John Bryden

[Economic Policy, October 19th, 2000]

Madam Speaker, what happened in Ontario is that instead of settling its obligations the Ontario government cut personal income taxes. It made the choice, which is proposed now by the Canadian Alliance, to set cutting taxes above public safety and the cost has been in lives in Ontario.

The Bloc Quebecois and the Liberals are very much on side on this. We all believe that we must invest in the environment.

[Economic Policy, October 19th, 2000]

Madam Speaker, I thank the member opposite for his question which was a little bit elaborate. I will try to answer it in reverse order.

I guess I did not make it very clear, and it is my fault, in my presentation. The report in 1995 on the grants and contributions was an excellent effort, but one of the difficulties is when we are dealing with large corporations, whether it is in industry or in government, it is very difficult to police what the average manager is doing, the rank and file manager.

While the intentions of the report were very good, and some of the recommendations were implemented, the reality in a large corporation is that there is no effective means, or has not been up until now, for the senior management, whether it is the deputy minister or the chief executive officer of a corporation, to have a really good sense of what is actually happening down in the offices and cubicles of government or the corporation.

The reason why the Internet is so important is that it offers a unique opportunity that never existed before, whereby by putting the daily operations of the rank and file managers online, all the public become the auditors. Then we would be able to see, as members of parliament or as ordinary citizens, who is getting money in a riding as they get the money. We would be able to assess the program.

One of our great problems with respect to grants and contributions which has been debated on all sides of the House was that in the old days, under a previous political party's government, grants and contributions were primarily controlled by politicians.

One of the great innovations that came in 1993 was that was basically taken away from the politicians on all sides of the House. While there was some input there was not very much input. It was primarily left to the bureaucrats to dispense the program funding in the various ridings. It applies to my riding and it applies to ridings of the opposition. That is, shall we say, a more honest process, but the problem is that it put the onus on the bureaucrats to make decisions that often they were not competent to make. So we have the dilemma of HRDC that we have right now where we have mismanagement; we have the awarding of program funds improperly; and we have poor tracking.

The solution is to put it online. If money is coming into my riding, your riding or whoever's riding, Madam Speaker, if the public can see who is receiving that money and how it is being tracked, how the services are being provided, then we will reach an enormous level of efficiency.

I do not hesitate to criticize my government on this point because I believe that my own political government is moving far too slowly in making the necessary changes in legislation to enable the bureaucrats to bring in this type of legislation. I believe the civil service wants to do it. I believe there is a very active effort out there to bring government online. It is we, perhaps, who are slow to respond.

I have to say, though, that I have not had a lot of support from the opposition benches on this. I have very much had to rely on the support of my backbench colleagues, but I think it is in all our interests to pressure government to make the appropriate changes to legislation to bring government online, which would increase transparency and accountability everywhere.

On the question of the debt, what I have to say with respect to that is that there is a fundamental difference between the Canadian Alliance and the Liberals.

I will put it to the member this way. If one were to legislate debt reduction and require every year that the debt be reduced by, let us say, $5 billion—$3 billion is peanuts when we have a $560 billion debt—what happens if a recession strikes? What happens if there is an Asian flu and suddenly the markets just fall apart?

If we have that legislation in place then we destroy the options government must have, the finance minister must have in the event of an emergency. This is again perhaps a difference between the two sides. I really believe as an individual, and I think we believe mostly as Liberals, that our responsibility as a government is to provide essential services.

It is not just about reducing taxes. It is not just about even reducing debt. The most important thing is that we have to provide services when Canadians need. If we put government into a straitjacket of legislated debt reduction we have that problem.

Then there is the opposite side of the coin. If we say, as the Alliance Party has said, that debt reduction has to be at $6 billion a year, what do we do when we have the opportunity of a surplus, as we have now, where we can reduce the debt by $10 billion and where we reduced the debt by $12 billion just recently?

I read an interesting figure on that reduction of $12 billion. That saves us $700 million in interest charges, I think it is. We are all on side here. We want to get that debt down but do not put us in a straitjacket. That does not help Canada.

[Economic Policy, October 19th, 2000]

Yes, we all work together. We made progress. That is a very important thing.

Then there are other things, such as debt reduction. The Canadian Alliance would have us believe that they are the ones who invented debt reduction as some sort of good thing that governments ought to be doing.

