Ken Epp

[Department Of External Affairs Act, February 8th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask a question of the hon. member who just spoke. Because of his experience in being abroad and seeing some of the firsthand work our money is doing around the world, I wonder whether he has any insights to share with respect to how we can produce some long term results in some of the countries in which we are putting money.

What could we do that would finally make these people independent and contributing members to the world society instead of drawing from it?

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

Mr. Speaker, I have just one very quick comment. Perhaps the member for Burin-St. George's will respond to it. Of all the agencies mentioned in Bill C-65, almost all of them have a little clause that reads something like this.

It says that on the day when this bill is proclaimed all people who are on the commission prior to that will cease to be on the commission. That unfortunately raises the sinister question, why would we have to eliminate all present members of the present board? Is it because the present government wants to be able to appoint new people, displacing the patronage appointments of the past?

We will be watching all of those agencies very closely and noting the people who are dropped. We know they will all be dropped if this legislation is passed; we expect with a majority of Liberals it will be. Then we will be watching very carefully to see who is put back on to the boards even though it is in reduced numbers.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I really hesitate to do this on a point of order, but Standing Order 11(2) clearly indicates this thing called relevance. I think we have strayed significantly from Bill C-65.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Kitchener for his very well reasoned, prepared speech. It was well delivered.

I want to say something about this farm analogy which occurred to me the instant he said it. He indicated that he thought Reformers, after the pail was full of milk, would then kick over the pail-not so. We are more committed than anybody around here to very carefully carrying that pail because it is not our milk. It belongs to the taxpayers.

Also, the thought occurred to me that before they kneel down on the stool beside the cow, they are forgetting to check whether the pail has a bottom. Theirs does not. When putting $120 billion a year into the government coffers as Canadian taxpayers are and there is $160 billion coming out of the bottom, we know the hole at the bottom is larger than the input at the top. That is an item of great concern.

I want to ask the member to respond to a question having to do with the urgency of reducing the deficit. Does he acknowledge-I know he cannot speak for the other members of his party-that the leadership of that party is an item of great concern to thinking Canadians because of the rapidly growing debt? Even if they are on target they are going to be adding roughly $80 billion to $100 billion to the debt before this Parliament is finished. Even very modest interest rates of 5 per cent indicate an additional cost of $5 billion per year. Just having the debt grow at this rate adds basically one-eighth to our present deficit without any additional programs being financed.

What I would like to hear just one Liberal member say is it is time they attack this, attack it vigorously and quickly and very effectively to get government spending down.

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

Go ahead and applaud. It is a wonderful goal.

Again, if you look at the goal in terms of the family, it would bring its borrowing down to $10,000 per year from $16,000. That is the goal. In other words, it is still going into debt $10,000 per year.

What does this bill do to reduce the deficit? For this family, which is spending $64,000 a year and borrowing $16,000, it reduces its annual spending by $6,000.

Yes, it is important. But I am saying let us get the horses moving. It is good to save $6, but we need to save $16,000. That is the proportion that this bill proposes to save in our budget. I am appealing to hon. members in the government who have the responsibility, who have the power to do something about it: Let us get with it. The longer we wait the harder it gets. While this is good, we are wasting a whole day talking about pennies when we should be talking about the billions that are threatening the well-being of all of our citizens and, indeed, this whole country.

I am very pleased the government is heading in this direction. But from all of the information and all of the input that I get, not only from residents in the Elk Island constituency but from right across the country who write to us in huge volumes, it is becoming very urgent that we reduce our deficit. Let us get on with it.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to rise in the House today to add yet another perspective to what is happening here today with Bill C-65.

The government has undertaken to reduce the membership on some of the boards. It has even undertaken to eliminate some of the boards and direct their activities to other government departments or agencies. My first response is to give a mild cheer because this is definitely going in the right direction.

