Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise on this issue because I have had the same experience as has been related by the other two members of my caucus. I take real exception to the cavalier attitude that has been expressed across the floor on the whole issue because even if only one member had this experience it is sufficient to warrant close examination and some real change.
Before I was elected I visited the offices of the former member. They were very well appointed offices with good furniture. There were computers in both offices and were very well equipped. After I was elected and the inventory was transferred to my office I was surprised to find that some very meagre furnishings were transferred. My filing cabinets, two of which I received, were locked and appeared to have been rolled down the stairs. When I had a locksmith open them because the keys were not there, the hanging filing rails were not there. It took some time and expense. The computer that was inventoried and I was to receive was not there. Some old obsolete equipment, some home-built computers with no serial numbers and such, replaced the ones I was to receive.
The member across the way says that an inventory is regularly sent out to every member. We are to examine our office equipment and verify with our signatures that the material is there. An inventory dated September 13, 1993 was received, reviewed and I presume signed by the former member. However immediately after the election the same former member came into materiel management and stroked off any number of pieces that he had a number of excuses for not being there. That is only one month and a little after he originally verified the contents.
Even if the rules are there they are certainly not being enforced. In my case it was very obvious. I really could not understand why. Immediately after my election when the material was transferred and all this equipment was missing, I approached materiel management people and talked to them. I sensed a real hesitancy to do anything about it.
I could not get anybody to get excited. They told me: "It is going to take months to straighten this out. You better go out and refurnish your office because you are not going to get this back in time". I had all kinds of excuses.
The member says that if there is fraud, the rules are there. It will be punished. It will be followed up. How can fraud be established if nobody will do an investigation of the whole issue in the first place?
I pursued with great vigour the material that was missing and did eventually receive some of it back from the former member's home in undamaged crates. However when I uncrated them a laser printer, for example, was badly damaged. It cost the taxpayers of Canada some $800 to repair and to put back into working order.
I could go on and on. It made me very angry and overall it ended up costing me personally some $500 in legal costs to defend myself against the former member's legal action for slander. I approached again the House of Commons to provide some assistance and some support in that area and was turned down.
Clearly if the rules are there they are not being enforced. I could not understand it. The longer I am here, the more and more I begin to understand it. It is an attitude around this place.
When I recently entered my building on Wellington Street and inquired of the security person standing there if I might do something-it was something to do with some guests who were arriving-he said: "You can do anything, sir. You are God around here". That is the problem around here. There is not any accountability. That is the attitude that caused the materiel management people to hesitate to investigate the charges I was making.
It is an attitude that has members of the House pass rules and regulations around here that are never enforced. Members can walk through any building on the Hill and, in spite of the fact a rule was passed by this organization that smoking is not allowed in the buildings on the Hill, there is blue smoke wafting out of the offices because we are God around here. I find that unacceptable.
What I did find encouraging, however, from this whole mess and when I was finished was that the person in charge of members' services, Mrs. Edna MacKenzie, when we discussed the whole situation approached me and asked if I might help her to develop some kind of a system-