OGGO Committee Meeting

37th PARLIAMENT, 2nd SESSION

Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates

EVIDENCE

CONTENTS

Tuesday, June 10, 2003

À

1025

The Chair (Mr. Reg Alcock (Winnipeg South, Lib.))

Mr. Tony Wright (As Individual)

The Chair

À

1030

À

1035

Mr. Tony Wright

The Chair

À

1040

Mr. Robert Lanctôt (Châteauguay, BQ)

À

1045

Mr. Tony Wright

The Chair

Mr. Tony Wright

Mr. Kevin Brennan (As Individual)

The Chair

À

1050

Mr. Roy Cullen (Etobicoke North, Lib.)

The Chair

Mr. Ken Epp (Elk Island, Canadian Alliance)

À

1055

The Chair

Mr. Robert Lanctôt

The Chair

Mr. Tony Wright

Mr. Kelvin Hopkins (As Individual)

The Chair

Mr. David Heyes (As Individual)

Á

1100

Mr. Ian Liddell-Grainger (As Individual)

The Chair

Mr. Paul Forseth (New Westminster—Coquitlam—Burnaby, Canadian Alliance)

The Chair

Mr. Roy Cullen

Á

1105

Mr. Tony Wright

Mr. Roy Cullen

The Chair

Mr. Robert Lanctôt

Á

1110

The Chair

Mr. Tony Wright

The Chair

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CANADA

Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates

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NUMBER 049

l

2nd SESSION

l

37th PARLIAMENT

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EVIDENCE

Tuesday, June 10, 2003

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

À  (1025)  

[English]

    The Chair (Mr. Reg Alcock (Winnipeg South, Lib.)): Order.

    Good morning. I apologize for being a few minutes late. There's another issue of this particular committee that is occupying the attention of the public right now, and it's a bit time-sensitive.

    Welcome, and we're pleased to have you here.

    Perhaps I could ask Mr. Wright to introduce the people who are with him and the purpose of their visit.

    Mr. Tony Wright (As Individual): Indeed.

    Let me just say thank you very much for finding the time to speak to us. We wanted to come to Canada to ask some questions about how you were doing with your public services here, which is an area that concerns our committee.

    We look broadly at constitutional administrative issues in Britain, and we do inquiries on all kinds of things. I can give you a long and diverse list of the things we do, that are all to do with how government works in some way. I think we thought that your committee might have some connection and overlap with the sort of work we do.

    We would also like to ask you, if we may, some general political questions about Canada. We've been here for a day now, and we're just getting the questions ready. We thought we'd try them on you, if we could. So thank you for finding time to see us.

    We're a cross-departmental committee. That is, we range across government. We're not linked to a particular government department. We're a cross-party committee. We have three parties, the three major parties represented in Parliament, on our committee.

    I'd like to introduce my colleagues: Kevin Brennan, who represents Cardiff West, and as you know Cardiff the capital city of Wales; David Heyes, Labour member of Parliament for Ashton under Lyne, which is near Manchester, north of England; Kelvin Hopkins, member of Parliament for Luton, in Bedfordshire, which is in south-central England; Gordon Prentice, member of Parliament for Pendle, which is a bit north of Manchester; Phillip Aylett, the clerk of our committee, who generally keeps us in order; Ian Liddell-Grainger, our house Conservative....

    Voices: Oh, oh!

    Mr. Tony Wright: When went to the last committee, they said they knew he was a Conservative the moment he walked in, so see if you can do the same.

    Ian represents Bridgwater in Somerset in the southwest of England. As well, Annette Brooke, a member of the Liberal Democrat Party--don't get excited by that--represents Poole on the south coast. So that's who we are.

    I wonder if it might be useful for you just to tell us perhaps in general the sorts of things you do and then we could simply ask you some questions.

    The Chair: Let me maybe just frame a couple of things and then other members can jump in as they choose.

    We're a standing committee of the House of Commons. Like the other standing committees, we have particular responsibilities for the central agencies of government. Then we also have a mandate that allows us to look at any issue that we are interested in across all departments of government. So we have both the specific mandate...and then we have the ability at two levels. We have a mandate to look at issues that affect information and communication technologies across all of government, which is a specific statement within our standing order. Then another mandate allows us essentially to pick up any issue that affects two or more departments and to deal with it however we choose. It is entirely at the discretion of the committee.