I cannot help but relate an analogy that came to my mind. I remember when I was a very young lad on the farm in Saskatchewan before we used tractors exclusively. For a while we had tractors as well as horses. I remember on one occasion the tractor got stuck and we had to use the horses to pull it out of the ditch. My dad hooked up the horses and lined them up perfectly in the right direction. Then he said chlick, chlick', because that was how one got the horses to go, but they just tightened up the traces. They did not make any great effort. So my father again wentchlick, chlick' and still nothing happened. The tractor would not move. Then very unexpectedly he hauled out, brought down his hand on the rump of one of the horses in the team and gave a yell like I had never heard my father give before. The horses leaped forward and pulled the tractor out of the ditch.

I want to applaud the Liberals because I think they have the horses lined up. The problem is we need to give them a yell; we need to give them a motivation. I will not use the one we used on the horses but we need to get them going. We need to get them moving. While they are headed in the right direction, they have not yet begun to move.

One might say that cannot be because we are going to reduce costs here and this is really significant. We are going to cut government expenditures and help balance the budget. Yes, that is true. As I am going to show in a few minutes, the direction is correct but unfortunately, all we have done is just barely tightened up on the traces. We have not yet begun to pull the tractor out of the mud. It is still firmly bogged down.

This act has a lot of potential to look good in the press. There is a possibility here of some good symbolism, because as I said, it is moving in the right direction. Unfortunately, I do not believe it has enough substance. It is not substantive enough to do anything real and tangible. As a matter of fact, it will be very interesting to see whether there actually are savings that result in basically terminating the employment of a number of board members in these different agencies; then turning around and hiring a bunch of them back.

Undoubtedly these different departments and components of government need leadership. However, the real problem is not so much how many people are giving that leadership as how much money those departments and different agencies are spending. I briefly looked at the list of organizations that are being revised.

In the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency Act the number of board members is being decreased from 18 to 7. Yet, we know the proportion of money spent in the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency Act is very small with respect to the board members as opposed to the money they are giving away.

Perhaps we ought to look much more seriously at how they are spending their money and how that can be reduced instead of reducing simply the number of people that are, shall we say, trying to manage the affairs.

In the Broadcasting Act the number of members is decreasing from 15 to 12. In the Canada Council Act the number is decreasing from 19 to 9. I could keep on going all the way down the list.

The National Advisory Council on Fitness and Amateur Sport is being dissolved. That is a very wise decision in the sense that nowadays there is so much awareness already of the need for physical fitness that individuals should be taking the initiative on their own. We do not really need a government bureaucracy that is taking taxpayers' money in order to try to promote this.

One of the items I noted in the minister's statement was that there was a full review of all of the agencies. That too is good. I am one who is much in favour of looking at a problem, analysing it, trying to break it down into smaller pieces if possible. Identify the problems. Identify all of the possible solutions. Choose from the better solutions and eventually nail it down to those solutions which will work.

Presumably that is what this review was all about. However, it is not possible for us to get a copy of the review. I find that rather distressing. As members of Parliament who have input into whether or not this act will pass and whether it is good, we will be dealing only with the issues the government has decided to bring forward. The whole review is in fact being kept under wraps.

This is a violation of a principle of democracy as well as being a substantial violation and a breaking of a promise of the government members when they were running for election. They promised more openness and accountability. We are not receiving that in this particular process because of the fact that the total report of the review is not being made available. We are told succinctly that it is not available to us.

Why does the government not release these findings? Why is the government keeping it a secret? Speculation is all I can do because I do not have the report. Perhaps the reason might be that there were more cuts identified by the review than the Liberals are prepared to go ahead with.

Consequently they choose the few they want. Really what they have here are a few cosmetic changes, minor reductions in the number of board members but no substantial cuts in terms of total cost and the total efficiency of these organizations and groups.

Some of these reductions appear suspect in any case. The way the act is written is rather interesting. It says that all of the members will cease their employment, but then when that takes place the government will be ready to reappoint new members. It does occur to me that perhaps one reason we have the legislation that way is because a number of the members of these boards are probably carry overs from a previous government of a party which essentially no longer exists. There is now an opportunity to replace the members of the board from those old appointments with brand new appointments where the government so chooses.

