Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to refer to page 13 again, but in light of the comments that have been made by other Members on the whole intention of this report --because on page 13 we are still talking about the report, the terms of reference, the organization, question of efficiency and so on -- I would like to point out, not to correct Mr. Pollard but, in fact, to confirm what he said, that when the standing committee on finance recommended to the Minister of Finance that we undertake a base review, then it was my understanding at that time that it would be a base review; that we would look at levels of service and whether we are, in fact, funding things properly.
Years ago, before we had a formula funding agreement with the federal government, there used to be an annual visit. We used to go down to Ottawa with our caps in our hands, and we were always using the words "base review" because the kinds of resources that we have in order to handle the problems are really not adequate. It is not a good base, it needs to be adjusted, and so on. When we went into the formula funding agreement, there were all kinds of different formulas put in there to really help you to adjust your base as you go along.
The purpose I understood, as Mr. Pollard's deputy on that standing committee on finance, was that we ourselves, at least the government, was, going to look at its base. In other words, what is the base of our operation? What is the level of service that we are providing? Do we have the proper resources to provide it? That is what we were doing.
When we looked at the terms of reference that the government gave the project team, it was somewhat different from a base review. That would be just one element of the total project. I have not gone in detail through the appendices, but this document is really not a base review in the way that we normally use the term "base review."
Criticism Regarding Timing Of Transfer
The concern that I have in looking at this issue of efficiency on page 13 is this, Mr. Chairman: I have heard the criticism many, many times, and it has already been reiterated by Mr. Todd here, that there is always going to be a sense of uncertainty and a sense that the government is choosing the wrong time to be doing these things. Why did this proposal not come forward years ago when there was all kinds of money around, things were great, and people seemed to have all kinds of money to do interesting projects? But now times are tough, really tough. They are so tough, in fact, that we want you to handle it. We give it to you now because we do not have the kind of money that we need to run government. I have heard that criticism already. We have a wonderful example. When things get tough, then suddenly we say, "Well, you guys run it." Or we screw something -- I should not use the word screw, I suppose, Mr. Chairman, but we mess something up or we have not done a very good job of it, so we say, "Okay, we will get somebody else to do it; they can look after it."
You are going to find that this argument here about efficiency, about doing more with less -- we are going to ask somebody else to do that now. We have not been able to do it, and we have been in existence for 20-odd years, but now we are telling people in communities, who have enough struggles, "You guys do more with less. We have done more with more but you guys are going to have to do more with less." That is going to be the challenge that this government is going to have to face if it is going to have any credibility in this transfer process. That is the first point I want to make.
Redesign Of Programs By Communities
The second point, which follows from this, Mr. Chairperson, is that we are assuming that when we are looking at effectiveness and efficiency we are talking about programs that we may have a statutory responsibility for, or we may be running programs which we want to delegate or pass on to another order of government, but it could very well be that the communities will say, "Those are your programs; they never worked for you; how do you think they are going to work for us? We never designed them. You did." In this transfer agreement or the proposal to do things in a different way, to reshape things, you may find that communities are going to say, "Those are your programs; there are all kinds of rules and regulations and everything else, because you set them up to do them the way you want to do them. Is there going to be any place in here, not just to have us measure against your system or your effectiveness or your ideas of efficiency -- can we have our own programs? Is there any way at all, any flexibility, so we can design the things that matter most to us? Not just give us a menu. 'You can have fish or beef, but you cannot have anything else; that is all we are going to offer you.'"
Would it be possible not to just be caught in this whole business of delegating something to somebody else because that is what we would like people to do, but to look at the whole business of having people look at government and say, "This is the way we see things. What you do is not exactly what we ever had in mind, but we would like to do something a bit different." Instead of taking over this and taking over that, could we not -- let me think of an example. Suppose people in some small place said, "Look, this system of sending people away to corrections is not working; that is hopeless for us. We want to handle all that stuff ourselves. We will set up a bush camp, and people can go there, and that is the way we want to handle that problem. You may not have that in your system on any kind of a developed basis, but we would like to do something like that." If we are going to reshape government, if you like, at the local level, how are we going to be simply caught in the web of talking about effectiveness or efficiency, with the way we do things, the way you are going to have to do things according to the same criteria that we do, but with fewer funds? Is that kind of option going to be open to people? I have heard some of my colleagues say that that is likely what communities are going to want to have. They are going to want to have not just simply delegated programs but some room, if you like, to develop some initiatives of their own, which currently they cannot.