SPRI Committee Meeting

SUB-COMMITTEE ON PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS OF THE STANDING COMMITTEE ON PROCEDURE AND HOUSE AFFAIRS

SOUS-COMITÉ DES AFFAIRES ÉMANANT DES DÉPUTÉS DU COMITÉ PERMANENT DE LA PROCÉDURE ET DES AFFAIRES DE LA CHAMBRE

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Monday, October 6, 1997

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[Translation]

The Chairman (Mr. Yvon Charbonneau (Anjou—Rivière-des- Prairies, Lib.)): Good morning, colleagues. I want to welcome you to the committee. Since I'm a neophyte when it comes to committees, subcommittees and procedure in this House, I ask for your indulgence and patience. With your cooperation, we will probably be able to submit a proposal to the standing committee fairly quickly, one which will allow our colleagues in the House to table the bills or motions selected by our subcommittee.

As you know, a draw was held and some 30 bills and motions were selected.

Before going any further, I would like our Clerk, Mrs. Diotte, to take a few minutes to explain to everyone the basic workings of our subcommittee.

Mrs. Diotte.

The Clerk of the committee: The role of our subcommittee is to select among the 30 items randomly drawn last week those which are to be designated as votable items. Thirty members have been invited to appear before this subcommittee to explain in five minutes why their items should be selected.

Subcommittee members will subsequently have five minutes to put questions to them.

[English]

Of the 30 drawn items, 15 were motions and 15 were bills. The subcommittee will have the possibility to choose a maximum of five votable bills and five votable motions. For the new members, the difference is that they will get three hours in the House and a decision from the House instead of the one hour that they already have because of that draw.

A list of criteria was established in 1987. I gave a list to everybody. I think you have it.

[Translation]

Once we have heard from all of the members today, at tomorrow's meeting and at a third meeting, the subcommittee will table its report to the committee on procedure and House affairs which will examine it and, in turn, table its report to the House, where it will be automatically adopted. The following day, the House can begin considering private member's business for one hour a day, every day while the House is in session, up to a maximum of five hours a week . When there are only 15 items remaining on this list, a new draw will be held and the subcommittee on private member's business will meet once again.

Of the 30 members invited to appear here today, three members have indicated that they do not wish to have their items made votable.

[English]

Mr. Peter Mancini, Mrs. Wendy Lill and Mr. Norman Doyle, who is also a member of this committee, do not wish to have their items made votable. So you have 27 items to consider.

[Translation]

The Chairman: When is today's meeting scheduled to end?

The Clerk: It should last approximately two hours. Eleven members are scheduled to speak.

[English]

We have 11 members who were invited, and it's a meeting of approximately two hours if we follow our time schedule of 10 minutes each.

The Chairman: Thank you, Madame Diotte.

Are there any questions?

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[Translation]

Are there any questions? Is everything clear? We will start with Mr. Bill Gilmour who over the next five minutes will be explaining Bill C-216 to us.

[English]

Mr. Bill Gilmour (Nanaimo—Alberni, Ref.): My bill is very simple. It addresses the Access to Information Act in terms of information that's available from crown corporations. As you may or may not know, at this point some crown corporations are accessible while others are not. This bill would make all crown corporations accessible to the Access to Information Act.

I won't go through and list all the corporations—that's in your backgrounder, it lists the number—but a number of anomalies really jump out at you. For example, Canada Lands is the group that sells all federal land. It's public property, yet its information is not allowed to come forward. Canada Post, CBC.... You'd have to ask why Canadian National Railway would be under this—it does not make a lot of sense—or the Canadian Wheat Board. Two port corporations, Halifax and Montreal, are under the Access to Information Act, yet Vancouver is not. There are a number of holes.

Basically, to go through, I would say that Bill C-16 meets the criteria for a votable item. It's significant; it goes across all boundaries; it will keep the government accountable. Remember, in many cases we're talking about taxable dollars, our own dollars. It doesn't discriminate against any section of the country, because it's basically going right across for every region. It doesn't deal with constituencies or whatever, or any province favourably or unfavourably. It goes right across the country.

I won't go into great detail any more, because it literally is a matter of a few words. The bill is that simple, because it just changes the exemption to across the board for access to information that is already there.

It meets all 11 selection criteria as a votable item, and I'm just asking all of the members here to make this votable. I believe all members in the House would appreciate having the ability to speak to this, because it's in all our constituencies. It involves all Canadians and it's non-partisan.

Thank you very much.

The Chairman: Thank you. Is this the first time this bill has been brought forward?

Mr. Bill Gilmour: It was in the last Parliament, but this is the first time that it has hit.

The Chairman: Are there any questions?

Mr. Norman Doyle (St. John's East, PC): I'm just wondering if any of these crown corporations at any point in time were subject to access of information, because I thought that once Canadian National Railway was subject to the Access to Information Act.

Mr. Bill Gilmour: I believe there's been a bit of a see-saw. Some have come in, some have gone out, and it's been, in many ways, for political reasons. I personally think it is wrong. They should be free and open and above-board.

Mr. Norman Doyle: I agree.

[Translation]

The Chairman: Yes.

Mrs. Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral (Laval Centre, BQ): Do you know the reasons why these corporations are not subject to the Access to Information Act? Can they tell us why this is so?

[English]

Mr. Bill Gilmour: Again, I can only go back to politics. For example, there is the wheat board. We hear an awful lot of what's going on in the wheat board now, but I believe that if it were open to access, a lot of these problems would have been cleared up. In many ways it's political.

Some of the corporations.... For example, regarding Canada Post, there is going to be an area where some of it should be kept quiet because it's letters and whatever, but the large portions of the corporation should be free and open.

[Translation]

Mrs. Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral: I see. Thank you.

The Chairman: Are there any further questions?

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[English]

The next one is not yet in. Do you have questions for us?

Mr. Bill Gilmour: No. Does that mean I get extra time?

The Chairman: Bill, do you have a question?

Mr. Bill Blaikie (Winnipeg—Transcona, NDP): Yes. I presume that like anything else that's subject to the Access to Information Act, the bill is designed in such a way that simply by these agencies and crown corporations being added to the Access to Information Act all the exemptions that exist for things that are now subject to the Access to Information Act would continue to exist for the crown corporations. For instance, you wouldn't be able to use freedom of information to pull personnel files or things like that.

Mr. Bill Gilmour: Yes, all the same rules apply. All this does is just lump these in with the ones that are already accessible. As you say, there are strict rules against personal information or whatever. It just brings them over.

The Chairman: Ken.

Mr. Ken Epp (Elk Island, Ref.): Bill, some crown corporations are now subject to the Access to Information Act, are they not?

Mr. Bill Gilmour: The vast majority are.

Mr. Ken Epp: So you're just saying that if your bill were passed none would be exempt.

Mr. Bill Gilmour: That's right. Instead of there being these two categories, some that are accessible and some that are not, it would just make it broad-brush. Everything would be accessible. It's not rocket science.

Mr. Norman Doyle: Especially with the CBC, access to information is a step in the right direction, in my view.

Mr. Bill Gilmour: And you wonder why they would be exempt.

Mr. Norman Doyle: They have access to every piece of information on you and me when it comes to being able to ask a question about us, but we don't have access to any information on the CBC. It just doesn't make sense, in my view.

Mr. Bill Gilmour: Thank you very much for your time.

The Chairman: Mr. Pankiw, welcome. According to our rules, you have five minutes to introduce your motion, if you need them. After that there will be a period of questions from our colleagues.

Mr. Jim Pankiw (Saskatoon—Humboldt, Ref.): I'm very pleased to have the opportunity to appear before this committee on making motion 104 a votable motion. The motion reads as follows:

That, in the opinion of this House, the Employment Equity Act should be repealed, since it is costly, unnecessary, and in contravention of the merit principle with respect to hiring and promotions.

I'm optimistic that at the end of my presentation you will be convinced this motion is important enough to be put to a vote in the House.

The Employment Equity Act applies to the public service, crown corporations, and federally regulated employers that have 100 employees or more. The act's stated purpose is to achieve equality in the workplace and to correct conditions of disadvantage experienced by certain groups. However, the assumption that conditions of disadvantage exist has not been established. In fact, there is evidence to the contrary.

In 1991 the Economic Council of Canada published a study entitled New Faces in the Crowd. The study concluded that in the Canadian workplace there is no observable tendency to discriminate against minorities.

In another study, in the summer of 1995, Statistics Canada reported that minorities were just as likely as anyone to be employed in professional occupations. Statistics Canada also stated that minorities enjoy rates of employment and wages similar to those of other Canadians.

There is no need for concern that the workplace may not mirror society's demographics, because the facts are that the workplace does reflect the make-up of Canadian society. According to 1995 data, visible minorities occupy 8% of jobs covered under the act, while they comprise 9% of the total workforce. Furthermore, women hold 45% of the jobs under this act and women comprise 45% of the workforce.

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Therefore, since conditions of disadvantage are nowhere to be found, why do we need an Employment Equity Act dedicated to correcting conditions that do not exist?

What has been the impact of employment equity legislation?

The act relies on statistics to measure its impact. However, the statistics gathered in this act are unreliable, because the act relies on self-identification by which people identify themselves as a member of one of four designated disadvantaged groups. The Stentor Group, while testifying before the standing committee on human rights on Bill C-64, the Employment Equity Act, stated that employee data collected by means of the self-identification process is unreliable. Therefore there is no way of telling what impact, if any, the act has had or will have. It is impossible to determine accurately if the act is having any effect.

The other question we should ask is what is the cost of administering this act, an act that evidence demonstrates is unnecessary and for which there's no reliable method of measuring its effects.

