Mr. Speaker, I had to get in my two cents worth on this issue. I had to listen all day to members justify how a crown corporation should have access to consolidated revenue funds. This is my duty day so I had to get up to give my piece.
There are three reasons I have problems with the bill as it stands. Under the bill $75 million in taxpayer dollars will be used for a guaranteed loan through the consolidated revenue fund or any other source. That is how it is worded. At the end of the day that means taxpayer dollars are being used to prop this up. If it were to go belly up, the taxpayers would be left holding the bag.
What is so insidious and evil about these types of things is that it is actually taxpayer money, money people pay out of their own wallets, that is being used against them. I have often maintained that it is actually better to burn a million dollars than it is to give it to the government. This is a small insidious case but nonetheless it is a classic example of what happens in this place.
People pay their good hard earned money into this place and it is used against them. The people who are employed by a company like Westaim will see government dollars being used to try to shove them out of the marketplace. That is what is evil about it. There is a private sector company performing the task of producing blank coins and the government is going ahead and putting it out of business, shoving it out of the way.
If this were just one example it might fly and people would not pay it any heed or any attention. People like me would not get up to speak. Unfortunately this is just one among many examples. There is the Royal Canadian Mint. Canada Post is trying to shove out people with e-mail. Canada Post is trying to shove out private sector competitors for parcel delivery. Canada Post is trying to shove out courier competitors. Canada Post is shutting down Overnight Express in Calgary. It was delivering mail in the T2P area code downtown for a fraction of what Canada Post does it for and guaranteeing mail delivery overnight. Canada Post shut it down because it has a monopoly.
There is another example in training programs. Henderson Business College was operating in the city of Calgary. For decades it provided good training for those who were looking to improve their typing skills and their abilities in various business related areas. The government subsidies came in and the universities and colleges that had access to all the public funds in the city of Calgary, in the province of Alberta, were edging out private sector businesses. It kept going ahead and developing curricula and programs. It ate away at private sector businesses and eventually shut them down. Henderson Business College shrunk. It shut down. It used to have two offices. It went down to one. Then it went out of business. That was because of the insidious type of thing we have where the government uses people's money to put them out of business. It uses their own taxpayer dollars to put them out of business.
I remember this only too well in the city of Calgary when Petro-Canada was nationalized and Petrofina was brought together with some other companies. The government went ahead and used government dollars to establish the tallest oil and gas building in the city of Calgary just so that the prime minister of the day, Pierre Elliot Trudeau, could remark with pride that Petro-Canada towered above its private sector competitors that did not have access to the type of dollars and the endless taxpayer pocket to which the Liberal government, the Liberal administration of the day, had access.
That is the type of problem I have with the bill, with guaranteed loans and with shoving out private sector businesses. It hurts private sector businesses with their own hard earned taxpayer dollars.
Another aspect is that the government is trying to establish an arm's length relationship. It is doing it time and time again, whether it is with Revenue Canada or a whole host of other things. It does not like the idea of ministerial accountability. It does not like the idea of parliamentary supremacy in being able to question the government on some of these things. It continually goes ahead and moves them further down the line.
Liberals like to put them at a further and further distance from themselves so that when problems arise and the opposition points them out and puts forward amendments they can say “Don't worry. Trust us”. Years down the road once it has established an arm's length relationship we see problems that we said would happen. Then the government says it is not its problem any more, that it is an agency or something beyond a crown corporation. We cannot touch the government any more. The minister is not accountable.
There are three good reasons to oppose the bill. The first is taxpayer money being used as a loan guarantee. The second is public dollars, taxpayer dollars, business dollars, being used to shut down private enterprise to be able foist the public sector on them. The third is the whole idea of lessening accountability and creating a greater distance with arm's length relationships and cutting down on ministerial accountability.
