Pat Martin

[Criminal Code, November 24th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, from all of the very valid comments my colleague from Prince Edward Island makes, the operative word and the thread throughout his comments is access to information and freedom of information. We have a right to know these things. In fact, as committee members, we have a duty and obligation to have all the facts before we make a determination.

However, there has been a systematic withholding of information. I am glad that my colleague from Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke raised this. The latest example of this was at the defence committee, where we would all like to hear from the former ambassador, Mr. Mulroney, but not without the prerequisite information before the committee first. It is up to the committee to determine what facts it needs and when, and who it would like to hear from and when.

I am sure that it would like to hear from Mr. Mulroney, but it would like to have the pertinent documents first. It has requested them and once again, there is a rationing out of facts and information by the government instead of a full disclosure and a full, voluntary freedom of information, which is what was supposed to be the cornerstone of the government's administration. Instead, it is obsessed with secrecy and cover-up.

[Criminal Code, November 24th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I was not really listening to my colleague from Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke. She started with an insult and I did not think it was worth listening to whatever else she had to say. My colleague from Windsor—Tecumseh said that the member for Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke used to belong to the Conservative Reform Alliance party. It had to change the name because it said CRAP.

I do not want to use my time to insult her. I do not think that she should use her time to insult me.

We are talking about a very serious issue here, which is the right of committee members to do their job without interference and without being sabotaged by the ruling party and the advantage it enjoys in rationing out tidbits of information that we all have a right to.

[Criminal Code, November 24th, 2009]

Absolutely, Madam Speaker. I believe I can demonstrate that my comments are in fact germane and pertinent to the motion to refer.

I was speaking of the rights of committees to access information they need to do their job properly, which is exactly the point my colleague from Windsor—Tecumseh is making. I ask for the support of other members of Parliament not on the merits of Bill C-36 but on the merits that committee members need the facts in order to make determinations and carry out due diligence to the work that is put in front of them. I was giving an example of where we in committee were denied that systematically.

My point was that members had better think twice before they try to do away with section 745 of the Criminal Code, the faint hope clause, because the punishment for deliberately destroying documents or deliberately denying the existence of them under the Access to Information Act is right up there in the Criminal Code with high crimes and misdemeanours, including treason. It is on par with treason because it sabotages and undermines democracy, and takes away from the very spirit of the public's right to know. We cannot do our jobs without that freedom of information as committee members.

That is the worrisome pattern that I am trying to illustrate. The deliberate withholding of information that was directly relevant to the determination of Bill C-36 undermined the rights of my colleagues on the justice committee in their ability to do their job properly.

Some committee members who spoke I believe were generous in their portrayal of what happened, saying that the minister simply forgot to pass the information that was requested on to committee member. I do not think that was any accident.

I think perhaps the minister is on fairly weak ground, that his arguments do not have a great deal of substance for the need to change the faint hope clause. I believe the actual experience, the empirical evidence that was asked for and that he withheld, would have done great damage to the arguments of members on the government side as to why they thought they needed to make these changes in the criminal justice system at this point in time.

Again, I do not speak to the merits of Bill C-36. That is not why I asked for an opportunity to speak today. I am speaking, as a vice-chair of a parliamentary committee, on behalf of the rights of committee members to function. When committee members ask for certain information and that information is made available to them by witnesses, the minister does not have any right to intercept that information and have it sit for days, weeks or months on his desk while the committee members struggle with only half of the information.

I am not a lawyer, but if we were in a court situation, that is one of the fundamental underpinnings of our legal system: full disclosure of the facts. The prayer we say every day when Parliament opens is that we have the ability to make good law. We cannot make good law without access to the facts.

If one side is withholding pertinent information for political purposes, that sabotages and undermines the democratic process. It is an affront to democracy and to Parliament. The collective privileges of the members of Parliament in that committee have surely been breached at the very least.

Madam Speaker, how much time do I have left? None.