    We also, and your clerk may be interested in this, have the ability to amend votes, even though they may be referred to other standing committees. Normally in the process of estimates review, where we would have the ability to amend those votes that have been specifically referred to this committee, we also have the ability to amend votes that are before other standing committees if it's on one of these horizontal issues that we're working on; either the ICT one, for which we have a specific mandate, or one that we have chosen to look at in that particular year.

    We also are multi-party. Monsieur Lanctôt here is a member of the Bloc Québécois. Unfortunately, neither our Progressive Conservative nor New Democratic Party members are able to be with us this morning.

    Monsieur Lanctôt represents a seat in Quebec, to the east of us here. Mr. Epp and Mr. Forseth are both members of the Alliance Party, and would represent seats in the western region of the country. Paul is from B.C. and Ken is from the prairies, as am I. I represent a seat in the central part of the country.

    And on the right we have a series of Liberal members from Ontario--three of them.

    A voice: On your right-hand side....

    The Chair: Yes, on my right, in all ways.

    Mr. Tirabassi, following the structure of these committees, is parliamentary secretary to the secretary of the Treasury Board. The Treasury Board reports to this committee, as does government services. Their parliamentary secretary is also a member of this committee. We are also blessed in this committee--blessed, I might say--to have Mr. Valeri and Mr. Cullen, who are active and interested participants in the committee. They are also both former parliamentary secretaries to the Minister of Finance.

    Beyond that, not being certain in detail of the nature of the work that is done by a select committee in the U.K., this committee arose out of a lot of debate around here about the changing nature of Parliament and the lack of public confidence in Parliament and whether Parliament was simply a rubber stamp for the government of the day. There had been a lot of debate about that, a lot of debate about declining interest in the public accounts and the public estimates; a sense that Parliament, while it had the responsibility for doing a detailed review of estimates and holding departments to account, was actually not doing it and was doing a very cursory review of the estimates.

    A great debate went back and forth on how we might respond to that. Different systems had been brought into play for the estimate process. The way our system is set up, each major department or collection of departments has a specific standing committee to which it is assigned. That standing committee is assigned for doing all of the estimates work in the annual cycle, from the first indications right through to the public accounts and any legislation, the idea being that one would build up some expertise in the topic area and apply that to the review of the funds being granted.

    Unfortunately, very few committees actually do it, and the estimates would simply fall off the table in the face of other work. So one of the debates was whether we create one committee that does simply estimates.

À  (1030)  

    In the end it was decided not to. We decided to create this committee, which was created just a year ago, and give it this expanded mandate. We have a mandate for the estimates, but we've interpreted that not as doing the estimates, other than those for the departments that we choose to do, but looking at the estimates process itself and offering advice to other committees on how they conduct the estimates into the House and in terms of how they organize their time.

    Mr. Valeri and a member of the Alliance Party co-chair that particular piece of work, and they're coming forward with a rather thorough report, for approval tomorrow, on that very question of ways in which to look at how we restructure our estimates process.

    We see that as an ongoing piece of work that this subcommittee will do yearly, as we get further into the questions of how a parliamentary committee provides effective oversight.

    When we organized--we had also my very capable clerk, Miriam Burke--we brought together the major central agencies of government--the Privy Council Office, the Treasury Board, government services--and then we have others. The Senate theoretically reports to us, but we wouldn't dare call them. In fact, I'm not even sure we're supposed to acknowledge their existence, just pass their money. Then there are the House officers--the Access to Information Commissioner, the Privacy Commissioner, the Public Service Commission, and soon the Ethics Commissioner in one set of his responsibilities. Whether he will come to us in his new responsibilities is yet to be decided. I rather suspect he will not. I think he'll go to privileges and elections rather than to us, but he comes to us for his responsibilities relative to lobbyists registration.

