Roger Simmons

[Government Organization Act (Federal Agencies), February 7th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I say to my friend for Elk Island, he should be very watchful. That is what makes good government, when we have people in the opposition and in the government benches who monitor those situations.

To the first part of his question, although it is a question better answered by the minister responsible, I would fully assume that if one is going to alter the mandate of an organization, one might want to start afresh. People who were put there, given the former mandate, may or may not be qualified or as qualified to pursue the new mandate. That is just an answer off the top of my head.

It is not uncommon when winding up and redefining an organization to replenish its membership. The litmus test is the one he put his finger on. The litmus test is whether any hanky-panky-he did not say this, but I will say it for him-goes on. If there are 10 people on the board with four Liberals and six Tories or whatever, they will all be shoved aside. If when the board comes back the next day the four Liberals remain and the six Tories have all been replaced for no better reason than they had different labels when it comes to parties, then that is hanky-panky. I would be there with him when he raises the point.

[Government Organization Act (Federal Agencies), February 7th, 1995]

I will talk about the serious business of this bill, but first, why should my hon. friend from Delta deny me some of the fun?

I notice my hon. friend from Cariboo-Chilcotin trotted out his tractor anecdote once again today. I missed part of it so I do not know what colour the tractor was today. Was it green or blue like the last time? I say to him that some time he should tell us about the cow that having given the full pail of milk, good wholesome milk, was manoeuvred into kicking over the pail. I am not suggesting of course that my friend from Cariboo-Chilcotin or his colleagues are a bunch of cows. They are not that at all. Some could accuse them of being the people trying to manoeuvre the productive cow into wasting something that has been produced.

I digress. I say to my friend from Lotbinière that I notice that patronage is getting a fairly full workout here this afternoon, and so it should. Patronage has always been with us and always will be, and so it should.

Mr. Speaker, I say through you to my friend from Calgary North, hear it in context. I said patronage has always been with us, always will be, and so it should. Before she gets too disbelieving I invite her to hear it in context. I was about to say that members of this Chamber practise patronage in your families on a regular basis, in your church and your community organizations. You regularly reach out to those people you know or can trust. That is not to imply that all the people you do not know you cannot trust. It is just that you do not know whether you can trust them because you have not yet met them.

What is so surprising if in that church group, community group, that municipal council or whatever the group may be, you reach out to somebody whose credentials you know, whose people skills you know when you want a job done. I repeat, that is not to suggest that all the people you do not know in this world are not to be trusted.

It is no accident that if a Liberal government is in power a number of the appointments will be people who are known Liberals. It would be no accident that if a Reform government were in power some of the appointments would be Reform appointments. The law of averages alone takes care of that. If we had to exclude all the people who either voted Liberal or were active in the Liberal cause over the years, we would virtually exclude the entire population of Canada.

Is anybody suggesting that the label itself ought to be a disincentive? There is more to it than that. Let me construct an example for members. If I am an employer and have an opening and there are two applicants for a particular position, both of whom have equal credentials, equal qualifications, equal experience and I know one and I do not know the other, I am going to hire the one I know. The principle stands that the devil you know is better than the devil you do not know, to put it in the vernacular. More generically, the person you know is better than the person you do not know. By definition if you do not know the second person there may be something about that second person, which despite the paper qualifications, despite the experience, has something less to commend him or her to the job. In its purest form that is patronage.

I believe what my friends are talking about is something different altogether. They may not have the courage to put the term on it. I think what they are talking about is corrupt patronage.

I return to my example. I the employer have two people in front of me applying for a position. The person I know does not know a row of beans about the job. The second person, whom I do not know, has good credentials, commends himself or herself to the job in every way, comes through well in the interview. Despite all that I hire the person I know. That is the beginning of corrupt patronage. That is the tail wagging the dog. That is the employer in the example using something other than his head. That example itself may not be corrupt but it is certainly stupid to rush out and hire the person because you know him rather than the person who can do the job. However, that is the beginning of corrupt patronage.

