Exactly. Novocain can do some wonderful things to you.
There was a situation in the Newfoundland house in which the auditor was reporting every year. He reported on a particular set of events in the Department of Public Works. We on the committee kept asking enough questions, kept probing enough that we found the smoking gun. A job which the fire commissioner after a fire at the fisheries college estimated to cost $35,000 to fix wound up costing $576,000.
The interesting coincidence was that despite the fact the Tory government at the time had made much of its new public tender legislation in which no amount over $10,000 would be awarded without tender, the government had found a way to give out $576,000 without tender. It was simple the way the government did it. There were some accountants on staff. They always awarded an amount less than $10,000. They got around the act with over 60
work orders. What was even more interesting was that all the work orders had gone to the same firm.
The public accounts committee and I as the chairman did enough probing that we got to the root of that one. The result was the following: a public inquiry into the spending practices of the Department of Public Works in Newfoundland; the resignation of the two ministers who had been in the portfolio during the period under investigation; and criminal charges laid in which an individual was convicted of fraud and sentenced to a prison term of three years as I remember.
I cite this example to show that if we are going to have accountability in this Chamber, it is not enough to dicker, to change, to amend, to perfect the rules. We have to fix the part that is broken. We have to see to it that the public accounts committee and the members on that committee, including my friend from St. Albert, do the necessary probing.
Before we get to that, before we begin to point fingers, we have to ask ourselves whether the public accounts committee and the House have the tools to do the job. In other words, is there something else that is broken that needs fixing. That is the allegation, the premise in the motion of my friend from St. Albert.
The hon. member wants the agencies and departments of government to bring specific responses to this House. Let us look at what the case is right now and has been the case under the Financial Administration Act for many years. The case is that when the auditor general reports, each department, each agency of government or as the act says, the government itself, is required within 150 days to give a specific response on the criticism in the auditor general's report and what that department or agency is doing about it.
There is another point. In 1994 we amended the Financial Administration Act to allow the auditor general to make more than one report to Parliament a year. Before that he made only one report a year. Since the auditor general has had the legislative authority or permission to report more often than once a year he has done so. In 1995, the year after the change in the act came in, he reported three times. In 1996 he can be expected to do likewise.
My point is that the tools are there. The auditor general reports quite frequently but his report, and I gave the example of the Newfoundland House of Assembly, in itself is not enough. We can swamp this place with paper and reports and we do.