Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to this supply day motion from the party formerly known as Reform. In fact the motion should have been put forward. I heard a previous speaker from the New Democratic Party suggest that it was unnecessary to bring the issue before the House and that there were other priorities and other issues that we could be talking about which certainly had a greater resonance now with Canadians.
I disagree to a certain extent because this issue certainly does resonate with Canadians. It speaks to the specific management capabilities of the government of the country to control and put into place the necessary services required by Canadians. There has to be some control over that either in the House with parliamentarians or with administrators at the top of departments.
I am a fan of internal efficiency audits. If I can go back a bit into a previous lifetime when I was involved in municipal politics, my administrator of the day and I set up a complete process by which we would identify specific departments within that municipal entity and then put into place internal efficiency audits.
Why we did that was not to witch hunt. We did not suggest that we or outside auditors could do the job any better. We looked at the operations with different eyes, especially operations that have been in place for a long time. Whether it be municipal governments, provincial governments or the federal government, there is a tendency, if the bureaucracy has been in place for a while, to do the job by taking the path of least resistance.
The path of least resistance may not necessarily be the best way to attain the necessary efficiencies within the department. Bringing in outside eyes allows someone else to see how better the operation could run. It is not a witch hunt. It is simply a matter of listing the way the job is completed now, the numbers of steps that have to be taken for necessary approval processes and perhaps identifying ways of doing the job better.
That is what happens in the federal government with the auditor general's department. I am a fan of the auditor general. Mr. Desautels does his job extremely well. Members of his staff are extremely competent. When they go into a department they do not go in for a witch hunt. They go in simply to look at the operations and say what could be done better or what could be done in a different fashion.
A lot of what has been said today in the House has a tendency to focus on HRDC because it has been the audit that has been put forward with the most regularity over the last two months and has identified certain deficiencies within the particular department.
HRDC is just one of the departments within the federal bureaucracy. Let me give a little example. The auditor general, Mr. Desautels, appeared before the agriculture committee last week. Four specific departments of agriculture were there. Mr. Desautels and his staff went through the audit with us as members of that committee and highlighted some of the areas where we could improve upon the service delivery of those departments, whether it be on cost recovery, which we have talked about in the House at great length in terms of agriculture, or whether it be an accounting process which in fact would bring forward some deficiencies within the department.
When the committee questioned the departments it was given some commitments from those departmental heads, which I expected to have regardless. We had an audit. We showed them the deficiencies. They were responsible to put into place in their departments changes within their operations to try to comply with those recommendations. They told us as committee members, as parliamentarians, that they would comply with those recommendations.
I asked the auditor general a question and he said that he was very glad to hear that the departments would comply with those recommendations. I was a bit shocked because I assumed it was automatic that the departments would follow the auditor general's recommendations and make the necessary changes, but that is not the way the system works. There has to be a watchdog. There has to be a backstop. The parliamentarians in committee are the watchdog and the backstop.
I was pleased to be able to say to the departmental heads that we would follow up on it on a regular basis over the next 12 months and that we would insist their operations become more efficient. The auditor general certainly thanked us for the job we performed in the whole process.
The motion today speaks specifically to that requirement of parliamentarians. It simply says that when we have an internal efficiency audit we must make sure the audit is tabled with the committee within 30 days of its being presented to the department.
I cannot for the life of me understand why any member of the sitting government would not agree with that. It is their job as well as our job to make sure that internal audits which give efficiency reports are seen and are acted upon. To hide them or not to react to them is a dereliction of duty. It is an abdication of duty. It is necessary that those reports be tabled, so why would the government not agree on its own behalf to ensure proper timeline and the process?
When we did internal audits at the municipal level we made them available to the department to put forward its comments on the recommendations. We then took the audits, the recommendations from the auditor and the reports from the departmental heads on the way they would comply with the recommendations, to council and ultimately to the public. Those were done in a necessary process. The public demands and the public deserves to know exactly how services are being delivered and that the money is being expended in an efficient manner. That is all the motion speaks to.
All the motion says is that when we do an internal audit, which we want to have, with which we agree and which we say Mr. Desautels has the mandate, the right and the requirement to put forward to the public, we should ask him to bring it forward to the departments. That is fair ball. It should be taken to HRDC, to agriculture, to finance, to the treasury board, to defence or to any department he wants to, so that the departments can look at the recommendations, put their comments forward and in 30 days report the audit back to committee. Where better can we deal with an audit than publicly at a committee table? There is absolutely no reason the government should oppose that type of resolution.
My hon. colleague from Kings—Hants spoke eloquently with respect to the private-public requirements and to the fact that as a federal government we were the watchdogs of the public purse. That is the absolute essence of what the audit speaks to, the watchdog of the public purse.
If the government is not prepared to bring forward audits in a timely fashion then it is saying that we as parliamentarians should not be the watchdog of the public purse. That is wrong, absolutely wrong. I would ask hon. members to support the resolution as in fact our party will support it.
Let us talk just briefly about access to information.
Access to information has been a very important tool for us and members of other parties. We require access to information because the departments have not been forthcoming when we have asked for information with respect to audits and other information. I would prefer not to have to file another access to information request in my life in parliament. Then I could honestly say to my constituents and other constituents in this great country that there is openness and transparency.
Earlier it was said that access and transparency are probably the two most overworked words in parliament and I agree. We should be working toward correcting the inefficiencies and making sure it is open and accessible.