Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-96 today.
At first glance one might think that a creation bill such as this is little reason to engage in debate, but there is indeed much we need to discuss. It is not so much what the bill says but the issues that underlie the bill that merit a resounding rejection.
Before I begin I would like to examine a recent event that speaks to why I stand before the House to express my rejection of Bill C-96.
As members of the House know, our country is submerged in troubling times. The referendum in Quebec has paralysed the House, the Liberal government and in particular the Minister of Human Resources Development. Promises made in the red book have fallen by the wayside as the government has chosen to do nothing, fearing the consequences of decisive action.
My party stated clearly at the outset of the referendum that we favoured a strong and united Canada. To this end, we made positive contributions to the debate. We outlined a very clear position for a new confederation. Our plan would change Canada for the better and bring our country into the next century healthy, vibrant and able to cope with its new challenges. Unfortunately for Canada, the no campaign launched a strategy based on a do nothing approach. It believed the status quo would work. In short order, however, it became obvious that this strategy was a complete and utter failure.
Our Prime Minister had a 10-point lead in the polls and lost it all. In a move motivated by panic and fear he committed a huge virage. After having categorically rejected constitutional changes, after having categorically rejected administrative changes, the Prime Minister capitulated at the last minute and offered up constitutional changes and distinct society. As we all know, this tired rhetoric was soundly rejected by Canadians, not once but twice.
Let me remind the Liberals that one of their titans, Mr. Trudeau, thoroughly and publicly denounced this strategy on Monday of this week.
In light of the Prime Minister's virage, Canadians are expecting great changes from the government. However, in the week that has just passed, do we have any indication of change? I think not. Instead of change, the Minister of Human Resources Development is attempting to sell us this flawed bill, which not only grabs more powers for the federal government but also fails to introduce one single noteworthy measure of administrative change.
I will speak on a number of areas the substance of Bill C-96 eliminates. My comments will touch briefly on these areas: specific concern with some of the bill's provisions; the government's trivial attempt at post-secondary education reforms; the government's non-existent approach to decentralization; the government's brazen attempt at accountability; and the government's invisible strategy for reform of the Canada pension plan. All these issues will show beyond a reasonable doubt that the House has only one option: it must clearly and soundly reject the bill.
In the bill the minister is accorded the power to deal directly with groups and municipalities for the delivery of social programs. This power circumvents the provinces directly and attempts to keep them out of the decision making process. This is disconcerting, as it is the provinces that have constitutional authority for social program delivery. This power contained in clauses 20 and 21 of the bill further demonstrates the government's penchant for power grabbing and invasive behaviour.
The bill also allows for the appointment of a minister for labour. If the government feels the need to increase the size of its cabinet then it should admit so publicly, rather than doing it through the back door like this. The government has an obligation to be forthright in its reasoning. If I were a cynic I might suggest this change amounted to nothing more than the creation of a position at the cabinet table for the no campaign strategist, the hon. member for Saint-Henri-Westmount. I will not imply motive as I am an optimist. Instead I will leave it to Canadians to judge this for themselves.
I would like to steer the discussion toward education. There can be no doubt that education forms the bedrock of a successful nation. Bill C-96 represents the creation of a department which oversees the federal role in education policy. The bill is a stark reminder that the government has no vision for an education policy which will meet the needs of Canada's students into the 21st century. The bill also reminds us that the government has failed in its attempts to create changes to revitalize post-secondary education.
By looking at the trends of globalization and retrenchment, we see not only where the government has failed but, more important, where the Reform Party offers a substantially stronger vision in this regard.
Herman Melville once said that we are not a nation so much as a world. This statement is as incisive as it is intimidating. Unwittingly it speaks volumes of the major shifts taking place today in all aspects of our world. For just as the business world is confronting the pressures of globalization to be more productive and competitive, so too are universities encountering the necessity to provide students with better tools to help Canada remain competitive.