Frankly, this adds to my cynicism and the cynicism of Canadians who are observing this. We all ought to look at that type of activity very carefully. Again I am speculating. We will be watching with interest to see what happens when this bill is passed. I am certain it will; it is a government bill. The Liberals have the majority. We will speak and will show the obvious shortcomings of it, but in the end it will pass because of the majority and because of the rule of voting with the party. Consequently, it will pass and then we will watch to see how many of the new appointees have Liberal connections.

I would also like to speak very briefly about the need to go beyond reducing. I guess this is the part of getting the horses moving. We are going in the right direction when we say: "Here is a department or an agency and we need to cut back". However, perhaps what we ought to do is to start pulling Canada's fiscal tractor out of the mud by getting the horses moving.

That might involve complete elimination of a number of these agencies. Instead of reducing from 15 board members to nine perhaps we ought to be reducing from 15 to zero and winding up the agencies and what they do. We do not as taxpayers save money if all we are doing is taking the money spending function of these people and moving it to another government agency. The money is still going to be flowing through. We need to do some hard work to eliminate the deficit. That can only happen if we reduce spending. We can only reduce spending by eliminating programs which are no longer needed and which are at the lower end of the priority level.

I am going to say again what I say in probably every speech I make here. Even just a few minutes ago there was an innuendo from the member for Yukon who said that the government might want to take the Reform Party tactics and eliminate health care and education. That is wrong. That is not our policy. We have said it, we have written it, and we will just keep on repeating it and hammering it until members opposite hear.

Our members and the citizens of this country we represent have told us very clearly that health care and education are of a top priority. That is why we want government costs and expenditures reduced and the budget balanced, so that we can continue to provide the things which Canadians have placed at a high priority.

They are empty promises to say we will keep those programs if we lose our ability to deliver them. That is very important to us. We need to reduce the programs that Canadians do not want.

In that regard I want to talk about one program specifically. One agency which is being affected here is the National Capital

Commission. There are many others and probably some of my colleagues will speak about those. I want to talk a little about the National Capital Commission. I want to speak to this from the perspective of a person who lives some distance from Ottawa.

As a matter of fact, until just three or four months before the election I had never been to Ottawa, being way out in the west and never having the financial means to take the huge trip out to the east. I would always have liked to but we were not able to do that within the confines of our family budget. Of course since the election, I have had the privilege of spending a lot of time in Ottawa.

One thing impressed me and that was the tonnes, the truckloads of money Canadians have poured into this region. I suppose there is nothing wrong with saying that this is Canada's national capital. Surely in this part of the country, in this city which houses our capital, we can do some special things to make it good, to make it attractive, to make it a tourist centre, to make it fun for citizens to visit and to see more than just the workings of government.

It is quite evident that after the dog and pony show of question period is over most citizens find this not that interesting. The galleries are mostly empty now and I admire those who are still here listening to this. They come to Ottawa and after question period they want to go and visit some other things.

We have museums, we have parks, we have all sorts of things. However this being the seat of government, by that token it attracts tourists here, other Canadians and indeed people from around the world. Would it not then be reasonable to ask the city of Ottawa to capitalize on that and as every other city in Canada needs to do, have it look after making other attractions in the city that will attract and help entertain the people who come here?

That happens in every city in Canada except this one. This city alone receives this huge input of government money, which translates into taxpayers' money from across the country, in order to provide these nice things. I am not speaking against what is being provided. I am saying that the money ought to be provided in a much more efficient way, managed by private enterprise primarily but also with some involvement by the city itself.

The National Capital Commission is not accountable. It is another one of those places where the taxpayers are being coerced into sending their money to Ottawa. As I said, we send it here in truckloads. At the same time, there are many areas of government where we taxpayers do not have any say on how the money is spent. We can each legitimately ask the question: What value is this expenditure to me as an individual living in a part of the country away from Ottawa, or indeed what value is it in terms of the country itself?