    Now, we just finished a piece of work. Mr. Cullen and Mr. Forseth also co-chaired a subcommittee that looked at the public service, at public service hiring and some of the issues around the public service labour relations act. We've just finished with a bill, that is now in the Senate, that was the first major reform of the public service employment legislation in 32 years. And in terms of the House officers--the Ethics Commissioner and the Privacy Commissioner and the like--we're just about to get into a piece of work with the Access to Information Office and looking at reform of that legislative bundle. Mr. Lanctôt and others are quite heavily involved in that.

    And then we sleep. That's the other thing we do around here.

    Anybody want to add anything to that description?

    Over to you.

À  (1035)  

    Mr. Tony Wright: That's extremely interesting. It shows there is a good deal of overlap with us--I won't go through it all--and also some areas of great difference. But there are common problems from parliament to parliament. We have a great problem in the British Parliament about estimates, and we're always talking, and talking again now, about how we can improve the way in which the committees that look at departments come to grips with estimates. This is always the bit that's left out, and you found a particular way of responding here.

    We're trying to beef up what we call a select committee, which is what we are, because we don't do bills and investigations together in the same committee in Britain; these are separate enterprises. It's an attempt to enable these select committees, the scrutiny committees, to get closer to estimates, although I think we shan't get very far with that. But there's much in what you've said, I think, that interests us.

    Perhaps I can start with this case that's in the news at the moment, which I've read about in the newspaper since I've been here, about the minister, who, it's said, was giving out contracts to his friends and party supporters....

    Are people leaving when I say this?

    Voices: Oh, oh!

    Mr. Tony Wright: It's suggested that Parliament hasn't really come to grips with this. Is that the case? And if so, why not?

    The Chair: Let me offer you a bit of an overview, and then I'm going to bring in Robert and perhaps somebody from the Alliance. If anybody on this side wishes to talk as well, they should let me know.

    Before we get to the specific case there, one of the issues that I think underlies some of the discussions this committee is engaged in and some of the reasons for it has been this decline of any kind of effective oversight.

    Now, part of that arises...and an academic recently produced a paper on this that I thought was somewhat useful. In 1993, when the current government was first elected, it was one of these sea changes where most of the House was basically wiped out. The previous government, which had won a very large majority in 1988, was reduced to two seats. As a result, the bulk of the people who came into the House, myself included, and actually I guess everybody around this table, and a couple have come since then, had no parliamentary experience whatsoever. We didn't have any institutional memory. We weren't coming into a committee where we were the two members in a larger committee that had a system.

    As a result, I think for a while we simply continued the kind of fight that was taking place in the committees; there would just be one side fighting with the other side to no end. I mean, there always is an amount of that, but there was no kind of collegiality or sense that our role as parliamentarians was to hold the government to account. And the government would get off the hook on all of that as we continued to battle among ourselves. So we're right in the middle of trying to sort some of these things out.

    Of course, one of the things that tests that are the issues of the type you raise.

    Perhaps, Robert, you can respond.

À  (1040)  

[Translation]

    Mr. Robert Lanctôt (Châteauguay, BQ): Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, for allowing me to speak.

    I am the public works critic for the Bloc Quebecois; therefore, I am somewhat familiar with the matter, which has been going on for nearly two years. You raised the same issue that I raised yesterday in the House. This matter has been handled by several ministers for Public Works and Government Services; there is now a third minister, and this matter has yet to be resolved. In fact, for two years now, we have been asking for a public inquiry to investigate until this is resolved. It is a truly incredible story.

    Quebec has a party called the Bloc Quebecois, of which I am a member. Here, we work on a federal level, but our goal is Quebec's sovereignty; we hold a majority of seats there, and our candidates only run in that province. There are 75 electoral districts in Quebec, most of which are held by the Bloc. Most of the members in Quebec belong to my party.

    In 1995, during a referendum that we lost by only 30,000 votes, Canada realized that the situation in Quebec was serious. So, it was decided to improve Canada's image and created the sponsorship program. Consequently, several advertising companies took this funding and paid themselves a commission. I will not go into detail, because the events occurred over a two-year period, and there were several cases. Nonetheless, several advertising companies paid themselves a commission from the sponsorships or subsidies granted.

    I will use the Formula 1 as an example; this event will take place in Montreal this weekend. It was sponsored; the advertising company took a commission from the funds that it then used to grant subcontracts to friends, family members or other relations. They then gave some of the money to the party in power.