[Criminal Code, November 24th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to join the debate on the amendment to Bill C-36, put forward by my colleague from Windsor—Tecumseh, not so much to debate the relative merits of the bill as it pertains to section 745, the faint hope clause, but to debate the actual amendment. This is a procedural amendment, put forward out of frustration and, I would argue, put forward out of a genuine commitment and love for parliamentary procedure by my colleague from Windsor. It is to that I would like to address my remarks today.

More and more Canadians are reminding members of Parliament that the one hour a day of question period is not acceptable to them. The squalor that is question period is not truly representative, we know, of the work that goes on in the House of Commons, but this is what the public sees. Therefore, we remind school teachers and people who bring groups of young people to witness Parliament that the real co-operative, collaborative work of parliamentarians goes on well behind the scenes at the parliamentary committees. It is in committee that we do the nation's real work. It is at committee that we paddle our canoes together in the same direction so we can achieve something good for Canadians.

Most of us believe and most of us find some comfort that genuine work goes on in Ottawa, on Parliament Hill, on behalf of Canadians. It was in that vein that some of us started to protest when parliamentary secretaries came on to committees and started to be elected as chairs. A lot of us intervened. We said no, if we allowed a parliamentary secretary to be the chair of the committee, the PS was really an agent of the government. The parliamentary secretaries have a loyalty to the government. Their first interest is to the agenda of the government, not necessarily to the collaborative effort of the committee. We quite rightly protested this, and it is no longer the case. We do not see parliamentary secretaries chairing committees.

Some of us would go further and even argue that parliamentary secretaries should not even be part of committees because they are unable to leave their political baggage at the door like the rest of us should do.

I lament that in recent years the fabric that held the parliamentary committees together, the common bond that we had, the impartiality that many committees enjoyed, has been tested, has been strained, has even been torn and fractured to the point, I despair, the last sanctuary of true parliamentary democracy has been eroded by political interference, by manipulation. It in fact has been abused to some degree in a number of very worrisome examples.

This has led my colleague from Windsor today to draw a line in the sand. In this case, the justice committee is being manipulated by, we argue, political interference through the minister's office in withholding information. Some of my colleagues have been very generous in how they phrase this. They have said that the minister forgot to send over very pertinent and relevant information on Bill C-36 to the committee so it could deal with the information during the clause-by-clause analysis and possibly amend the bill.

I am using the term “withheld”, because I am starting to see a motif, a very worrisome pattern that this is not a problem in isolation at the justice committee. We now have a number of examples where there have been cover ups regarding information that should flow freely to committees so members of Parliament can do their job, can study bills with the due diligence their responsibility dictates. However, they are being denied that.

At the very least, my colleague from Windsor is alleging that there is a breach of the collective privilege of the members of the committee and that they have every right to have access to all the pertinent information they call for so they can do their due diligence with regard to the bill, with a degree of confidence that they have all the facts.

In this instance, other members have laid out the problems surrounding access to information for the committee. I went to the trouble of reading the blues of the justice committee hearing on November 4. Witnesses made very firm undertakings that they would produce the relevant information regarding the number of appeals made under the faint hope clause, the rate of success of those appeals, the information surrounding victims' statements on that appeal process, all of which would have been very useful to the committee.

The witnesses undertook that they would ensure they would get the information to the committee prior to the clause-by-clause analysis, so if the information warranted it, committee members could in fact put forward amendments, or not. Either way they would be comfortable that they had the most pertinent and relevant information about the actual empirical evidence, the experience of the use of section 745, the faint hope clause.

This is the very information that has been denied to them. They waited and they waited. The time came and went. They still had not seen the information the witnesses promised to give them. We are talking about senior bureaucrats who should be able to provide that information, such as the Commissioner of Correctional Service Canada.

The reason the frustration is breaking out today is committee members have now learned that the witnesses did comply with the timeframes to which they stipulated themselves. They did go home, did that research, pulled that data from their information files and brought it to the Government of Canada. However, where did it wind up? Not with the clerk of the justice committee and not on the desks of the members of the justice committee. The information went to the Minister of Public Safety and sat there and sat there until such time as the opportunity was lost. The committee stage for amending the bill was lost.