It is unfortunate that the National Capital Commission has decided to hold all its meetings in camera. When suggested that those meetings should be made public it said: "No, this is the same as any other crown corporation. We are not required to and therefore we will not". I do not think that is acceptable. I know it is not acceptable.

People complain to me about the high level of taxation just about every day. Those people are very upset when their money goes into a black hole, a dark sinkhole somewhere and there is no accountability on how it is spent. We do not know how much is given to certain individuals. We do not know how contracts are let. We do not know whose friends are getting paid what.

Again, it is innuendo that could be so easily solved by just doing what the Liberals said they would do, that is, having open government: openness and accountability. If there is nothing to hide, why would you be afraid of having someone look at what is happening? If you have something to hide then you will hide it. If you simply hide it, then the conclusion on the part of many Canadians is that there must be something to hide.

Right now it is winter. People back in my riding who happen to be watching this are enjoying today, a plus one day, but right here right now we are feeling the brunt of winter. In Ottawa these days, we have a little thing called Winterlude, a wonderful cultural event. Last year it cost just under $264,000. We are told that it is time to restrain ourselves, to reduce our spending and to look after the mounting debt. What is the response of this unaccountable capital commission with the Winterlude concert? The best information I have is that instead of spending $264,000, as it did last year, it is spending $383,000.

I know $383,000 is not much in terms of total government spending, but when a citizen is having trouble making ends meet and is being asked to pay $800 or $900 a month in taxes, seeing one-third of a million dollars being spent here, to him it is a huge amount of money. That lack of accountability is something we need to really address.

I believe we need to look very seriously at disbanding the National Capital Commission. The parts that pertain to the Canadian government could easily be transferred to public works and government services. Yes, we want to keep the grounds nice. We want to keep the buildings in repair. We need to occasionally undertake to build a monument or something like that. It could be done under the aegis of the minister, with accountability to the people via Parliament instead of just being done by an unaccountable, appointed group.

Canadians universally will be upset when they hear me say that the National Capital Commission bought new office furniture for around $2 million, selling their old stuff for $50,000. I do not know how old and how decrepit it was. Maybe it really was down to the place where when it was sat on the chairs collapsed. That is possible but I doubt it. If that were the case I do not know how it received $50,000 for the used stuff.

In these times of restraint it would be totally appropriate to say, okay, it would be nice to have $2 million worth of new furniture, but perhaps in deference to the taxpayer we should not spend it. Perhaps we ought to be under budget instead of working so hard to spend every penny that is allocated in the budget.

The NCC now has a new building that occupies 11 floors. It is larger than most city halls. We have an organization just in this city, aside from the city hall organization, occupying 11 floors in a building with $2 million worth of new furniture. I am upset with that. I represent all of the citizens in Elk Island and I believe most people across the country would agree when I say that is an obscenity which has to be stopped.

I know it is nice to have a beautiful family rendezvous centre on Sussex Drive for $250,000, but when we cannot afford it that is when you say it is a lower level of priority.

I would like to point out to the members here and to all Canadian citizens that when I say we need to get the horse moving it is not just rhetoric. It is not just trying to make a point. There have been some accusations even today about the Reform Party trying to gain popularity by making the tax revolt thing. We did not cause it. We were talking to citizens who were telling us increasingly that the deficit must be brought under control.

What is the government's plan? I will round off the numbers so I do not have to read them all. The income of government is around $120 billion per year. It spends $160 billion; hence it needs to borrow $40 billion. As a result of this bill and the savings that are promoted by it, which I cannot really figure out, when I add up the numbers in the document that we were given they come to $5.9 million. I believe the minister said the savings would be $15 million. The member for the Bloc said it was going to save $1 million. I guess at this stage we do not have any solid accounting for how much it will save. However, if we take the safe number of $15 million how big a dent does that make in the deficit? Instead of having to borrow $40 billion we now have to borrow $39,985,000,000. Big deal. It is almost insignificant.