There is at present a growing concern among educators in Canada that students are entering the world market without the requisite education and training to help them meet the needs of their chosen vocation. The skills mismatch. The global job crisis. Reinventing education. All of these are familiar battle cries of observers writing in North American journals warning of this disturbing trend.
Schools need to be relevant to reflect the realities of the modern world and to help train present and future workers who are capable of helping their employers, in whatever field, achieve higher levels of performance and productivity. For example, the challenge facing schools is to prepare future leaders to think critically about the forces and requirements that shape business operations in global markets and in different cross-cultural contexts.
What leadership do we have from the government in the area of internationalization and education? Little to none. The Canadian Bureau of International Education has reported that Canada's performance in this area is the lowest among all G-7 countries. In fact, the bureau found that the United States spends somewhat in the order of 20 times what Canada spends in this regard. We are not talking about increasing aggregate spending, but rather reconfiguring current spending to reflect our strategic needs.
The federal government simply has to be a player in the area of international education. In the short term a Reform government would work to do the following. Strengthen the policy dialogue with provincial governments and higher education institutions through regular and systematic consultation and information exchange at all levels. Increase networking and reinforce collaborative ventures among higher education institutions in priority regions and in priority areas of research. Foster the development of stronger partnerships among higher education institutions, professional associations and public authorities, business and other organizations which have a stake in the quality of higher education and research. Facilitate and encourage key stakeholders, such as the provinces and territories, national standards bodies and associations representing the learning community, industry, business and
labour to develop competency based skill tests which are matched to learning outcomes developed by learning organizations.
I want to examine a second trend, namely that of fiscal retrenchment. We are all agreed that the dismal state of public finances in Canada places a tremendous burden on the capacity of government to address any issue. This is particularly true in the case of education. Having said that, we must not let education be circumvented by, as the Smith commission noted in 1991, short term, make shift responses that have postponed temporarily the day of reckoning. I do not propose that we ignore the realities of retrenchment, but that we address our fiscal plight with a strategic mind set.
We must re-examine the way we fund our post-secondary institutions. Specifically we need to re-examine student loans and transfers to provinces for education.
The Department of Human Resources Development, which the bill will create, has done virtually nothing to take a lead role in promoting a new vision for education financing in Canada. Instead it has discussed, tinkered and carelessly cut.
Let us review this disappointing history. The 1994 discussion paper on reforming social security talked vaguely about life long learning. The document was long on rhetoric and short on details. It talked in generalities, as most discussion papers do. We do not need discussion. We need action. We need fresh and creative approaches to confront the plight of our education financing mechanism.
Bill C-28, passed in June 1994, made some modest improvements to the Canada student loans program. It removed financial liability from the government, which is good. However, it represents a stopgap measure for a program that requires fundamental redesign.
Some serious questions need to be answered by the government. For example, while the act made provisions to develop pilot program testing, new financing schemes, such as income contingent loans, it is not likely that anything will happen before 1997. That is four years that Canadians will have waited for the government to act, four years that the government has neglected the need to address questions of access and sustainability.
Another fundamental question that lingers is one of strategic intent. When loan eligibility is controlled by the government, loans do not provide an incentive for students to enter areas of study where there is good occupational demand. Competitiveness and productivity must be linked to education. We must determine where there is need and focus our energies to promote education in those areas.
The 1995-96 budget announced changes to the fiscal transfer regime by creating the Canada health and social transfer, known as CHST. Through the CHST the government carelessly cut transfers which support education financing and made it increasingly difficult for taxpayers to measure whether provinces are spending the appropriate amounts of money on specific programs.
The government decided that it is better to give education dollars to the provinces with no strings attached than it is to give education dollars to individuals, where it can be ensured that tax dollars are going to support their intended purpose. The logic in this is spectacularly flawed.
Bill C-96 will create a department that for two years has done nothing to make the fundamental changes required of our post-secondary education system. Why should we create a department, when we already know that it has no capacity to act on this issue?
