Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak today on the motion presented by the hon. member of the Canadian Alliance. I will repeat it so that people will be clear on what we are debating.
This is a call for the establishment of an independent commission of inquiry into the mismanagement of grants and contributions in the Department of Human Resources Development, and into any attempts to control the disclosure of this mismanagement to the public, with a report by December 2000.
Mr. Speaker, before I continue, I would like to inform you that I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Frontenac—Mégantic.
Why do we have a call today for an independent inquiry? The Bloc Quebecois called for one back on March 21, 2000, and this motion was voted on in the House. Since then, we have come to realize that this public and independent inquiry is still being called for, in both the interim report of the standing committee on HRD and in its final report. The position remains unchanged.
Why are the opposition parties not satisfied with what has been done to date? Because the government has systematically hidden behind the committee in order to avoid having to get to the bottom of the main issue, that is the use of funds for partisan purposes.
The conclusion of the departmental internal audit was that the Minister of Human Resources Development had totally lost control over all of her department's grants and contributions programs. There is talk of $1 billion in public funds over which the government could no longer give assurance that it had control.
The administrative causes of this situation were sought out and certain conclusions were reached. But there is another side to the analysis that was not done by the government, and that is to know why it is that, during this time of loss of control, the political machinery, the partisan machinery of government, knew how to take full advantage of the money available.
There were several instances. First of all, we realized that, during the 1997 election campaign, a whole series of grants had suddenly been handed out, particularly in ridings the government wanted to win in the 1997 election.
During the campaign, 54% of the transitional job fund, a program that was supposed to extend over three years, was spent in Quebec. In Bloc Quebecois ridings, the figure was 63%. This means that ridings suddenly became very interesting because there was an opportunity to win them over in an election.
This is something that should be looked into so that it does not happen again in future.
After the interim report, the Placeteco affair hit the news. It involved $1.2 million paid out by a bank in the absence of any invoices, and the government is still unable to produce invoices for us showing that payment was justified.
Then there was the case of Conili Star. The Bloc Quebecois brought this case to light and got to the bottom of it. This forced the government to take action, because, left to its own devices, it would have done nothing in this case either.
There was also the case of the company that moved from the riding of Rosemont to the riding of Saint-Maurice, for no apparent reason. The opposition parties had to conduct investigations, as though they were the police, to sort all this out.
In the meantime, more than a dozen cases are being investigated by the RCMP, following information that came out in the House or was revealed by other sources. The government is still denying that it used funds for partisan purposes. What is more, it is denying the right to get to the bottom of what happened.
An election is in the offing. In a few months, we will have another election. If we end up with the same situation, if the federal government, the party in power, uses public funds for partisan purposes, it will debase our country's democracy. This strikes me as totally dangerous and unacceptable. This is why is it is so important to get to the root of the issues on the table.
Two things need analyzing in this matter. There is the disastrous period when the new Minister for International Trade was the Minister of Human Resources Development, when there was a total lack of control over the use of funds. During that time, a lot of grants were handed out on the q.t. during the election.
Since the arrival of the new minister, operation “camouflage” has been in effect to cover the previous situation and because the minister is trying to convince that she was the minister for several months without being responsible for anything, that when she came to the department no one informed her about the most important administrative activity in process, the internal audit, and that she did not learn of it until last November.
If the present minister had really assumed her responsibilities, we would not be faced with the current situation. We would be having an independent and public inquiry. We could say “Things in the past were not right, certain behaviour was unacceptable, now we will correct the situation and return to the quality of our democratic life”. In the end, this is the issue on the table.
I believe it is important for us to have this independent inquiry. It is important for us to have it as soon as possible. Since the parliamentary majority on the human resources development committee systematically arranged things so that the witnesses involved, the buddies of the regime, were not heard, those who were really connected with the use of funds for partisan purposes, the entire matter must be investigated thoroughly. That was not possible in committee.
It seems to me that, as long as there is no satisfactory appearance of justice, we must continue, as opposition parties, to call for a public inquiry. It is important to point out that this is not a partisan approach by one of the parties, but all the opposition parties together who share the belief that an independent public inquiry is called for.
There are some who have made different choices, some who would like to see job creation programs abolished, others who want to see them maintained. They may hold widely divergent social views, but all have joined together, with the same concern for honesty and justice, in order to expose to public view whether public funds have been properly used.
I believe that today's motion is highly appropriate in this connection. As long as we do not have the invoices from Placeteco, as long as we have not got to the bottom of other matters, as long as we do not have an accurate picture of the responsibility of the present minister, there is a large chunk of information missing. The public must know what is being done with their tax dollars.
It is one of parliament's responsibilities to be in a position to provide the answer to that question. An auditor general investigation is not the only way that this can be done, nor one by members of parliament. There is one part of this that concerns the role of members; they must be asked to evaluate themselves, to reach a judgment on their own behaviour.
Would there not be grounds for an independent public inquiry so that we may cast light on the role of members, and on whether or not they should continue to play that role? As far as the parliamentary majority is concerned, it did not say much on this in the report. There was much attention given to the administrative problem, but it went along with a systematic avoidance of the political problem. As long as this matter has not been settled, we will have unfinished business on our hands, and this reflects badly on those who sit in this House.
There is the issue of the quality of public finances. There is the guarantee for voters that they have a government that can have opinions different from theirs. That is not a problem; they are all prepared to accept that.
What I find unacceptable is that the government is trying to pass the buck, as though everything has been resolved and now everything is back to normal. It is normal that politicians are using public money for partisan purposes. It is part of the system that the Prime Minister has set up and that he has used himself in the riding of Saint-Maurice to get himself elected.
Whether we are federalists or sovereignists, left or right leaning, we do not have to put up with this kind of situation, because it basically undermines democracy. It is unacceptable in a country such as this.
I would like the Liberal members who considered the matter in the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities, and others who saw the whole situation develop to ask themselves today, after several months have gone by: Is this not a situation where we should make up our mind to hold an independent public inquiry?
Would it not benefit both the government and the opposition parties? Would it not benefit all members of the House, all Quebecers and all Canadians to finally get to the bottom of this misuse of public money and especially this denial of democracy by the Liberals?