I was a math teacher in my previous life. I taught for 31 years. Let us look at this as if it were proportioned down to a family. Let us say that a family has an income of $48,000. If it was patterned along the Canadian government that family would be spending $64,000 a year. With a family income of $48,000 it has to borrow every year $16,000 in order to keep going with its spending patterns which it is not willing to give up.

That family would have to reduce spending or get more income. If more income was not available it would have to reduce its spending by $16,000 a year in order not to go further into debt.

It is illustrative to look at the Liberals' projection and their goals. We hear so often-and this is wonderful-the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance saying, "We will meet our goals". The minister was very clear. That is great.

[Petitions, December 14th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, the next two petitions are essentially the same. They request that Parliament not amend the human rights code, the Canadian Human Rights Act or the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in any way which would tend to indicate societal approval of same sex relationships or homosexuality and not to amend the human rights code to include the undefined phrase sexual orientation.

Together the two petitions contain 1,058 signatures.

[Petitions, December 14th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured today to rise, pursuant to Standing Order 36, to present three petitions from Elk Island and the surrounding area.

The first petition asks that the Young Offenders Act, because it is not stringent enough, be amended to lower the protected age to 12, to provide harsher penalties for those convicted of violent crimes and the release of the names of offenders.

The petition is signed by 1,296 petitioners.

[Department Of Public Works And Government Services Act, December 13th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I am a little frustrated in getting up here. This amendment comes from the Liberal side. I know the way things work around here with the majority over there and the less than majority over here that it will pass and what we say probably will not.

I will not miss this opportunity to go on record as powerfully and as strongly as I can to say that this is not the answer to the problems we have in this country, specifically on this one issue.

When I first saw this amendment I thought of a television show I watched for about 10 minutes one day. This lady was put into a box; the box was closed; the magician sawed her right in half. It was incredible. Her body was cut in two. Then he opened the box and she was fine again, there was no severance. That is what this particular amendment does. It gives the illusion of accomplishing something but really nothing is accomplished at all.

It is important for us in considering what we are talking about to really know what this motion says. Originally it said the minister may do anything for or on behalf of any department, board, or agency of the Government of Canada or a crown corporation or any government body or person in Canada or elsewhere.

It was mentioned earlier here that this was already in the previous act, the one this bill replaces. Not quite right. The two words "or elsewhere" were added. In other words the ability of the government to perform these functions now goes even outside of our country according to what it first proposed.

We now have this amendment. It still has exactly the same words except the one little word "a" has been taken out. Other than that the words are all there. The only difference is that for the minister to do anything for or on behalf of any government body or person in Canada or elsewhere, he or she must now obtain the approval of cabinet. In other words there is no restriction at all on whether or not government can still do anything for anybody.

The other day I was giving a little speech to a few people. I said the rough paraphrase of clause 16 of Bill C-52 was simply that the minister may do anything for anyone and the taxpayers pick up the bill. It was then said to me that that was not quite fair and that I was overstating it. Yet, it is very difficult to read anything else into this when it says that the minister may do anything for or on behalf of, and then everything listed includes anybody because finally it gets down to that every entity is

either a government, a government agency, a body, or a person. There is no exclusion.

I would also like to make reference to a quotation. It is from a letter written by no other than the minister himself. These are his words: "I have already decided that Public Works and Government Services Canada will not be competing with the private sector by offering services outside the federal government". That quotation is from a letter signed by the Minister of Public Works and Government Services.

I am at a loss to understand if that is his intention why he would hesitate for a second to state that in the legislation. The legislation says one thing and the minister says exactly the opposite. He is trying to assure us and the critics of this bill that we ought not to worry because it is not his intention to do this. Yet the bill clearly says that the government may do it. I do not see where the logic lies there; it misses me completely and I think it would miss anybody who stopped to think about it.

