Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this motion. We see it as an initiative to begin the huge job of cleaning up the mess in this government's defence ministry.
The auditor general pointed out in his report last year that national defence plans to spend $6.5 billion over the next five years to purchase equipment for the Canadian forces. The auditor general was scathing in his report. All Canadians deserve an open and fair defence procurement procedure. They are not receiving the quality they deserve from their taxes.
Canada's auditor general had these words to say about this Liberal government's defence procurement practices:
We are concerned at the extent to which the Department relies on professional judgment in making complex purchase decisions. Management did not conduct adequate analyses to justify its spending decisions for most of the projects we examined. Tactical studies often did not reflect the way officials said they actually planned to employ equipment, were done too late to influence decisions, produced results that contradicted the purchase decision, were undertaken by contractors who had an interest in the Department's decision, or were not done at all.
In three cases, the Department considered only a single option. In other cases, the options analyses were inadequate.
This is simply not good enough. Furthermore this is not news to this government. The auditor general has been sounding the alarm bells on the government's procurement policies for years. The auditor general reminded the government of the following:
In 1992, we reported that DND had recognized the need to simplify and streamline its major capital acquisition process, which had become unnecessarily complex, process-driven, costly and no longer appropriate for the management of the defence capital program. Our 1994 chapters on Information Technology and Infrastructure Management pointed to continuing problems with the Department's project and program management systems, despite attempts to improve them. Our 1994 follow-up chapter also noted that while the Department has generally concurred with our recommendations, it has been slow to implement improvements. We also expressed our concern that the actions it has taken may be inadequate to address the problems with the project and program management systems.
Many of the problems associated with the purchase of major capital equipment that we found in our 1984, 1987 and 1992 audits continue to affect today's defence capital acquisition projects.
Just how bad is this situation? Following is a partial list of the disastrous mishandling of the Canadian taxpayers' money by this Liberal government's defence spenders courtesy of the auditor general: excessively complex and labour intensive acquisition process; inadequately trained project managers; insufficient resources and underestimation of supportability costs; an ineffective and untimely staffing of project management offices; gaps and overlaps in project management responsibilities; poor procurement practices; poor application of program and project risk evaluation and risk management principles; lack of an integrated information system; and inadequate project management information.
Housing and pay conditions for our forces personnel still demand attention. Recent announcements to improve pay, particularly for the lowest paid defence personnel, helps but it is not enough.
If the government were not guilty of wasting the taxpayers' money, I wonder how much we would be able to improve housing for our forces personnel. I wonder if we would be facing the safety crisis posed by our obsolete Labrador and Sea King helicopters. All Canadians deserve to have these very serious issues resolved.
The motion before us proposes to hold public hearings on every expenditure over $100 million. The sentiment lying behind the motion is good. It raises a very important question. At the crux of this issue is the extent to which the Liberal government is wasting untold millions of dollars. I can say that the people of my riding of Halifax West and throughout the province of Nova Scotia do not want the government to continue to waste their money.
I want to know, and I am quite sure that Canadians would want to know, what military hardware is currently mothballed in warehouses and elsewhere throughout the land. There must be big ticket items that are neither currently being used nor intended for use. Let us see an inventory of unused hardware that might be sold to other allied countries.
I am concerned that the government may be reluctant to provide this information so as not to be embarrassed by the amount or value of equipment purchased that was never used or used only for a short period of time before becoming obsolete or incompatible with other equipment.
In the standing committee we are currently reviewing the procurement process. It is true that one of the things that comes to mind is the complexity of this process and the length of time involved from deciding that a piece of equipment is required to the time that equipment is acquired. Perhaps part of the problem could be resolved if there was more public transparency.
The public should be aware of what is happening, the amounts of money that are being spent and how they are being spent. The previous speaker argued that public involvement might further complicate the problem. However, I would think that perhaps the threat and the involvement of public scrutiny would be a very positive thing. As things become more transparent it places more responsibility upon us to make sure that things are done properly, adequately and more effectively.
In this instance we could argue very strongly that with such huge amounts of money being expended, public scrutiny and transparency is a very important factor and would assist in the process. Anything that can assist in this procurement process to bring fairness and justice to the system and to bring good value for the money being spent is something that we would support.
On behalf of the New Democratic Party I am pleased to indicate our support for this motion.