In 1992 the Conference Board of Canada conducted a survey of companies to determine the cost of employment equity legislation. Reform's minority report on Bill C-64 states that with the assistance of the Library of Parliament the findings were extrapolated and it was estimated that if all Canadian businesses with 50 or more employees were subject to employment equity regulations, total annual direct costs would be $1 billion.

In November 1994 the U.S. Conference Board and Chamber of Commerce heard from Professor Jain, who estimated that employment equity costs $250 per employee per year. Based on that estimate, if we consider that our own Employment Equity Act applies to 500,000 people, then we can estimate that the act costs $120 million per year. While it is not possible to determine an exact figure, there is no doubt that a significant cost is associated with complying with this act.

Furthermore, the government itself has an employment equity branch in the Department of Human Resources and within Treasury Board. Each department writes an annual report on the progress of employment equity measures within the public service and within federally regulated firms. Repealing the act not only would eliminate these branches of the bureaucracy but also would eliminate a lot of costs and a lot of red tape that federally regulated companies must now face in order to comply with the act.

The most important thing is to consider the impact this act has on the concept of the merit principle, that the best person for the job gets hired or promoted. All Canadians support the merit principle. However, this act is an assault upon that principle. The result of this act is not to promote or hire the best person for the job, but to hire or promote people based on their disability, their race or their sex.

Compliance with this act is not voluntary. The government has established compliance orders and has set numerical goals in order to implement its view of how the workplace should appear, despite the fact, as I explained earlier, that the workforce fits the demographics of our society like a glove. The merit principle takes a back seat.

Employment equity is about placing qualifications second and putting race, gender and disability up front in order to meet quotas, which, as I also explained earlier, cannot be measured with any degree of reliability. Canadians believe that is wrong.

Furthermore, the merit principle not only is disregarded through hiring and promotion but also is a secondary concern when companies downsize. The CBC stated in the Employment Equity Act 1996 report that it had retention strategies for designated group numbers during workforce reduction. In short, the CBC already plans now to lay off certain employees while keeping others based solely on their appearance.

Today the U.S. Supreme Court begins hearing a case related to an affirmative action program within the state of New Jersey. A white female teacher was laid off so that a black teacher might remain at the school in order to promote diversity within the workplace. Even the White House has filed a legal brief with the Supreme Court urging it to rule against the actions of the school board. The decision by the U.S. Supreme Court may have repercussions here in Canada with respect to the underlying philosophy of employment equity: that using discrimination practices to resolve perceived discriminatory practices, which evidence shows do not exist, is acceptable.

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Under the Employment Equity Act the merit principle becomes secondary when it comes to hiring, firing, and promoting. That's why it must be repealed.

In conclusion, the act does nothing to correct discriminatory practices or to protect certain people from those practices. It sets people apart based on physical appearance, and the effect of the act is that based on that appearance you must be hired, promoted, or retained. Is that the way to promote equity in the workplace? Is that the type of environment we wish to create in the workplace? That's what we must ask ourselves.

As legislators, we have the capacity to introduce bills and motions in order to amend statutes or call for their repeal. Considering the flaws of this act and the detrimental effect it has on the morale of employees and on society as a whole, we would be remiss in our duties as legislators not to vote on a repeal of the act. I therefore urge this committee to make motion 104 votable, so members of the House may have an opportunity to express their view and the wishes of all Canadians on this inequitable act.

The Chairman: Thank you for your presentation.

[Translation]

Our colleague Mr. Blaikie has a question.

[English]

Mr. Bill Blaikie: I don't say this critically, because members do—and this is a new process—but I just wanted to make the point that the purpose of this committee is to determine whether or not we make this bill votable. Persuading us of the merits of the legislation is really not part of it. We're not even supposed to enter into the substance of the legislation itself. In other words, we need to make it clear to members who are coming before this committee that the task they have is to persuade us that the bill falls within the guidelines and that, having fallen within the guidelines for what is votable, it has some parliamentary urgency or merit to being voted on at this time in this coming session.

Mr. Jim Pankiw: I appreciate that. However, this does have urgency, because the floodgates are about to open today. We hear of this case in the United States. If I gave you no background, you would not see the urgency of this. Our courts are going to be flooded with litigation over this issue if this act isn't repealed.

Mr. Bill Blaikie: Again, that is an argument for repealing it, not for making it votable.

Mr. Jim Pankiw: It's an argument that it poses urgency for Parliament.

Mr. Bill Blaikie: That's your opinion. The job of the committee is not to decide or to rule on the urgency based on the merit of the legislation, because we may disagree on the merit of the legislation.

Mr. Jim Pankiw: Hold on a minute. I've just covered a whole bunch of reasons why the legislation, since it has come into evidence, shows it is unnecessary, it's costly—

Mr. Bill Blaikie: In your judgment.

The Chairman: Please, if there is a question, let him respond to the question.

Mr. Jim Pankiw: As I say, it's not an argument for or against. That will occur in the House of Commons. I was simply outlining evidence that shows the act is unnecessary, that measurement of any effects of the act is unreliable, and that it's costly, and I pointed out that it violates the merit principle. Those are very valid reasons by which this should go to a vote of members of the House of Commons. I could find no evidence to the contrary, showing that it's necessary, that the data collection is reliable, or that it's cost-effective in any way. I feel that's very relevant.

The Chairman: I suggest we listen to the arguments. If our guest wants to use such an argument, it is his prerogative. We have the possibility of taking it into consideration or rejecting it. It will be a matter for consideration.

Mr. Bill Blaikie: I just thought instead of having people come here and spend a lot of time speaking to something that is fundamentally—

The Chairman: It's the same five minutes. They can use it either way.

Mr. Bill Blaikie:—irrelevant to our decision, in fairness we need to tell people and be as clear as we can about what the role of the committee is and what it is we're trying to determine here. If it's just a question of letting them use up their five minutes however they like and then making our decision anyway....

Mr. Jim Pankiw: What could you possibly base your decision on if not what effect the legislation is having on Canadian society?

Mr. Bill Blaikie: I've tried to explain myself.

The Chairman: Mr. Epp.

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Mr. Ken Epp: Mr. Pankiw, you're aware this Employment Equity Act—I don't know if that's exactly the name of it—in effect was passed in the last Parliament.

Mr. Jim Pankiw: Yes.

Mr. Ken Epp: So it's now in force.

Mr. Jim Pankiw: That's right.

Mr. Ken Epp: What you're saying is you not only want to have this issue debated but you actually want the House basically to reconsider the bill from the last Parliament. Am I reading you right on that?

Mr. Jim Pankiw: That's right, the reasons being that, first of all, that was in another Parliament and it was two years ago or more, and since that time all the evidence I have just explained to you has come to light. There's no way the people in that Parliament could have foreseen the things I've explained to you: that it's unnecessary, that we're finding it's costly, and that it's going to lead to a slew of litigation in the court system in this country.

Yes, it was voted on. Yes, it was decided. But with all this new evidence coming to light, I think we would be remiss not to revisit the issue by way of a vote.

Further to that, one of the ways this came to my attention was through a former Liberal member, who did not run in this last election but was present and voted on it the last time. He voted in favour of it, but he said it was government-introduced legislation—I'm not sure if that's the right term, but it was the government that put it forward—and Liberal members felt compelled to vote for it even though they might have been concerned about where it was going and that type of thing. He suggested that if a private member introduced the vote for the repeal of it, the Liberal members would be free to vote as they wished because it would not be government-introduced legislation.

[Translation]

The Chairman: Twelve minutes have already elapsed and since the following member has not yet arrived, I will turn the floor over to Mr. Doyle.

[English]

Mr. Norman Doyle: I just want something made clear. Whose committee will be making recommendations as to what bills shall be made votable?

An hon. member: This one.

Mr. Norman Doyle: Okay. On what basis will we be making that decision? Will it be on the basis of the arguments that have been presented by the various people who come in? How is it done? Do we get in the back room afterwards and say he made a good presentation, it's a good bill, therefore we should have this bill put on the agenda? What is the procedure? I'm not quite sure what our function is. We obviously make recommendations to the full committee, but on what basis would we say his bill is a good one? Is it a majority vote of the subcommittee or is it the effectiveness of what he's doing?

Mr. Bill Blaikie: We discussed this in the standing committee, at great length.

The Chairman: We have Mr. Pankiw here as our main reference. Then we have to debate it together after we have received everyone. I would like to invite my colleague, Mrs. Parrish, who was the chairman before me, to give us the benefit of her experience.

Mrs. Carolyn Parrish (Mississauga Centre, Lib.): This is strictly from my own experience. I think Mr. Blaikie was trying to make the point—it became a little confrontational, but Bill is such a charmer we'll get over it—that what normally happens here is we go through the criteria, and as long as the bill meets all those criteria it's declared acceptable for us to consider. If it doesn't meet those criteria, then we would probably eliminate it before we get started on our debate.

This is unfortunately somewhat like a beauty contest or a dog show. You have a lot of good bills, and what we often have to do is line them up against each other and say, okay, which of these bills and which of these motions are going to engender a lot more interest in the House? As Mr. Blaikie said, we're not necessarily going to pick bills we agree with. That would be a disaster. This is not a filtering system here. What we're going to do is to say to ourselves, okay, of all the bills and motions we've seen today, which would inspire the most debate in the House, the healthiest and most interesting concern, and we're going to give them three hours in the House, as opposed to the one hour you automatically get when you go into second reading.

What we're looking at, first of all, is those criteria. But we don't vote in here. We never voted in here even before I chaired it. What we generally did was come to a consensus. I don't know how this chairman will do it, but what I used to do is go around the table and ask people to pick. If they say five bills, I say give me your best five. So we don't sit here and debate them all for hours. The best five may automatically come out of all of us.