I can tell the House that prior to 1997 for three years running I ran an opinion poll at the fall fairs in my riding in central Ontario. I had four jars and people would be given four beans, each one representing $1 billion. I would ask them if they were the finance minister how they would spend a $4 billion surplus. They had a choice of GST reduction, increased social spending, personal income tax cuts or debt reduction. For three years running the people who put the beans in the jars chose, first and foremost, debt reduction. About 45% of the opinion poll chose debt reduction as their number one priority. I presented those results every year to the finance minister and I told him that this was what people were saying.

It is no surprise to me to see in this economic statement that not only have we reduced the debt already by some $18.7 billion, but in this statement we are also undertaking to reduce the debt by another $10 billion.

The previous speaker really amused me. I can be amused occasionally in the House by some of the statements coming from the other side, Madam Speaker. The member complained that the government had no plan for debt reduction. What is amusing about that is of course any time when we have unspent surplus, the debt is reduced. That is all we have to do. We have to limit spending, control our spending, and automatically the debt is reduced. We have a government that is not only able to reinvest in the economy, reinvest in Canadians, but also has a sufficient surplus to bring down the debt by another $10 billion. The members on the other side ought to be applauding that.

Unfortunately, the House is adversarial and it needs to be adversarial. That is only right and proper. Sometimes I really do think that praise from the other side is warranted when the finance minister really does what is in the interests of all Canadians. The leader of the Canadian Alliance is always demanding forgiveness from this side, but I would suggest that what he really ought to do is stand in the House and give praise and congratulations where it is due. I realize that may be a bit too much to expect.

Another point just in passing. There are two other areas in the economic statement that reflect pressure coming from this side and to some degree from the other side and that is the rebate on fuel costs. It is quite scary, Madam Speaker, when we see what is happening with regard to fuel costs and how Canadians are worried. Quite rightly, on the other side there has been pressure to somehow relieve the burden, particularly on low income home owners facing substantial hikes in fuel costs. That concern is being acted on by this side.

We see in the economic statement that the finance minister is listening. That is an important point in the life of this parliament. The finance minister not only listens to the backbenchers here, but he also listens to the opposition when they do carry valid arguments and valid concerns. We are all concerned about what is going to happen to Canadians with the high cost of home heating fuel and the finance minister has replied.

I was particularly impressed by the fact that the finance minister provided for an increase in the educational tax credit for students. This is a very small thing in some respects, but a very large thing in others. There is absolutely no doubt that the investment for tomorrow is the investment of this government and this parliament in young people. I am very pleased that the economic statement reflects that.

I think that is actually precisely the point in many respects because what does make us different on this side and what makes us so different from the philosophy that we see, particularly from the Canadian Alliance, is that we believe as Liberals, and I think I can speak for the majority of us, that the role of the government is to provide services and encouragement in the country. Our role is to increase the equality of opportunity of all Canadians. That is a proper use of government money.

I deplore what I see in Ontario with the Harris government. I am uncomfortable with what I see in Alberta with the Alberta government. I am extremely uncomfortable with what I hear from the Canadian Alliance with this whole idea that you should retreat from government spending.

That is not the point. What you really need to do with government spending is when you do invest in the country, when you do invest in social services, when you do invest in helicopters or whatever it is the government is buying, you must invest well.

The important thing is to make sure that spending is as efficient as possible. That brings me to the more recent debate over the last few days about the auditor general's report and indeed the information commissioner's report about the need to reform the Access to Information Act.

A key point that the auditor general said which is so important is that even though there are all kinds of problems in effectiveness of spending and mismanagement in HRDC, he said there was no evidence of malfeasance. He said there was no evidence that any bureaucrat profited by any of the inefficiencies or mistakes that were made.

What is so important about that? That means that our job as a government, as politicians, is to build on the honesty of our bureaucrats. We have to give them the tools to more efficiently manage.

I believe one of them is to modernize the privacy legislation and the access to information legislation. I have to say in the context of a point of privilege that the Speaker ruled on today that there were problems that led to the government making an incorrect decision with respect to its opportunity to support reforms to the access to information bill that was proposed in my Private Members' Bill C-206.

I do not fault the government. I do fault messages that were received by the government, but that is another story. I do not dispute the Speaker's ruling, but I do stress it is important to all of us here to reform this kind of legislation so that the bureaucrats in HRDC and every other government department can operate with a better degree of transparency. When you have transparency, you have accountability. This is where we are headed with respect to HRDC and with respect to every government department.

You will recall that the member for Mississauga West, again a member on this side, chaired a committee in 1995 on grants and contributions. What she and the members who supported her did was they came out with a number of recommendations on how to improve the way government handled grants and contributions.