We all know a bill is relatively easy to amend at committee. At second reading, a bill is passed in principle, but substantive amendments are still possible at committee. At third reading, there is very little we can amend of a substantive nature.

Therefore, the window of opportunity had been lost to the members, and I argue taken away from them. The information was withheld from the members by the minister. The minister did not pass it along to the committee. It shows a disrespect for the committee. Tampering with that kind of evidence should be an offence of a higher nature. I have heard it said before that Parliament is the highest court in the land. A parliamentary committee, acting under the purview of Parliament, has rights, privileges and powers. To deliberately manipulate or withhold evidence from that parliamentary committee is an offence. It is an affront to Parliament. Whether it is an offence in any further way remains to be seen.

That gave rise to the frustration of my colleague, the member for Windsor—Tecumseh. He has come forward and has said that information was important to the members so they could do their job. They had asked for it, the witnesses delivered it, but it never came to their desk. Now at this point in time we want to refer this matter back to the committee. We have the information in our hands and we want to refer that matter back so we can revisit especially clauses 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 of Bill C-36. The information the Commissioner of Correctional Service Canada brings forward may change what the committee members intend to do in their final treatment of the bill before it comes back to the House for third reading.

I believe it is a matter of fairness, transparency, accountability and it is in keeping with the commitment the Prime Minister made not that long ago, that he would empower committees to do more meaningful work as one of the ways to enhance democracy through the parliamentary process. If anything, there has been a worrisome pattern developing that actually diminishes the power and the authority of committees.

Let me explain my point because I do not say this lightly. Last fall, almost a year ago today, we saw a very worrisome pattern. Committees were being filibustered by Conservative government members and committee chairs were denying due process at committees. Whenever things were not going their way, they would disrupt committees. They had a manual for that. I called it the anarchist handbook. That was worrisome enough but other examples have come forward since then.

Recently we held a very contentious vote in the House of Commons on the gun registry. As it turns out, the latest state of the moment snapshot report of the efficacy and the use of the gun registry, the actual experience of the gun registry's use, had been published and was ready to be released, but the government of the day sat on that information until such time as it could get its bill through. I presume it felt its case was better made without the facts rather than with the facts. It was available the very next day, after the vote, and it was too late to do anything about it.

Members can see the picture I am trying to paint.

Another worrisome example was brought forward by my colleague from Elmwood—Transcona. In the process of trying to develop and move forward a legitimate private member's bill on airline passenger bill of rights, something of great interest to many Canadians, collusion was going on behind the scenes with the government and the lobby group trying to defeat the bill, trying to undermine democracy.

It is fair game if people want to make a case for or against a bill in the House of Commons. A bill should stand on its merits. It should be able to survive legitimate debate and all the facts from both sides put forward and let the chips fall where they may. However, to undermine that process by going behind the scenes, through the back door, to sabotage democracy is again in keeping with a worrisome trend we are seeing. It is becoming the hallmark of the government. It is becoming a motif that we see time and time again.

Another example, and the last one I will make regarding this worrisome pattern as it pertains to committees, is a committee that I sat on, the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics. The Afghan detainee issue came before the committee. At that time, and it has only been borne out in recent days, which is why I use it as a relevant example, a journalist and a university professor filed access to information requests, asking for any and all correspondence, emails, communications or internal documents regarding the transfer of Afghan detainees by Canadian soldiers to the Afghan military. Time and again these petitioners would be told by the government that no such documents of that nature existed. No emails, correspondence, reports or data had ever been provided on this subject, so nothing could be released.