Mr. Norman Doyle: The same thing for motions as for bills.

Mrs. Carolyn Parrish: Yes. It's a consensus, and it's not based on whether we like the bill or we don't like the bill. It's based on whether we believe it meets the criteria and will inspire a lot of debate in the House and contribute to a good parliamentary system.

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I've often voted for bills that I'd never vote for once I got in there to vote in the House.

Mr. Bill Blaikie: That's the point I've been trying to make: we're not here to debate the merits of the bill.

Ms. Carolyn Parrish: That's right.

Mr. Bill Blaikie: We're here to debate the merits of whether the bill should be votable.

Ms. Carolyn Parrish: But the point the chairman made is also true. If this gentleman wants to spend his five minutes talking to us about—

Mr. Bill Blaikie: Okay. I was just trying to give him some advice, that's all.

Mr. Jim Pankiw: I will let the committee decide if what I said applied to your list of criteria or not.

I do want to make one point of clarification. This is not pay equity. This is employment equity. There's a big difference and I guess maybe I should have drawn attention to that, but everybody probably knows that anyway.

Could I give you just a summary of what I said?

The Chairman: Thank you very much.

Mr. Jim Pankiw: Thank you. Have a great day, everyone.

The Chairman: I'm going to invite the next colleague, John Herron. Motion 214.

Mr. Herron, you are invited to present your motion during five minutes and then to exchange views with us.

Mr. John Herron (Fundy—Royal, PC): I'm going to use Mr. Blaikie's comments, because I had prepared a little bit differently. Perhaps it's similar to how the other gentlemen did, so I'll probably change my approach throughout. We'll see how it works out.

That having been said, the comment that was just made with respect to going through the list of criteria is what I based my bill on.

I've given you some documentation that actually supports some background on the bill itself, and it pertains to the necessity of developing a national shipbuilding strategy for the country.

I believe that my motion does meet every requirement of the 11 listed on pages 5 and 6 of the document itself. This motion is definitely non-partisan in nature, and I cannot stress enough my desire to work in co-operation with all parties.

Simply put, what we want to do is develop a new and modern policy to give Canada and one of our important industries a chance to compete in the global marketplace. All I have done here is put together suggestions made by the shipbuilding industry, by the premiers and by the finance minister. I believe it would be wrong for us not to debate it, and indeed not to have a chance to actually vote on it as well.

When talking about some of the comments about the urgent need of the documentation itself, the fact is that the shipbuilding industry realizes now that it cannot rely on contracts in the nature which they've received over the past years—by that I mean receiving defence contracts and other kinds of government-oriented shipping manufacturing contracts—and that they understand that the only place where they're going to be able to have any kind of consistent growth in that industry is within the industry of the private sector. So they need to be able to have mechanisms in place so that they can in fact compete in the private sector, and the private sector market for them is that of exporting internationally.

The marine industry itself employs 40,000 people nationwide and adds over $2 billion to our GDP. The industry over the last ten years has evolved and modernized and really rationalized its shipbuilding capacity. Now they're looking for an opportunity to compete, but some initiatives have to be done to give them that chance to compete.

Every other shipbuilding nation in the world has some degree of direct subsidy. What the shipbuilding industry in Canada is looking for are not direct subsidies. What they're looking for are innovative approaches with respect to financing, leasing, and loan guarantees, which is the most benign of subsidies because it's just giving access to capital.

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What we're looking at doing is perhaps stealing some of the best strategies they have throughout the nation. We're not reinventing the wheel.

Inside your folder you'll see a document produced by the Shipbuilding Association of Canada. It talks about four points.

The first of these four points is to provide improved export financing and loan guarantee programs. It's similar to Title 11 in the United States. It essentially means the federal government would guarantee the loans on any ship that would be built, whether it was a Canadian owner or an international owner. The Americans take a very prudent approach to this. Since this loan guarantee system has been in place, since 1936, there has been not one single default in a loan, because they have some very prudent criteria.

The second thing they're looking at doing is revisiting the Revenue Canada leasing regulations. What they mean by that is that any kind of large capital expenditure done today is done by means of leasing, quite often, and the current regulations mean the depreciation is done at the back end of the lease, as opposed to the front end of the lease, which really makes our system basically uneconomical from a leasing perspective.

Those are two methods that would give a competitive edge to the shipbuilding industry and that they believe would give them a chance to compete in the European market. They're not going to be able to compete in Korea or China, where they have subsidies of up to 40%. What they're looking at is building medium-size and small-size vessels of a value-added nature, such as seagoing tugs of some form, which have some higher technology involved.

Currently we do not have access to the United States market. We can't sell a ship into the United States today, because of the Jones Act of 1920, which was exempt from NAFTA. That said, I'm not projecting that we're going to be able to reopen up NAFTA and the Jones Act or maybe challenge it through the World Trade Organization, but at the end of the day it's something that can be revisited as a component of the overall strategy.

So the necessities of this are that at the first ministers meeting in July the premiers recognized the challenges Canadian shipbuilders currently face in their efforts to become internationally competitive. The industry itself supports a national policy. Last but not least, Mr. Martin, when he was looking at having his ships rebuilt back in 1988, stated quite succinctly:

I fought hard to have the ships built in Canada, but was unable to convince the government of the need to have an aggressive shipbuilding policy. If we're not going to do that, we can't be a factor in commercial shipping.

People have recognized the need for this for quite some time. It's time we put it up for debate.

The Chairman: Thank you very much. Are there any questions?

Since my colleagues have no questions, I have a question involving the ninth criterion, that bills will be set aside in this selection process if they impede or are contrary to normal federal-provincial or international relations. Would you comment on this particular aspect.

Mr. John Herron: Yes. When it comes to a federal issue or a provincial issue, really nothing would come into play. Two provinces do have provincial subsidies, British Columbia and Quebec. That would be on top of what we would do as a national strategy itself. That said, Canada is the only country in the world that is playing by the exact rules as set out in 1988 by the OECD regulations.

What we're doing in having these two...as I say, one is a very benign subsidy, which doesn't actually give any cash. It just guarantees a loan. The other thing is changing the way we actually do our accounting from a depreciation component. We would still be by far the least subsidized shipbuilding nation in the world—the least in the world.

The quality of the work in the shipbuilding industry is something I'm familiar with. My professional background is that I've been involved in heavy metal fabrication for the last nine years, since I graduated from school. I know from my experience even on the Hibernia project that five super-modules were built on the Hibernia project: two in Korea, two in Italy, and one in Bull Arm, Newfoundland. The Norwegians who were the project managers for that said the M-20 module, the well-head module, was of the highest calibre of the five. You'll get testaments to that effect from anybody who was down there on the site. The quality is there.

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We know that we do not have a domestic market to utilize only to keep a vibrant industry going. The federal government likely is not going to be building a ship for maybe 20 years, because it built the minesweepers recently in Halifax and because of the frigate program. So they need new markets. What this does is give them a chance to compete in the EU.

It is urgent. The premiers recognize it. I assure you the families in the manufacturing cities, whether they be inland yards in Tracy, Quebec or whether they be in Saint John or Halifax, or even Vancouver shipyards.... They are actually quite busy doing aluminum ferries for the moment, but they're going to be looking for help for export bases down the road as well. It is a pan-Canadian issue.

We're talking about the need of having a national shipbuilding strategy, and then we can hand it over to the government so that the government can actually take this ball and carry it. But it should be the will of the House to make this industry have a chance to compete.

Mr. Ken Epp: One of the questions I have is on the fairness to the regions. How would you defend that as a criterion for whether we should make it votable? Clearly, putting taxpayers' dollars in one form or another into supporting the shipbuilding industry is not going to help us in Alberta or Saskatchewan a great deal.

Mr. John Herron: Actually that's what I want as an Atlantic Canadian. What has hurt a lot of industry in Atlantic Canada has been that paternalistic aspect of trying to rely on federal dollars to prop up industries. That is what these industries have relied on. They have relied on having defence contracts, which have been federal taxpayers' dollars. What I'm saying is that we don't need that for those industries to succeed. They can do it in a free market, free enterprise system by actually having some tax incentives, as opposed to giving out cash—versus the Manitobas and the Albertas, where we allocated over $238 million in the aerospace industry in direct subsidies. I'm not even looking for subsidies for these particular industries; I'm looking for a level playing field internationally.

If we want to be in shipbuilding as a country so that we have a chance to refit our merchant vessels and our defence vessels, then we have to be able to ensure that our shipyards continue to modernize as we go ahead in time. What we're looking for is a chance to compete in the international market. We know that we have to do things similar to what other people are doing in the world. We're asking for a whole lot less than what they're doing.

The Chairman: This will be the last question, because we have gone beyond our time.

Mr. Ken Epp: My last question has to do with the clarity of the wording of your bill, which is another of our criteria. It seems to me that you're double-fudging it when you say on the one hand that you're not looking for any direct subsidies or tax dollars and yet you are asking for tax policies and tax incentives and construction financing to be made available.

Mr. John Herron: That's the differential. When I consulted the professionals in this industry, these criteria would not be classified in their regard. That's why I specifically chose that language, because it is not a direct subsidy as pertaining to the shipbuilding industry. It's a financial guarantee of a loan.

The Chairman: Thank you very much.

Mr. John Herron: Thank you for your help.

The Chairman: I will now invite Randy White on Bill C-211.

Mr. Randy White (Langley—Abbotsford, Ref.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'll be as brief as I can.

Having sat on this committee for two years, I can assure you that you'll be strapped for time as well, but I think you'll like your time on the committee.