    We demand a full explanation. There was close ties with this minister you mentioned earlier; he controlled the ruling party's entire organization in Quebec.

    Through the media and our researchers, we have been investigating this for the past two years. With each passing day, this matter gets more complex; this is a very tightly knit network. For two years now, we have been asking for a public inquiry. However, not all the government members are involved in this conspiracy. We want to clarify this situation, and the only way to do that is to hold a public inquiry.

    To this end, the decision was made to hand this matter over to the RCMP for a police investigation. However, no results have been provided because, naturally, all these cases—there are now approximately fourteen—are under investigation by the RCMP. Whenever anyone asks what is happening with this matter, we are not given an answer on the pretext that it is a police matter. Then, of course, nothing more is said about it.

    This is, then, a bit of the history behind your question. Of course, the minister responsible was appointed ambassador to Copenhagen, Denmark.

À  (1045)  

    Also, we recently learned that he wanted to become ambassador to the Vatican. I do not know if you read the papers and heard our questions in the House yesterday, but we wonder how anyone with such a bad reputation could be appointed to the Vatican. It would be strange, to say the least.

[English]

    Mr. Tony Wright: Thank you for that. It's a very good explanation. Before someone else comes in, could I just add a supplemental question?

    Canada is known to have this Ethics Commissioner, and I mean, some simple persons like us, coming from outside, might ask, “Why doesn't the Ethics Commissioner have a look at all this? Why do you have to wait around asking for inquiries?”

    An hon. member: Well, that's another big topic.

    The Chair: Perhaps I will hand that over to Mr. Cullen.

    Mr. Epp, would you like to...?

    Mr. Tony Wright: Perhaps I could first ask Mr. Brennan to add a word.

    Mr. Kevin Brennan (As Individual): I don't think we really are interested in the detail of the particular case. I think what the chair is interested in, and something that also struck me, is that one of the reasons we came here is that Canada has a very good reputation for having clean politics, if you like, and for having high standards of ethics.

    An hon. member: [Inaudible—Editor]

    Mr. Kevin Brennan: It does; it does internationally. That is true.

    We look into this stuff routinely, at public appointments and all this type of thing. Since we've been here, I think one of the things that's surprised some of us is the extent to which there is, if you like, what we might call a patronage state.

    This is not a criticism of a particular political party, this is the system, that there are huge numbers of public appointments out there that are available to political parties to appoint people of their choice, their friends, their cronies.

    An hon. member: About 3,500.

    Mr. Kevin Brennan: There is a large number of them.

    I heard a case this morning on the radio of some immigration appeals, officials who have been accused of taking bribes in order to grant people immigration status in Canada. Again, these were political appointments; one of them had a previous conviction for fraud. And we've heard about the Privacy Commissioner stopping off in Hawaii and all this sort of thing.

    Now, we're familiar with all of this, because we've been through it all, in a way. In Britain we had a lot of this in the 1990s.

    I suppose my question is whether your committee, or someone within Parliament, is looking at not the particular issues--we're not interested in the particular cases--but at the whole broad issue of the influence of patronage within Canadian politics.

    The Chair: Let me just offer a structural response, and then others can jump in.

    There was nothing, no formal ethics process, for elected officials prior to 1993. The post of ethics commissioner was created, but the Prime Minister who created it, the current Prime Minister, took the position that...as the...it was to oversee cabinet, largely, and senior appointees, and as they reported to him, then the Privacy Commissioner would report to him.

    I think that has been an issue of some contention for some time, because rightly or wrongly--and I don't think there's any evidence that the person has acted inappropriately at all--he gets accused of acting with political motives simply because his whole office is accountable to the Prime Minister.

    So there are two levels of work going on right now. The work going on in terms of political patronage, political ethics, is being done by the procedure and House affairs committee. There's a bill before them right now. Within that bill, the Ethics Commissioner will now be an independently appointed officer of Parliament, much like the Auditor General, and report to Parliament as opposed to through the Prime Minister.

    There is, then, a second area, and in fact this committee will be dealing with a draft policy this evening. We're meeting with the Clerk of the Privy Council, who reports to this committee, to discuss the similar package for senior public servants. One of the concerns that gets raised is that for reasons of....