We did not believe it, so we brought in the Globe and Mail journalist and the professor from the University of Ottawa as witnesses before our committee. We also brought in the ATIP coordinator for the Department of Foreign Affairs and for the Department of National Defence. Everyone swore on a stack of bibles that no such information existed. They were not denying information, there was none. Now we learn from a senior Washington diplomat that he filed regular and frequent correspondence to everyone he could think of who blew the whistle or alerted the Canadian government that the transfer of Afghan detainees left them vulnerable to probable torture. The correspondence did exist. We were lied to by the government.

This goes beyond a breach of privilege for committee members. This goes beyond the public's right to know. This enters into illegal. In fact, the ruling party might consider whether it wants to do away with the faint hope clause because the violation for denying the existence of documents under the Access to Information Act is in fact a high—

[Criminal Code, November 24th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, I would ask for your direction. I understood that we were debating the motion to refer the bill back to the committee, not the merits of Bill C-36.

The motion to refer the bill is really a procedural motion, based on the NDP alleging that the minister failed to provide information pertinent to the committee doing its work. It has nothing to do with the merits of the faint hope clause.

[Committees of the House, November 19th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I want to begin by thanking my colleague, the member for Trinity—Spadina, for bringing this important matter before the House of Commons.

It is very fitting that the immigration committee dealt with these real and pressing issues, but I think they are of such a nature that they warrant the attention of the entire House of Commons, which should be seized with these issues.

I am particularly interested in my colleague's comments regarding live-in caregivers being used as cheap labour in some situations. I suppose I will begin with the caveat or comment that it boggles my mind that we consider those whom we hire to care for our children and our most precious elders as cheap, rather than highly skilled, labour.

This is a skill that we should value. These are not people who should be on the scale of manual or unskilled labour. It has always bothered me that nursery school teachers and day care centre workers are considered low-paid, low-skilled workers. These are highly skilled jobs and should be valued as such.

My question for my colleague is with respect to the rash of incidents where employers have violated the terms and conditions, such as by withholding passports or asking the live-in caregivers to do work that is clearly outside caregiving, such as shining the employer's shoes or general housework. Is if there is any recourse? Are these matters being investigated and prosecuted in any meaningful way, or do these matters just exist as complaints to be registered with us as MPs?

[Committees of the House, November 18th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Sudbury for raising a critically important issue for small and medium sized businesses.

I should point out that my colleague from Sudbury has been the single, foremost champion on the issue of credit card reform and credit card fairness, exposing the atrocious gouging that takes place in today's marketplace associated with credit cards. It is not only the consumer who is being victimized but small businesses have been stuck with these interchange fees, user fees, et cetera and they are also victims.

We are glad we have champions like the member for Sudbury who is advocating on behalf of ordinary Canadians and small businesses like those he mentioned in his riding.

[Committees of the House, November 18th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, there certainly has been the widespread belief that some government contracts are structured and bundled in such a way so as to favour one obvious beneficiary and sometimes year after year.

I will use for an example the Royal LePage relocation contract, a multi-billion dollar contract to move military families and government personnel and take care of their real estate needs. It seems like a stacked deck. It is one of those ring toss games on a carnival midway where no one can win. Only the one who has the magic formula seems to get this contract and it is always Royal LePage.

If there is progress in that regard, I would be the first to celebrate it, but I think we have a long way to go. It is not a fair game yet.

[Committees of the House, November 18th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I share my colleague's concern that the access is becoming more difficult in terms of being able to understand the proposal process. Frankly, many of the witnesses we heard from in the small and medium size business sector said it seems that just as they begin to learn the game, the rules change. Not only is it a difficult and complex process, but it is an ever evolving, ever changing process that makes it that much more difficult to take part in. It becomes a smaller and smaller elite group that has figured out the magic formula. It is like Rumpelstiltskin where one has to know the magic word in order to spin straw into gold.

The terminology changed, and my colleague referred to compounds, the degree of difficulty facing those wishing to avail themselves of these very lucrative and important contracts not only for the continuity of keeping the employees in these companies busy, but growing the companies to be able to hire more Canadians.