Bill C-211 is an act to amend the Criminal Code for arrest of those in breach of conditions of parole or statutory or temporary release. I passed around a document. I don't intend to read it all, but I put some of the salient points in here.

This issue had come up to me over the last several years from various policemen across Canada. It's not their police organizations or associations; it's the guy on the street who has a concern.

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The concern is this, basically. They walk in to make an arrest or they walk into a certain situation and they find somebody they know is out on statutory release or temporary absence. They can't pick them up, because under the law you're not allowed to arrest without warrant for those particular aspects of release. So essentially what happens is they may arrest somebody else in the crowd for something, but this fellow will be long gone before they ever get a warrant. That's the problem police are having.

Most notably, this bill will assist police forces across the country to apprehend those in breach of their conditions promptly. Currently the Criminal Code allows arrests without warrant if a person is committing a crime. But this is not the case. It's a breach. Breach of parole is not a crime but an administrative offence, in which the National Parole Board has exclusive jurisdiction to suspend, terminate, or revoke by a warrant. While that is good, it doesn't help the policeman on the scene.

Parole, statutory release, and unescorted temporary absence conditions are not judicially imposed but imposed pursuant to the Corrections and Conditional Release Act. Nowhere in the legislation does it state that when an offender violates a condition of parole, statutory release, or unescorted temporary absence imposed on the offender he commits a crime. The problem is that because it is not a crime to violate parole, statutory release, or unescorted temporary absence there is no authority for a justice to detain the person, because the person has not been charged with an offence.

The proposed amendment establishes an arrest power for breaches of parole, statutory release, or unescorted temporary absence. When you live in an area like mine, with seven federal penitentiaries, you'll understand how severe this is. The police continually find people in breach of their conditions but basically can't do anything other than make a phone call.

In item 7 here I explain exactly what the problem is. This was a story related to me by Constable Mike Novakowski, from the Abbotsford Police, in my riding. It's noon on a Sunday and a police officer encounters a parolee in a public park who is in violation of a condition not to be near public parks or schools. It's usually a sex offender. The current procedure would be that the police contact a pager number to reach the on-call duty officer who is responsible for the area parole officer's case. The police have to wait for a response from the duty officer and so on and so forth. If the duty officer issues a warrant, then the police officer may execute the warrant and arrest the parolee. The trouble is this isn't immediate. They have to sit and wait. If the guy sees a policeman walk through the door, he's long gone. That's what it amounts to.

On page 3 I've given you all the necessary references and so on. I won't take you all through that. Let me give you an ironic example, though. If a person steals a simple chocolate bar from a grocery store and he's charged and convicted of theft, it's not uncommon that when that person is sentenced they are on probation. In fact, it happens all the time. When they violate that probation and they are caught again, they are arrested without warrant and detained, and in fact they can get an additional crime for that, for theft. However, when a person is charged and convicted for aggravated sexual assault and is sentenced to a penitentiary, then they are released on statutory declaration or parole or unescorted temporary absence with conditions. If that person violates the condition and is caught by the police, the police can't arrest them. That is the problem.

I can assure you, if you have read about the Abbotsford killer and a few others in my community, this is very serious. But it's not just Abbotsford; it's right across the country. Police are saying, look, we walk in on these guys, we know they are violating their parole or their temporary absences, but we can't do anything about it. So they walk. And therein lies the problem.

I hope you can make this votable, because I think there will be general support for it in the House.

The Chairman: Thank you. Mr. Blaikie.

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Mr. Bill Blaikie: I have a technical question. I'm interested in knowing more about the way the system works now.

So they see the guy who's breaking the conditions and they have to get hold of So-and-so. Is there no retroactivity? You say that he sees a policeman come through the doorway and he's gone. Are they not able after the fact to pursue them for—

Mr. Randy White: No. They can make a report, but they won't issue a warrant for it. If they do somehow try to get a warrant, what happens is then you go into the legal fight over where he was at this time and if you have witnesses. Typically, this kind of thing happens on a Friday night or early in the morning when you can't even get hold of the on-duty people.

Mr. Bill Blaikie: These are the on-duty people at the prison presumably, or the National Parole Board?

Mr. Randy White: Either the parole board or the judicial people.

So you can see the difficulties we're having.

Mr. Bill Blaikie: Yes.

Mr. Randy White: These people who are violating their parole usually know full well that they are, and in many cases they're sex offenders or drug addicts.

Mr. Ken Epp: What you're saying, then, is that the policemen in an area obviously know these guys, they get to know them. They know the conditions of the parole, and just on the basis of that, they cannot detain them at all?

Mr. Randy White: That's right. They walk in on them. They know who they are, pretty well in every community across the country. They're either where drugs are being sold or in a park—they're pedophiles, or that sort of thing. Basically, you can't even stop a pedophile from being in a park if you come across him. Unless you fetch a warrant, he can walk.

Mr. Norman Doyle: The obvious question is jumping out at me. Why hasn't this been done before? It's obviously a big problem, it's obviously something that should have been corrected long ago, so why hasn't it been?

Mr. Randy White: The system is this. I think the average policeman has a lot of work to do. If he has to go through Corrections Canada, then you know what a nightmare that could be. Basically, it's a lot easier just to say, well, I saw him there; you guys should do something about it. We have some policemen out there today saying, look, this is occurring more and more and we have to be able to do something here. It's paperwork and it's a lot of bureaucracy, frankly.

Mr. Ken Epp: I have a question with respect to the issue before us, and that is can we propose that you can have this in the House and vote on it? Have you checked into the constitutionality of it vis-à-vis the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and so on?

Mr. Randy White: Oh yes. What the bill does is make it an indictable offence so they can arrest. If you look at the bill itself, on the back, it says that already subsection 733(1) of the code provides for arrest of an offender who is bound by a probation order. It does not currently include those on parole, statutory release or temporary release, and if it did, (a) and (b) would apply. You would pick them up; it's an indictable offence liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years or an offence punishable on summary conviction and it's liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 18 months or a fine not exceeding $2,000, or both.

In essence, what would happen is that depending on the severity of the situation, the person would be arrested, be put back in, and they would probably look at it as an administrative tribunal in Canada Corrections. But he'd be picked up and removed from the scene, and that's what the police want. He'd definitely spend overnight in jail, and then Corrections would decide what to do with him.

My experience on a parole board says that they'd revoke his parole.

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[Translation]

The Chairman: Are there any other comments? Is everyone fine with this?

Thank you very much, Mr. White.

Mr. Randy White: Thank you.

[English]

The Chairman: No. 5, Mr. Forseth.

Mr. Paul Szabo (Mississauga South, Lib.): Mr. Chairman, I would like to thank Mr. Forseth for allowing me to go forward because of a time conflict that we actually both had.

I've given you a package with some material in it. There's a copy of the bill, a copy of a press release and also a copy of a book that I prepared last year called Divorce: The Bold Facts, as well as another document, which I wrote over the summer, called Strong Families Make a Strong Country, which deals substantially with family breakdown.

[Translation]

I'm sorry that these documents have not been translated into French, Mr. Chairman and Mrs. Dalphond-Guiral. Would it be possible to have them translated?

The Chairman: Yes.

[English]

Mr. Paul Szabo: Colleagues, I am pleased to come before you on a matter that is very important to me and, I believe, to many of our colleagues.

The Vanier Institute produced a report this year announcing to Canadians that 50% of marriages are ending in divorce, and 60% of those relationships involve children. The growth in one-parent families has been very significant. Now, 11.3% of all families are lone-parent families, 85% of which are led by a mother.

I can tell you that 70% of young offenders come from broken families.

With regard to the assessment of the situation, recently it was written by an author that we are creating a new fatherless society that is filling up with children who are so emotionally damaged by their parents' behaviour that they themselves are at high risk of having difficulty in forming relationships and commitments themselves.

This bill I've proposed is called “mandatory counselling prior to granting of a divorce”. I want to say at the outset, however, that there is a specific exclusion for mental or physical abuse or cruelty. This relates primarily to the no-fault provisions of the act.

The purpose of this bill is to achieve two things.

First, it's to ensure that there is an appropriate parenting plan in place where children are involved.

The second purpose is to deal with a very serious and growing issue of post-break-up acrimony, problems after the break-up. In Canada we have seen recently cases where a husband has killed his wife and children and then committed suicide. We had a case in my own riding where a father took his two young children and walked them into Lake Ontario. One of them drowned and the other was seriously hurt.

The O.J. Simpson case would be another situation demonstrating the prevalence of stalking, violence and even homicide after a break-up of a relationship.

The justice department has just issued a new publication, called Another Way, in which they call for consideration of mediation in divorce and separation.

Under the current Divorce Act, there is a requirement that lawyers must recommend counselling. However, it is not mandatory. This bill would take it that one further step to try to address a serious problem.

Now, I understand very clearly that this touches some delicate spots, particularly the issue about getting involved in the personal decisions of a family and having the government intrude there. However, when you consider the impact on the development and the outcome of a child, the impact on the criminal justice system and the impact on our social programs, you understand that all of us in our society are severely affected by the breakdown of the family and specifically divorce where children are involved.

This particular bill is endorsed by a number of groups, but I would tell you that in Edmonton there's a program called the parenting after divorce program. It started four years ago. It is by court order, so this is not an intrusion of privacy as some may have suggested. It has in fact been going on. It has a wonderful success rate. In fact, the Minister of Justice of Alberta has announced recently that they are considering requiring this to be mandatory on a province-wide basis.

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In addition, 14 American states have similar programs and they are boasting very high success rates. Journal studies have now been published to indicate the success factor.