We have had a number of very strong presentations on the intrusion of government into private enterprise. I have a whole stack of them here. I know I cannot refer to them so I will not, Mr. Speaker, but they are here. Most of them are from small business firms and notably among them are consulting engineers. I will not quote it but I remember one of them said that this legislation cuts right to the very core of small engineering firms whose lifeblood is bidding on and providing services for provinces and municipalities.

This legislation now says that the taxpayer is going to be subsidizing the competition because government agencies are also going to be bidding. That introduces such a large unfairness into the free enterprise process.

I would also like to read a statement from a very well-known organization which does things along the lines of analysing our economic problems and difficulties and solutions to those problems. This is that organization's assessment of this bill, not mine: "It is clear that if the implication of the bill is that the federal government intends in any way to engage in the undertaking of work for private purposes in competition with contractors in the private sector, this would be entirely wrong and the bill ought to specifically preclude the federal government from doing this".

There are other references. As I said I have many of them here from individuals, groups and businesses. They all give the message that the government should not be in the business of competing with private enterprise, period. Why it is in this legislation at all is a total mystery to me.

Now there is an amendment that clause 16 ought to be amended by dividing the two parts. One part says to let the minister go ahead, but in the other part he has to get a nod from the other cabinet ministers, behind closed doors, no openness, no accountability and no restriction on what he can do for anyone anywhere on planet earth.

I object. On behalf of all of those people who wrote to me and my colleagues, I object. I object on behalf of all of those small businesses, those engineering firms, the printers, the small newspapers who wrote. They said they do not like having government taxation subsidy driving them out of business. For all of them I say as strongly as I can, please, members of this House, reconsider this. Do not pass this legislation and then regret it later because I know you will.

[Department Of Public Works And Government Services Act, December 13th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I have some statements which are relevant to the amendment. I do not know if you noticed, but I think I was very close to being on topic speaking about the four points of my amendment one by one. I was very careful to do that.

I would like to say a few things partially in rebuttal to the hon. member from the Liberal Party who just spoke. He indicated how patient he has been. I suppose if we were to blow up our chests a little those of us on the other side would say that we too have tried to exercise patience in trying to work together and I shall continue to do that. It is not my objective here to merely fight for the sake of fighting. I want to do what is right and what is best for the Canadian people.

The member said that there was a time to a stop in these discussions. I think the record ought to show that we probably discussed Bill C-52 in committee for 10 hours maximum. That is my estimate. We heard one witness. That is my recollection of it. I stand to be corrected if that is wrong.

Second, the member made some statement about backroom deals. I did not accuse anybody about backroom deals. I said the perception out there among the people is that governments engage in backroom deals. Because the Liberal government has said it wants more openness and honesty and integrity, and Reformers are also saying this, surely we can agree that we will

do away with any reality of that which may have occurred in the past. Let me be really charitable in the spirit of Christmas and say it happened before the Liberals were elected, some of them, at least to the government side.

We need to do away with not only the reality of it but the perception of it. The only way to guarantee that the perception is removed is by actually putting into legislation that there is this openness.

With respect to the amendment to my motion that says "where possible", I do not know how to say this in such a way that it does not come out wrong. I am going to try very hard to do that. The only reason that we inserted these two words in sections (a) and (b) was the government side. Observing the way discussions went in our committee and recognizing that if we were to come with an amendment which would be very hard and which would say the minister must engage or make sure, refrain from engaging in activities and so on, we were quite certain that the Liberal side would have just said nix to it. We softened it deliberately for them, to give them an opportunity to vote for this so that the minister has greater flexibility. That is why the words are there, to say "where possible".

I know the hon. member from the Bloc is most sincere and actually made an amendment to my motion to remove those words which would have been my first choice. I know they do not have a chance of getting it passed. Instead of not going anywhere, I would like to at least move the government a little in the right direction, and that is why we said "where possible'. That is my comment with respect to the amendment that has been made.

In the spirit of Christmas, if I may quote the hon. member for St. Boniface, in the spirit of gentleness let us get together on this and let us vote in favour of the motion but let us leave those words in so that the Liberals can feel comfortable voting for it.