Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in this evening's adjournment debate.
On November 25 and December 1, I questioned the Minister of Foreign Affairs about a problem affecting the residents of the riding I represent in the House. Litigation continues between three constituents and a nebulous non profit organization that is accredited with the United Nations Economic and Social Council, the international agency for rural industrialization, better known as INARI.
On May 5, 1997, the individuals involved complained to the Minister of Foreign Affairs about this agency, alleging fraudulent practices and false representations. Nearly a year later, they are still waiting for the matter to be resolved.
In brief, the facts are as follows. A number of Canadians and Quebeckers, including the three I referred to earlier, paid substantial sums to INARI and incurred considerable expenses to be repaid in initiating a rural industrialization project.
The agency, it must be understood, appeared entirely credible, because it was using the United Nations' logo, prestige and network to carry out its operations. These people saw their investments rapidly disappear, thus discovering the agency's lack of responsibility and dubious practices.
Claims for refunds and compensation have been made to the director general of INARI, a man named Okorie Okorie, who could not offer anything but false hopes. This has had serious consequences on the psychological, social and financial well-being of the families involved.
Investigations and redress procedures have been launched by the victims. Messrs. Audet, Daoust and Yee did not miss the opportunity to inform me, as well as my colleague, the member for Marguerite-d'Youville at the National Assembly, of the problems they faced. As a matter of fact, we made representations jointly to the Minister of Foreign Affairs to ask him to intervene in this matter to defend these people and all the other Canadians and Quebeckers whose rights were obviously abused by this agency.
The Quebec minister of international relations, Sylvain Simard, was also interested in this matter, as were some of the media, who made inquiries of the United Nations only to be turned away and to see a number of those responsible for this sidestep the issue.
There is definitely something very fishy here. It seems that the federal government was aware of these dodgy manoeuvres by INARI. INARI's financial director, a certain Louie Moore, had apparently been convicted of fraud in the United States, and banned from France on the same grounds. Yet, on a number of occasions, he was able to cross the border in order to pursue his illegal activities on Canadian soil.
It was therefore the duty of the Canadian government to intervene in order to assist the victims and ensure such a thing could never happen again. The Minister of Foreign Affairs therefore wrote last December informing me that a representative of the Canadian delegation to the UN would be attending the next meeting of the committee responsible for NGOs, in mid-January 1998, in order to make sure this case was raised and that proceedings were initiated to resolve the disputes.
That committee would then have the authority to suspend INARI's observer status and, eventually, to withdraw any United Nations accreditation. We are now half way through March and have still heard nothing about the outcome of this theoretical meeting.
In my opinion, the victims of this fraud have waited long enough, and they now deserve to know where the matter stands, after the meeting of the UN committee responsible for NGOs.
It is high time the government showed some compassion regarding this issue and informed the House and those directly affected by this fraud of the outcome of its representations to the United Nations.
These dispossessed people have suffered enough because of the irresponsibility, the proscratination and the apathy of the people involved.