We are talking about probabilities. There is no certitude, but one has to ask the question whether or not there is something we can do. The bill touches on child poverty, the outcomes of children, custody orders, support payments, financial arrangements, what happens to the children afterwards, the well-being of women after a breakdown, and social assistance and support for lone-parent families. As I said, 85% are led by women.

I ask for your support to make this a votable bill, please, so we can have as many members as possible to discuss what I believe is one of the most critical emerging issues not only in our country but in western industrial civilization. This is one of the biggest issues coming forward, and it has to do with the breakdown of the family.

The Chairman: Mr. Epp.

Mr. Ken Epp: Paul, I have two questions for you. First, you have indicated that this is the Divorce Act. You are talking all the time about how it affects the children, yet I see no indication that your bill is limited to divorces where children are involved. Am I correct in that?

Mr. Paul Szabo: That is correct. Only 60% of divorces involve children. But the issue of post-breakup acrimony is applicable in all divorces.

Mr. Ken Epp: Yes, I'm aware of that. But your argument is to protect the children. I'm just wondering whether there might even be a legal challenge on this under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms if two people decide they want a divorce, there are no children, and it doesn't bother anybody else; both of them, by mutual consent, just want out. Now you're saying no, first of all you have to pay for government counselling.

I've encountered divorced couples who have come to me because I'm the MP. They say to me, look, we have enough financial trouble, and now the judge has said we have to go to counselling. Sometimes judges do that; they do prescribe it, even though it's not required in an act. Now they are hit with another bill of $8,000 or $10,000, at $200 an hour, to talk to some shrink. This is the way they put it to me.

I think particularly in cases where children are not involved you might be pushing the legality of this bill in terms of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Mr. Paul Szabo: Thank you very much. You have raised two good points.

First of all, the purpose of this is not to reconcile marriages. That is not the intent of the bill.

On the second point, the cost, the Department of Health engaged a firm in Guelph, Ontario to catalogue all the existing programs. Right now 144 social agencies are providing divorce counselling programs on a voluntary basis, for those who take them voluntarily. These are in place now, even in the Edmonton situation.

They are using current programs. They are not new programs. They are all registered bodies providing these services. Their problem right now is that many of these groups do not have many clients, because as you well know, it is very difficult for people to make the decision to go on a voluntary basis.

However, when you consider the consequences, I think it's an investment we can make. Don't forget that under the Divorce Act there has to be a 12-month period before the divorce is granted in any event. So it isn't delaying anything whatsoever. Under the no-fault provisions you don't have to give a reason for the divorce. You simply have to declare you want a divorce.

So this is not going to intrude. I don't believe that under existing programs it will cost any money.

Mr. Ken Epp: You don't think so?

Mr. Paul Szabo: No.

Mr. Ken Epp: Under this bill you have the minister prescribing who is a counsellor or not. When you give the minister that kind of power, you can count on it that the counsellors in every region can now say, aha, we have a captive audience.

Mr. Paul Szabo: Now you have discovered just how interesting it is to debate this, because there are many dimensions. Thank you for the question.

The Chairman: Mr. Blaikie.

Mr. Bill Blaikie: I was interested in something you just said. You said the purpose of the counselling is not to reconcile a marriage. Surely that would be one of the purposes, wouldn't it? If there are so many consequences identified with broken marriages and broken families, surely one of the possibilities of any such counselling ought to be reconciliation. I was just surprised to have you rule it out altogether after having said how damaging it is that people divorce.

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Mr. Paul Szabo: And I concur.

The Edmonton experience is that 5% of the couples who have come to them in fact have found that divorce is not the solution to their problems, but in 95% of the cases they have gone forward.

What I'm suggesting to you is that in the vast majority of cases when people have made that decision that their relationship is going to terminate, this has then gone far enough.

Although the bill suggests reconciliation, the issue for me is that the impact on children and the parenting plan and, second, the post-break-up acrimony situation cost us tens of billions of dollars, not to mention the human cost.

Your point is well taken. I don't propose that counselling is going to—

Mr. Bill Blaikie: You haven't ruled it out.

Mr. Paul Szabo: No.

Mr. Bill Blaikie: My other question is this. Everybody else enters into the substance of these issues, so I'm not going to discipline myself, because nobody else does. What do you think of the Promise Keepers?

Mr. Paul Szabo: I don't know very much about their history, their background, or whatever, and therefore I don't want to pit anybody's views against anybody else's. I did listen to the message, and it seemed to be, “I'm a father and I haven't done a very good job”. To me it represented something like admission of a problem, and I think that's the first step in finding a solution.

Mr. Bill Blaikie: Fair enough.

The Chairman: Would you like to break for five minutes for a coffee?

Mr. Bill Blaikie: No, just keep going.

The Chairman: Mr. Forseth, you have five minutes to present your bill.

Mr. Paul Forseth (New Westminster—Coquitlam—Burnaby, Ref.): Thank you very much. It's a privilege to appear before the subcommittee to brief you a little bit about my bill to assist dealing with the changing of the Criminal Code in respect to public communication for the purposes of prostitution. I hope you will be able to make my bill votable.

Subsection 213(1) of the Criminal Code currently states that every person who communicates or attempts to communicate for the purposes of engaging in prostitution or obtaining sexual services of a prostitute is guilty of an offence upon summary conviction. It's the minor significance part of the Criminal Code.

My bill strengthens the punishment by making it a hybrid or electable offence so that the police or the Crown can go either way and give some flexibility in the administration of justice.

I am speaking now of street prostitution specifically. It is a problem that plagues all of our major Canadian cities. The real problem in most cases is that offenders usually pay only a very small fine and think nothing of the crime. The summary aspect of it sends a certain message to the community. It also sends a message to police forces concerning how they're going to allocate resources in that it's not really worth their while to allocate a lot of police time and resources to something that is categorized as being purely summary in nature. So certainly changes need to be made.

It's a particular problem in my riding. The British Columbia provincial attorney general has certainly talked about this issue recently, as has the mayor of Vancouver.

Certainly a change in the Criminal Code is not going to solve the prostitution problem per se, and I'm not putting it forward as that. But I think this is a particular interesting procedural wrinkle that would certainly provide some more flexible tools into the hands on the enforcement side, while at the same time recognizing that we need to do a lot better on the other end, the social services side. We can deal with that in a different forum.

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One of the things we have is that because of the summary nature of the charge, it is a wide-open legal door for young people, children, to get involved in prostitution. Because we have the street aspect of it, any young person can simply get mad at their parents or whatever, run away, and go stand on a corner. The legal capacity has created its own demand. Now, we're not going to get rid of prostitution, but I think this particular wrinkle would go a long way towards at least keeping a lid on the street prostitution angle.

In 1992 a working group was established by the deputy ministers of justice of the federal, provincial, and territorial governments. Reports were made and one of the recommendations I think there appeared to be consensus around was this particular wrinkle, among many other possibilities of changing the Criminal Code. The Identification of Criminals Act states that fingerprints and photographs can't be taken when a person is charged summarily, so this certainly aids in the identification of individuals.

The working group...I think the national consensus is that the identification of prostitutes, along with their use of false identities, was considered a serious problem by law enforcement agencies and prosecutors and one that might be solved with this amendment.

The ability to respond on the more serious side to particular problems when they're getting out of hand.... They could arrest and then have a particular problem individual appear in front of a justice the following morning and be released on some kind of court supervision order, bail order, with certain conditions attached. Essentially the street procedure for a summary offence is that the individual is given a traffic ticket, a summons to appear, and that person may never be seen again or whatever, or they have a repeated number of these and they are trying to ticket people with false IDs and it just isn't working.

I talked to the previous justice minister about this matter and he acknowledged that yes, this is one of the common sense solutions the national consultations came up with, but it was always, well, we'll put it off until we have a more comprehensive national picture put together. But appearing before a parliamentary committee in 1989, Mr. Art Eggleton stated:

I support these changes to Bill C-49, as well as other recommendations our police are putting forward, to help us once again regain control of our streets; namely, that this offence be changed from a summary offence to a hybrid offence...

—exactly what I'm asking for—

...requiring that those arrested be fingerprinted and photographed, which is important in dealing with runaways, who can change their identities and their names, and others who are trying to avoid prosecution, and that it remain, in addition to that, within the absolute jurisdiction of a provincial court judge.

That's what that cabinet minister had to say at that time, because, of course, having been mayor of a large city, with that experience, he had to deal with being chief law enforcement officer of Toronto.

I'm convinced this is a type of bill that fits into the purview of what a private member's bill can do. It's taking an existing offence that's purely summary and making it a hybrid offence. It's a small technical change. It's not a large piece of legislation. Yet the ramifications and the really helpful thing it can do, especially to break the cycle of a bad lifestyle for young people.... Often it's being able to get someone off the street and get them to other resources, and to make that first break we need to be able to keep hold of the body, at least for 24 hours, or to get some kind of reporting order. I see that this is one of the greatest ways not of trying to put people involved in the sex trade in jail or to give them fines.... It's the technical amendment that's needed to bring them in contact with the social services.

That's the main reason why I'm putting it forward. It arises out my 23 years of experience as a probation officer and parole officer, and also as a youth worker under the Young Offenders Act, in dealing with parents when their kids were on the street, and the limits of the resources to be able to get them to a safe house or whatever. This is the one technical amendment I think is needed.

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The Acting Chairman (Ms. Carolyn Parrish (Mississauga Centre, Lib.)): Thank you very much for your presentation.

Mr. Epp.

Mr. Ken Epp: One of the criteria that we have is the clarity of the bill. Right off the bat, in 213(1)(a), you're saying “anybody who stops or attempts to stop any motor vehicle”, and it's not clear at all to me whether you're talking about a young lady stepping onto the street in front of a car and stopping it in that way or you're talking about the driver of that car who stopped in order to beckon the young lady to come to his window to talk to him.