Let us move to decentralization, an issue that has garnered significant attention of late and, in particular, when the Minister of Human Resources Development presented his remarks earlier this morning. Bill C-96 is a centralizing piece of legislation, make no mistake, despite what the hon. minister said in the House today.
Clause 6 of the bill reinforces the existing federal powers for social programs. In fact, it may even create new powers for the federal government. Even if this new power never manifests itself, the bill at a minimum entrenches the status quo of federal intervention into provincial areas of social policy jurisdiction.
I find it cathartic, though I suppose not entirely uncharacteristic, that the government should try to enact legislation which engenders and champions the notion of centralization and of status quo. To do so amidst the decentralization forces pressuring the country to change is profoundly absurd.
Recent events have shown to all that fundamental change is required in our federation. There is almost universal agreement that the federal government needs to rethink its current role as a provider of services and programs. In areas of social policy, we cannot continue to support a system which separates the revenue raising capacity from the expenditure function. In other areas too there is strong evidence to support devolution to the most logical level of government.
In October of this year the Reform Party released its vision for a new confederation. Reform believes that decentralization will
permit future governments to respond more effectively to the needs of ordinary Canadians. It also addresses many of the historic concerns of individuals from all provinces.
Reform's plan includes the following: giving provinces exclusive control over natural resources, job training, municipal affairs, housing, tourism, sports and recreation; giving provinces control over setting their own interprovincial standards for health, welfare and education and replacing federal cash transfers with tax points, allowing provinces to raise their own taxes to finance social programs. This decentralization will lead to a more balanced federation, one in which Ottawa will play a co-operative role rather than a dominating role.
The proposals outlined in the new Confederation speak to the long term. They furnish Canada with a vision. They put flesh on the conceptual bones of a new federalism. This is the kind of leadership that has been conspicuously absent in the federal Liberals.
How can one govern without coherent direction? It is incomprehensible. I am not talking about prescience but about the courage to say, these are my ideas, this is my vision. We have seen none of that from the government. The traditional response to fiscal crisis has been centralization, consolidation and concentration. This instinct increasingly leads to failure. Centralized control and consolidated agencies create more waste, not less.
There are many reasons why Reform speaks for this vision of decentralization. Decentralization will engender greater flexibility, allowing institutions to respond more quickly to changing circumstances and client needs.
Decentralization will create more effective programs and service delivery as the deliverers and providers of government assistance are closer to those whom they serve, which is whom we serve. Decentralization will reduce wasteful overlap and duplication created by concurrent jurisdiction and poorly co-ordinated government programs and services. Decentralization will engender greater fiscal responsibility. For a government that spends the money it raises will inherently be more accountable than the one that spends the money someone else collects. Decentralization in regard to the tax system is most compatible with the tenet of federalism. The essence of a federal form of government is local autonomy. In its designated spheres each unit is free, free to exercise its policy discretion unemcumbered.
It is important to remember in this debate on Bill C-96 that decentralization is neither a celebrated buzzword nor a passing political fad. It is a policy movement that has been vigorously championed in Canada since the 1960s. It represents reconfiguring the locus of attention in the federation. As former B.C. Liberal Party leader Gordon Gibson writes in his new book: "Canadians ultimately want less control by Ottawa and more local management of their affairs-The basic concept here is `government closer to home'. Now home is where the heart is in our private lives perhaps, but in government terms home is where the folk have the knowledge and resources to do the job. That single thought takes us a long way".
Adhering to the rule of thumb that the responsibility for addressing problems should lie with the lowest level of government possible does not require that we disavow the notion of federal leadership.
A federal government with fewer employees, fewer departments, and smaller budgets can still have a steering role in Canadian society. There would still be a policy framework setting functions in certain areas, even if it delivered no services. These would include policy areas that transcend the capacities of state and local governments such as international trade, macroeconomic policy and much environmental and regulatory policy; social insurance programs like employment compensation, where paying equal benefits to all citizens requires that rich and poor share differentiated burdens; and investments that are so costly that they require tax increases which might discourage business from locating or staying in a city or province.
