Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak to this motion tabled by the hon. member for St. Albert. We know he has been a member of the public accounts committee since the opening of the 35th Parliament. In fact, he is the only member of the committee who has been there since the start.
The hon. member for St. Albert has then had the opportunity to see how the public accounts committee works and how the different chapters of the annual report and the periodic reports of the auditor general are examined. In tabling this motion, the member for St. Albert seeks to maximize the impact of the report of the auditor general in terms of accountability.
Since becoming the chair of the public accounts committee, last March, I have seen how this committee has an important role to play, since it has to ensure public funds are well spent. To achieve this goal, the committee can rely on the excellent work done by the Auditor General of Canada, Denis Desautels, through his reporting to Parliament on the management of public finances.
To that effect, I would like to remind the House that the public accounts committee is currently in a deadlock, because the Liberal majority refuses to examine the two cases that were criticized by the auditor general in his May 7 report, that is, the two family trusts that were able to transfer $2 billion tax free. I want to reiterate that I fully support the Auditor General of Canada, unlike the hon. member for Willowdale, who chairs the finance committee, and who mocked and ridiculed the evidence recently given in all honesty by the auditor.
That is the role of the committee. The committee must try to find solutions to improve the management of government finances. It is responsible for warning Parliament either by holding hearings or by tabling reports in the House when taxpayers' dollars are not spent in the most effective and efficient way possible.
I can say that the committee takes this role very seriously. In a little over two years, the committee, chaired by a member of the official opposition, has tabled close to 20 reports in this House. It has held meetings on a wide variety of topics, ranging from assistance programs for seniors to the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions.
The committee recently dealt with the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency. The auditor general recommended, among other things, that the agency make its program objectives clearer and easier to measure. Since the answers I got during the meeting were rather vague, I asked the agency's president, Norman Spector, to send us a list of the concrete actions he intends to take in response to the points raised during the meeting.
If the committee is not satisfied with the response, it can summon witnesses to appear again. The auditor said he would, as usual, follow up on this matter in two years. I asked him if our request was inconsistent with his work and his answer was: "This can only help by speeding things along".
In essence, this request made by the committee is identical to the motion put forward by the hon. member for St. Albert. Some members will immediately see overlap in there. The fact is that, as hard as the committee tries to fully review the auditor general's report, not all chapters are reviewed. Take the 1994 report for example. Only half of the chapters were reviewed by the committee.
Less than 25 per cent of the chapters in the 1995 report were reviewed. I do not wish to give the impression that the departments act on the auditor general's recommendations only when the public accounts committee holds hearings on the subject. I am simply suggesting that, if departments were to table detailed reports, including time frames and action plans, the departments could then be asked by the committee to account on the basis of these interesting reports. They would also be useful in the follow-up audits the auditor general conducts two years after a chapter's publication.
During the first hour of debate on this motion, the Liberal member for Bruce-Grey said that each department or agency has the opportunity to respond to the comments made by the auditor general and that a response accompanies the report. It is true. However, the responses vary, both in terms of quantity and quality. In several cases, the department will say it agrees with the auditor's recommendations and that it will make efforts to implement them. However, little is said about how and when this will be done.
A compulsory response, with a specific time frame to implement necessary measures, would encourage the department to take a more serious look at the auditor general's recommendations and to take concrete action. This should not be an undue burden for departments that already provide satisfactory responses. As for the others, it could be argued that the additional resources required would be more than made up for by the savings that would result from a more in-depth review of the auditor general's recommendations.
Finally, in recent years, it has been the practice to write to the departments that did not appear before the committee and to ask them precisely what the motion of the hon. member for St. Albert proposes. Again, some members might say: "Why this motion, since the committee already does that work?" There are two reasons. First, there could be some years when the committee would not be in a position to send letters, for example because of an election, or because of an lengthy adjournment of the House. Second, technically speaking, the committee cannot force the departments to follow up on its request, even though most of them do.
For all these reasons, I would ask my colleagues of all parties in the House to support the motion of the hon. member for St. Albert. I can assure you that these responses to the auditor general's reports will improve accountability, help the auditor general carry out his duties, and compensate for the fact that the public accounts committee does not have time to examine all of the chapters in the auditor general's report.