Mr. Paul Forseth: That's the existing wording of the Criminal Code. So the only—

Mr. Ken Epp: Which one is it?

Mr. Paul Forseth: In my bill the only change is the words that are underlined, but I reproduced the whole section.

Mr. Ken Epp: Oh, okay.

Mr. Paul Forseth: So the only technical point is an offence.... You have to state both cases—an indictable offence or liable to...because the existing clause is proceeded on only on a summary basis.

Mr. Ken Epp: Okay. So you're just making it indictable.

Mr. Paul Forseth: There's a whole body of case law around defining all those other terms, which I'm not addressing at all.

Mr. Ken Epp: It's too bad, Paul. I wish you would have addressed the one in 1(a) instead, because I think it's time for us to go after the so-called johns. That's my view.

Mr. Paul Forseth: This section does that. It's used both ways.

The Acting Chairman (Ms. Carolyn Parrish): Any other questions? No?

Thank you very much.

Mr. Strahl.

Mr. Chuck Strahl (Fraser Valley, Ref.): This bill is entitled the joyriding bill because it covers a section of the Criminal Code that is commonly called.... It's under the section of the Criminal Code entitled “Offences Resembling Theft”. It reads that everyone who, without the consent of the owner, takes a motor vehicle or vessel with intent to drive, use, navigate or operate it or cause it to be driven, used, navigated or operated is guilty of an offence punishable on summary conviction.

It's another of these cases where we have a very serious, growing criminal problem that is no longer, I think, handled properly under the Criminal Code.

In my father's day, joyriding used to be something that a kid did with his uncle's car when he was trying to get to the barn dance. Joy-riding now is a very serious problem. The problem in Canada is that 160,000 vehicles are now stolen every year, at a cost of some $1.6 billion. By contrast, bank robberies account for, I think, $3 million in theft. Yet, of course, our penalties and our concern for bank robberies are much higher, probably, than for joyriding. Sometimes they go hand in hand.

The extent of the problem is huge. It's a growing problem in my own constituency, which is where this thing sort of started. The instances of auto theft shot up by 87% last year. In East Vancouver it went up by 73% in one year. Overall in British Columbia, to take the B.C. statistics, from 1986 to 1995 there's been an average growth of 14% per year in the number of auto theft claims. So the number of auto thefts has quadrupled in the last nine years.

ICBC, which is the provincial insurance corporation, has had an increase in insurance claims paid out year to year from 1995 to 1996 of 41%, and the average claim is $3,984. So the problem is huge.

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In Prince Rupert the statistics have gone up 156% in one year, in Quesnel it has doubled in the last year, and so on. The British Columbia statistics are alarming.

But it's a Canada-wide problem. In the city of Montreal there are 40,000 car thefts per year.

I think that alone is serious enough to look at changing the law. But the other part of it that alarms me is that the types of damages done in this so-called joyriding are very serious. In Ottawa in November last year a 15-year-old stole a vehicle, picked up four or five friends, lost control of the vehicle, rolled it, killed an innocent passenger.

In my own neck of the woods, I was in the logging business before I got into this racket. I went to work one morning just about—

An hon. member: Log rolling.

Mr. Chuck Strahl: Log rolling. Actually, it was a guy I used to work with. He drove to work up toward Mission. He met a fellow coming up out of a creek early one morning. It was a fellow who had stolen a vehicle and driven off the road while he was having a joyride. It would have been just another vehicle except his passenger in the vehicle had a broken back from the incident. The life of an innocent 15-year-old guy is ruined.

The sad part is this. It was actually my brother who found this fellow. When he went down to the police station the guy said—whatever his name was—John, he steals a vehicle every weekend and the laws aren't tough enough to deal with it.

Last year the average penalty for joyriding in Canada was a $100 fine. That was the median penalty. Yet the average damage done to vehicles is, as I say, $3,984. So what we have is a 1950s kind of mentality in dealing with the crime and it's a 1990s crime and it's growing at exponential speed.

This bill changes the law and it tightens it up from a summary conviction to a more serious crime. It invokes both minimum and maximum sentences as a deterrent to crime. If in the opinion of the judge, the court, the fine should be paid by the guardian, that is an option the court can consider. In other words, if somebody is on a restraining order or is a repeat offender, as in this case my brother came in contact with, the court could step in and say to the parents, you're going to have to keep that kid in or else we're going to have to deal with it, and the court could actually force the restitution to come from the guardian if it was shown that the guardian wasn't showing due diligence in keeping that person off the road or off the streets.

I think it has the makings of being a votable national bill. It has something that affects people from coast to coast. The number of incidents is huge and rising. It allows the courts to deal with it in a more serious way.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Strahl.

Any questions?

Mr. Chuck Strahl: I'd be happy to give you any background numbers or figures.

Mr. Bill Blaikie: I presume when Mr. Strahl said this all began in his constituency he meant the movement towards amending the legislation and not joyriding itself.

Mr. Chuck Strahl: It's interesting that the local ICBC, the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia, has actually put together a petition based on this private member's bill—I've actually spoken at some of their seminars—and now leave petitions on the desk at the government ICBC offices for people to sign. They are so concerned that something be done with this. I think it has broad support.

Mr. Ken Epp: What degree is this provincial jurisdiction as opposed to federal?

Mr. Chuck Strahl: The Criminal Code is federal, of course. Right now it's under a section of the Criminal Code, as I mentioned earlier, on offences resembling crimes, so to speak. I think it is a crime. Joyriding is no longer a—

Mr. Ken Epp: It's theft.

Mr. Chuck Strahl: It's theft; yet it's called joyriding in the Criminal Code. The guy is taking it out for a spin.

Some 76% of car thefts are recovered locally. In other words, it is people on a so-called joyride. But by the time they get finished with it the chrome is all wiped off one side, the thing is three-quarters totalled, and although it's recovered, it's often a write-off.

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So it is a federal Criminal Code offence and it just changes it from a joyriding offence or changes that provision into the things along the lines that you can see. It's a very short bill.

Mr. Ken Epp: So you are assuring us that we're not encroaching on provincial jurisdiction.

Mr. Chuck Strahl: That's my understanding. It's a Criminal Code offence.

The Chairman: Do you really think that joyriding is an appropriate translation of balade en voiture volée? In French it means that there is a theft. In English it is joyriding. Is it the appropriate translation? Does joyriding mean that there is a theft or a violation of anything?

Mr. Chuck Strahl: As I understand it, joyriding in English comes from that time in history way back when somebody without a driver's licence or without permission just jumped in the old man's car and took it for a spin. That was a joyride. You picked up your friends on the way to the malt shop and that's just what you did. But it's not that any more. That's not the problem.

Mr. Norman Doyle: It's auto theft.

Mr. Chuck Strahl: Now it's auto theft.

In Mississauga last year a group of teenagers were also given money to steal cars for specific purposes. This one group of half a dozen teenagers stole 102 vehicles over the course of a month, just for a couple of hundred bucks a shot to do it.

It's a serious crime and it's really growing in exponential numbers. That's the bad part, and there is no end in sight.

The Chairman: But I was meaning that it's more clearly a crime in French, with the French words, than in the English word.

Mr. Chuck Strahl: Yes.

Mr. Ken Epp: So, Chuck, do you think that we should vote on this rather than just talking about it for an hour?

Mr. Chuck Strahl: Well, I think it's votable. I think it meets the criteria. It is something of national concern.

If you talk to the insurance people, including ICBC, the government-regulated insurance company in British Columbia, I was saying to Bill that they actually keep a petition now. They put together a petition that they actually keep in the front of their offices, which they get all the people coming in to sign. I've a copy of it here and I've had thousands of signatures from people.

People take also a lot of personal offence, because it's almost like stealing a guy's horse in the old days. If you take somebody's wheels, you don't just take something worth $1,000. It could be that you take away his or her way of getting to work, getting to the hospital.... You take more than just the dollars. That's why people are so personally offended by it and why I think it's a serious crime. It's not just a matter of Monte Solberg and his kids going for a good....

I'm sorry. Are you giving me the hook?

The Chairman: Thank you very much.

Mr. Chuck Strahl: Thank you.

The Chairman: Mr. Solberg, you have five minutes.

Mr. Monte Solberg (Medicine Hat, Ref.): Mr. Chairman, the clerk is distributing just a few points about Bill C-205. I'm just going to run through some of these points.

Really, this bill flows from concerns raised by the Auditor General in 1993, when he stated in his report:

We are concerned that Parliament cannot readily scrutinize the user fees established by contracts and non-regulatory means. There does not exist a government-wide summary of the fees being charged, the revenues raised and the authorities under which they are established.

In 1996 Treasury Board officials identified four main issues related to parliamentary authority. I want to explain most importantly the first point. They said that the raising of revenue, including user fees, is subject to parliamentary approval. What they should be saying is that they should be subject to parliamentary approval. In fact, they are not right now.

Second, there is a need for better accounting and a more detailed disclosure of user charges to Parliament.

Third, Parliament loses control when programs are not financed exclusively by appropriations.

Fourth, Parliament cannot readily scrutinize fees established by contracts and other non-regulatory means.

Over the last ten years user fees have doubled in the amount of revenue that they bring in, up to $3.8 billion, and most fees are established by regulation conferred through legislation. There is very little scrutiny and they come in a number of different guises.

• 1705

I want to talk specifically about some of the ones people have raised lately. For instance the head tax is basically a user fee brought in without any real scrutiny. A couple of years ago on the east coast we had federal fishing licence fees raised dramatically. A lot was raised about it in the House, but it was after the fact. It should have been something that was discussed ahead of time. In my own province the national park fees at Banff have gone up dramatically, but there has been no discussion about it, no scrutiny by politicians, and there should be.