    There are two ways to reduce political patronage, or “inappropriate political influence”, which would be a better way to describe it, I would argue. One is to enhance transparency and the other is to take it out of the hands of politicians, eliminate their involvement. As you eliminate their involvement, then all you do is hand over big chunks of patronage to the public service, so public service patronage is as big a concern as political patronage is. That's part of the debate going on right now.

    Roy, did you want to come in on that?

À  (1050)  

    Mr. Roy Cullen (Etobicoke North, Lib.): Yes, thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    I know you're not interested in the specifics of this particular case, but since my colleague had a chance to comment I just wanted to maybe set some context. One of the aspects of having an Auditor General and a very free press, of course, is that with the additional transparency you get all sorts of stories that come out into the media.

    In this particular case, the one you are talking about, the sponsorship, etc., first of all, one of the problems in the province of Quebec is that for us as a government to get our federalist message into the province of Quebec it's always a challenge. Some elements in the province of Quebec want to separate Quebec from Canada. So I think part of the context of this sponsorship was that there were some directed contracts to people that the government felt would share the federalist view of Canada, and we could get our message out that the federal government was sponsoring and supporting these events in the province of Quebec.

    Now, in the end, I think what happened is that it got mixed in with some other perhaps partisan events that weren't totally correct. What the government has done to address this is that the new minister has basically taken what used to be a contracted-out sponsorship and brought it all in-house. So it won't be subject to the same kinds of difficulties experienced.

    The only other comment I would make is that you can have very fine rules...and this is what I have been discovering. I am doing a lot of work on corporate governance, on fighting corruption generally. You can have the greatest of rules, but it comes down to personalities and the culture, the best of intentions.

    I think that's all I would like to say just to give some context to that.

    Sure, in Canada we have challenges with ethical issues, just like any other government. We have a very open and free press. We have an Auditor General that reports every quarter. So we get hammered hard on many things from time to time.

    The Chair: Ken, did you want to comment?

    Mr. Ken Epp (Elk Island, Canadian Alliance): Thank you very much.

    First of all, I would like to welcome you here. It's wonderful to have this opportunity for a little interchange.

    I and Paul Forseth are members of the Canadian Alliance, as it's called. We're an opposition party that's somewhat different from the party of our separatist friend from Quebec. They have given up on Ottawa and the federal government, and they want out. Our slogan ten years ago, when our party was formed, was “The West wants in.” We want to become participants in Confederation in a much more real way. Being distant, and also being much less populous, we have really been ignored. But that's just a little preamble.

    I have had the privilege/responsibility of being the ethics critic for our party pretty well all the time since I was first elected in 1993. In fact, I have to leave early today because we are right now in the process of going through the bill that will establish the new so-called independent Ethics Commissioner. We have still a great concern with it, because, as now, even with the new one, the Prime Minister is going to do the recruitment and put forward a name.

    Now, it's true that under the new rules there will be consultation, which is actually a good thing, I think, but nothing in the legislation says the Prime Minister has an obligation to change his mind if there is objection to his selection. After that there will be a ratifying vote in the House, but we have a clear Liberal majority, and most of the time they will obviously then just ratify the person put forward.

    So this is a big concern we have, because our Ethics Commissioner should be truly independent of the political influence from the Prime Minister.

    The one we've had in the past I know personally. He's a fine man, but I think he's really been stifled in his work because of the fact that he was appointed by the Prime Minister and answers to the Prime Minister. In many cases he has appeared to us to have been just part of the damage control team instead of really going at the nub of the problem and solving it from an ethical point of view.

    So I'm part of that process, and we're pushing very hard to bring in some sort of super-majority or some...and have all the parties involved in the initial recruitment instead of having it done through the PMO. That's just a very quick insight.

    I must go, because this meeting starts at 11 o'clock.

    Again, I appreciate your being here.

À  (1055)  

    The Chair: Mr. Lanctôt with a little supplementary.

[Translation]

    Mr. Robert Lanctôt: Yes, please.

    We also completely agree with what Mr. Epp's just said. Obviously, an Ethics Commissioner should be independent and not tied to the Prime Minister.

