David Christopherson

[Airline Industry, March 11th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, blaming a free market economy for government's failure to protect consumers just will not fly. For 17,000 Jetsgo travellers there is nothing but heartbreak, confusion and anger today.

When this government deregulated the airline industry, it failed to bring in basic consumer protections. Now how will the government help stranded Canadians? What protections will the government bring in for the future? Who is going to be held accountable for this mess?

[The Budget, February 24th, 2005]

And who voted for it?

[Supply, February 22nd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to join in the debate today. I support the motion in front of us for a host of reasons.

The first thing I would like to address goes back to the comments of the President of the Treasury Board who earlier today said that the first thing was that it seems that whenever we want to inflame debate, all we have to do is throw up the aura of some dishonest or inappropriate behaviour. Let me knock that down right away.

First, that is not what I am about, and second, that is not what the debate is about today. Let us remember that all of this flows from the AG's report. What did the AG say about whether or not there was anything dishonest, whether that is driving this or not? On page 2 she states:

4.7 This chapter does not express a view on the merits of foundations as a vehicle to achieve the government's policy objectives. Our findings should not be interpreted in any way as a criticism of the individuals in charge of the foundations.

Right off the bat let us acknowledge that this is not some kind of witch hunt. This is not a fishing expedition to leave the suggestion that this is another sponsorship scandal, unless the government wants to give us a carte blanche guarantee that there is none anywhere. However that is not the issue before us now.

The President of the Treasury Board said earlier today that managing something as large as the Government of Canada was a very important responsibility that we all share, and we particularly share that in a minority. He went on to say that he thought members should get focused on their responsibilities.

We are talking about billions of dollars of taxpayer money that the Auditor General has said has not been adequately looked at or accounted for. It seems to me that is the responsibility of every member of the House, minority or majority. If that is not enough of a credential, I am a member of the public accounts committee, so not only is it my job on behalf of my constituents, it is part of my job in being here.

Let us set aside this nonsense that somehow this issue is being raised as a political bogeyman, that accusations are being thrown around. That is not true. This is about accountable government and transparent government, and the ability of parliamentarians on behalf of voters and taxpayers to hold the government of the day accountable. That is it.

What those comments suggest is that the President of the Treasury Board is a little more concerned than he needs to be, and perhaps that is because the government does not have a good argument. I do not understand why the Liberals continue to oppose this.

This may be an opposition motion but we must remember that it is driven by the Auditor General's report, and not just this one. In previous reports she has tried to get the Liberals to acknowledge that something needs to change.

What exactly did the Auditor General say concerning the accountability of foundations? In the first paragraph on the first page she states:

Despite a number of improvements to the framework for the accountability of foundations to Parliament, overall progress is unsatisfactory.

It seems to me that we have a job to do and that is to get into the satisfactory category. If the government is not prepared to do it, then, my goodness, we will do it as a minority because we have the votes this time. That is what is going on here.

I want to continue on with her report where it states:

In the Auditor General's observations on the government's summary financial statements in the Public Accounts of Canada, we have raised concerns about the governance and the accountability of and accounting for government transfers to foundations.

Is that not the government that says that it wants to be transparent and accountable and that it is? It is funny that the Auditor General has said “not yet” when it relates to foundations.

The report goes on to state:

These are up-front payments made many years in advance of need. Our performance audits in 1999 and 2002 found that accountability to Parliament was placed unnecessarily at risk—the government had failed to meet the essential requirements for accountability to Parliament, namely credible reporting of results, effective ministerial oversight, and adequate provision for external audit.

On page 5, 4.14 states:

The government has recorded these payments as expenses, even though the foundations do not expect to use the funds for many years...This accounting treatment has resulted in a reduction of the reported annual surplus when funds are transferred to foundations, rather than when funds are distributed to the ultimate intended recipients or used for the ultimate purposes that the government announced for this spending.

In simpler terms, when the government makes an announcement that money will be going into a foundation, existing or new, it takes the total amount that it is transferring and shows it as an expenditure.

In the case of the Canada millennium scholarship fund, the government was able to announce billions of dollars to help students access the education to which they are entitled. The problem is that if that had been done within a ministry it would be not be an expenditure. The government cannot make the statement that it is spending $3 billion on education when it is done in that way. However, because the money is going to a foundation, the government can make the statement and it is factually truthful.