It was an excellent report and the government did act on it. The problem in a modern society and a huge government department spending billions of dollars is that we have to modernize. The member for Mississauga West in the report called on the government to implement better controls, to be more targeted in what organizations should receive money.

One of the most interesting suggestions in that particular report was that governments should always choose contributions rather than grants because the system of contributions requires accountability and performance review whereas grants tend to go out with no accountability whatsoever.

I must tell you that some departments reacted very strongly to the report, at least as far as I can gather. Industry Canada and foreign affairs both implemented a number of reforms of the way they put out grants and contributions. I know this because I have all kinds of representations from organizations that were suddenly being asked, in 1995-1996, to give better explanations and better accounting of how they were going to use the money. Many of these organizations ceased to get support from both Industry Canada and Foreign Affairs because they could not live up to this.

We made progress at that time. That progress came from the backbench. We really have to take the next step. I look to the other side to set aside partisan politics and work together on improving the way our bureaucracy operates, always allowing for the fact of wanting to do a good job, wanting to do the best job.

We should harness the Internet. We should put as much government online as possible so that when that middle level manager in any government department is considering a contract, considering making a contribution or executing some kind of program involving grants and contributions, we can see en route who it is that is receiving the money, what they are proposing, how the government is checking that it is actually delivering the services that it proposes.

That can all go on the Internet. This is crucial because this is what will make Canada more efficient than any other country in the world. In fact there is a race between Canada and the United States to implement this kind of bureaucratic efficiency because not only does it make more efficient government but it is a model for corporations. To come back to the original point, that is why, with some urgency, government has to review and modernize the Access to Information Act, the Freedom of Information Act and the Privacy Act.

I take a great deal of satisfaction in realizing and learning that even though my private member's bill to reform the Access to Information Act failed, the government has since undertaken a major co-operative endeavour between the justice department and treasury board to examine the whole issue of how to make government more open. I believe the government is going to report in the fall of next year.

I would prefer an open process that would have resulted had my private member's bill gone through and it had gone through committee stage debate. Nevertheless, this is a clear indication that this government is very much on the right track.

Finally, we must bear in mind that all government is like a huge vessel. I hate to think of it, but it is like the Titanic . We do not want it to hit an iceberg. We want it to continue to sail. If we are going to make sure that the ship of states sails on successfully, we have to make sure that it has the modern tools of transparency and accountability in order to achieve that target.

Madam Speaker, on this side of the House I can assure you that we already have the heart.

[Economic Policy, October 19th, 2000]

Yes, the traditional family.

The other side of the equation is that there is a lot of concern on this side of the House about looking after families where there is only a single parent. There is no doubt that for a long time a lot of the financial policy on this side of the House was directed toward helping single parent families. That is a very good thing, but now we finally have the balance. That is because of the efforts of the member for Mississauga South and others of us. I will count my colleague next to me.

[Economic Policy, October 19th, 2000]

It is the Canadian way, as my colleague says. It is certainly the Liberal way, but it is not the Canadian Alliance way. I am a little uncomfortable with them having the term “Canadian” because it really is not very consistent in these politics of economic selfishness. I really do not believe in that.

We actually had an example just recently in Ontario with the Walkerton crisis with respect to the water. There is an inquiry going on right now. This is a classic case in which a provincial government withdrew from providing services, in this case the guarantee that water quality would be first class. What we have, because it essentially privatized and downloaded the responsibility of the provincial government to ensure pure water, is that people actually died in that event there.

The other aspect of this budget is that the Canadian Alliance is very fond of saying it reflects the grassroots and the Liberals somehow pull economic policy out of some vacuum that looks only toward gaining votes in the next election. I can say that in this economic statement, which is not a budget but an extension of the February budget of this current year, what one will see are features that reflect the efforts of backbench MPs on this side of the House who have listened to their constituents and have lobbied and pressured the finance minister. He has listened.

I have to be a little careful because there are several other members of cabinet here, but I can tell the House that of all the members of cabinet here the finance minister has one of the most admirable records of listening to his backbench MPs and actually implementing their suggestions and policies.

I will give a couple of examples. One of the things in this economic statement that absolutely delights me is the fact that finally, after some years of lobbying, particularly by the member for Mississauga South, who was the real champion of this issue of supporting the nuclear family in our society, is the proposal that gives tax breaks to a family that has a stay at home parent. What we find for a family earning $40,000 a year with one parent working and the other parent staying at home with two children is a one-third break in their taxes. They will save $1,000 as a result of this initiative that the finance minister brought in yesterday.