Even in these cases Reform believes that programs can be designed to allow for significant flexibility at a provincial or municipal level. The federal government can and must work with provincial governments to define jointly the missions and the outcome. But in so doing it must free lower government to achieve those outcomes as they see fit.
What has been the Liberal response to decentralization? The government has resisted the natural ebb and flow of this federation by operating completely oblivious to its surroundings. We saw this in the recent referendum. The government grossly miscalculated by adhering to a status quo position. Only when it became obvious to the government that its policy was indeed a complete failure did it move to make insincere promises of change. Where is this change now, this vision of a new federalism? Where is its blueprint for a renewed Canada? Where is the leadership to bring forward such a plan?
Given the government's previous attempts at major change, I suggest that we will be waiting a long time before we see substantive and meaningful change.
Let me give one example of how the government is failing to deliver on its promise to reform and decentralize social programs. Consider the current welfare issue in British Columbia. When the province made changes to its own programs by stipulating a residency requirement for welfare qualifications, the federal government stepped in and threatened the province with punitive actions. That is certainly no stranger to Albertans.
There is no question that the B.C. government should be permitted to administer its affairs without federal interference. The minister, rather than threatening the province, should back off and leave it free to run its own programs. It is absurd for this minister, who has radically reduced transfers to the provinces, to turn around and intervene in provincial jurisdiction.
The minister continues to refuse to meet with the provinces over the Canada health and social transfer. Now, when the provinces try to move forward, he stands in their way. This, it would seem, is the Liberal position on co-operative federalism. How terribly predictable and how truly unfortunate.
I want to discuss accountability for a moment. Bill C-96 reminds us once again that the government has embraced a policy that will bring an end to departments submitting annual reports to Parliament. This ignoble policy speaks volumes of the government's attitude toward accountability, despite the sniping from the other side of the House.
Most observers who study Parliament lament the gap that exists between the relatively rudimentary theory of parliamentary accountability and its practice. The theory suggests that there are strong linkages between the representative system that created the elected House of Commons and the executive system of departments headed and controlled by ministers.
Parliamentary control is considered in two key phases: first, the assigning of responsibility and authority through statutes and appropriations; and, second, accountability through scrutiny in the House and in its committees. I can accept that the reality of modern government is not as neatly ordained as this theory might suggest. But I cannot accept any actions such as those provided for in Bill C-96, which weaken accountability through scrutiny in the House.
Reform supports in principle the current attempt to improve the accessibility of information in the budget estimates. However, by moving to end the annual reporting function before the estimates reform is in place, we are left with an incomplete picture regarding annual departmental activities and expenditures. How can this be? When the bill and others like it are enacted we will have poor estimates and no annual report. This is a disgrace.
At a conference hosted by the Canadian study of parliament group this past weekend the Auditor General of Canada stated that it was time for the government to go beyond rhetoric and embrace true accountability. The government would do well to listen to its own auditor general, because Canadians want information about their government. Canadians deserve to have access to good quality information about their government. For a department that spends some $70 billion annually, I think the relatively minor investment that an annual report could engender is a worthwhile expenditure.
In broader accountability terms the government does not have a solid track record. It is for this reason that I make specific reference to accountability in my remarks today. The red book outlined the seemingly ambitious agenda to restore integrity to the institution of Parliament. What has been accomplished since 1993? Not very much. Where are those free votes? Where is the independent ethics counsellor who was supposedly reporting to Parliament directly? Where is our code of conduct? Where is our real MP pension reform? Where is the promise of increasing the role of committees in drafting legislation? How can there be so many unanswered questions?
The Liberal government has made a mockery of parliamentary accountability by showing such brazen disdain and contempt toward its election commitments. It has talked incessantly about transparency, about integrity and about commitment to the Canadian people. In truth, the question is not really how many commitments have already been broken, but when next will the government break another one.
Because of this shameful lack of action the institution of Parliament has suffered. Members from all parties have suffered. Most significantly, the Canadian people have suffered.
