Diane Ablonczy

[Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Process, April 19th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order. I had understood the amendment to read "including the possibility of a formula or cap to reduce". Are those words not in the amendment? That is what I had understood.

[Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Process, April 19th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I have a few thoughts to add to this motion to refer the matter of redistribution to a committee of this House and on the amendment of the member for Kootenay East to look at capping the number of members of the House of Commons. I have seven short points to make on that, the perfect number for those in the House who would like to have something to count.

First, we need to look at the cost considerations of increasing numbers of members in the House of Commons. The Canadian public is becoming increasingly critical of the cost of its government, the inefficiencies it perceives in the allocation of moneys that go to support government; the budgets, the support systems, the salary costs, the pension costs. All of the liabilities that we incur as a country because of increased representation should be a factor because they concern the taxpaying public.

Second, and this has been mentioned, the physical limitations of the House of Commons are a consideration for us and another reason to support the amendment that has been brought forward to this motion.

We have now a very full complement of seats in this House. Many members, especially those members considerably larger than I, have complained about the cramped space for the work of debates and participation in the House. It is very clear that adding more bodies and more physical demands on the space in the House is going to be very difficult to accommodate.

Third, particularly in the system we have had to date there is a very limited role for many of our members of Parliament, particularly backbench members of the government. The decisions generally are made and taken by cabinet and those who advise cabinet. The purpose of the backbenchers in the House seems to be to support those decisions. Simply having more people standing up and voting for decisions that are taken by a small group does not seem to be a very needed addition to the way our system works at this time.

Fourth, it is fair to say that most Canadians would not see an increase in the number of members of Parliament as being equal to better representation for them. I believe from talking to Canadians and from comments that many of us have heard across the country that most Canadians would argue that they are not as well represented today as they were 10 years ago, even though the number of seats has increased. It is not the number, the quantity of representation, it is the quality of representation that is important to Canadians. It is clear that it is the quality of representation that Canadians want to see addressed, not the quantity.

Fifth, these points have been made and I think bear repeating. Canada is over represented as a population compared with other democracies. For example, in the United States members of Congress number about a hundred more than in Canada with 10 times the population. They have only about 30 per cent more representation with 10 times the population.

It is very clear that other democracies manage to give quality representation with far fewer representatives per component of the population. We need to look at that as well.

Sixth, it should be emphasized that Canadians want fewer politicians. We do hear this over and over and this is not disputed. All members of the House when we discussed these issues agreed that the feedback they get from their constituents and from other people in Canada is that they do not want to see more politicians, they do not want to see more representatives, they do not want to see more MPs. They want to see the ones who are here be more effective, they want the system to be changed so that decisions are more representative of the judgment of Canadians. There is no cry for increased numbers of representatives.

We should not forget who we are supposed to serve. Our decisions should be taken in a way that meets with the approval, that carries the judgment of the people who are paying the bill, the people who are asking for the service that we provide. It is very clear that Canadians do want fewer representatives rather than more.

Seventh, when we talk about capping the number of MPs, how do we address the problem of regional representation? In my view it would be unwise to make regional representation too strong a feature in how we structure the way our representatives are chosen and the proportions from particular provinces or areas. It is clear that we do have some anomalies like Prince Edward Island, which has been mentioned, which perhaps need special consideration.

In our view the principle of representation by population should be adhered to as closely as possible in the way we structure the choosing of our members of Parliament. Regional representation and the need for that element in our political system, in our law making bodies, should be addressed through changes to the Senate rather than through changes to the House of Commons to ensure that certain proportions are made and do not change for different regions or provinces.

We have put forward as the Reform Party specific proposals for the reform of the other place in order to achieve those objectives.

The bottom line today when we consider whether to support the amendments that have been proposed is whether we are responsive as members of Parliament to the clear wishes of our constituents and the citizens of this country, to the economic

resources which they are able to provide for the operations of government, and to considerations of fairness and practicality.

Canadians would welcome a commitment on the part of this House to limit the number of representatives they must support and instead work more on increasing the quality of representation rather than the quantity of representation.

I urge members of the House to support the amendment that has been put forward and to instruct the committee of the House working on these issues on our behalf to factor into the proposals it brings back to us at the end of its deliberations a specific proposal to cap the number of members of Parliament and, if possible, to reduce it.

