for fear that in two or three years' time, too high a profile on the part of the Auditor General or his too frequent reports on very specific or timely issues will alert taxpayers to the mismanagement on the part of this Liberal government, or worse, to its inability to take the required action to contain the debt.

As I said earlier, I support Bill C-207 introduced by the hon. member for Ottawa-Vanier and I also agree with his statement to the effect that, and I quote: "Let us not have the bureaucracy tell us what we should be doing in this House".

Bill C-207 which was introduced on January 20, 1994 was the sixteenth initiative presented to Parliament since July 18, 1980 calling for the Auditor General Act to be amended.

We had the first and fifth reports of the public accounts committee tabled in the 32nd Parliament. There was also a question to the House from the chairwoman of the committee during that same Parliament. In 1985, we had Bill C-250 and in 1987, Bill C-262; then the report of the Senate Committee on National Finances; Bill C-288, introduced in this House in 1988; Bill C-228 in 1989 and finally Bill C-344 introduced in 1992 by the hon. member for Ottawa-Vanier, as well as Bill C-207 we are debating today.

What has happened since July 18, 1980? Liberals lost power in 1984 and came back in 1993 and today, the sixteenth try for such a bill, it is still in the making. It is high time to act. If there was not so much resistance from the government machine, this bill would have been passed a long time ago.

The present mandate of the Auditor General and the procedures he uses, including the mandatory tabling of an annual report, go back to 1977, the year the Auditor General Act was passed by this House.

Since then, the flow of information has been multiplied by ten, information systems have evolved, public finances have deteriorated, managers have been made accountable to Parliament, and the Auditor General's office must be able to keep up with new procedures in the area of public account auditing. The Auditor General himself, in his note of March 22, 1994, to the hon. member for Ottawa-Vanier, was saying and I quote: "- it seems fairly safe to say that periodic reporting is becoming the norm around the world. In our view, this would be a good time for Canada to join the trend".

[Lobbying, May 2nd, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, almost four months after the throne speech, the government has still not appointed an ethics counsellor, as promised by the Prime Minister during the election campaign.

When will the Prime Minister appoint the counsellor who of be responsible for this ethical issue and for the enforcing of the law?

[Lobbying, May 2nd, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, in its red book, the Liberal Party stated nice principles regarding the need to monitor the activities of lobbyists, in the best interest of the federal administration. Yet, six months after the election, the Liberals have become silent on this issue. Somehow, they seem to have distanced themselves from the policies which they were advocating before the election.

How can the Prime Minister explain his hesitation to table a bill on lobbyists, considering that his stated intentions during the election campaign seemed very clear on that issue?

[Committees Of The House, April 28th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present the first report of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts. According to the committee, discussions on the debt and the deficits should not happen only during prebudget consultations but should be an ongoing process. The committee suggests that all members of Parliament use, among other things, the indicators proposed in this report to explain more readily to their constituents Canada's financial and economic situation.

The report tabled today reflects the basic consensus of the committee and the dissenting opinion of the members for Joliette and Chicoutimi concerning the addition to the report of a series of prospective economic indicators.

Pursuant to Standing Order 109 of the House of Commons, the committee is asking the government to table a comprehensive response to the report.

[Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Suspension Act, March 24th, 1994]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to participate in the debate today on Bill C-18.

As several members have mentioned, this bill is an act to suspend the operation of the Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act in Canada.

The Act, which will cease to be in effect if Bill C-18 is passed, provides for the creation of 75 new constituencies in Quebec. This act also provides for the setting up of a federal electoral boundaries commission in each of the ten provinces, as well as in the Northwest Territories.

The proposal resulting from this legislation was to have been the object of public consultations in the weeks to come. This proposal, which seemed to me to be serious and well articulated, was based on the following principles, as is normally the case with this type of exercise or review: The geographical size, the density of population, the size of urban and rural centres, as well as other factors such as the common interest, the cultural identity and the historic evolution of the various regions and communities involved.

Except for unusual circumstances, the population of a constituency should more or less represent 25 per cent of the province's electoral quota. As you all know, this quota is calculated by dividing the province's population by the number of ridings allocated to that same province.

This whole review was based on data compiled in 1991, during the last federal decennial census-an exercise which takes place every ten years-conducted by Statistics Canada, a highly professional organization.

What is the impact of this review under the current legislation? Four ridings would be added in Ontario and two in British Columbia, while the number of Mps representing the other provinces would remain the same.

Quebec would still have 75 ridings, but most of these would undergo significant changes. The Montérégie, which is the region on the South Shore of Montreal, would gain one riding. Indeed, electoral boundaries are based on population changes, and Montreal's South Shore is currently experiencing the highest population growth in Quebec, particularly in its central and midwest sectors.

The riding most affected by this review in the Montérégie is Laprairie, which I have the honour of representing here in this House.

A new riding, called Saint-Lambert, is created around the town of Saint-Lambert, where I live. To Saint-Lambert are added Greenfield Park, LeMoyne and the western part of Longueuil, which together form the new riding of Saint-Lambert. The western part of the existing riding becomes the new riding of Brossard-La Prairie. The result is that the riding I now represent will be divided into two entirely new ridings.

The riding of Brossard-La Prairie will consist of the towns of the same name, plus Candiac and that part of the regional county municipality of Roussillon which is included in the parish of Saint-Philippe.

