Discussion · Government Orders
Xavier Barsalou-Duval Bloc Québécois
“I do not support this bill. It creates a new Crown corporation to buy military equipment, but it gives this group too much power and too little oversight. The minister will pick the board members and tell them what to do. The procurement watchdog will not be able to review its choices. Billions of tax dollars will be spent behind closed doors with less accountability to Parliament.”
“Madam Speaker, thank you for the reminder. A high-level banker needs to get paid his worth. People like that do not dine on chicken nuggets at McDonald’s. They eat what ordinary people cannot afford. Do my colleagues know how much he makes? He makes twice as much as the Minister of Finance and National Revenue. He makes more than the Prime Minister. He makes more than the Governor General and that is no mean feat. It is quite something. In fact, our current Prime Minister’s financial-sector friend, or colleague at least, earns $700,000 a year. Even that was not enough for him. Within six months, he was threatening to resign. It was too little for him. In fact, he found out there were public servants in government. That was the last straw. Since he was allergic to public servants, he started blackmailing the government. In the end, he did not resign. He is still around. Apparently, he is still in his office in Toronto. I do not know if he has ever been seen in the agency’s offices, but he is still there. The funny thing is that an agency was created just for him. This is the agency that was supposed to be created under Bill C-31. I did say that it is a bill. It is not even a law yet, and now the government is introducing Bill C-40 to scrap what was in Bill C-31 and create a new crown corporation. Maybe it will become the “House of Guzman”. Essentially, this will eliminate what was already tailor-made for the Prime Minister’s buddy and make his life even easier. That is my take on all of this. We are essentially creating a new entity with a new board of directors and a new corporate headquarters, the location of which is still unknown. We know that the current CEO is very fond of his offices in Toronto. We do not know if that is where it will end up, but I hope not. However, it seems that it will be up to the corporation to decide that later on. Interestingly enough, when we go through a Crown corporation to make purchases worth billions of dollars, as is currently planned, that Crown corporation will not need all the usual government approvals to proceed and move forward with its decisions. Sometimes, the Treasury Board may not have a say. The much-vaunted new Crown corporation will have all sorts of powers, such as the power to make advance payments, provide loan guarantees, lend money and even buy company shares. What would the limits be? It is not 100% clear. Apparently, for less than $1 billion, it will not even need to ask the government for permission unless explicitly requested by the government. The bill says that it will create a defence agency that will be at arm’s length from the government. I always find it interesting when people say that it will be at arm’s length from the government. When we look at who sits on the board of directors, we see that the deputy minister will be there. The members of the board of directors—it is not an army, it is five people—are all going to be appointed by the government. This can be found in subclause 9(2) of Bill C‑40. We cannot make this stuff up. The Corporation must do as the Minister directs, and doing so is deemed to be in the best interests of the Corporation. This obviously means that the corporation is not at all at arm’s length from the minister. The minister can direct the corporation to do anything. There is no real independence. It is kind of a smokescreen to say that it is at arm’s length. It will be able to be blamed when poor decisions are made, but ultimately, all decisions will still go through the minister’s office. The only difference is that there will be less transparency and less accountability. We are concerned about that. Here is a legitimate question: Do we really want what will probably be hundreds of billions of dollars of procurement to be completely out of the government’s hands and be completely apolitical? That seems like a lot of money to me. I think that it is reasonable to be able to raise questions and that there should be some political oversight when such huge amounts are involved. Calling for politics to be taken out of something is often a way to claim the moral high ground. Defence already has the ability to identify its own requirements. When it comes to procurement, there are often strategic, geopolitical and industrial implications. I think that political considerations have been overly demonized. I am not suggesting that it should be driven by patronage or handed out to Liberal Party cronies. That is what is likely going to happen: the Prime Minister appoints one of his friends and wants as little accountability as possible. Hundreds of billions of dollars will end up there, and they will spend it however they want. I am not sure that is the best solution. We are told it will move faster, but we were also told that we were going to build more housing. I call that