One of the most egregious examples is what has happened at the Pest Management Regulatory Agency, where they were established to streamline some of the regulations surrounding pest management review, reviewing pesticides and that kind of thing. Using user fees, they have increased their budget from $14.2 million to $34 million virtually overnight, in a couple of years, because there was no scrutiny by politicians. We are arguing very strongly that politicians need to have some way to oversee these things, because they can have such a profound impact on certain sectors of the economy.

I'm going to leave it at that, Mr. Chairman. I invite questions.

Mr. Norman Doyle: Can't you get a lot of this information now, through the Access to Information Act?

Mr. Monte Solberg: You could probably get some of it, but you would have to go through each and every department to do it, because there is no one place where it is all gathered. It is very difficult to get the information. As I pointed out, it adds up to a lot of money, almost $4 billion.

Mr. Norman Doyle: So this would bring it all under one umbrella, would it?

Mr. Monte Solberg: The idea is to force these things to pass through the parliamentary committees, so the committees could scrutinize any of these changes before they occur. Ultimately all of these would be listed on a single document somewhere, so people could keep track of what is happening and the Auditor General would be satisfied in his concern.

Mr. Ken Epp: I want to ask you about all these fees and regulations. You've cited park fees, and there are many others in the health department; user fees for inspections and that type of thing. Right now those are done by bureaucrats and the thing just hits the minister's desk. He scarcely has time even to sign them all, let alone to study them. How do you propose to run all these through Parliament?

Mr. Monte Solberg: What we're proposing is that they be run through the committees. Any time there is a proposal to raise a fee or introduce a new fee, it would have to pass through a committee first, so there is some scrutiny of the thing and people are aware.

Now of course the committee can't stop it. That is the job of Parliament. But it should be subject to some kind of political scrutiny. I can guarantee you, for instance, that if people had known ahead of time there was going to be a head tax on immigration, many of the politicians at the table would probably have raised concerns. I would also argue the same thing would be the case with the dramatic increase in the cost of fishing permits on the east coast. So that is the idea: to raise these things and make people aware of them. I'm sure the Atlantic caucus of the various parties would have been very alarmed by that.

Mr. Ken Epp: But are you proposing that the committees now gain a new power, and that is to set fees?

Mr. Monte Solberg: No, they can't set fees. Only Parliament can do that. It's not within the purview of the committees to do that, and this bill cannot change that. Perhaps I'd like to see that happen, but it's just not within the purview of the committees to do that. All they can do is point these things out, raise the concerns, and ask Parliament or the minister and the department to address them.

Mr. Ken Epp: How would you propose actually to stop a proposed fee?

Mr. Monte Solberg: All you can do is have the committee recommend back to the department that this is wrong, it's unjust; that sort of thing. That's about all the committee could do, because committees don't have the power to stop something like that.

Mr. Norman Doyle: It would make it subject to the scrutiny of Parliament.

Mr. Monte Solberg: It would make it subject to the scrutiny of Parliament. But I would argue too that if these things were brought to light earlier in the process, you would have a much better chance of stopping them.

• 1710

For instance, something like the head tax that was introduced in the 1995 budget, I think—I'm not certain.... If that had been subject to some kind of discussion ahead of time, then you could be certain that the department would have had a much better chance of turning it back than once it had already arrived in legislation.

My assistant has pointed something out here. I should read this to you, if I could, from the summary of the bill.

The report of the Committee is subject to the concurrence of the House. If the Committee does not report within one hundred and fifty days, the House may pass a resolution approving, denying or amending the proposed fee or change. The regulating authority is bound by the decision of the House.

That's essentially how it would work. Therefore we wouldn't have to review every fee, if it's a minor fee of some kind, but we would have the power to investigate all the fees.

Thanks to Devon for bringing that forward.

Mr. Ken Epp: In other words, it could possibly come back to Parliament as a committee report?

Mr. Monte Solberg: Yes.

Mr. Ken Epp: And then when the motion is made to adopt the committee, at that time you enter debate and make a motion on the floor of the House, which could stop it?

Mr. Monte Solberg: Yes, that's true.

Mr. Ken Epp: Okay, that sounds reasonable.

Mr. Monte Solberg: Thank you for pointing that out.

Mr. Ken Epp: I'm sure glad we got you out of that, because otherwise it's a redundant bill and I can't vote that we should even vote on it in private members'....

Mr. Monte Solberg: I'm glad that was clarified then.

[Translation]

The Chairman: Are there any other questions?

Thank you, Mr. Solberg, for your presentation.

[English]

Mr. Monte Solberg: Thank you very much.

Mr. Chairman, when will we know when these are votable or not?

The Chairman: We have two more meetings to go through, so it will be after the week of recess.

Number 11, Mr. Breitkreuz.

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz (Yorkton—Melville, Ref.): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank you all for listening to my plea to have my bill become votable.

I've given you a little outline of some of the articles and of the bill itself. It's being distributed at this time, Bill C-214. You have a copy of the bill before you now, and also a sample of the people's tax form that I designed and tested.

I want to say right off the bat that in some of the feedback I've had people have suggested that universities could design this form, that we could have a committee or whatever. This form that you see there is simply my first run at this.

In this bill, C-214, the title is “the people's tax form act”, but the long title explains the objectives that I hope to achieve with this legislation. It's an act to allow taxpayers to inform government of their views on levels and priorities for the expenditure of tax revenue and to provide parliamentary review of the results.

I feel that that's very important. At the present time we have no way, other than at election time, for taxpayers or the people to give any feedback as to the priorities and the level at which they would like to be taxed and the ways in which they would like to have their tax taxes used.

The government would design the form and it would be included in every tax kit, according to my proposal. The completion of this people's tax form would be completely voluntary. All the forms would be returned to Revenue Canada, where they would be analysed and summarized, and then a copy of the analysis would be sent to every MP and senator. The analysis would also be tabled in both the House of Commons and the Senate, and then it would be referred to the standing committee for review and report. The duties of the standing committee are outlined in the bill in this regard.

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Also, I'd like to refer you as members of this committee to the page and the background information that describe the results of the sample I tested in my constituency. If you briefly turn to this page here, you'll see a bit of an idea of what I have done in this regard. Of all the surveys I've done—and I do a survey every time I send out a householder—this one received the most attention by far and had the best response. It's very popular with my constituents and with people. They want to give the government some feedback on this.

You will notice this is not a right-wing or left-wing type of thing. If you look at the results here and you look at the programs that are most strongly supported by the people, you'll see it's not one particular party that would drive the agenda in promoting this kind of thing. It would be of benefit to all MPs. It's a non-partisan form.

That's why I bring this forward. I think you'll find that interesting. I haven't time to dwell on a lot of that, but as you glance at that—old age security, health care, justice—all of these were foremost and strongly supported by at least the people in my constituency.

I really believe the measures proposed in this bill could become a real, integral part of the pre-budget consultations the government does. The finance minister and the Standing Committee on Finance at this time of year are always looking for some sort of direction, and I think this could be a tool they could use. It's not binding on the government, it's voluntary, but the results could help guide them. It's a very democratic measure in that regard.

I think the majority of members would agree that taxpayers really deserve some kind of direct say in how their money is being spent. If we implement this for no other reason, it would be to reassure taxpayers that they do have some say in how their money is being spent.

This type of bill, I believe, should be fully debated and it should be voted on in the House. I think it's a matter worthy of the debate and the time members would spend debating it. The passage of this bill would give voters an opportunity to send a real message to government once a year, not just at election time, and I think that's very important. It is the people's money. Should they not have a say in how it's being spent?

I've reviewed the 11 criteria you as a committee have in determining whether items are to be become votable or not. It's a non-partisan bill. It has never come up before. I think it meets all 11 of your criteria.

In conclusion, I would like to say that one of the reasons I urge you to make this votable is that there's a deep cynicism out there that government is out of control, that a lot of special interests are influencing the agenda and we often have to cater to some of these. It would really help people to get input into government and government spending.

It would also help politicians control the bureaucracy. Right now we're often subject to pressure. That's the nature of politics. I think this would be a very useful tool in combating some of the pressures we experience. It would help us counteract them. Many people see the big corporations as having way too much control in twisting the government agenda. I think this would really bring that back and would counter that.

Finally, I believe it will counter a lot of the apathy many people have towards politics and government affairs. It would really increase the interest people have in the workings of government in a very concrete and real way.

I hope you will consider making this bill votable. If you have any questions, I'd be glad to answer them.

The Chairman: Thank you.

Mrs. Carolyn Parrish: You said twice in your presentation that this would be a non-binding survey. I'm having trouble understanding how this would be different from the election process, from the consultation process, from the polling done by the government, which is very extensive, before and after a budget. If this is non-binding, and at the very least it would be expensive, what would be the purpose?

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: I don't think it would cost more money. It might in fact save us money. It's not a complicated thing. It would have to be a very simple form.

• 1720

How is it different from an election process? Elections take place once a year and people do not have an opportunity at that time to indicate the various programs they'd prefer. An election ballot is basically a very non-specific tool for them to use in directing their government, but this is much more detailed.

Mrs. Carolyn Parrish: You're saying it's non-binding.

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: Yes. It's an advisory measure.

Mrs. Carolyn Parrish: Would the results be published?

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: Yes. They would be given to every MP and senator, and by September of every year. I don't know where I have that, but by September of every year these results should be tabulated.