[Supply, April 18th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I would first like to point out to the hon. member that we in our motion are suggesting that services be available to official language minorities in their own language in any part of the country where there is demonstrable local public demand. It would be a judgment that would have to be made by the government as to whether in this member's riding, with 11 per cent anglophones spread across a very large area, it would constitute a significant demand. I think it would certainly constitute larger demand than the one my colleague just spoke of where there was 1.7 per cent but still requiring bilingual services or at least the offering of bilingual services by the commissioner.

We want to be careful that we do not get into these matters simply on the basis of dollars and cents. We have to get into the situation on the basis of common sense and on the basis of this significant demand and not just ask where can we cut back. We need to ask where do we really need the services, where do Canadians really require these services. On that basis there can be savings. We are suggesting that because there are services provided where there is no real demand, there is no significant need, that money is being wasted.

We need to approach it from the point of view of the needs of Canadians rather than simply from a straight dollars and cents viewpoint.

[Supply, April 18th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I will be brief.

The first thing I would like to say is that we do not see the policy of official bilingualism as making Canadians bilingual. What I was talking about was the need of the policy to provide equality of opportunity for all Canadians to participate in civil service jobs and in the defence sector in our country and that it has not done.

Second, the member asked what greater priority would the government have than to make sure that there was a provision of services for both official language groups in the country. I would like to point out on behalf of over 12 million Canadians whose mother tongue is neither French nor English that this government is to serve and to meet the needs of every single Canadian, of all Canadians.

It is time we recognize the fact that Canada is changing. I would say that the greater priority that this member asked about would be to ensure fairness for all Canadians, equality of service for all Canadians. That should be the greater priority that we should now be moving toward.

[Supply, April 18th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, my colleagues have discussed at some length the problems we have had in Canada with the policy of official bilingualism and I would now like to take a look at how the policy has worked in the public service.

The recent annual report by the Commissioner of Official Languages echoed Lester Pearson, as annual reports have done practically since the inception of official bilingualism, with the following words: "The Official Languages Act requires federal institutions to ensure that English-speaking and French-speaking Canadians have equal opportunities for employment and advancement within their ranks".

This is a high minded and noble goal, one that all of us in this House can agree with. It is hard, however, to reconcile this ideal with a statement made by the hon. minister of defence, for example, on February 25: "We are putting on notice anglophones who want to be generals or chiefs of staff that they have to be totally and absolutely bilingual". This is in Hansard at page 1855.

He later commented: "Anglophones have more to be worried about than francophones because of the tougher bilingual requirements for senior officers".

It seems pretty clear and obvious from these completely opposed statements that the ideal and the reality of official bilingualism are two different things.

I do not believe for one moment that the hon. minister of defence favours French-speaking Canadians over English-speaking Canadians, but I think the minister is faced with the problem of having to defend an inherently flawed system.

There is good reason for the fact that of the 3,000 communications received by the ombudsman under the Official Languages Act over half were complaints of one sort or another.

To put it very simply, the current implementation of official bilingualism does not work. It does not work for anglophones and it does not work for francophones.

The term bilingual describes a person who is equally proficient in both official languages. By this definition there are very few Canadians who can claim to be fluently bilingual and yet we persist, after 27 years of failure, to believe that this policy will somehow be made to work if only we wish harder and spend more money.

By way of example let me draw your attention to many of the members on both sides of this House, myself included, who would not be eligible for employment in virtually all the senior positions in the public sector today because our command of the other official language is less than functional.

It is ironic that although many of us in this House are not bilingual we expect anyone who wants to advance in the public sector to be fluent in both languages.

The reality is that the great majority of Canadians are not bilingual and those who claim to be often are not.

The second problem is that the designation of bilingual postings is increasing, often doing so when there is no real need for bilingual services, as my hon. colleague has just indicated.

One example of the unnecessary designation of public service posts as bilingual was uncovered by the Ottawa Citizen in 1991. In that case there were eight positions designated as bilingual. It turns out that the eight employees were asked to use their bilingual capabilities just once in the past two years and that was when an English-speaking caller had a wrong number and the employees were able to direct him to the right one.

The example I have just given is one of scores which show that many public service positions are unnecessarily designated as bilingual.

There is an alternative to the present implementation of official bilingualism which will not only allow public servants to speak in the language of their choice, but will also eliminate language based discrimination.

In 1977 in response to the problem of de facto discrimination against francophones, the royal commission on bilingualism and biculturalism recommended that the public service be reorganized into two parallel hierarchies of unilingual work units. French would become the language of about 25 per cent of those work units and English would be the language of the rest.

