Mr. Speaker, I will speak about Bill C-48 and how it represents an abandonment of traditions and the traditional roles of government and is a step in the wrong direction.
Before I do that, I want to take just a moment to respond to the remarks of the parliamentary secretary with regard to his complaint about how, after all, Bill C-48 deals with four areas and why it was not dealing with many other areas that the federal government could have dealt with. He has a point. Bill C-48 could have dealt with a great number of other areas and there is certainly a large number of areas which are sadly lacking from the agenda of the government.
There is obviously one that comes to mind because of the fact that I represent a rural and largely agricultural riding, one in which in particular there is a lot of farming. In fact, there are more beef cattle than there are voters in my constituency. What comes to mind is the complete absence of any provision in Bill C-48 that deals with agriculture, that deals with the crisis in Canadian agriculture and particularly that deals with the crisis in the Canadian beef production industry.
That absence is really striking. It is all that much more striking because of the absence of an adequate mechanism in this country to provide Canadian product, of which there is so much, to Canadian consumers, of which there are so many. There are so many willing consumers for Canadian beef, which as we all know is the best quality beef in the world, but we cannot get that beef from the hoof and from the farm gate to the consumer if we do not have the slaughter and processing facilities, given the fact that we cannot take that beef across the border into the United States even for the purpose of having it slaughtered and returned it to this country.
The CFIA, the Canada Food Inspection Agency, has been unwilling to license new federally inspected slaughter and processing facilities. Indeed, it is taking very inadequate measures. In fact, over a period of time, the past decade, it has reduced the number of facilities that are available in this country. It seems to me that this is an area that could have been and indeed should have been dealt with in this budget.
The government had two tries at this: Bill C-43 and Bill C-48. The Liberals could definitely have found some time in their busy labours to have accommodated these needs. Bill C-48 is essentially a package of amendments to Bill C-43. Given the Liberals' enthusiasm for amendments, they could have amended it to take into account this pressing need of beef producers and, indeed, of Canadian consumers. They could have done a great deal of good for a sector of the economy that is, after all, one of our key export sectors and one of our most productive sectors. That is a general comment with regard to the observations of the parliamentary secretary.
Let me now turn to the theme I wanted to dwell on this evening. Bill C-48 represents the abandonment of a very important part of our Constitution and our tradition regarding the control by the House of Commons over the spending of the ministry, the Crown, the executive.
We see the government in many areas abandoning or rolling back the traditional protections we have enjoyed. Canada's constitutional structure is in part modelled on the written constitution that was pioneered in the United States and that has been copied in other countries, such as Australia, for example, with the idea of a written constitution with firmly laid out jurisdictions and boundaries.
It is also partly a structure that is based on the British constitution. Of course, our Constitution Act of 1867 makes specific reference to being similar in spirit to the constitution of the United Kingdom, that is to say, to the unwritten constitution of the United Kingdom. The protections that are in the British constitution are based primarily upon conventions, traditions and a respect for a way of doing things that has been proven through time and usage. We see the Liberal government moving steadily away from this. In all fairness, we also see the Liberal government being increasingly disrespectful of the written Constitution as well and of the jurisdictional boundaries in the written Constitution.
I do not know of one area of provincial jurisdiction in which the federal government does not feel it can intrude, and ideally, from its point of view, by offering enough dollars to cause the provincial government to shift its spending priorities in order to capture federal matching funds. After having roped the provinces into making expenditures, which they would not otherwise have made, which means moving expenditures away from areas where they might more productively have been made, it then over time rolls back those expenditures.
Even when the initial expenditure is in a very worthwhile area, such as health care, the federal government, nonetheless, has a tendency to reduce its expenditures very substantially as a proportion of those in that area of provincial jurisdiction.
The government is into all kinds of areas of provincial jurisdiction and no doubt when government members get up to ask me questions, as they have been doing, they will ask me whether I approve of this kind of spending, that kind of spending or some other kind of spending. However all this spending will be in areas of provincial jurisdiction, areas which are underfunded because of the actions of the government.
It is a phenomenal fiscal disequilibrium that exists between the amount of money that the federal government raises and the amount of money that falls into the areas of its jurisdiction, and the amount of money available to the provinces after the federal vacuum cleaner has come out and sucked the money out of Canadian pockets and the very considerable responsibilities that fall under provincial jurisdiction under our Constitution: education, health and so on. It seems to me that this is a mark of disrespect for our written Constitution.
With regard to the unwritten Constitution, the conventional part of our Constitution, the most important of our conventions in this country and under the Westminster system of government is the convention that the government is responsible to the House of Commons. This is a convention that was established following the glorious revolution of 1688 in which it was established that the King could not expend funds without the approval of the House of Commons.
What we see the government doing is rolling back this convention and refusing to recognize that the House of Commons determines which party should be the government.
We saw this most spectacularly and most egregiously last month when the government, having failed to demonstrate that it had the confidence of the House, proceeded to hold off any confidence votes through a variety of technical means, and we are familiar with what those are, until such time as it could secure a majority or a tie vote based upon offering inducements, successfully to one member and unsuccessfully to a number of others, to either cross the floor or at least sit on their hands.
Leaving aside the merits of what went on with the current Minister responsible for Democratic Renewal, for which I am the critic, nonetheless I think it is clear that it held off on a confidence vote for a long period of time. The argument that was made by the House leader for the government was that they would allow the House to vote when the conditions were appropriate and the questions were appropriate.
That suggests that the government has the authority to decide whether or not the House of Commons is allowed to vote on whether it has confidence in the government. That was an egregious breach of convention and one that I think will be looked at with great dismay by constitutional scholars for many decades to come.
The other convention that is being shattered here, and this is in Bill C-48, is the convention of the House controlling funds. Let us take a look at this very small bill. It is a parody of a government budget bill and is two pages long. It contains a number of vague spending proposals. An example of one would be the proposal for affordable housing, including housing for aboriginal Canadians, in an amount not exceeding $1.6 billion. It is great but it is very vague. We see that for foreign aid the amount is not to exceed $500 million which is again an awfully vague promise.
We then get down to the actual operative part of the bill and it is all about the power of the government to spend this money as it sees fit, notwithstanding the vague promises made earlier. Clause 2 states:
(2) The Governor in Council may specify the particular purposes for which payments referred to in subsection (1) may be made and the amounts of those payments for the relevant fiscal year.
Clause 3 states:
For the purposes of this Act, the Governor in Council--
--that means the government--
--may, on any terms and conditions that the Governor in Council considers appropriate, authorize a minister to
(a) develop and implement programs and projects;
(b) enter into an agreement with the government of a province, a municipality or any other organization or any person;
(c) make a grant or contribution or any other payment;
(d) subject to the approval of Treasury Board, supplement any appropriation by Parliament;
(e) incorporate a corporation--
This is all about simply creating a pool of money and then spending it in the manner the government sees fit on its own timetable. This is not a budget bill. This is about freeing the government from parliamentary and legislative control. Frankly, it is something which I think all parliamentarians who care about House of Commons control should oppose.