Governments over the years, Tory governments, have practised some corrupt patronage and Liberals have practised corrupt patronage but that does not make it right. I submit that we cannot go back and undo the elections of many years past with the people who sat in Liberal cabinets or Liberal governments or headed Liberal governments and Tory governments over the years. I mention those two parties because they are the only two strains we have had at the federal level. I could go to the provincial level and talk about governments of other stripes, including Social Credit and NDP. We all know the range of governments we have had in Canada heading provincial and federal administrations. There was the Union Nationale in the province of Quebec and other governments. We cannot go back and rerun those elections.

Therefore I submit that the only credentials we can examine now are the credentials of the present administration which is the administration which will be accountable in the next election. Before we are all tarred with the same brush, hear some of

the facts. Has this government appointed Liberals? Yes, it has and I can give this House a good list of them. Has it appointed people of other stripes? Yes, and I can give this House a good list of those as well. However, that ought not to be the governing criterion as to what the person's party label was.

I will return to my example again. If that minister is selecting a person for a board only on the basis of his label or on the basis of who he knows versus who he does not know rather than on the basis of the competence of that person to do that job, that is where it becomes corrupt patronage. I do not agree with that and I will give notice that when I see it and as I see it I will do my bit to blow the whistle.

However, do not ask me to subscribe to a dictum that says all persons of the same party label as the party in power are hereby disqualified for appointment however qualified. That makes no sense. Nobody in this House in their right mind would subscribe to that kind of dictum. It would be unfair. As much to the point it would be counterproductive because we would be robbing ourselves of the opportunity to appoint some competent people.

Let us look at something off the record. This is not particularly an attack on the Tories. There are no Tories left around here to attack. I want to draw a couple of recent example and it just so happens that the last government that was in power in this country federally was the Tory government. Let us have a look at comparable periods.

The big bad Liberals, I will pick two equivalent periods, from November 4, 1994 to February 3, 1995 in the one case and an earlier set of years in another case. In the first case, the present case, the big bad patronage infested Liberals over a 15-month period from November 4, 1993 until February 3, 1995 have made 700 appointments. The Globe and Mail with a research team looking into this for days and weeks, we saw the article last weekend, managed to identify that fewer than 80 of those appointed had Liberal connections. That is only 80 out of 700. I have to talk to the Prime Minister. That is discrimination. The balance ought to be a bit more than that.

I say to my friend from Delta when he was a card carrying Liberal he would not have stood for that kind of unfairness.

Let us look at the period November 4, 1991 until February 3, 1993. These are not conveniently chosen dates. They are the last dates I could choose within the mandate of the last government that would parallel the 15-month period we are talking about and that is why I chose that period. In that 15-month period the Conservatives made 1,819 appointments, about two and a half times as many as had been made in this period.

One of the realities of being in government is that there are agencies, there are boards that need to have personnel appointed to them. We cannot ignore that. This government under the minister responsible did undertake a review. As a result we have made a lot fewer appointments but some of them have to be made.

The very people who stand in this House and decry appointments have themselves been patronage appointments in past times. I will not follow in the footsteps of someone else who spoke earlier and name names. I do not believe that is fair in terms of making the case. It is half fair in the sense that the individuals whose names I have there are now members of this Chamber and would have an opportunity to respond. However, others were mentioned today who have never sat in this Chamber and more to the point do not sit here presently and have no recourse and cannot protect themselves.

I submit to my friends who were dragging out names today that we can make the point that somebody may be the grandson or the son or whatever relation. I did not have any say who my grandparents were. I did not have much say who my parents were. Should it disqualify me because my dad was a humble carpenter, because my mother came from a family of shipbuilders and worked as a domestic before her marriage? Does that disqualify me? Should I carry those labels and somebody should decide that I have to be pegged here because my mother was a domestic and my father was a carpenter? How far do we carry this thing in order to make some point about patronage?

I guess my last sermonette could have been entitled "people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones" because some of them sitting in this Chamber right now had patronage appointments from the former Tory administration.

There is one other issue that I would like to talk about. I am not referring to the gentlemen from Charlevoix, Anjou-Rivière-des-Prairies, Elk Island, Red Deer, Fraser Valley East, Calgary North, Port Moody-Coquitlam or Delta, nor to the members for St. Boniface, Parry Sound-Muskoka, Kitchener, London West and Oxford, not to mention the members for Niagara Falls and Stormont-Dundas. Are there other offers-or the member for Louis-Hébert. Just to pull together what I have said on that issue, if there is something wrong with the patronage system, it is the system that is wrong.

