Madam Speaker, I commend both previous speakers for recognizing the word accountability. It is really what this is all about.
That there is a function of auditor general suggests there is a need to occasionally review what has happened. I think we need to know how the money is spent, was it spent in the manner indicated in the budget and did people get value for their money. These are exactly the kinds of questions an auditor general is supposed to address.
The auditor general's report identifies areas where changes should be made, and the departments so affected are expected to respond. That in effect is the thrust of this motion.
However, it goes beyond the auditor general. Both previous speakers indicated the auditor general would be saddled with all of the responsibility. I draw the attention of the House to the last part of the motion: "Such reports should be referred to the Standing Committee on Public Accounts and any other relevant standing committees". That becomes very critical in this regard.
There are standing committees on industry, agriculture and health, et cetera. These are the committees that really have a working knowledge of what happens in the department and what the auditor general is referring to when the auditor says something out to be changed.
Each of those department should respond in three major areas: yes, the recommendations are useful; no, the recommendations are impractical, do not work and therefore will not be implemented; or the recommendations will be implemented in part and state the timeframe in which it will take place and provide a detailed plan of exactly what is to be done.
I will address this from two perspectives. I will use the science and technology experience and I will to refer briefly to the regional economic development programs.
First is science and technology. In this area the auditor general made some rather interesting observations. He suggests there was a lot of money spent. We agree. It was some $6 billion in 1995. Who is spending that money? It is the granting councils like NSERC, SSHRC and several others and scientific departments and agencies.
How are they spending it? They are spending it to some degree through government labs. There are 150 of these. I will not take time to read them all.
There are the Agri-food Diversification Research Centre in Borden, Manitoba; the Air Traffic Services Research and Experimentation in Gloucester, Ontario; the Canadian Centre for Geomatics in Sherbrooke; the Centre for Information Technology Innovation in Laval; Chalk River Laboratories in Chalk River; the Defence Research Establishment; the Lacombe Research Centre in Lacombe; the Lethbridge Research Centre in Lethbridge; the NRC Centre for Surface Transportation Technology in Ottawa; the Pacific Geoscience Centre in Sydney, British Columbia; the Sum-
merland Research Centre in Summerland, British Columbia; the West Coast Vancouver Laboratory in West Vancouver, British Columbia; the Winnipeg Research Centre in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
There are 150 of those labs. They are not the ones involved in NSERC situation. What we recognize is there is great variance on the kinds of labs just going through the labs I have given.
We need to look at some of the categories of labs. It is a little easier to do if we follow by provinces. In Newfoundland there is the St. John's Research Centre. I do not have a clue what that centre is all about but on the left hand side of my document it suggests it is in agriculture. That is fine.
There are natural resources, for example the Canadian Forestry Services in Newfoundland and Labrador. There are a number in agriculture.
It is interesting that a lot of the agricultural labs would not be recognized as agricultural labs because they are identified by the name of the place where they are centred. It goes on through the various centres. These are the labs that do the various work and in which the research is done.
Ontario has 13 different labs that deal with environment. There are the Canadian Wildlife Service, the water and wetlands branch; Atmospheric Environment Service, Ontario region; Environmental Conservation Service; the National Water Research Institute; the National Laboratory for Environmental Testing; the Waste Water Technology Centre; Dry Deposition Research Centre; King Radar Research Facility; the Centre for Atmospheric Research Experiments; Atmospheric Environment Service, Downsview; the Environmental Technology Centre, and so on. The list goes on.
The purpose of reading these lists is to show the auditor's observation of the subject of science and technology in Canada and how research dollars were being spent is accurate or at least not surprising when we go through that list.
He said science and technology go beyond contributing to economic growth; they contribute to our quality of life. I think we all agree this is so. He shows that the government has demonstrated that it obviously believes science is a major contributor to our economic well-being and to our standard of living. It spends 11 per cent of its annual budget in this area.
However, when it comes to answering the question about value for money spent or whether the money is being spent in those areas that are strategic to advancing Canada's international competitiveness, he concludes: "The present allocation of funds among various fields of science and technology is more incidental than the result of a well formulated strategy". That is not much of a commendation for spending $6 billion.
The auditor general then goes on to suggest there ought to be a framework. He suggests four questions: what are the greatest needs and opportunities; where must the government be involved and why; where should and could the government be involved and why; what should and could the government's involvements be.
The Department of Industry began to answer these questions. It produced a booklet earlier this year "Science and Technology for the New Century". It was promised to the House 12 months earlier. It was delayed one year and then another year. Following that document came another document "Highlights of Department S & T Action Plans in Response to Science and Technology for the New Century". The motivation for that came from the auditor's statement saying the allocation of funds was more incidental that the result of strategy.
What are these action plans? The action plans resulted in a further booklet "A Framework for the Human Resources Management of the Federal Science and Technology Community Science and Technology for the New Century". There are five projects in that framework: training and development, rewards and recognition, workforce and mobility, classification compression, and recruitment and rejuvenation.
Not a single one of those task forces in those five areas has anything whatsoever to do with science and technology but with personnel, its reclassification and how to look after the people who are to be involved in the research department.
Where is the science strategy for Canada in all of this? There is not one. That was the thrust of the auditor general's concern. If we do not come to grips with these kinds of things we will lose the competitive advantage we want.
I have had time to deal with one illustration of how significant the auditor general's observations are and how they can direct a whole department to what it ought to do so that the people can get the places identified where the money ought to be spent and then spent in an efficient manner so they can say that money was well spent.