    I want to tell you that this committee has just completed consideration of Bill C-25 to modernized the public service. I think that some people here are members of the Labour Party. We made 120 amendments, only one of which the committee agreed to. These amendments sought to improve labour-management relations, but they were rejected.

    Previously, the Public Service Commission of Canada decided who would be promoted, who was responsible for recruiting and so forth. Bill C-25 allows these powers to be delegated to deputy ministers. People said that the public service was partisan and that it should be impartial. People said that the aim is an impartial public service, but the deputy ministers are being given the tools to appoint whomever they want to the good jobs. This bill allows there to be a single candidate for a position.

    I wanted to give you an idea of the situation. Yes, there are political appointments, but this bill contained provisions giving control to senior public servants, obviously, at the unions' expense.

[English]

    The Chair: Given that the bell indicates that we have only about 15 minutes before we have to leave to vote, why don't we now get two or three more questions out for members to respond to.

    Mr. Tony Wright: Thank you very much.

    Kelvin.

    Mr. Kelvin Hopkins (As Individual): You said in your introductory speech that there's a lack of confidence in members of Parliament, now regarded just as rubber-stamping what the government decides. There is a similar kind of feeling going on in Britain. It's very worrying that turnouts for elections are going down to dangerously low levels--not quite as far down as in America, but there's a feeling that it's all somehow fixed at the top and there's not much we can do about it. Although there are still some who vote loyally for their parties, a 59% turnout in a general election is very low by our standards, and very worrying. Obviously it's the same in Canada.

    Do you think there are things that can be done? What is the root cause of it? Is it the feeling that MPs are not corrupt so much as impotent?

    The Chair: Let's get two or three questions in--and then there's the next hour.

    Mr. David Heyes (As Individual): You mentioned earlier the 1993 electoral wipe-out. We heard yesterday, from the people we were talking to, about the very short shelf life of politicians in Canada. I think one term is not unusual, and not much more that in many cases.

    To what extent are the kinds of problems we've been discussing so far the result of that fundamental lack of experience in the legislature and the imbalance of power that flows from that?

    Just your views on that would be helpful.

Á  (1100)  

    Mr. Ian Liddell-Grainger (As Individual): Going back to what we were talking about, I'm intrigued, because you have the ability to quiz whoever is appointed by the PM. How many times do you call the PM's appointments in front of you? And what do you do if you don't really like them? You could have anybody.

    We were talking about the dairy industry from Alberta. Great, but do you get that guy or girl in front of you and give them a hard time because they're a PM's appointment? I mean, we do. Do you?

    The Chair: Why don't I let Paul speak, because he hasn't spoken yet, and then we'll go to Roy, and then I'll have a bash at it.

    Paul, si vous voulez.

    Mr. Paul Forseth (New Westminster—Coquitlam—Burnaby, Canadian Alliance): I think we have been not sufficiently exercising our authority as an independent committee. Parliament is not the government, but Parliament is the independent institution where the government comes to get its legislation passed, and where the government comes to get permission to tax and spend the people's money. Parliament, through this committee, should exercise its independent role in reviewing what's happening and not just rubber-stamp what happens or what is being driven by the Prime Minister's Office.

    As far as appointments are concerned, we know there are some 3,500 appointments across the country in regional boards, commissions, judgeships, and whatever. There's a bureau inside the Prime Minister's Office that obviously keeps trying to make those appointments. Unfortunately, as I've seen it worked out, they look for not only competence but also political party label attached to those appointments.

    Fortunately, most of the people appointed are fully qualified and they do a very good job, but there's sufficient partisanship attached to that and an element of paying off their friends and working a system.

    All we've ever had in power, since Confederation, is Conservative, Liberal, Conservative, Liberal, and both of those historical streams of parties have operated somewhat in the same style. You have to have party machinery, and to get people to work for your machine you have to have some kind of inherent system that says, well, if you work for us for a long time, more often than not it's going to be good for you. Throughout our society, you go out to the university and see students making a political decision even at the undergrad level to join a political party because they know at some point it may be helpful to their careers, especially if they're in law, in business, or whatever. I go out to those campaign party days out on the campus, and they're talking about...and you get that conversation. These systems are deeply ingrained in our society.