It is important to keep in mind that this would not be a quota system because anglophones could try to win jobs in the French language work unit and vice versa. However, in each case workers would be allowed and required to communicate with fellow employees in the language of the work unit.

The big picture within the public service as a whole would be that employees could choose whether or not they wanted to make the substantial financial investment required to learn the other official language. Either way there would be a place for them to work in the language of their choice. Not only would the choice have been left to the employee, but the enormous cost of government sponsored language training would have been saved.

This proposal has been tested in the private sector and has been very successful in bilingual companies. Most positions can be filled by unilingual speakers of one language or another and only a few bridge positions need to be filled with bilingual employees. Had this model been adopted when it was recommended 27 years ago full equality between the languages would have been achieved by now and there would be no meaningful discrimination against speakers of either official language.

However, Trudeau chose to adopt another model in which every individual position was designated as to the official language skills it required. Francophones and anglophones would be expected to work in close proximity throughout the public service which means that many posts, including all posts beyond the most junior level would involve regular communication between speakers of two languages.

In this situation two unfortunate results were inevitable. First, the traditionally dominant language, English, would continue to dominate. This is why virtually all public service meetings continue to this day to be held in English. Second, there would be a huge need for bilingual people to occupy all supervisory positions since the rules now proclaimed that each person must be supervised in the language of his or her choice.

It is in the wildfire spread of bilingually designated posts that the real tragedy has occurred. On the one hand the system helped to boost the number of francophones employed by Ottawa. This is because two-thirds of the designated bilingual posts in the public service are occupied by francophones. On the other hand between 60 and 70 per cent of francophones in Canada do not speak English. For this majority the chances of finding employment in the public service have been reduced by the system of designating individual posts as bilingual.

In fact between 1974 when the policy was introduced and 1992, the number of positions in the federal civil service open to persons capable of speaking only French dropped from 34,000 to 25,000. This is a drop of 26 per cent. Even more staggering is the impact in Quebec itself where over half of all the jobs in the federal public service are open only to persons who speak English as well as French.

If the majority of francophones face discrimination the situation among anglophones is even worse. Nearly 90 per cent of Canadian English speakers are incapable of speaking fluent French. This means that most English Canadians are ineligible to rise above the junior public service or above the rank of major in the armed forces. The result of this situation is dramatic.

In a 1990 survey by the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada over one-third of anglophone respondents stated that the policy of designating individual posts had negatively affected their advancement opportunities in the past. Over half of the respondents stated they believed the policy would hurt their promotion opportunities in the future. Nearly 42 per cent stated that on at least one occasion in the past they had not even bothered to apply for a post solely because of the restrictive language requirements.

In other words, because they structured their reform so poorly, the federal government managed to actually increase the level of discrimination faced by the average francophone and simultaneously introduced discrimination against the average anglophone. Canada is probably unique in having managed to systematically discriminate against both its major language groups at the same time by means of the same policy.

The way out of this mess is to toss aside the present system and to finally adopt the system of French and English language units proposed by the B and B commission 27 years ago. New Brunswick has recently adopted elements of this model for its provincial language service. It seems to be a success. That would be our territorial bilingualism policy within the public service. We believe it is time for Ottawa to follow this example.

[Social Programs, April 15th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, what Canadians really want to know is whether the minister is allowing the Government of Quebec to drive the agenda of the Government of Canada.

[Social Programs, April 15th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, if the government of Quebec did not want to participate in Monday's meeting, that is Quebec's business but other provinces were prepared to attend.

Why is the minister allowing the Quebec government to delay not only the federal government's planning but that of the nine other provinces as well?

[Social Programs, April 15th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the Minister of Human Resources Development how long the cancellation of Monday's federal-provincial meeting will delay the minister's social reform program?

[Income Tax Act, April 15th, 1994]

I rise on a point of order, Madam Speaker. I would like to clarify events. We too are happy that the debate can go forward as it ought to so that everyone can be heard on the matter. However, when one of our members was recognized who was not present-

[Income Tax Act, April 15th, 1994]

On a point of order, Madam Speaker. I would like to support the comments on the point of order made by my other colleagues on this side of the House. Our members also were here prepared to debate. We did not hear the Chair indicate that this was an appropriate time to begin the debate. We believe this debate should go forward this morning as we have clearly indicated we are prepared to do. We have submitted speakers to the Chair. It was obvious that we were ready to go ahead and we think that the process should have allowed us to hear and realize that this was the time to do that.