Val Meredith

[Assisted Human Reproduction Act, March 26th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to be recorded as voting no.

(The House divided on Motion No. 55, which was negatived on the following division:)

[Assisted Human Reproduction Act, March 26th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I just want to clarify that my vote on Motion No. 53 is the same as my vote on the amendment of Motion No. 52, which is no.

[Canada Customs and Revenue Agency, March 26th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, it would be nice if the minister tabled the interim report so we could see for ourselves.

With a growing list of Liberal members, cabinet and senators bad-mouthing Americans, perhaps the minister can tell us, what are the chances of Canada obtaining an exemption on the 24 hour notice?

[Canada Customs and Revenue Agency, March 26th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, it has been reported that Canada Customs and Revenue Agency quashed an interim report prepared by Moduspec, a consulting firm it had hired to decide if customs agents required firearms to protect themselves. The original interim report called for CCRA to establish an armed presence at southern Ontario borders, including Windsor.

However, before this recommendation could be discussed in Parliament, CCRA directed Moduspec to rewrite its final report, leaving out this finding. Why did the minister cover up this issue by asking Moduspec to rewrite its report?

[Canada-U.S. Trade, March 25th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, it is fortunate that despite the outbreak of war in Iraq and increased security at the border, Canadian commerce still flows across the border to the United States.

The importance of our trade with the U.S. cannot be underestimated. Despite a slight drop in exports last year, one-third of our economy is still based on Canada-U.S. trade. That equates to over five million jobs.

Our reliance on the U.S. as a trading partner continues to grow. Without our trade surplus with the Americans, Canada's $54 billion surplus would have been a $40 billion deficit.

What is truly astounding about these economic numbers is that they come at a time when the Canadian government's influence on Washington is at a historic low. Meanwhile, ministers and members opposite think that it is acceptable to bad-mouth the American people and the American government.

Our trade disputes over the last few years are just the tip of the iceberg. It should come as little surprise to Canadians that when decisions are made by the Liberal government, they will come back to haunt us.

[Canada-U.S. Relations, March 19th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the government has constantly antagonized the current American administration with its anti-American comments and policies. Defence suppliers are being asked to transfer production to the United States because of Canada's opposition and the potential delays at the border.

How many more Canadian jobs is the government prepared to lose because of its anti-American policies?

[Canada-U.S. Relations, March 19th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberals have decided to stand with France regarding the situation in Iraq instead of with our largest trading partner.

Yesterday the U.S. increased its domestic security by advising the Canadian government that it was going to immediately implement the entrance and exit requirements at all the southern Ontario borders.

Why is the government jeopardizing millions of Canadian jobs that depend on exports to the United States?

[Goods and Services Tax, February 28th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, we have been down this path before. For years, ministers of the government withheld the true cost of the firearms registry from Parliament.

The Minister of National Revenue seems to agree that what Canadians do not know cannot harm the Liberals. Before the minister appears before the public accounts committee, will she reveal the true cost of the GST fraud to Parliament?

[Supply, February 24th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for that rather philosophical question. It goes into whether our system works when the executive branch of government is the one that determines the agenda and the decisions on that agenda. It really prevents Parliament from operating separate from the government's agenda. That needs to be changed so Parliament can be more effective in determining what the end result will be in dealing with some of the issues that appear before the House.

The tragedy in all this is that we have an executive that chooses what the agenda will be and it runs the bureaucracy to the point that the bureaucracy is hand in glove with the executive branch. It is up to the opposition to point out when things are not what they appear to be. Often what we are told by government representatives is somewhat different from the reality, such as the gun control registration program.

I find it hard to believe that the government uses the supplementary estimates at the beginning of the year for money it will need every year. It could ask for that money in the main estimates. Year after year the government goes after more money in the supplementary estimates. That is smoke and mirrors. The government knows it will need more money and has year after year. It avoids dealing with Parliament on the issue of how much it will cost by planting it in the supplementary estimates.

As far as the criminal use of firearms being under the registration program is concerned, I sat on the justice committee when it dealt with Bill C-68. Everybody on the committee advised the government of two things: first, that criminals would not register their guns no matter what; and second, that it would cost an enormous amount of money. Government members were told that by provincial representatives, by various business associations and by organizations. They were quite upfront that this would be an enormous program and that it would be difficult to put it into application.

I raised in committee whether the government had done due diligence before it went into this program to see what the likely costs would be. The top bureaucrat told me that he did not know. I am sorry but I find that very hard to accept. I find even harder to accept the fact that 94% of the senior bureaucrats received performance bonuses when they spent 500 times more than what was originally planned on the gun registration program. I find it hard to accept that they were rewarded for not delivering on a promise. I believe taxpayers would have a problem with this as well.

[Supply, February 24th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to speak to this supply day motion. I happen to be one of the members of Parliament on the public accounts committee and it has been a real eye opener for me.

