Madam Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to rise in the House today to speak to Bill C-263, an act to amend the Financial Administration Act.
The bill is about a non-partisan issue, one of which we as members of the 35th Parliament should be keenly aware, and that is accountability. Accountability is what Canadians want from their governments, from their elected officials and the institutions which they fund. The last government failed in many areas, but one area that really disturbed the voters was the lack of accounting for funds spent in the name of the taxpayer. That government paid the price for its failings, so I feel confident that this mistake will not be repeated by current members and changes will be made in the way we conduct the nation's business.
The bill does not require anything of the crown corporations listed other than the standard of accountability imposed on most government operations. All that we are asking for is a corporate plan, a budget summary and an annual report.
As a small businessman I can tell the House that without a business plan, proper accounting and auditing, any business is doomed to fail. We are not dealing with a small business though, we are dealing with the nation's biggest business and its funding. It comes in trust from the Canadian taxpayer. We have
a moral obligation to ensure that these funds are spent as wisely as possible.
The Canada Council is one of the affected agencies in the proposed legislation. As a granting council, budgeting should be a fairly simple and non-controversial matter. A corporate plan, setting out the corporate vision, objectives and a timetable for meeting those objectives are fundamental to the proper operation of a granting council. Without such a business plan businesses fall apart. Without such a plan the granting council leaves itself open to be captured by special interest groups. A gap forms in accountability between an organization and those who fund it and the taxpayers feel disenfranchised.
Perhaps this is part of the real problem with the Canada Council. With no ongoing vision, plan or objective, special interests are able to find a measure of control in deciding who or what is worthy of funding. This can be the only explanation for the council to even consider giving $10,000 to the Writers Union of Canada for its "Writing through Race" conference in Vancouver last year. The conference openly discriminated against a segment of our society on the basis of race, and it did so with public money.
Robert Fulford wrote at the time: "The idea of the Writers Union reinventing apartheid for any purpose would have been beyond belief". Unbelievably, when the issue broke in the media, associate director of the council, Brian Anthony, dared to defend the grant. He said that support to such conferences that seek solutions to the problem of systemic barriers, whether they be gender, cultural, artistic or race related, is an essential step in bridging the gap between artists and the public.
These are not the viewpoints of the Parliament of Canada and they are not contained in the statutes that created the Canada Council. However there is no holding the council to account for this outrageous action.
A further example of waste at the council came to light last week when it was revealed that the agency's director is receiving a $1,300 a monthly stipend in addition to his generous salary which is something between $110,000 and $130,000. The allowance in lieu of moving costs is given to the director because he lives in Montreal and commutes to Ottawa to work. My suggestion to the heritage minister is to find a bureaucrat who is willing to move to Ottawa and so save the taxpayers some hard earned dollars.
I was interested to find that the council receives $98.4 million from federal taxpayers each year. Believing that the council was a granting agency, I was shocked to learn that of the 98.4 million in tax dollars, the council spends $21 million on administration. It would appear that the 248 full time cheque writers at the council have managed to create quite a bureaucracy since it was formed in 1957.
Accountability to Parliament over the years might have prevented the current situation from developing and could help the organization to downsize efficiently along with the rest of government as the recent budget requires. A clear corporate vision with financial accountability would help to avoid the paper shuffling and internal policy development that now go on.
There has been a great deal of controversy surrounding the purchase of some paintings at the National Gallery recently. A few of the paintings were reported to be worth millions of dollars, even though they appear simplistic to the untrained eye. The question many have asked me because of the controversy is: Were the paintings a waste of tax dollars? The debate that follows usually centres around a question of how art is defined.
According to the Canada Council Act the object of the council is to foster and promote the study and enjoyment of the arts. I believe part of the answer about how art is defined is found in the following phrase. The key word is enjoyment. If Canadians do not like it, if they get angry and upset that their tax dollars are frittered away on such items, enjoyment is lost.
If my constituents come back from Ottawa upset after a visit to the National Gallery, how can we say that value for their money was achieved? We certainly cannot justify it by the statute definition because they felt resentment and not enjoyment as the law requires.
Many proponents of art try to brush off these criticisms and suggest that people such as my constituents simply do not understand art. While this may or may not be true, it is not relevant to whether such art should be funded by tax dollars. If a large majority of my constituents believe that our scarce tax dollars would be better spent on medical research, national defence or policing, I am happy to support their position.
The Reform Party has developed a policy on cultural industries that will affect the Canada Council, the National Gallery and other arts bodies. The Reform Party will promote the freedom of the Canadian cultural community to develop and grow without needless protection and government regulation, encouraging a free cultural market that offers choice while lowering cost to consumers as services are provided by the sectors that are able to do so most cost effectively. This is our vision of how culture should develop.
Our vision of a new and better Canada allows Canadians to use their own judgment in picking winners and losers in the cultural marketplace. This already happens to a large extent.
If we look at the Canadian television industry we see two private national broadcasters that both manage to make a profit most years. Then we have the CBC which is mortgaged to the hilt and costs over $1 billion a year. The major reason two are winners and one is a loser is based on incentives or lack of them. The winners must produce programming its audiences want to see. The loser can produce whatever it wants and then forget all about the consumer because it already has its funding kindly appropriated by Parliament.
Reform policy would place the government sponsored loser in a situation where subsidies are weaned away and the future of the company is based on consumer satisfaction.
I received a card a few weeks ago, as did all MPs, that asked me to imagine Canada without musicians, painters, writers and other artists. The card implied that without the Canada Council we would lack culture and imagination.
Canadians have culture and imagination in spite of the Canada Council. Our art galleries, theatres, music halls and libraries are full of examples of Canadian culture and imagination that existed long before the Canada Council was ever conceived. No grants were handed out prior to 1957 yet artists have flourished in Canada for centuries.
I was elected on a platform of accountability. I promised my constituents I would represent their concerns before all other considerations. I also promised to help put in place the kind of democratic reforms that would hold myself and other elected officials accountable to the people who elect them. If Parliament is to be responsible about spending tax dollars I believe there must be a direct accounting from all those who receive funding.
The Canadian taxpayer is demanding accountability. The bill moves us in that direction and I ask all members for their support.