    From the Canadian Alliance perspective, our whole agenda is to change all of that. We have a great big, long package of parliamentary reform to incrementally, piece by piece, enliven or engage the community so that individual voters feel that it's worth their while to show up to a vote, or that they can be engaged in citizen participation using electronic means. That's a whole new capacity of citizen engagement. We hope to be able to do that on public opinion surveys.

    It also gives them some power in terms of what the legislative agenda is. It isn't top-down but more grassroots, coming up from the bottom. That's where we're coming from.

    So we have a lot to say about trying to change the power centre from an agenda being driven by the Prime Minister and two or three unelected officials to Parliament reasserting some of its independent authority.

    The Chair: Thank you, Paul.

    Roy.

    Mr. Roy Cullen: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    Not to be too partisan, but every party talks about removing patronage-type appointments until they become the party in government. That'll go out the window probably in about two weeks' time.

    I personally don't have any problem with patronage appointments. Other things being equal, why not have someone who is sympathetic to your values and your thinking?

    I'd like to come back to one of the questions. There has been a lot of debate and discussion in Canada recently about this democratic deficit. We have of course a leadership convention going on in November. One of the gentlemen who will probably become our next Prime Minister has talked very clearly about the democratic deficit and things that he would like to see done.

    We talk about appointments. Right now appointments sometimes come to committee, but it's after the fact. A number of us are saying this is totally pointless. I think you'll see that change.

    Now, the debate is more centred on whether or not we really want to go to the U.S.-style system for judges, for example. Any skeletons in their closet, or how they voted or spoke out on a certain issue, are talked about. It becomes a bit of a witch-hunt.

    So I think that's where the debate is more focused now. Bringing appointments to committees after they're already decided is, in my judgment, a total waste of time, and I think you'll see that changing.

Á  (1105)  

    Mr. Tony Wright: That interests us, because we're about to make a report on this. If you don't like the American model because of the witch-hunt, and if the present model is pointless, what is the model that would work?

    Mr. Roy Cullen: I think that's where the balance will be struck. On a whole range of appointments, I think what will happen is they'll be brought to committee before any final offers are made. I think the debate is more focused around judges, Supreme Court judges; that's where the debate gets more constrained. But for regular, run-of-the-mill appointments, I think the new government will try that, and try to make it work.

    Other things, too, can be done. We were chatting privately about the fact that pretty well all votes now are confidence votes. I think we'll go back to the three-line whip. We don't have that today. So I think that's created a lot of cynicism.

    Amongst the public, I think they sometimes misunderstand the role of MPs in terms of party discipline, but I think that's been aided and abetted by some of the concentration of power in the Prime Minister's Office.

    We've talked about committee chairs. Up until very recently, the Prime Minister decided who was going to chair this committee, for example. That selection would be fed to the members, and it would be a whipped vote. That is changing now. Our caucus is much more engaged and plays a much more active role in terms of the choice of committee chairs.

    We talked about the role of committees, about referring legislation to committee at first reading. We've done some of that, but it's been very pro forma on not a very committed basis. I think we can do more of that, referring bills to committee at first reading.

    I think we'll also see the role of the committee changing. We have committees that review estimates. They'll reduce estimates of a department only to have the government the next day in the House bring it all back into the House reversed, because it's a matter of confidence and it's a matter of estimates and money bills.

    It gets the committee saying, why are we even reviewing these estimates if we make what we feel are legitimate cuts to these programs and the government just says, well, you know, this is a money matter, this is a confidence matter, and we're going to reverse it all and bring it to the House?

    We could go on, but I think those are some of the things that might be coming.

[Translation]

    The Chair: Mr. Lanctôt, a very brief question.

    Mr. Robert Lanctôt: Currently, there is a democratic deficit throughout the world. However, the public's indifference about elections exists only on paper. People are less interested in domestic policy and more interested in international issues due to globalization. This is true in your country and in ours; it is the same thing.

    However, there are areas where there is no democratic deficit. By-elections were recently held in Quebec, because some seats became vacant. Voter turnout was 22% in one riding, and 29% in the other. These were federal by-elections.