As I said earlier, the Montérégie will now have eleven instead of ten ridings. This seems sensible and consistent with the guidelines I described earlier.

The Federal Electoral Boundaries Commission for Quebec has, in my opinion, done a good job, and is to submit the results for public hearings very shortly. This proposal is well founded in terms of geography, population density, the size of outlying areas and other factors I mentioned earlier.

Why, after two years of work and spending $5 million, does the Liberal government want to stop the work being done by this commission? Is it because of lobbying by a number of backbenchers whose ridings will otherwise be drastically changed or will disappear altogether? Is it because it wants to postpone all this work for two years, which means that, considering the need for new public hearings and a repeat of the legislative process, the next election in Canada would, as far as electoral boundaries are concerned, follow the status quo?

The best way to avoid upsetting a large caucus is to change nothing, and the government is a past master at this sort of thing.

I think one principle is particularly important: we should not increase the number of electoral districts in Canada. Two hundred and ninety-five electoral districts for 27 million people is already too much, compared with what we see in the United States and many other western countries. Each new member of Parliament costs more than $1 million per session. Reducing the deficit also extends to considerations of this nature.

Bill C-18 would suspend for 24 months the operation of the present Act. The eleven electoral boundaries commissions would be dissolved and new commissions would be created within 60 days after the Act ceases to be suspended.

In our opinion, the 11 commissions have done a consistent and creditable job, but the electoral quota, in Quebec as well as elsewhere in Canada, will have to be increased in order to reduce the number of members of the House.

We are told that the process has not been studied in depth for 30 years, but should we redo everything, abolish the present commissions, name new ones and start all over again?

Why freeze the process for two more years? Is it to fight the next election with the present boundaries?

By passing Bill C-18 we would condone the waste of five million dollars, the shelving of another government study and the sweeping under the carpet of conclusions that do not seem to please the government.

Why should we start from scratch all the time? Even if we proceed with new studies, I can assure the House that the future ridings will be very similar to the ones proposed under the present Act. Why? Because the base will be the same, it will be the census of 1991. Regions and cities will be the same. The framework for analysis and apportionment will remain the population of each county, and the number of voters per riding in each province will not change. Geographical areas, population densities, community of interest and cultural identity do not change overnight, and this means, according to me, that the conclusions will be similar.

Being based on the same given quantities and qualities, the conclusions of the second exercise cannot differ markedly from those arrived at under the present Act. One thing only would produce noticeably different results, that is if the density of population in one specific riding could diverge by more than 25 per cent from the provincial ratio; that could be advantageous for rural communities. If that percentage were closer to 10 or 15 per cent, it would benefit urban areas and would increase considerably the surface of rural areas.

However, identical premises will only give us more or less identical results. Is it worth it to start this exercise all over again if we are to get similar results in the end? What is the government's intention? Do they want to save time or please the caucus members who want to be reelected whatever the cost to taxpayers?

In conclusion, what is important for Bloc Quebecois members is that all Quebec constituents are well represented in this House, whatever the distribution of the federal electoral boundaries for the province. As for the next federal election, the Bloc now hopes above all that the Parti Quebecois will be elected in Quebec in 1994 and that the referendum which will follow in 1995 will lead to sovereignty. Since the redistribution of the federal electoral map will be implemented only at a later date in canadian provinces, it could very well never apply in Quebec.

Finally, I would like to add that I also agree with my colleague, the member for Bellechasse who said in this House earlier this morning that Quebec lost its sovereignty in 1867. In fact, the link that existed between Upper Canada and Lower Canada before 1867 was really a sovereignty-association type of relationship very similar to the one the Bloc Quebecois is advocating today.

[Borrowing Authority Act, 1994-95, March 7th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his question. I would like to tell him that in 1984, the Conservative Party of Canada was elected in Ottawa.

In 1985, the Liberal Party was elected in Quebec, and I can tell you that there has never been more constitutional stability than during those years from 1984 to 1993. As the then Conservative Prime Minister used to say, the reason Quebecers had supported his party in 1984 was to give a last chance to federalism in Quebec and, in his own words, bring Quebec back into the Canadian Confederation with honour and enthusiasm.

A period that I would describe as a calm spell in terms of constitutional matters followed the election of the Bourassa Liberal government in 1985. Mr. Bourassa and the Conservative Prime Minister got along very well. Those were truly calm times with regard to the Constitution, but the federal debt grew from $200 to $500 billion just the same from 1984 to 1993. In fact, the federal debt more than doubled over that period.

I think that those were the calmest times. Then, as you will recall, we had the referendum on the Charlottetown Accord in October 1992, and for Quebecers and Canadians in general, this was a really calm spell. Yet, the federal debt never grew so much as during those years.

I think that the point the hon. member made about the effect talk about Quebec's separation could have on investors and interest rates is really-today, interests and confidence come into play much more at the global or North American level. It has nothing to do with the people of Quebec expressing a preference for the Bloc Quebecois or another party or opting for sovereignty in a referendum. I think that, in the medium term, this will have very little influence on the economic situation.

There may be some short-term effects, but in the medium or long term, I do not think that it will do much.

We have had a nine-year or so calm spell, both in Quebec and in Canada. Yet, never has the federal government debt increased so much.