I would argue that this is long overdue, but the reality is that on this side of the House we have all kinds of points of view represented. The member for Mississauga South championed the whole idea of supporting the ability of people to look after their children directly.

[Economic Policy, October 19th, 2000]

Madam Speaker, I realize that the Alliance has come to the House to try to bring a better aura of decorum here, but the members really ought to give lessons to the Conservatives, who seem to have a little difficulty with that problem. Thank you for your intervention, Madam Speaker.

As I was saying, as I walked in to work a headline caught my eye in the newspaper box of the National Post . The headline basically said “Liberals Deliver Alliance Budget”. Of anything that any one of us feels about this budget, the one thing it is not is an Alliance budget. The difference between what the party on the other side does in terms of economic philosophy and economic proposals and platforms and what we on this side do—and even the Conservatives, in all fairness—is that we do not represent the kind of economic policy of basic selfishness that is reflected in the Alliance's economic platforms.

It is not just the flat tax. What we see in almost all the themes of the Canadian Alliance is that it believes that the fundamental thing that drives Canadians is the desire to keep their own money at all costs.

What makes us different on this side, I would suggest—and I will compliment the Conservatives over there who are busy engaged in a conversation and not paying any attention—is that they, like us, believe that government is in the business of providing services to Canadians that Canadians cannot otherwise get. The issue is not to reduce taxes to an absolute minimum so that all the people can selfishly get everything they have. What it is really all about is to try to give opportunities to all Canadians by using taxpayers' funds in a responsible manner so that all Canadians share in equal opportunities in this great land of ours.

[Economic Policy, October 19th, 2000]

Madam Speaker, as I was walking to the office this morning I passed by some newspaper boxes. A headline caught my eye on the newspaper box of the National Post . The headline said “Liberals Deliver Alliance Budget”. That headline just cut to the quick.

[Proportional Representation, October 17th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I make the observation at the beginning that the reason why this has not been debated in the last 75 years is that the debate concluded 75 years ago with the conclusion that proportional representation is not anywhere near as democratic or efficient for democratic societies as what we do have in Canada, which is the first past the post constituency system.

I observe that the three most powerful democracies in the world, the three most efficient democracies in the world, the three democracies of which at least two of them have the greatest land masses in the world, have the simple plurality system that we inherited from the British parliamentary system.

If we compare proportional representation around the world, the majority of countries that have that type of system, which basically involves a party leader being able to name people to seats based on the percentage of votes his parties received, we will find by and large that the countries whose democracies work most inefficiently and with the greatest amount of difficulty are those that have proportional representation.

There is a reason for this. There is a very clear reason. Proportional representation is great in theory but terrible in practice. The reason is that in the end it so slices up the result of an election that very rarely do we have anything but a minority government and too often we have a situation where not only do we have a minority government but the balance of power is controlled by a very few.

I point out that Israel, which is currently in the news right now, is a classic case of proportional representation. What happens is that a legislative assembly or a parliament is fractured among many parties. What constantly happens is that no single party can get enough of the seats by proportional representation, percentage of the vote, to form a government. In the end, very small parties, often parties with very extremist agendas, form the balance of power.

I think one of the barriers to peace in the Middle East, to some extent, has been the fact that successive Israeli governments have had a great deal of difficulty advancing agendas for peace when they have had very small splinter parties, which they are dependent upon to remain in power, that are very reluctant to advance the peace process, as the current government of Mr. Barak. I find he made a superb effort, but we do realize that he had to come to some very difficult alliances to even bring the peace process as far as it has gone now.

Let us leave Israel. We can go around the world and find countries such as Italy and many others in which proportional representation has led to successive governments that are extraordinarily weak and have constant elections. It is bad enough to have an election in less than four years around this place, but some of these countries with proportional representation have elections about every year, if not every six months.

To illustrate my point I do come prepared. I do have an example that should strike great interest. It is the results of the 1997 election when the Liberals did form the government. It was a very narrow majority. In fact the Liberal government only received 38.5% of the popular vote but obtained 51.5% out of 301 seats in the House. So a government was formed.

The mover of the motion would find that unacceptable. Let us just consider what would have happened had we had proportional representation instead of the by constituency voting mechanism that we have inherited from the British parliamentary system. Here is what would have happened. I have a note here somewhere that I made. Had it been proportional representation in this parliament based on the 1997 election, two alliances would have formed based on the percentage of seats they would have obtained.