    However, when it comes to voting in what they call provinces, but what we, in Quebec, refer to as our nation, turnout is quite atypical at over 75% or even 80% during provincial elections. In the last referendum, in 1995, voter turnout was over 97%. The more distant people feel to their elected representatives, the less they participate. That is the reason for the democratic deficit. When people feel close to their members, they participate, and this must be acknowledged. In a country like Canada, in a federation, people are extremely distant from the daily lives of others.

    In Quebec, all the political parties unanimously talk about a fiscal imbalance; all the federal opposition parties, here in Parliament, talk about a fiscal imbalance. In other words, the federal government has too much money in comparison with the expenditures in the jurisdictions. It should correct this by giving tax points to the provinces. The government in power says it has no money. As a result, everyone says there is a fiscal imbalance, except the federal government, which is quite distant, high above everyone else. So people feel no connection to issues of concern. Everyone thinks there is a fiscal imbalance, expect the central government.

    The closer you are to the voters, the better voter turnout.

Á  (1110)  

[English]

    The Chair: Thank you, Robert.

    Let me very quickly try to walk through the three questions.

    One of the things, if one takes a little broader view of it and steps back over the last century, is that the transfer of authority from the Commons to the executive is something that's been going on throughout that time. It didn't happen in the last four or five years. I think there are a lot of other very complex forces at play here--i.e., around communication, the role of television, the centralizing on individuals rather than groups. There's a whole bunch of other dynamics there.

    The question...and I know I've debated with folks from your office about your decision to go to on-line voting in the belief that if we make voting easier, more people will vote. While that sounds like it makes a lot of sense, most of the evidence suggests it's not enough. It's not unimportant, and it's not something one shouldn't pursue, but is the decline in voting just because the voter says, “I'm busy, and I don't see any reason to vote because there's no consequence to it, and I don't believe you, Mr. MP, are connected to me and will do what I want you to do anyway”? There is a disconnect between the community and the members.

    So part of it here has been to try to structurally change...because ultimately this is all about power. We talk about it in administrative terms, but it's about how we manage power in society. So we're trying to shift some of that back from the centre.

    The House actually has enormous authority; it just doesn't exercise it, and it doesn't exercise it in part because of the inexperience of the members. I think now, in this, the third term, you're seeing a lot of that. It's the first time since 1973 an estimate was reduced, and it was in this committee, and then followed up in transport with another one.

    So it's literally been thirty years since that happened. I think it's in part a consequence of members getting more experienced. And on this committee, we had the unusual experience on the employment bill of the opposition critic pushing the government to get the damn thing passed and the government members trying to hold it up, in part because of the dynamic that has started to occur here, which I think is a very healthy thing.

    So we're trying to separate some of those authorities. How do members get on committees? Right now that's sort of the gift of the whip. Well, that's being taken away, and that will be done by the caucus. How do chairs get elected? It used to be, as Roy said, a gift of the Prime Minister. It'll be free election here. In fact, there have been committee chairs elected over the objections of the government, and largely by opposition members. In fact, there's an active discussion going on about the possibility of having a double majority, making a double majority a requirement for a person to be elected chair, that they have a majority of the opposition members and a majority of the government members voting for them.

    Roy mentioned the issue of first reading of bills, getting committees to get involved in bills before the House has passed its judgment on it.

    Mr. Liddell-Grainger had a question about the approval. We get all those appointments; they all come before us. How many of them have been called? In this committee, none so far. In fact, I haven't been in a committee where any were called. They all come, and we get notice of them, but it is after the fact, so why do you want to spend time doing it?

    To me, one of the big pieces here, the most valuable thing in this place, is members' time. We don't have any. You're just run ragged. They say the estimates are important, but at the same time, they run at you with a whole pile of bills. So you're sitting there with a referral on estimates and a referral on bills, so the estimates fall off the table.

    An hon. member: Speed it up, Reg, the bell is going.

    The Chair: Okay.

    I'm sorry, but if there's any group that understands the nature of a bell, it's you.

    Mr. Tony Wright: We do, so don't worry.

    Thank you very much for your time. It's been extremely helpful.

    The Chair: Thank you.

    We are adjourned.