Mr. Speaker, I am happy to advance the position of the New Democratic Party on the motion before the House today. In essence the motion can be boiled down to this. Is it necessary, is it essential, is it good government and is it good management of taxpayer dollars to spend over $1 billion for security for 72 hours of meetings in June to host the G8 and G20 summits?
There are a few things on which all members of the House and maybe all Canadians can agree. One is that Canadians are, as the motion says, “justifiably proud” of Canada's participation in the G8 and G20 groups. We are also proud of the fact that Canada is hosting these meetings.
I think Canadians also agree, as the motion states, that Canada is committed to “effective and efficient security for the visiting world leaders” and all of the associated delegations and Canadians themselves who will attend these meetings, whether as part of the meetings or to protest these meetings. We want to ensure that all are safe.
The question before the House is whether it is necessary, prudent and justified in today's economic climate to spend $1 billion to accomplish those objectives. I respectfully suggest the answer to that is no.
On March 3, the Conservative government tabled in the House supplementary estimates C, with the main estimates. I point out that this was not in the main estimates. It was in the supplementary estimates C, which are prepared after the main estimates. These estimates contained projected total security spending for the G8 and G20 summits at $179 million.
On May 25, a little over two and a half months later, the Conservative government tabled supplementary estimates A, and these contained $654 million in additional security costs for the G8 and G20 summits, bringing the total cost to $833 million.
The next day, on May 26, in the House in answer to a question I asked the Minister of Public Safety, the government admitted that the costs would be $930 million. Since then, reports have come out suggesting that the total cost could well exceed $1 billion. I want to talk a bit about that.
I asked a question of the member for Oxford, who sits on the public safety committee with me. I asked why the government estimated the costs at $179 million when that cost came out to conceivably six times that amount. He said that the government knew all along that the cost for security would be $900 million or thereabouts. He said that from the very beginning of the planning for the G8 and G20 summits months ago, the government knew the costs of security. We all know that summits do not get planned in weeks. They get planned over a period of months.
When I asked why that cost would not have been put in supplementary estimates C when they were tabled in the House on March 3, I received no answer, other than rhetoric, other than invective or ad hominem arguments that attacked the speaker or insulted the argument. Nobody answered the question about why the government did not put the $900 million in the budget documents on March 3 if it knew it would be that amount. Why did the government not know the cost for security?
We have a case where the government is indicted either way. Either it knew that the costs would be close to $1 billion and it purposely put in $179 million to try to hide the true cost for security for the summits from Canadians, or it did not know that and instead, through mismanagement, watched the cost for security increase by five times in a period of two months. Either way it is an improper and an unacceptable way to handle Canadian taxpayer dollars.
I want to compare the cost of these summits to the cost of previous summits. I agree we cannot necessarily have a complete comparison to other summits, because this is a G8 and G20 combined summit. We are comparing these costs to only G8 or G20 summits. That is a fair point to keep in mind. To give us a general idea of the ballpark figures that are used in meetings like this, it is helpful for us to look at them.
The 2009 G8 summit in Italy cost $359 million. The 2009 G20 meeting in London cost $30 million, although there has been some suggestion that figure may be artificially low. The 2008 G8 gathering in Japan cost $381 million. The 2005 G8 summit in Scotland cost $110 million. If we average all these figures, we will get a rough picture that security for a world-class meeting involving leaders of at least the G8 and sometimes the G20 is approximately $220 million to $240 million. That is about the average.
It is also instructive to look at the cost for security for the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, which was hosted in the city in which my riding is located.
Right now the security costs for 72 hours of meetings in June exceed the entire security costs for the Vancouver Olympics, which includes 17 days of Olympics themselves, an additional two weeks of Paralympics after that and several months of preparation for delegations and athletes to arrive in Vancouver before the start of the 17 days to be acclimatized and set in the athletes village, et cetera. The Olympics involved tens of thousands of people, two venues, including Vancouver and Whistler, and many surrounding municipalities like Richmond, Vancouver, West Vancouver and Whistler. The Olympics were held in a very challenging geographical location. The sea, the mountains and Vancouver, with its close proximity to the U.S. border, all had to be secured.