There is no need to make scapegoats of individuals to make one's point about what needs to be done with the system. That is the only point I am making. I give notice. I have in front of me the names of present members of this House but unless I eliminate everybody and by extrapolation name the person, I cannot go any further.

In fairness to the people who asked me the question, they did not need to ask the question. They would know full well if they had been appointed. If they had been appointed they would not be so loud in their protests that I inject a disclaimer on their behalf.

If the member for Delta did not exist, we would have to create him. He is such a delight. The members of the Reform Party might have some say in that matter. There is one other item that I want to go on to.

This bill is umbrella legislation. In many respects, it is what we used to call comma legislation. It is not of any particular consequence but it tidies up some things. It needs to be done. I am not dismissing its importance but it is probably not going to create a lot of jobs. Indeed it is cutting out quite a few, for example ACOA.

I see I have my two minute signal so I had better say this very quickly. I want to spend most of my time on ACOA, an instrument of regional development very dear to my heart because I have seen the good it has done in my own riding.

I can talk to members about an agriculture operation in Bay St. George where 35 or 40 people are full time employees thanks to some initiative from that agency. I can talk to members about the salmon operation in Bay d'Espoir which employs 80 people full time where we fly salmon on a daily basis to San Francisco and Toronto and so on. It is a good producing industry that has been going on now for 10 years.

I could talk to members about people who sit in Milltown, 35 of them, and do computer inputing for companies in Germany, England and Australia on contract as a result of a little SEED money they got five or six years ago from ACOA.

I see as I look around that the transition to the new economy, the high tech part of it but agriculture in our case in Newfoundland, the transition to a new set of endeavours in Newfoundland is fully aided by that kind of agency. I sought to speak in this debate particularly to give support to it. I would be glad to invite any member of the House to go with me to my riding so I could show members some of those success stories that are the result of ACOA money.

The member has had an invitation that he has not yet taken me up on. The invitation still stands. I see my time is up.

[Government Organization Act (Federal Agencies), February 7th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I too want to make a few comments on this bill. I have spent some time in opposition myself, both here in this Chamber and in the Newfoundland House of Assembly, and I see that the members of the opposition have recognized this bill for what it is, in part, and that is an opportunity for the opposition to have some fun with a number of issues.

[Questions On The Order Paper, February 7th, 1995]

What action will the government take in reference to the claim made by the Auditor General in his 1994 report that "Health Canada cannot ensure that the food related and safety provisions of the Food and Drugs Act are applied fully and effectively to all food produced domestically or imported for sale in Canada," and what specific measures are being developed to deal with the gaps in information received from the provinces on "the nature, extent, timing and results of food safety inspections they undertake"?

[Petitions, February 6th, 1995]

Madam Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise and present a petition. The petitioners, who are from several communities in Newfoundland and Labrador, have signed their names by the hundreds on the issue of Canada's mining industry, noting that it is the mainstay of employment in over 150 communities. It notes that Canada's investment climate is forcing its mineral industry to look for new opportunities elsewhere.

The petitioners call on Parliament to take action that will grow employment in this sector, promote exploration and rebuild Canada's mineral reserves.

I have great pleasure in supporting this petition.

[Employment Equity Act, December 13th, 1994]

For my friend from St. Albert, let me decode that. We have given new authority to the Human Rights Commission to enforce those terrible quotas, the very system that sent him to the Chamber. We are going to enforce it on behalf of some other people, many of whom are his constituents.

I venture to say there are some women in his riding who could benefit from the legislation, women who have been excluded effectively from employment because of some unwitting employer. Maybe he has some aboriginal people in his riding. I do not know it well but there are probably a few of them who could benefit.

I see the Chair is getting impatient because I am running the clock again. I had all these other wonderful things I wanted to say for the edification of members of the House. More to the point, I say to all who are watching and listening that the legislation is a good piece of legislation. It will take us that extra step toward assuring employment equity for the designated groups, for the women I have mentioned and for other groups that were mentioned during the debate. That is why I appeal to my colleagues of whatever party to find it in their hearts and minds to give support to this good piece of legislation.