As I said, we heard overwhelming testimony. That is not my language; that is the language of the drafters of this report, the researchers, and the language was ratified unanimously by committee members. The committee heard overwhelming testimony that SMEs are frustrated with the federal procurement process, from cumbersome and expensive to complete RFP processes, to the government not paying interest on overdue accounts. Many SMEs have simply given up trying to bid on federal government contracts.

[Committees of the House, November 18th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I am glad to join the debate today on the concurrence motion on the seventh report of the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates as it pertains to small and medium size enterprises and their access to federal procurement contracts.

I am proud to be the vice-chair of the committee and was proud to participate in the study that resulted in this report. It was a unanimous report. There was not a great deal of argument or debate about the content of the report.

My colleague from the Bloc Québécois felt it was necessary to move concurrence on this report today because the same issues that gave rise to the investigation and the study continue to plague small businesses today as they seek access to their fair share of government procurement contracts.

I want to thank my colleague from Terrebonne—Blainville, Quebec for the opportunity for us to speak at some length today on this subject.

Let me begin my remarks by pointing out that 98% of all businesses in Canada in fact fall into the small and medium size business category. I learned something when that was brought to our attention. I had no idea.

Even more noteworthy is the fact that SMEs employ 5.1 million Canadians, almost half of the entire private-sector workforce. In fact small businesses accounted for 80% of the job creation between 1993 and 2007. During that period of time, large businesses actually shed jobs. It was the large enterprises that were cutting back and reducing staff. The engine for economic growth, almost the entire backbone of the economy during that period was the job creation from small and medium size enterprises.

We can see why the government should have a real interest in making sure that the procurement by the federal government, which represents a huge volume of financial activity, goes to the sector of the economy that will give the biggest bang for its buck. We argue, and the committee unanimously concluded, that is the small and medium size sector, the SME sector.

However, let me quote from the seventh report of the government operations committee, and this is in the very neutral language put forward by the researcher of our committee, who crafted this report:

The Committee heard overwhelming testimony that SMEs are frustrated with the federal procurement process. From cumbersome and expensive-to-complete RFP processes to the government not paying interest on overdue accounts, many SMEs “have just given up” trying to bid on federal government contracts.

That was the unanimously adopted language of this report. Even the government-side members of the committee did not disagree that this was what our committee heard from small and medium size enterprises. They are frustrated by the process and by the government not paying interest on overdue accounts to the point where they have simply given up. They have found it too expensive and too cumbersome to even participate in the bidding process to get access to the tax dollars being invested.

I do not know if it is a deliberate trend. We did not prove that. We did not prove that it was the policy of the government to simplify its procurement by going sole-source or going to larger enterprises, especially in the IT sector. We do know that the bundling of contracts, especially in the IT sector, has shut out a vast number of actors in that sector. They are justifiably frustrated.

It was a satisfying committee study to take part in, because we heard real passion from real actors in the economy.

We were not dealing with abstracts in this study. We were right down on the ground with the people who are the driving engine of the economy, and they were telling us that the system is broken. Access to government procurement contracts is so frustrating. The wheels have fallen off it. The arse is out of her, as they say in Newfoundland. It is simply not working for them. Therefore, they came to us; they appealed to us; they urged us in the strongest possible terms to bring the message back to government that they want in.

There used to be a saying, the west wants in. Well, SMEs want in, in a substantive way, and they asked us to bring that message to Parliament. We did through this report, but what has been frustrating to us, and I know it has been frustrating to my colleague from the Bloc Québécois, is that the government's response to our report is inadequate. I do not think the Conservatives heard us in any meaningful way. The language they use does not reflect the urgency in our report.

Let me give one example to illustrate what I think is a wilful blindness on the part of the government to the urgency in this sector. Our goal number three said simply that

[t]he federal government must ensure that due consideration is given to small and medium enterprises when considering the bundling of contracts and standing offers.

The response from the government is that it commits to “review best practices related to the consolidation of contracts”.