Let us suppose that one of those alliances would have been the Liberals and the NDP. The Liberals obtained 38.5% of the popular vote. The NDP received 11%, for a grand total of 49.5% entitlement for the number of seats. In other words, had the seats reflected the popular vote, then the Liberal and NDP coalition would have been entitled to only 49.5% of those seats.

Similarly we had the natural alliance formed around the Canadian Alliance, the Bloc Quebecois and the Conservatives. The figures are 18.8%, 19.4% and 10.7%, for a grand total of 48.9%. Of the five major parties in the House, neither natural alliance would have been able to form a government.

Where would the balance of the seats come from? There were three independents. In fact if the seats had been awarded according to the percentage of popular vote, enormous power would have been given to the two independent MPs who were sitting in this House. They would have had it in their power to determine whether it would be a government based on NDP-Liberal values or a government based on the more conservative or the more decentralizing philosophy that characterizes the Bloc, the Reform Party and the Conservative Party.

That is unacceptable. A country cannot be run when that kind of power is given to so few. What we have in our system is not fair, in the most literal sense, but it works.

When there is talk about democracy we do not simply talk about what is fair or what seems good on paper. We have to talk about what is good for the country and what is good for Canadians. What is necessary in any democracy is that we have a reasonable succession of governments that are able actually to carry out a mandate, if not for five years or four years, at least for three and a half years. In a system where there are two MPs holding 299 MPs to ransom, governments will rise and fall every six months, as indeed they do around the world with countries with this kind of problem.

There is another major problem with proportional representation which strikes near and dear to my heart. One of the problems is that in our current system the reason why there is a skew in the percentage votes is that if I win in my riding and another person wins in another riding I may win by 30%, 40% or 50%. It depends. Nevertheless I win in my riding and I come to the House representing the people in my constituency. It makes it very difficult for the Prime Minister or any party leader. If I come to the House I am not only here because of my party leader, I am also here because of the support I have received regionally in my constituency from my own electors.

In the proportional representation system there are no constituencies, not usually. In the majority of them there are no constituencies. What happens is that once the party leader, as in the case in Israel and so many other countries, gets the percentage of the vote, he determines who takes his place in parliament. The difficulty is that means the party leader can hold his politicians together with an iron fist, whereas the reality here is that the Prime Minister has to be on a certain amount of good behaviour around here because he cannot easily fire backbench MPs like me.

The reality is that he can dismiss people from cabinet but he cannot dismiss people from their House of Commons seats. If he does, he may do it at his peril because—and the hon. member for York South—Weston is a good case in point—the leader may dismiss but the voters may return that person as an independent.

The thing that I find most appalling about the very thought of proportional representation is that in that kind of parliament I would not survive 10 minutes.

[Privilege, October 17th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to remind you that there was a question of privilege moved by myself last June that is now before the House which relates directly to this matter. I suggested that there was interference with my privileges as an MP because of certain documents that were presented to cabinet by the justice department.

I would suggest, Mr. Speaker, that you are expected to rule on this question of privilege very soon. You might consider taking under advisement the current question of privilege until after we hear your ruling on my question of privilege. My question of privilege is very specific and alleged direct interference. If you find a prima facie case for my question of privilege, I think there will be ample opportunity for the House to debate the information commissioner's report in that context.

[Marine Liability Act, October 6th, 2000]

Madam Speaker, I take this question very seriously because I know the member is very interested in the future of the Senate. The Senate has an enormously important role in parliament but it has to be a role that does not collide with the role being fulfilled by the elected portion of Parliament.

Where the Senate is very valuable is it has more time, particularly on private members' legislation, to examine indepth the implications of legislation. The particular legislation that we have before us, Bill S-17, previously Bill C-53, is very complicated. The average member in this House does not have the time to give it the examination it deserves.

Even the transportation committee is going to have difficulty giving it the full examination it deserves. That is what we can use the Senate for and that is the role the Senate should have.

However, the Senate must not, this government must not and this House of Commons must not allow the Senate to intrude into those areas of responsibility that should be exclusively the role of the elected representatives. We are accountable to the people.

I introduced just recently a very controversial private members' bill that would make Christmas into a national holiday. I got 400 hostile e-mails. Well, that is correct because I take the brunt of the fact that I introduced legislation that certainly some members of the public oppose and they can get at me. However, they cannot get at a senator.

If the government wishes to introduce a bill through the Senate, it does not matter to the Senate but the government is still accountable. If a senator introduces his own legislation and does not have to answer for it but we do, I think that is wrong.