However in reality, in terms of what it means to people, if the government has not spent $3 billion on education then it cannot take credit for supposedly doing so. The key point the Auditor General made was that what ought to be recorded as an expense, and therefore available for political use in a speech, is what ought to be accounted for, which means only the money that was actually sent to recipients. We have learned from the Auditor General that it is a fraction of what is in these accounts.

That is the first biggest problem we have. It leaves the impression that the government is spending billions of dollars on Canadian health care, billions of dollars on innovation and billions of dollars on education but that is not the case.

The government has transferred the money to these foundations, yes, and there is a notional amount in the budget, yes, but did it actually spend that money in the homes for people to actually benefit from it? No, only a fraction of it. That is not being transparent because the government is saying one thing and doing something different.

The Auditor General is saying that the government has an obligation. It does not matter whether it is Liberals, Tories or whoever, what matters is that the government ought to be showing as an expenditure only those dollars that it actually expends, not money that it transferred to an agency which then spends it in little dribbles. Without the Auditor General telling us this, the existing rules would never put that in front of the House of Commons.

Holding foundations accountable is not just a question of whether or not we think there are people in there cooking the books, or outright stealing money, or expending money they should not, or passing off money to partisan friends. That is not the second issue that I am interested in, in terms of bringing them forth. I am interested because in the short time I have been here and on the public accounts committee we have had a chance to deal with the Auditor General's report that came out last year.

My friends who were on the committee will know that chapter 5 dealt with Indian and Northern Affairs Canada's education program and post-secondary student support, one of the most outrageous reports of a ministry not doing the job that the House thought it was doing. It was not about whether we thought the deputy was dishonest. It was quite the opposite. The deputy appeared very professional. Nobody was questioning his credentials before, during or after.

However that does not take away from the fact that the disgrace that is going on in this ministry, vis-à-vis our first nations people, would not have been brought to the attention of the House of Commons had the Auditor General not had the legislative mandate to go in and review what was going on.

We have two different things here. There is a world of difference between the minister who says that the programs work. Well, a broken clock works twice a day. The question is whether this is the best use of the money that is meant to help Canadians. The Auditor General is suggesting that the process does not let us as parliamentarians make an intelligent evaluation on whether program objectives are being met vis-à-vis the money that is being spent to fund it. That is the issue. It seems pretty clear to me and I think to quite a number of other people.

I do not know why the government has itself in such a twist over this. The Liberals are the ones, by resisting, who leave the impression that maybe there is something they do not want people to see. I am not making that accusation or that allegation but I am saying that billions of dollars are sitting in accounts earning interest to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.

i think the millennium fund alone has collected close to $700 million in interest on the money that is sitting there and yet the government is taking political credit for spending the money on education. No, it is not. The money is sitting in a bank account collecting hundreds of millions of dollars that could be helping people.

At the end of the day, making these changes would make for better transparency and more proper accountability.

[Wal-Mart, February 18th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, 10 years ago, the Levi Strauss clothing company had over a dozen manufacturing plants in Canada, including in my hometown of Hamilton, but then along came Wal-Mart, which forced Levi to close all their North American factories and move their operations to poverty-wage Asia, killing off thousands of Canadian jobs.

Recently fined for child labour violations, this anti-labour predator could not care less about the damage it does to our economy. When will the government wake up and take action to ensure that Canadian manufacturing jobs are protected from corporate bullies like Wal-Mart?

[Canada Labour Code, February 11th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, those words do not do us an awful lot of good after the first comment of “it's not my responsibility”.

The fact of the matter is that Wal-Mart is an international corporation. This is affecting Canadians right across the country. In Saskatchewan, for instance, right now Wal-Mart is challenging the laws that protect workers' rights during an organizing drive. This is a constitutional matter in Saskatchewan.

What is the minister going to do to stand up for those workers in Saskatchewan who have a right to have their constitutional rights protected?

[Canada Labour Code, February 11th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, Wal-Mart's closure of its first unionized store is being characterized as economic terrorism, a blatant attempt to smash organizing activities across the country.

Wal-Mart has forced manufacturers to relocate overseas at the cost of thousands of Canadian jobs and now it has sent a message to its 70,000 Canadian workers telling them that they do not have the right to organize, they do not have the right to collective bargaining, and they do not have the right to decent wages or hours of work.

What is the government going to do to protect Canadian workers from corporate bullies like Wal-Mart?