[Employment Equity Act, December 13th, 1994]

Once again the authors of the red book are delivering on the promises in the red book.

We used to sing in the church I am proud to be a member of: "Every promise in the book is mine". We are talking about another book here. I do not want to be sacrilegious, but I am sure members get the point. We identify with those promises because they are promises we fabricated in opposition having listened to the people and without any 1-900 lines. We did not have them pay to get through to us. We listened and they told us they had some concerns about employment equity, our subject today.

We heard them and we incorporated those concerns in commitments. We ran on that basis. We were elected to a majority government on that basis. We are back here this afternoon as we have been several other mornings and afternoons to say to the people of Canada: "Here is another example of how we want to honour the commitments we made to you back in October a year or so ago".

While today we deliver on some promises, we believe we must go even further. The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal, constituted as the employment equity review tribunal, will hear appeals from employers to resolve disputes and to assure compliance with the law.

Let me remind the House that the changes to the act are in direct response to issues raised by both the designated groups and by businesses. Disadvantaged Canadians complained to us there was not enough compliance with the legislation. Accordingly we have given new authority to the Canadian Human Rights Commission to conduct audits of employers to verify and gain compliance with the act.

[Employment Equity Act, December 13th, 1994]

He must be. With the bill we will deliver on the promises in the red book. Does that come as any surprise?

[Employment Equity Act, December 13th, 1994]

The member for St. Albert is having difficulty because he sees quotas. I say to him that he is in the House of Commons because of a quota system. We did not just go out to all Canadians, elect a bunch of people and send them to Ottawa. The act which gives him the right to be here is a quota system as such. His constituents in St. Albert get one member of Parlia-

ment, not one and half, two or three. I say to him that is called quota.

He is right. He must have been up bright and early this morning. He recognizes this business here as a quota system and he is absolutely dead right. I assume from his intervention that he is so anxious to support the legislation he cannot wait for me to finish.

[Employment Equity Act, December 13th, 1994]

Madam Speaker, I too want an opportunity to elaborate on some features of the legislation before us. I say to the minister that I am proud the government has tabled such progressive amendments that I believe will strengthen the Employment Equity Act.

The changes proposed will assure fair and equal treatment for millions of disadvantaged Canadians. These amendments offer the hope of better times for women, for persons with disabilities, for aboriginal peoples and for members of visible minorities.

Since the adoption of the Employment Equity Act there has been significant progress in making the workplace more inclusive of all Canadians. It has been proven that employment equity can promote fairness and equal opportunity in the world of work. The present legislation was a good beginning but has not kept pace with the times, and hence the need for the amendments now before us.

More and more Canadians are members of designated groups, yet the sad fact is that despite the increase in their numbers their opportunities have actually decreased. For example, the latest annual report on employment equity indicates that in 1993 the number of employees covered under the Employment Equity Act actually dropped by 4.27 per cent or by 26,000 jobs across the country.

According to the statistics for 1994, 74 of the 348 companies covered under the Employment Equity Act 74 or 20 per cent had no aboriginal employees at all. There were 65 of those companies with no provision for persons with disabilities on the payroll and 28 of those companies had no visible minority members working for them. There were still four employers with no women on their staffs. This is in a country where 52 per cent of the people are women.

Can we fathom any company of any significant size not even bothering to address that question? Were I malicious-and you would know, Madam Speaker, that I could never be malicious-I would wonder aloud whether such an exclusion of women by those four companies was not deliberate. How could they manage in a situation where half the available workforce is women to hire everyone but women unless they worked at it? Hence the need for the kinds of amendments we are talking about today.

Obviously much more remains to be done if we are to live up to the values of fairness, decency and equality which form the foundation of our society, our system of values in the country.

We need to bring the act into the nineties to reflect our current reality and to prepare us for the century ahead. That is precisely the kind of country we as a party promised Canadians when we wrote "Creating Opportunity".

The amendments before us are the fulfilment of our red book commitments. We said that we would bring the federal public service as well as federal agencies and commissions under the Employment Equity Act. We are doing that with this legislation. We said that we would empower the Canadian Human Rights Commission to initiate investigations and conduct workplace audits to ensure enforcement of the legislation. We are doing that. We said that we would ensure federal contractors would be subject to mandatory compliance with the principles of the act.