Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to rise in this House to speak on the motion put forward by the hon. member for St. Albert. I am doubly pleased because my hon. friend from St. Albert, with whom I sit on the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, is among the members of that party who take the work they do very seriously. Every time the hon. member speaks, he is clearly trying to improve on things, he is a making a sincere effort and not joking around. I commend him for that.
Today, his motion reflects just that. I am not at all surprised to hear my government colleague comment that the motion is in order and describe it as totally admirable because it is designed to improve in things. The government member says that he agrees in principle with this proposal but that he cannot support it. It is like saying that you are all for virtue but cannot afford to be virtuous.
Through this private member's motion, he has an opportunity to make sure that the government will save money, and we are in great need of some. Since we cannot get any more money out of the taxpayers' pockets, we must take steps to save the government money that can then be put toward other programs, which are necessary to ensure the well-being of our taxpayers.
The Standing Committee on Public Accounts does a fine job, and the auditor general is also doing his job. But the auditor general will not achieve the desired result in his audits unless he can count on the support of a committee of elected representatives and that is the role the public accounts committee is playing.
The auditor general mentioned on several occasions having made one recommendation after another to certain departments; yet, two or three years later, none had been acted on.
It is true that, when he carries out an audit, the auditor general questions departmental officials, those individuals who are responsible for making certain decisions.
It is also true that these people then have the opportunity to tell the auditor general what they think of the issue. In other words, the auditor general could tell department officials: "It seems to us that the books for your program should be kept in this fashion".
It may happen that officials defend their position and say: "Sorry, but we do not agree. We feel that we should continue to account for the money spent like we have been doing for three or four years".
The auditor general is an expert, but he is not infallible. Moreover, departments have competent officials and staff who can make a case for a different way of doing things. If the truth was always obvious, we would not need lawyers and courts. It may be that, in some cases, a department will not agree with the auditor general's opinion.
What better way to deal with the issue than to refer the dispute to a committee made up of elected men and women? That committee would review the issue and report to the House, which would make the final decision, since it is the supreme authority in the land.
The auditor general told us on numerous occasions that it was important for the public accounts committee to urge the House to order a department, I will not name any for the time being, to follow up on the auditor's recommendations. Under such circumstances, some departments have indeed agreed to change their attitude or their way of doing things.
This is an important measure which, we feel, should have been put in effect a long time ago. Let us not forget, as the auditor general himself pointed out, that close to 70 per cent of government programs are not subject to any assessment. Hundreds of millions of dollars are invested in a scant 30 per cent of the programs, and barely thirty programs are evaluated. The question is asked: did the program yield the expected results?
For example, there was the fishery problem-one which affected your area, Madam Speaker-the problem of the New Brunswick fisheries. At one point they were hit with disaster and the government, overnight practically, in just days, set up a relief program for the fishermen. Nobody stopped to say: "If we create a program, we must be sure to create program evaluation criteria at the same time, to be sure at the end whether the money went to the right people, if they had enough, if they had too much".
There are a whole lot of questions to be thought of ahead of time, to ensure that the money has been spent properly, has attained the desired objective. Unfortunately, nothing like that is done in 70 per
cent of the cases, something the auditor general has often mentioned. Unfortunately, however, it has not been possible to set up such a thing.
Of course, a minister can be told "Mr. Minister, the auditor general wants you to apply this or that measure". Then the minister via the departmental employees, or the deputy minister if the case involves the public accounts committee, will often respond with: "Oh yes, we agree with the auditor general's recommendations and we will take the necessary steps or do everything in our power to remedy the situation".
So when the minister said he agreed with the recommendation and that he would do everything in his power to improve the situation we are enclined to believe him and expect that, with the next report by the auditor general, everything will be in order. Unfortunately, this is not the case. If there is no mechanism in place to follow the thing through, we will never know whether recommendations have been followed or not.
I have to talk about schools from time, because I come from an educational background. The effect would be the same if, in a school, we made rules and established discipline for students but never went to see whether they were behaving or following the rules. You know where we would end up, and it would not take long: the students would realize that, when the school principal issued an order, he never checked up on it or made sure it was followed. So the students would very quickly avoid putting themselves out and would simply do what they felt like with the least amount of effort.
The same thing happens when the auditor general makes recommendations and a department says: "Oh yes, oh yes, we will follow them". There is, however, no follow up if no agency is assigned to ensure action has been taken. Things will never change.
If, as proposed by my colleague for St. Albert, each department identified by the auditor general-and not every department is identified every year, there is not time to examine them all; some departments may be examined only every two, three or four years-would know the next day, if this legislation were passed, that it had to prepare a response to the questions raised by the auditor general and, as well, a plan to remedy the situation. These plans would be tabled in the House so that the ultimate authority would know that action had been taken.
You know this is the only way we will improve things. This is not to add to the paper burden. We are not asking for 75-page reports; we are asking the department to respond to the allegations of the auditor general in a report that would be determined ahead of time to be a certain length-not too long-and would be concise and clear so that taxpayers could understand it. This way we could save money that would no doubt be very welcome in other areas.