[The Environment, February 10th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, this morning a group of proud Canadians from Hamilton stood outside the federal government's offices in Downsview, Ontario to apologize to federal civil servants and to urge the enforcement of Canadian environmental law.

They have apologized because the city of Hamilton has launched a $75 million lawsuit against 64 civil servants and four Chrétien cabinet ministers for the alleged crime of doing their job to protect Canadians by applying the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act in the matter of the Red Hill Creek Expressway.

Our civil servants conducted over 5,700 environmental assessments last year. Hundreds of government staff worked to implement this law, and the lawsuit is imposing a chill on them. They do not know whether their government, their employer, will support them or cut a backroom deal.

Seven out of fifteen Hamilton city councillors not only voted against it, they have also written the government urging a vigorous fight against this lawsuit.

It is time for the government to stand up and defend its own environmental law.

[Immigration, February 2nd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, when a young Moroccan woman named Saadia El Ouardi was ordered by her father to marry a man more than twice her age, and who already had two wives, she refused. He then threatened to kill her to regain his so-called honour, and she fled to Canada to save her life.

But, last weekend she was deported to Morocco, despite her father's continuing threats, despite the fact that her son Timmy is a Canadian citizen and despite the appeals of the community in Hamilton where she made her home.

While citizenship and immigration does not recognize threatened honour killings in Morocco, the international organization Global Rights and the United Nations have documented such killings, and the inability of Morocco's justice system to protect women there.

Our first priority is to return Saadia and Timmy to their family in Canada. But, the bigger issue here is that Canada must work harder to protect women everywhere from the tragedy of honour killings.

[Brabant Newspapers, December 14th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, the Brabant newspaper chain publishes many papers in Hamilton communities. Cost cutting measures and layoffs have allowed Brabant to reap record profits.

While investors are raking it in, Brabant and its masters at TorStar Corporation cancelled 600 kids' paper routes.

The 60 remaining press, insert and pre-production workers have gone on strike seeking pay equity and fair wages.

This same company has called for a shield law to protect its journalists from being forced to reveal their sources. That is right, it wants more respect for its workers.

But at the same time, Brabant is now using scab labour just before Christmas to undermine its employees' bargaining strength. Where is the respect in that?

I support a shield law, but I also support showing more respect for workers' rights to fair wages. Using scabs is an immoral attack on the collective bargaining process.

Get rid of the scabs, Brabant, and get back to the bargaining table.

[Canada Border Services Agency Act, December 13th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I think all of us are like-minded in moving forward. This will be one of those times when we may have disagreements along the way about how we do something, but no doubt we are all resolute in the raison d'être of the bill and the absolute critical need to ensure that our borders are as safe as possible as well as being efficient as possible. I have no doubt we share that goal.

Again, I want to be perfectly clear that our caucus is certainly supportive, at the very least, to getting it to committee. I would not want to hazard beyond that. I am not criticizing it in any great detail at this point. It is up and running. Something needed to be done. We need to get it to committee. We will see where we are at in committee and if there are some changes that gets us close to perfection, I know we will want to roll our sleeves up and do that work.

Let me say two quick things to the hon. member. First, I appreciate the fact that after September 11 a lot of deficiencies were found in the American intelligence system. To the Americans credit, they have had a number of reviews of that and publicized their findings. People in very senior positions have had to take some hits and responsibility because of lack of planning ahead of time, which contributed to September 11. We did not have those kind of reviews, but I want to ensure that we put on the table the fact that we had similar serious problems here. We were not looking any further ahead than the Americans or anybody else. One could call that a partisan shot, but it is part of the history and needs to be provided to put things in context on how we got there.

Second, I accept the fact that the government had to move quickly. I accept the fact that a majority government would have no reason to think the bill would not pass. I have some trouble with the specific comment of the parliamentary secretary that it could not wait around. This is a minority situation. If it happened now, I do not imagine the government would dare run off, spend money, hire people and create an agency without first getting the approval of the House.

If timing was an issue in terms of responding quickly and having to beef up our security in a very quick rapid way, I believe the government would find it would get the support of the House. We are not here to hurt the country. We are here to do the right thing. If that means moving quickly, then by unanimous consent the House can do anything. I have a little problem with that being the reason. I think it is more the fact that the Liberals were in power with a majority for so long, it never really occurred to the government, in any serious way, that its bill would not pass.

I thank the parliamentary secretary for his attention and for taking the time to comment.