Everybody who has been around here for a while knows that is bafflegab for stall, delay, rag the puck, buy ourselves some time, status quo. That is what it really means. “We will review best practices” means we will do absolutely SFA, if I may put it that way.

That is a very frustrating response to one of the key recommendations. I want to share what we heard about the bundling of contracts. There seems to be a feeling on the part of government that bigger is better in terms of dealing with one big supplier instead of many small ones, but that way of thinking, that logic is folly. In fact, I argue, it is dangerous, because if we put all our eggs in one basket, especially with our relationship with an IT contractor who is essentially supplying our mainframe and then providing that main government service of IT connectivity, we are vulnerable; we are at risk. I would argue it is an issue of national security, but it is certainly at least a danger in that we have contracted out the ability to service our own systems. We have contracted them all out to one entity that may or may not be stable in the long term, that may be sold, that may merge with other companies, that may have its own internal difficulties, or that may turn into an Enron and have a terrible corporate collapse.

The government has put us at risk if it goes to that single entity, plus there is the other effect that we are concerned about. Some of these big actors, the ones that seem to get the big bundled contracts, are major Canadian success stories. We bless them for their success. We wish them well, but we will never grow another generation of success stories if we let them starve for business. Unless some of the smaller actors get a piece of the action, they will never grow into big actors, hire more people and become international players as some of the big contractors are now.

It is only reasonable that we want to patronize the developing sector, the entrepreneurial sector, the small and medium size businesses that will become our next major players in the IT sector. That work should be spread around for national security reasons, for reliability reasons and for the reasons of providing better opportunity to more players in the field so that we can grow another generation of entrepreneurs.

Above and beyond all that, there remains the question of why we are contracting this work out to begin with. There is a pretty good argument. We are not like any other business. This is the Government of Canada. There are security issues and there are compelling reasons why this should be kept in-house, that the design, the operation, the repair and maintenance of our internal communications, our IT component for the Government of Canada, should not be contracted out to the private sector, because we do not know if we can guarantee the security once the control of it leaves our hands.

I wish there had been more of an emphasis on that in the study that we undertook. It was not part of our mandate, but I think it is worth noting in the context of this debate.

Another thing that is worth noting in the context of this debate is that the expenditure of Canadian tax dollars should be done in such a way as to provide as much benefit to Canadian taxpayers as possible. That means not only achieving the initial objective of the spending, the procurement of goods and services, but hopefully achieving secondary objectives as well, such as providing jobs and opportunities for Canadians. That means to the greatest extent possible we should be buying Canadian goods and services, within the limitations of the trade agreements that we are a signatory to and that we have ratified. We should be knocking ourselves out. We should be going the extra mile to make sure that we are buying Canadian goods and services and IT whenever possible. Let me give one example where we have fallen down in that regard and I think it will shock the House.

The Canadian military needed troop carrier buses. The forces already have a whole fleet of Canadian made buses. They needed 32 new ones. A tender was put out for new buses. There were only two bidders. One was a company in Quebec that makes some of the best carrier buses in the world, I argue the second best, because there is another company in Winnipeg that makes what I argue are the best buses in the world. Both of those bus companies bid on the Canadian armed forces' troop carrier tender. Who got it? Mercedes Benz in Germany. The really shocking is that the difference in price was less than one-half of one per cent. That is by how much it won the contract, less than the cost of a set of tires on one of those buses is what it won the contract by, but lowest bid gets it. Unless there are three Canadian bidders, the made in Canada procurement policy does not kick in.

What kind of a message does this send to our NATO allies around the world and in foreign theatres of operation? It says that if they want to buy a good troop carrier bus, they should buy a German one, because that is what we did. We abandoned our Canadian bus manufacturer in Quebec, our bus manufacturer in Winnipeg, our unemployed standing outside the gate looking in. Germany is building the troop carrier buses that carry our armed forces, all for the sake of less than $5,000 per bus on half a million dollar buses. That is an appalling situation that ignores the best interests of Canadians.