slogan-based governance. Every time there is a problem, the government makes grand promises and comes up with catchy slogans. Ultimately, it does not produce tangible results. That is the case, for example, with Build Canada Homes. We were told that 500,000 homes would be built. The report we saw recently stated that we were quite far off and not even half the target had been reached. We keep creating new structures: the financial crimes agency, Build Canada Homes, a defence bank, the Major Projects Office and the Canada strong fund—the much-vaunted sovereign wealth fund. Normally, a sovereign wealth fund consists of money that has been saved. In this case, however, it is being financed through borrowing. We are constantly seeing slogan-based governance, with too little attention paid to solving the real problems. According to an internal report from the Canadian Armed Forces, it takes anywhere from four to 24 years to deliver a simple procurement project in Canada and from 10 to 28 years to deliver a complex one. That is a serious problem. However, I am not convinced that it is a structural problem. It may well be a cultural one. How do we explain the fact that, among all NATO countries and all Five Eyes countries, none has needed a Crown corporation to manage military procurement? Apparently, Canada is the only one that would require one. I have a hard time making sense of what the government is presenting to us today. It strikes me as just another arrangement under which decisions will be made behind closed doors and well-connected individuals will be free to do as they please. I find that deeply troubling, particularly since we have learned that the procurement ombud will not even have a say in the decisions that will be made by this new entity. For example, a company that believes it has been treated unfairly during the process will have no recourse because the Crown corporation will be the one that makes the decisions, period. No one will have the authority to review the decisions made by this agency, which will no longer even be an agency but rather a Crown corporation. What we are also seeing with the creation of these new structures, as I said, is a tendency on the part of this government to want to create new structures by saying that they represent a blank slate, that the government needs to be given a chance and that a blank slate is beyond reproach. We are told that we need to act in good faith and give the government a chance. However, what we have seen is that all these blank slates and new structures are generally designed to reduce accountability to Parliament, resulting in decisions being made increasingly behind closed doors. I find that rather troubling, because we should expect greater transparency and accountability, not less, especially when even more money is being invested in defence and other priorities.”
Madam Speaker, thank you for the reminder. A high-level banker needs to get paid his worth. People like that do not dine on chicken nuggets at McDonald’s. They eat what ordinary people cannot afford. Do my colleagues know how much he makes? He makes twice as much as the Minister of Finance and National Revenue. He makes more than the Prime Minister. He makes more than the Governor General and that is no mean feat. It is quite something. In fact, our current Prime Minister’s financial-sector friend, or colleague at least, earns $700,000 a year. Even that was not enough for him. Within six months, he was threatening to resign. It was too little for him. In fact, he found out there were public servants in government. That was the last straw. Since he was allergic to public servants, he started blackmailing the government. In the end, he did not resign. He is still around. Apparently, he is still in his office in Toronto. I do not know if he has ever been seen in the agency’s offices, but he is still there. The funny thing is that an agency was created just for him. This is the agency that was supposed to be created under Bill C-31. I did say that it is a bill. It is not even a law yet, and now the government is introducing Bill C-40 to scrap what was in Bill C-31 and create a new crown corporation. Maybe it will become the “House of Guzman”. Essentially, this will eliminate what was already tailor-made for the Prime Minister’s buddy and make his life even easier. That is my take on all of this. We are essentially creating a new entity with a new board of directors and a new corporate headquarters, the location of which is still unknown. We know that the current CEO is very fond of his offices in Toronto. We do not know if that is where it will end up, but I hope not. However, it seems that it will be up to the corporation to decide that later on. Interestingly enough, when we go through a Crown corporation to make purchases worth billions of dollars, as is currently planned, that Crown corporation will not need all the usual government approvals to proceed and move forward with its decisions. Sometimes, the Treasury Board may not have a say. The much-vaunted new Crown corporation will have all sorts of powers, such as the power to make advance payments, provide loan guarantees, lend money and even buy company shares. What would the limits be? It is not 100% clear. Apparently, for