Mrs. Carolyn Parrish: I also send surveys out in my householders. They're not terribly scientific, as you'd probably guess. None of us can do that. But the percentage of returns is always very low. My last riding had 363,000 people and nothing was exciting enough to elicit more than 1,000 responses. What are you going to base your published findings on? A 2% or 3% return? I'm very cautious.

As I say, we're not supposed to debate the merit of the bill; we're supposed to debate whether or not it should be votable. I'm just a little concerned that if it's non-binding, we have no way of forcing people to fill it out. If we're going to publish the results, I'm very concerned that the exercise might be very futile.

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: Of all the surveys I've taken, this was the one that got the best response.

Mrs. Carolyn Parrish: What percentage did you get?

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: Of the people?

Mrs. Carolyn Parrish: Yes.

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: I'm sure it was probably in the neighbourhood of 5%. There's a cynicism out there that nobody's listening. But if one of these forms is included in every tax form and people look at it at the same time they're filling out the tax form, I would venture to say that the results will be substantially higher than 5%. In fact, I would venture to say that the vast majority of people would fill it out to try to indicate.... At that time, in April, when they fill out their tax form they are interested in this. They see how much tax they're paying. They also want to have some say as to the level of taxation and where their money is going. I think it's a very democratic tool, and I think it would be many times higher than 5%.

Mrs. Carolyn Parrish: I have one more question. Did the people who designed this survey for you also talk about mind-set? For example, I believe that if you send it out in the tax bill, when people are about to pay taxes, they're going to be furious. Their answer to all spending will be no. Have you talked about an optimum time to send it out and the most inexpensive time to send it out to see if you can coordinate those two?

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: You wouldn't send it out. It would be included in the package. It would be done at the same time as they fill out their other taxes.

I brought the results. It gives you an indication that people don't have a mind-set that they want to slash everything in government. That's not the intent of this. What are your priorities? What would you like to see at various levels? I think it has to be designed as well as possible, and we could refine it as the years go on. Because it's non-binding and voluntary, to begin with we could see what interest there is. If it falls by the wayside in three or four years, fine, but it may become one of the most useful tools that a government could employ in directing the affairs of government. In a sense we are the people who are supposed to direct affairs here at the top. How do we know? What indication do we have of the priorities of the people. I don't know what the results of this would be. It would be a tool for us to use in determining what we as elected politicians should do.

Mrs. Carolyn Parrish: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The Chairman: As far as you know, Mr. Breitkreuz, what is the proportion of taxpayers who fill out their tax forms themselves...or with their accountants?

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: They would have the right to fill this out. The accountant would not fill this out. He would have to consult with the taxpayer, of course. You can't have accountants filling this out. That would not work.

The Chairman: Is it true that more and more taxpayers have their tax forms filled out by a third party?

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: Yes, that's true. But this would have to be filled out by the taxpayer himself.

The Chairman: At least signed by the taxpayer.

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: Yes. You have to keep it simple, and that's where the design is very important. That's why I was going to put it out to various universities to try to design a form that would be workable.

The Chairman: Good.

Are there any other questions?

Thank you very much for your presentation.

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: Thank you.

• 1725

The Chairman: Colleagues, I have to inform you that Mr. Bellehumeur n'est pas arrivé. We have tried to reach his office and there is no response.

Mr. Mills will be here at 5.35 p.m., and Mr. Riis will be here tomorrow. If you agree, we will suspend for ten minutes while we wait for Mr. Mills.

• 1726

• 1730

The Chairman: Mr. Mills, welcome. You have five minutes to make your presentation on Bill C-217.

Mr. Bob Mills (Red Deer, Ref.): Basically, this comes out of the Auditor General's report on access to information. I have gone through that report fairly carefully, and there a number of recommendations that come out of that.

This is similar to a bill I put forward in the last Parliament. It was defeated on the basis that action was imminent and that there would be changes. An awful lot of the speakers who spoke to it said they would support this particular type of legislation, but because the justice minister was going to make the changes to the Access to Information Act very soon, there was no need to have a bill like this. That was in 1994. Of course, there have been no changes to the Access to Information Act, and needless to say, the definition of “soon” wasn't quite the same as my definition.

This would force federal departments, boards, and agencies to make public, public opinion polls paid for by the taxpayer. If the taxpayer pays for the poll, it would be made public 15 days after the completion of the poll—within 15 days.

At present, the legislation does have some restriction. It allows up to 90 days before poll results have to be made public. In most issues, it really doesn't matter much what the poll said three months after the fact.

I think the value of having legislation like this is that the people who pay the bill are the ones who then see the results. It is then readily available to the general public. This goes along with the increased transparency, which I believe all parties have promised. Specifically, of course, the red book promises very clearly that we should have more transparency in government.

Mr. John Grace, the Information Commissioner, supports the free and ready access of results of public opinion polls. He believes that if they're commissioned by the government or government agencies, that should be the case. I guess the bottom line is that the more accountable we can make government to the general public, the greater chance we have of increasing what people think of politicians and the political process.

I would find it very difficult to justify if you were a government agency doing a poll like this without in fact being prepared to make it public.

That's a summary of what I have in mind. I'm more than prepared to answer any questions. I think it's fairly simple and straightforward. I believe there's a need for this legislation and I would like to see it votable.

The Chairman: Thank you.

Are there any questions? Mr. Epp.

• 1735

Mr. Ken Epp: Mr. Mills, I'd like to ask you a question with respect to whether or not the government can deal with this thing in a different manner, which is one of our criteria for deciding whether or not a bill should be votable. You said in your little speech there that the minister said he was going to change the bill.

Mr. Bob Mills: The previous minister.

Mr. Ken Epp: The previous minister didn't do it. Now you're coming forward with this again. Have you basically given up that the minister is going to introduce such legislation? Do you believe now that she won't do it, in the present case?

Mr. Bob Mills: I think there was lots of opportunity for the Access to Information Act to be changed. There are a whole bunch of recommendations. It hasn't been modernized, if you will. Many of the areas that are covered there are wrong. I have no reason to believe that it's an area the government would want to get into at this point, particularly with the smaller House. So I think the chances of us seeing the access to information.... Particularly after the Somalia inquiry and things like that, I really don't believe there's any chance it will come forward as government legislation.

Mr. Norman Doyle: You mentioned that there was a requirement to release the information within 90 days. Is there a legislative requirement?

Mr. Bob Mills: Yes, unless the minister deems it as being not in the public interest to release it. My comment to that would be if it is not in the public interest, then why should the taxpayers be paying for it? If it's a partisan thing, then it should be done by that organization, not by taxpayers' dollars.

I think you'd have a hard time arguing that taxpayers should pay for a poll they don't have access to.

The Chairman: Mr. Blaikie.

Mr. Bill Blaikie: I'm not disagreeing with you about the substance of the bill, but when they say it's not in the public interest, they don't mean that the poll wasn't necessarily conducted in the public interest; it's not in the public interest—

Mr. Bob Mills: To release the results.

Mr. Bill Blaikie:—to disclose the results of the poll.

One can imagine some circumstances in which that might be true, but generally speaking, it seems to me that a lot of these polls have been conducted not necessarily in the public interest, but rather in the strategic interest of the government.

Mr. Bob Mills: I think this would then prevent that from happening and in fact would cause the government not to conduct a poll that—

Mr. Bill Blaikie: They'd find a way.

Mr. Bob Mills: I might be cynical too, but I wouldn't answer that way because that wouldn't impress the committee.

The Chairman: Would you please repeat what the main difference is between this version of your bill and the previous one? Am I wrong if I understand that you have already come before the House with this quite similar bill?

Mr. Bob Mills: It was a motion.

The Chairman: It was a motion.

Mr. Bob Mills: Yes, and it was along the same lines regarding polling. What I did was take the speeches from the last Parliament and sort of looked at what the complaints were about the motion and changed it to sort of cover what I considered explained more clearly what I was getting at. Those are the only changes, really.

I guess the point is that I still believe this is a legitimate issue, one that can be easily dealt with by parliamentarians, and should be votable.

The Chairman: Mr. Epp.

Mr. Ken Epp: Do you anticipate that if there is such a requirement that every poll that's conducted by the government needs to have such full disclosure, including the cost of it and everything, it could bias the results of some of these polls in the sense that people would then become so cynical when they saw the costs of them and the uses that are being made of them, it would bias the usefulness of them?

Mr. Bob Mills: If you examine how many dollars are spent and how many polls are done, I think you might already very quickly decide that it would be good if you caused fewer polls to be conducted, because many of them are pretty far out in terms of what they're really trying to accomplish. I think that would be a positive, as opposed to a negative.

• 1740

The Chairman: Are there any other questions?

Thank you very much for your presentation.

Mr. Bob Mills: Thank you.

The Chairman: Mr. Blaikie.

Mr. Bill Blaikie: On the question of further business of the committee, I did ask one of my staff to get a message through to Mr. Riis in the House. He was just finishing up questions and comments on his speech on the CPP, so we might just give him a few minutes to see if he actually gets over here and we could get one more person done. I can't guarantee that he got the message or that he's coming, but I know I told him I would be in the committee and I knew he had to speak and that I would kind of keep an eye on things for him. It may well be that he will show up in a few minutes, so we might want to give him a few minutes and if he doesn't show up then we'll just adjourn.

The Chairman: We could break for five minutes and maybe in that time you could check again.

Mr. Bill Blaikie: I'll double-check, yes.

• 1741

• 1744

[Translation]

The Chairman: We will now return to the business at hand.

[English]

Since Mr. Bellehumeur is not available and neither is Mr. Riis, we have rescheduled them for tomorrow and we will reconvene tomorrow at 11 o'clock in Room 269 of this block.

Thank you very much. Have a nice evening.