Let us think about that. Would Canadians not be justified in asking why the cost of security for three days of meetings with 20 world leaders and their entourages would exceed that? Something is wrong. One does not have to be an economist, or a security expert or the Parliamentary Budget Officer to know that something is horribly amiss with the way the security budget has been handled for the G8 and G20 meetings.
I am going to break this down a bit. Let us look at the $930 million, if that is indeed what it is right now: $450 million has been allocated to the RCMP; $262 million has been allocated to the public safety department; and $63 million has been allocated for national defence. I will stop there because I have one question. What are the $262 million for with respect to the public safety department?
The public safety department is made up of five components. It is made up of Correctional Service Canada, the prison system. It is not getting any money out of this. It is made up of the National Parole Board. It is not getting any money out of this. It is made up of the RCMP. Clearly, that is not what the $262 million is for because $450 million has already been allocated to the RCMP. The department is also made up of the Canada Border Services Agency. I cannot see it getting any money out of this. That leaves CSIS. It is hard to believe that for the purpose of G8 and G20 meetings there would be any cause to allocate $262 million to CSIS. Maybe there is because the government does like to violate the civil liberties of Canadians. It does like to fund undercover officers who provoke protestors, like they did in Quebec a few years ago. We never know what is up with the Conservative government, but we do know there is something wrong with these figures.
It would not surprise me because the public safety minister stood up on behalf of the government and said that they did not want to cost the costs of its crime bills. The government wants to bring forward 18 crime bills, but it does not want to tell Canadians the cost of any one of them.
When faced with the prospect of dealing with the Parliamentary Budget Officer, who was going to estimate the costs for us if the government was not going to come clean with Canadians, the minister stood and said that the cost for cancelling the two-for-one credit for pre-sentencing custody bill was $90 million. The next day that minister said that it was $2 billion.
I hear silence in this room right now. Why? Because there is no answer to that. How could a minister of the crown say one day that the cost of a bill is $90 million and then the next day say that it is $2 billion? I do not hear any witty remarks coming from that side right now. What causes a 2000% increase in 24 hours? Is it incompetence or is it deception? It is not competence.
There are some problems with this $1 billion budget. Like most Canadians, I think there is no way we could possibly envision how the government could possibly spend $1 billion for security for three days of meetings.
Jeffrey Simpson in the Globe and Mail said:
Spending $1-billion to play host to two summits is preposterous, a case of bureaucracy gone wild, or planning gone crazy, of fear sinking itself into every official’s and security person’s heart....This siege mentality has now been used in preparing for the G8 and G20, with everyone fearing some major terrorist attack against the leaders, or against one of them. A corner of Muskoka is being turned into a militarized zone, downtown Toronto shut off, baseball games moved out of town, thousands of police and security agents mobilized, to say nothing of helicopters, planes and, for all we know, submarines in Lake Ontario....The whole thing is over the top and way too expensive for three days that bid fair to be a non-event in substance.
A New Democrat did not say that. That was said by a respected columnist, who I do not think characterizes politics as left-wing.
This is a case of bad budgeting.
I want to talk about the lack of transparency and accountability. The government is starting to lay down what could only be described fairly as a record of avoiding transparency and hiding from accountability. It was only with the threat of an election fought on the question of government arrogance and disdain for Parliament that the opposition was able to force the government to make a deal to provide secure access to the Afghan detainee documents. It still refuses to disclose the true cost of its legislative agenda on crime despite what I said earlier in my speech.
Time and time again the Conservative government has shown disrespect for Parliament and our democratic process. It prorogued Parliament twice to avoid democratic accountability. The Conservatives continue to stack the Senate with their unelected friends and ministers despite promising Canadians they would never do that. They are attempting to manipulate a vote on several bills to try to drive a wedge between politicians on all sorts of issues.
I want to talk a bit about what we could have bought for $930 million: 159,000 Canadians could have received EI for the average period before finding employment; 189,000 undergraduate students across the country could have received full funding of their tuition for a year; 1,270 new hybrid buses could have been purchased for public transit systems in Canada; 167,000 Canadians' health care costs could have been covered for a full year; 59,000 seniors could have received their guaranteed income supplement; or 158,000 seniors could have received their old age security. The estimated cost to lift every senior in our country out of poverty would be $700 million and $300 million would be left over. That is a question of priorities.
