Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to stand in this House today and support the private member's bill of my hon. colleague for Ottawa-Vanier.
Our party, as members know, is very supportive of increasing the reporting opportunities of the Auditor General to this House. We sponsored a supply motion in the early stages of this Parliament that tried to set up a procedure for the Auditor General to be able to make reports more often on a regular basis to this House rather than just once a year giving his annual report.
This bill, as mentioned by the hon. member for Ottawa-Vanier, has been introduced at various times or something like it has been introduced various times in this House, in 1985 and 1988 just to mention a couple of occasions. It is the feeling that this is a step in the right direction but not necessarily the only step that should be taken. However, it would start to solve some of the concern that with a yearly report is more than often after the fact.
It has been brought to the attention of the House that the public accounts committee holds hearings on chapters of the Auditor General's report which deal with government waste and mismanagement. It seeks to ensure that Canadians receive value for their tax dollars.
Due to the fact that the Auditor General's report is only tabled once a year, the committee is often dealing with problems that are more than a year old and any remedial action that should be taken is unnecessarily delayed.
We feel that this private members' bill C-207, that is sponsored by a former chairman of the public accounts committee, would allow the public accounts committee to deal with reported cases of fiscal mismanagement in a more timely manner than currently exists.
That certainly is a very positive step. We feel that it would allow the committee to report to the House what remedial action could be taken more expeditiously since it would be able to hold hearings more expeditiously. We feel that is a very good step in the right direction. We feel it would contribute to an improved process to correct government mismanagement.
We like to think that if the government is truly concerned about using taxpayers' dollars wisely that it will endorse this completion date reporting as suggested in Bill C-207.
We feel that taxpayers are entitled to receive value for their money and when they do not, such as when the Auditor General reports cases of mismanagement, taxpayers are entitled to have the problem rectified as quickly as possible, not once a year or after the fact.
In conclusion, this idea has been supported by former NDP and PC members in this House and endorsed by public accounts committees and the office of the Auditor General. The Reform caucus now has the pleasure to endorse it.
We feel that the member for Ottawa-Vanier, a Liberal MP and former chair of the public accounts committee, should be supported in this private member's bill.
I urge all members of this House to give their support so that this can be referred to the public accounts committee after second reading.