less than $1 billion, it will not even need to ask the government for permission unless explicitly requested by the government. The bill says that it will create a defence agency that will be at arm’s length from the government. I always find it interesting when people say that it will be at arm’s length from the government. When we look at who sits on the board of directors, we see that the deputy minister will be there. The members of the board of directors—it is not an army, it is five people—are all going to be appointed by the government. This can be found in subclause 9(2) of Bill C‑40. We cannot make this stuff up. The Corporation must do as the Minister directs, and doing so is deemed to be in the best interests of the Corporation. This obviously means that the corporation is not at all at arm’s length from the minister. The minister can direct the corporation to do anything. There is no real independence. It is kind of a smokescreen to say that it is at arm’s length. It will be able to be blamed when poor decisions are made, but ultimately, all decisions will still go through the minister’s office. The only difference is that there will be less transparency and less accountability. We are concerned about that. Here is a legitimate question: Do we really want what will probably be hundreds of billions of dollars of procurement to be completely out of the government’s hands and be completely apolitical? That seems like a lot of money to me. I think that it is reasonable to be able to raise questions and that there should be some political oversight when such huge amounts are involved. Calling for politics to be taken out of something is often a way to claim the moral high ground. Defence already has the ability to identify its own requirements. When it comes to procurement, there are often strategic, geopolitical and industrial implications. I think that political considerations have been overly demonized. I am not suggesting that it should be driven by patronage or handed out to Liberal Party cronies. That is what is likely going to happen: the Prime Minister appoints one of his friends and wants as little accountability as possible. Hundreds of billions of dollars will end up there, and they will spend it however they want. I am not sure that is the best solution. We are told it will move faster, but we were also told that we were going to build more housing. I call that slogan-based governance. Every time there is a problem, the government makes grand promises and comes up with catchy slogans. Ultimately, it does not produce tangible results. That is the case, for example, with Build Canada Homes. We were told that 500,000 homes would be built. The report we saw recently stated that we were quite far off and not even half the target had been reached. We keep creating new structures: the financial crimes agency, Build Canada Homes, a defence bank, the Major Projects Office and the Canada strong fund—the much-vaunted sovereign wealth fund. Normally, a sovereign wealth fund consists of money that has been saved. In this case, however, it is being financed through borrowing. We are constantly seeing slogan-based governance, with too little attention paid to solving the real problems. According to an internal report from the Canadian Armed Forces, it takes anywhere from four to 24 years to deliver a simple procurement project in Canada and from 10 to 28 years to deliver a complex one. That is a serious problem. However, I am not convinced that it is a structural problem. It may well be a cultural one. How do we explain the fact that, among all NATO countries and all Five Eyes countries, none has needed a Crown corporation to manage military procurement? Apparently, Canada is the only one that would require one. I have a hard time making sense of what the government is presenting to us today. It strikes me as just another arrangement under which decisions will be made behind closed doors and well-connected individuals will be free to do as they please. I find that deeply troubling, particularly since we have learned that the procurement ombud will not even have a say in the decisions that will be made by this new entity. For example, a company that believes it has been treated unfairly during the process will have no recourse because the Crown corporation will be the one that makes the decisions, period. No one will have the authority to review the decisions made by this agency, which will no longer even be an agency but rather a Crown corporation. What we are also seeing with the creation of these new structures, as I said, is a tendency on the part of this government to want to create new structures by saying that they represent a blank slate, that the government needs to be given a chance and that a blank slate is beyond reproach. We are told that we need to act in good faith and give the government a chance. However, what we have seen is that all these blank slates and new structures are generally designed to reduce accountability to Parliament, resulting in decisions being made increasingly behind closed doors. I find that rather troubling, because we should expect greater transparency and accountability, not less, especially when even more money is being invested in defence and other priorities.