I want to talk a bit about the irony of tightening belts. The government has said that it expected every Canadian to tighten their belts. It has said that every person in the chamber was expected to tighten their belts. It asked the civil servants to forgo wage increases because they had to do their bit to tighten their belts. How about the government leading by example and tightening its belt by taking some prudent measures to lower security costs for the G8, G20 meetings?
We have heard wonderful suggestions that have come from the non-experts in the House, which the government keeps thinking is relevant, such as why do we not hold one meeting at one location instead of two? Why double the security costs in a time of restraint? Why not have one area? The G8 leaders are part of the G20. Why not have the meeting at a place like a military base, which is already secure? The optics are not good. Maybe it is not something we would want to do ideally, but in a time of economic restraint, maybe that would be a wise, prudent move to keep the costs low.
Why did the government try to get this summit put into a cabinet minister's riding in Muskoka as a way to bolster his profile in the region? I will say this here because the facts bear it out. The Conservatives have abused taxpayer dollars by putting money into their own ridings time and time again. I expected that from the Liberal government, which was corrupt and rotten to the core when it was suitably booted out of office. However, the Conservative government came into office promising something different, and it should be reminded of that and be ashamed of it.
The infrastructure funds that government members put into their own ridings is shameful. The way they exploited the Conservative logo on cheques was shameful. Trying to put a G8 or G20 meeting in one of their ridings for partisan purposes is equally shameful because they are not playing with their money. They are playing with Canadian taxpayer dollars. For a party that claims to stand up for Canadian taxpayers, that claims to talk about fiscal probity and responsibility, this is a shameful record that shows its hypocrisy.
Robert Fox, the executive director of Oxfam Canada, says:
It is painful to think a billion dollars is being spent on the security for a three-day event when we are capping commitments to international aid for the next several years because we can’t find the money. It just speaks to our priorities and the fact that when we choose to, we can mobilize resources and when there is a lack of political will, we fall short.
Again, the government tightens belts by expecting NGOs to not get any increases or not get funding for international aid, but when it comes to spending money for security, the Conservatives say that there is really no limit on what they can spend on security because they have to keep people secure. Yes, they can, but there is a limit. There is no need to spend $1 billion to do so.
The day after the minister admitted that it was a fivefold increase in security, I wrote the Parliamentary Budget Officer. We asked him to get involved in looking at this. I am proud to say that he has accepted this request. We also wrote the Auditor General and asked her to look into this as well. The Parliamentary Budget Officer has said:
We will investigate with the purpose of issuing a report for parliamentarians and Canadians...we will need co-operation from the government on information and this will need to be done in a timely manner.
I sincerely hope every member of the House, including members of the government, ensure that this information is furnished to the Parliamentary Budget Officer so Canadians can hold the government accountable
The bottom line is we have to provide security for the G8, G20 leaders. That is not in question. The question is the government's commitment to lead by example and to be a prudent manager of the Canadian taxpayer dollars. We also expect the government to be transparent and accountable.
I call on every member of the House, if they truly believe in those concepts, to join together and vote in favour of the motion, which calls on the government to do nothing but acknowledge those concepts and principles.
When governments spend money, we look into the soul of the government to determine what are the priorities of that government. When children are hungry in our country, when seniors are living in poverty, when people all across this world and in the Third World need our assistance and we tell them no, that they have to tighten their belts, then I expect the government to do the same thing and tighten its belt on expenditures that are frivolous and unnecessary.
In addition, I want to talk about what I consider to be one of the prime responsibilities of parliamentarians. We were all elected in the House. We have all worked very hard to get here. We all do our best, on all sides of the House, to represent our constituents. One of the jobs of parliamentarians is to hold the government accountable by observing its spending and holding it to account. That is what we are doing in the House today. When there is an outrageous amount furnished, like $1 billion, it is our job to get to the bottom of it. It is our job to ensure that money is accounted for and it is not a waste of taxpayer dollars. People work darned hard every day for their wages and they expect and deserve for us to spend that money wisely. I urge all members to support this motion.
