House of Commons photoWon his last election, in 1997, with 54% of the vote.
Pay Equity April 18th, 1997
Mr. Speaker, as I just indicated, we will be putting on the table, on Monday April 21, an offer regarding pay equity. These matters have already been negotiated with the unions.
A settlement has already been reached with one of the unions, the one representing professional employees, and we hope not only that a settlement can be negotiated in good faith but also that it will be fair to both taxpayers and employees.
Pay Equity April 18th, 1997
Mr. Speaker, naturally, I have no intention of negotiating in this place something that should be negotiated between the employer, namely the Treasury Board, and its employees.
On Monday April 21, we will be putting on the table an offer regarding pay equity for the public service employees' union to consider. At that time, the details of the offer will be released, I guess, by the union itself.
People will be able to see for themselves what our position is. As far as we are concerned, we want both parties to negotiate in good faith, and we would not want to prejudice either the employees' position or that of the employer by discussing the matter in this House.
Computer Programming April 17th, 1997
Mr. Speaker, the member is quite right to mention that question. It is a complex one, not only for the public sector but also for the private sector. We have already spent millions of dollars on it and we have started to look at how our various computer systems could be adapted.
Good progress is being made in that direction but there is still a lot of work to be done and we are at it.
Government Expenditures April 14th, 1997
Mr. Speaker, once again, taking into consideration the entire program review period, we see that the cuts detailed department by department in the program review have been made. The program review has accomplished the planned results.
During that period, if additional expenditures have been approved by Parliament, these have, obviously, been totally legitimate and for the purpose of enhancing the well-being of Canadians.
I shall close by referring to a study which indicates what has happened in Quebec with the transfer payments. According to this, if Quebec had reduced its expenditures and its deficit at the same rate as the average of the other provinces, it would have virtually eliminated its deficit last year.
And what is the source of this document? It is a document published by the Government of Quebec in October 1996.
Government Expenditures April 14th, 1997
Mr. Speaker, I am forced to repeat what has already been stated very clearly: the $10 billion we had said we would cut from our departments have been cut, since this money has quite simply been taken off the public accounts, the allocations to the departments. The cuts we had forecast and described in detail have been made.
As for the transfer payments, compared to our cuts in our own departments, I repeat again: the cuts to our own expenditures, our departmental expenditures, are 40 per cent higher than the cuts we have made to transfer payments to the provinces.
Government Contracts April 11th, 1997
Mr. Speaker, first, more than 60 per cent of the contracts that are concluded are concluded according to rules that involve competitive bidding. The great majority of these contracts are clearly recognized as being efficient, fair and under proper procedures.
In the circumstances that were mentioned by the committee we have recognized that in certain cases the recommendations make a lot of sense. As I mentioned, we have already implemented a number of these measures. We will now study the other recommendations. We have, I believe, 90 days to respond. We will
respond to all these recommendations. When they make sense we will implement them.
Government Contracts April 11th, 1997
Mr. Speaker, this committee of the House has been doing what we believe is very good work for about two years. The members submitted a preliminary report in the fall of 1995. We agreed with quite a number of their recommendations.
In fact, already we have put in place a number of measures to implement these recommendations. For instance, in order to increase the number of contracts that went to competitive bidding the threshold was lowered from $30,000 to $25,000. The new bidding procedures have been tightened. The monitoring is much stronger. We are waiting to see the other recommendations in the final report in order to act on them as quickly as possible.
Infrastructure Program April 11th, 1997
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to announce that the Government of Canada has reached an agreement with the Government of Quebec on continuing and expanding the infrastructure programs.
Under this agreement, $185 million dollars from the Government of Canada will be spent on municipal infrastructures over the next twelve months, and we hope to create over 5,000 jobs with this expanded program. It will enable municipalities to put in place the infrastructures that are vital to all Quebecers.
Government Expenditures April 8th, 1997
Mr. Speaker, our cuts according to their own affirmation are nothing compared to the cuts in transfers they would make. How can they complain about the cuts we are making when they would cut all the social programs, cut the transfer programs to the provinces.
We have cut our own programs 40 per cent more than we are cutting transfers to the provinces. In this case we have done the right thing which is to reduce the size of government. It would have been a terrible mess if the Reform Party had done that.
Government Expenditures April 8th, 1997
Mr. Speaker, once again I have to inform our friends and colleagues in the Reform Party that the money he is talking about was taken out of the departmental budgets when the program review targets were put together.
We have indicated that the figures changed over the years because of changes in accounting practices and so on. We have even given them a reconciliation of the figures so that it would be easy for them to go step by step and see that the program review has reached its objective.
Now the only thing I can do is to ask them to read the text we have given them.