Surely there should be some kind of a lens through which the procurement officers look when they make these purchases. Is this purchase in the best interests of Canadians? Is the best price always the best value? These are questions that need to be asked. It was the final recommendation of our report, to advise procurement officers, or perhaps recommend to the government that the officers be given more latitude to consider the whole cost and value of their purchases. In some cases the lowest cost is not always the best value, if there are quality issues at stake and if there are other maintenance costs.

In this example most of our troop carrier buses are Canadian made but 32 of them will be German made. We now need new tools. We need new training for the mechanics to maintain them. We needed Canadian military officers to fly back and forth to Germany to supervise the manufacture of them.

Whatever savings there might have been in this example were burnt up by all of the other additional costs. The best value would in fact have been either the Quebec buses or the Winnipeg buses. It certainly was not the German option.

These are some of the frustrations that came to our attention as committee members. We had compelling testimony from the wood furniture manufacturing industry. They are very strong actors in Quebec and in the province of Manitoba. We heard from the window and door manufacturers, the furniture manufacturers and the shipbuilding industry. It was not just the IT sector that was frustrated with the lack of access to government procurement.

One can imagine the amount of office furniture the Government of Canada buys. These are things Canada is known for. We have strength in these areas. These are areas of expertise. Canada is a centre of excellence in furniture building because we have access to the resources and we have a long history and tradition in this industry. Would it not make sense that when the Government of Canada needs to buy furniture, it would give some preference, within the limitations of our trade agreements, to Canadian manufacturers? That is not being protectionist. That is being a proud Canadian nationalist. That is what that is.

We see the Americans doing it. We see the Americans going beyond that with their buy American program. We are not recommending that we match the buy American program with a buy Canadian program. Within the context and limitations of NAFTA, we are allowed to show preference for a Canadian product if it is within 7% of the price range. In my example of the buses, if we had availed ourselves of the opportunities that are already available to us, we would have had Canadian buses right then and there.

We had an interesting study, but we are not at all satisfied with the government response to our seventh report of the government operations committee. There is one thing that came up in the context of our debate and I will close with this recommendation. Small and medium size businesses indicated three areas that they were frustrated with: first, government procurement; second, their problem in finding venture capital; and third, the extraordinarily high federal tax rate on small businesses.

I would like to point out that in the socialist paradise of Manitoba, the business tax rate on small businesses is in fact zero. If the federal Conservative government were not strangling the growth potential of small businesses with its crippling small business tax, more Canadian small businesses might be able to fight through some of the other disadvantages, such as their inability to get government procurement.

I hope that my Conservative colleagues are listening to this plea. If they would stop persecuting small businesses with these crippling small business taxes, we may in fact be able to aspire to a burgeoning SME sector in this country. As I said, 80% of all the jobs created between 1993 and 2007 were in that sector. We should be doing all we can to encourage them.

I did have one more point that I would like to make. I was interested in the remarks of my colleague from Newfoundland. She was talking about the shipbuilding sector. We did have representation from the shipbuilding industry. There were some very interesting recommendations and quotations from the shipbuilding sector to which I think we would be well advised to pay attention. However, if I cannot find them in my notes, I can always talk about something else.

Let me deal with one of the other recommendations of the report and the government's response to it. We were disappointed that the government's response to the seventh report of the government operations committee was thin, almost to the point of being patronizing. I do not think it took our recommendations seriously. Let me give one example.

Recommendation number four is that the federal government must establish a system of fairness to encourage departments and agencies to use SMEs.

Disappointingly, the government reacted by saying it is essentially already doing all it can to encourage SMEs. Our recommendation was more along the American model, where the office of small and medium enterprises actually advocates on behalf of small businesses and helps them to ensure that they get a set-aside quota of all the government procurement contracts in that country.

That is the direction we want our Office of Small and Medium Enterprises to take. It is not just to provide information. We want them to take them by the hand, if necessary, guide them through the morass of RFPs and help them achieve a specific quota so that we can proudly say that we support SMEs, not stifle them.