For the viewers out there, the public accounts committee is the one committee that is struck to deal with the Auditor General's reports. I have been in this place for almost 10 years and because that committee gets very little attention by the press or by the House, I must admit that I was unaware of its importance.

That committee, and in respect the Auditor General, is there to hold the government to account, the whole government, not just the executive branch, the cabinet ministers. It makes sure that all the rules and regulations that have been put in place on the spending of our tax dollars are followed, that there is value for money, that the programs are administered in a cost efficient manner and that Canadians are getting value for the tax dollars that go into running those programs.

I hate to think what it would be like if we did not have the Auditor General, who is an officer Parliament and not of the government, and reports directly to Parliament. That is a very important distinction because the government does not have control over the Auditor General or the reports that come from her department.

I speak in terms of her because the present Auditor General is a female, Madam Fraser. That does not make her any less tough and I would suggest she is as tough or tougher than a lot of former auditors general. She takes her role seriously and that is to look at various programs. There are resources available to the Auditor General to look into pre-programs, programs that are in the designing stage, to see whether or not they will meet the objectives they have set out to do or, as in gun control registration, to look at the cost of a program.

It is interesting that in the report my colleague from Cypress Hills—Grasslands referred to, the one on the gun control registration program, she made it quite clear she did not look at the operations of the program but only at the cost of the program. In looking at that she recognized there were enormous overruns of the projected costs of the program.

When we look at Groupaction and the report that she did on government sponsorship programs, it was a question of not applying Treasury Board rules and of not getting any value for money.

The Auditor General's department can look at all different aspects of how the government operates. The Auditor General reports to the House of Commons, not to the government, problems that she sees in how Canadian taxpayers' money is being spent, in how programs are being operated and in how the administration, the bureaucracy, is managing the programs the government has established.

It is such an important part of allowing us as parliamentarians to do our job because the Auditor General's department can get information that is almost impossible for us as ordinary parliamentarians to get on our own. The Auditor General has the ability and the resources to go into the departments and to look at the various programs that she wants to look at. If somebody brings a concern to her, she can determine whether or not to investigate the issue.

There are some very serious issues that have come up only because the Auditor General in her independent state has been able to investigate and get to the bottom of them. One example is the Groupaction file, which is a blatant abuse of Treasury Board rules and regulations.

Then it is a question of what we as parliamentarians do once we have those reports. We in the public accounts committee review those reports and call witnesses to appear to explain how it happened, how the issue of concern occurred, who was responsible and what has been done to make sure that it never happens again.

I have sat on that committee for a number of months. It is interesting the rationalization we hear from government department officials. In today's case it was the minister himself who was rationalizing all the reasons that things happen.

One thing that is very hard to pin down is who was responsible for the decision that allowed the issue to happen in the first place. That is where the job of the parliamentarians comes in. We look at the Auditor General's report and try to pinpoint who was responsible and how it happened.

The position of the Auditor General is not so much to criticize the program or say whether or not it should be there. In many cases the Auditor General will not say specifically who was responsible. That is the job of parliamentarians, to take the report based on the facts of what was found and to dig a little deeper to find out how it came about, who was responsible for the decisions and to determine what we as parliamentarians will do about it.

In some cases the Auditor General does not deal with value for money. The gun registration program is one example. The Auditor General tried to obtain all the information in order to evaluate the cost of the gun registration program. In essence what happened is the information was scattered all over the place and the audit could not be completed.

That raises one concern. Who is in charge and what information is being used in order to ask for more money to run this program? The other was reporting to Parliament, where it was found that because it is a major crown program there are certain Treasury Board guidelines on the reporting mechanism, on what information is to be tabled and reported in Parliament. They failed to do that.

When we talk about value for money we have to look at the estimated cost of this program which will be over $1 billion. Parliamentarians have to look at it from value for the tax dollars and justify whether or not it is a good program.

From Statistics Canada the information garnered is that there are under 200 individuals who lose their lives because of firearms. Upwards of $1 billion will be spent in order to register guns to stop that from happening. At the same time there are over 5,500 women who die each year due to breast cancer. The commitment the government has made is $30 million over five years, which works out to $6 million a year.

When we talk about value for dollar, the government has to explain to Canadians how it can determine that spending over $1 billion for less than 200 people who die each year because of firearms can be justified over spending $30 million for the over 5,500 women who die annually due to breast cancer. Value for dollar is where some Canadians have a bit of a problem.

The Auditor General's report is a valuable tool for parliamentarians. It is one way that parliamentarians have of getting the inside information on how government departments operate, how they spend tax dollars and whether or not they are being spent in an efficient manner, whether we are getting value for dollar, and whether they are managing the dollars within the confines of Treasury Board guidelines. In many cases the Auditor General has found that the guidelines have been broken, that the controls on spending tax dollars have not been followed.

We as parliamentarians are put in the position of dealing with that information and ensuring that we are protecting the spending of tax dollars and that we are getting value for money.