John Williams

[Standing Committee on Public Accounts, May 11th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the answer is that the Prime Minister never wanted the facts on the table. He shut down the committee and called an election last year, even though he said that he wanted the facts on the table. He set up the Gomery inquiry with no authority to assess blame or say who did wrong.

The Prime Minister made sure that this was a whitewash and the public accounts committee could never get to the bottom of the sponsorship scandal.

[Standing Committee on Public Accounts, May 10th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, it seems to me that the leader of the New Democratic Party is jumping the gun. We have not had the vote yet. Therefore, there has been nothing referred to the public accounts committee on this issue yet.

[Committees of the House, May 10th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present the 10th report of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts concerning governance and the Public Service of Canada, ministerial and deputy ministerial accountability.

In accordance with Standing Order 109, your committee requests a government response within 120 days.

[Committees of the House, May 9th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the member seems to have a difficult time in understanding the similarity between the Privacy Commissioner and the sponsorship inquiry. They both broke every rule in the book. They were both reported on by the Auditor General. Both contained illegalities, both contained irregularities, and both contained abusive spending authorities, and nobody has apologized. How more consistent can it be? The point is that it is everywhere we turn. That is what I am trying to say.

[Committees of the House, May 9th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the motivations are quite obvious. I was drawing a distinct parallel between the fiasco at the office of the Privacy Commissioner and the fiasco at the public works department where $100 million disappeared for little or no value, according to the Auditor General.

A bunch of money disappeared for little or no value at the Privacy Commissioner's office. He broke the rules. Public works broke the rules. The Privacy Commissioner lost his job; however, no one stood up and apologized in the House for the mess that happened over there. No one has stood up and given any apology for the mess at public works. It is important that Canadians realize that it was not just a single isolated issue at public works under the sponsorship program. There are more issues.

That is why I want to have concurrence in this report, so that we can tell Canadians that this is not an isolated incident. We are finding more of these all the time. We found it with the president of Canada Post who was cheating on his expense accounts. We find it in the sponsorship program where bags of cash were going back to the Liberal Party to finance elections. We find it in the political appointees of Liberal friends at the office of the Privacy Commissioner. It is everywhere we turn and Canadians need to know that.

[Committees of the House, May 9th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I move that the first report of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts presented on Thursday, October 28, 2004, be concurred in.

I will be dividing my time with the member for Prince George--Peace River.

The first report of the public accounts committee, which I tabled in this House when we came back in the fall, dealt with the issue of the Privacy Commissioner, not the sponsorship program or the sponsorship scandal.

I want to point out the clear similarities between the two when the government does not pay attention to what is going on and how everything gets right off the rails. Perhaps the government did know what was going on and it did it with its blessing.

The report dealt with Mr. George Radwanski, as members may recall. He was a Liberal hack, if I may say. He was appointed by the Liberal government to the position of the Privacy Commissioner, an officer of Parliament no less. The government had not done any background checks other than the fact that he was a major contributor to the Liberal Party.

Apparently, that was quite sufficient for him to get the appointment. The fact that he was bankrupt really did not make that much difference. The government was not that worried about finding out these things.

The fact that Mr. Radwanski owed tens of thousands of dollars in back taxes of course did not mean anything because now he was going to have the money from the salary to pay back his taxes. Then, of course, the court and the Bankruptcy Act wiped all of that clean. He got his salary and he did not have to pay it back. This was just a great little gravy train that he was on.

The Auditor General took a look at what was going on and she said in her report that the former Privacy Commissioner:

--abdicated his responsibilities and that under his stewardship, rules and even basic standards of decent behaviour were routinely and flagrantly ignored and broken. These facts are by now widely known and, with one notable exception, universally accepted

This is how the Liberal appointee, Mr. George Radwanski, who had no other criteria for being in the job, other than contributing to the Liberal Party, was acting as an officer of Parliament. Mrs. Fraser, the Auditor General, went on to say in paragraph 5:

--oversight mechanisms of central agencies—the Treasury Board Secretariat and the Public Service Commission—were insufficient or, in the case of central agencies, not used to either prevent abuse and wrongdoing or deal with them when they occurred.

While Canadians have been horrified at the sponsorship scandal and the revelations that have been coming out almost daily on that, there are other scandals that maybe did not quite reach the same headlines, but nonetheless are very important.

We have of course the concept that Parliament ensures and authorizes spending by individual departments and agencies and officers of Parliament. However, we found out that because Mr. Radwanski thought he was a small department, with a budget of only $11 million, that the Auditor General would never come along and take a look at what he was doing.

Since Mr. Radwanski felt that the Auditor General would never show up and take a look at his books, he thought that he could break the rules with impunity. He actually borrowed $250,000 from next year's spending to cover off his excess spending in that particular year, totally contrary to the Financial Administration Act. This was contrary to the whole concept of Parliament. Only Parliament votes the money. If we do not vote it, they cannot have it.

Mr. Radwanski just helped himself to next year's budget. How he was going to balance the next year's budget we do not know. We never did get around to giving him the chance to figure that out himself because we turfed him out the door.

Then I said to myself that there must be some redress, something must happen. Mr. Radwanski spent money without Parliament's approval. Somebody should come here and do a mea culpa, apologize, and say they are going to fix the problem.

Therefore, I stood up in the House on a point of order or a point of privilege, I do not remember which, and demanded an explanation. Back came the answer that if money is spent that is not authorized by Parliament, there is a little section in the Financial Administration Act that says that is okay. It is deemed to be authorized anyway.

That is the low point of democracy here. We had it with the Privacy Commissioner and we have it with the sponsorship scandal. The whole rules regarding the administration of ethical financial management were totally ignored. The government was complicit and complacent and nobody seemed to care.

Yet, no one has come back to the House to say said that they were sorry and apologize to the Canadian people, and to say that this should not have happened. No one, not the Prime Minister, not the President of the Treasury Board, the Deputy Prime Minister, or the Minister of Finance. No one has stood up here and apologized to the Canadian taxpayer and that is an affront to Canadians.

That is why we must take a look at the sponsorship scandal, the office of the Privacy Commissioner and what else yet we do not know. There was Canada Post where the president was helping himself to millions of dollars in expense reimbursement without producing a single expense receipt.

That is again totally and completely unethical behaviour and no one has admitted that they were responsible. Perhaps the time is coming that someone is going to be held responsible. That is the responsibility of the House.

That is why we have these debates and why no confidence in the government is what causes an election. Perhaps one day very soon the House will express its dissatisfaction with the government and we are off to an election.

As I mentioned, Mr. Speaker, I am sharing my time with the member for Prince George--Peace River and I will turn it over to him.

[Food and Drugs Act, May 9th, 2005]

Motion No. 1, Mr. Speaker.

[Petitions, May 6th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I have another petition signed by constituents in and around my riding who call for greater access to natural health products.

[Petitions, May 6th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I have another petition from my constituents in and around Edmonton. They call upon Parliament to enact legislation to preserve the traditional definition of marriage.

[Petitions, May 6th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, in memory of RCMP Officers Myrol, Johnston, Gordon and Schiemann, I am presenting a petition signed by the residents in and around my constituency and the town of Stony Plain, the home of Constable Schiemann, which calls for a minimum 10 year jail sentence without parole for people involved in marijuana grow ops.