Debates of Feb. 18th, 2000

Human Resources Development

[Jane Stewart, Liberal, Minister of Human Resources Development]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to confirm again that I wrote to my deputy and indicated that she would be the sole decision maker in terms of projects that were approved in the riding of Brant.

[Diane Ablonczy, Reform, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the minister is confirming that the information she provides through access to information is not reliable. Can she tell the House why she does not provide reliable information through access?

[Jane Stewart, Liberal, Minister of Human Resources Development]

Mr. Speaker, what I can confirm is that I made it very clear I would not be approving grants and contributions in the riding of Brant. I indicated that the deputy minister would be doing so, and I did that by letter.

[Diane Ablonczy, Reform, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Mr. Speaker, there is a document which she provided to an access request headed “Delegation of Authority”. There is a column that says approval of proposal.

The minister has full authority and everyone else listed in the column has no authority at all. If the minister has evidence to show that this document is reliable then she should table it immediately, and I ask her to do so.

[Jane Stewart, Liberal, Minister of Human Resources Development]

Mr. Speaker, if it pleases the House, I would be glad, when it is translated and in accordance with the rules of the House, to table the letter to the deputy.

[Jay Hill, Reform, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Mr. Speaker, as my colleague has outlined, yesterday the human resources minister confirmed that the Canada jobs fund grants were approved for her riding last November despite the fact it did not qualify, and yet she said:

—what I will confirm is that when I became Minister of Human Resources Development Canada I delegated the authority for approvals in my riding to my deputy minister.

That was presumably last summer. The chart obtained through access to information by the official opposition clearly disputes this because it says that as of November only the minister had approval for those grants. Why is there a discrepancy?

[Jane Stewart, Liberal, Minister of Human Resources Development]

Mr. Speaker, there are a number of things to which the hon. member makes reference. Let me clarify that indeed the riding of Brant did qualify for Canada jobs funds.

One of the things I would also like to do, perhaps at the end of question period, is table the terms and conditions of the two programs on which we have been focusing: the transitional jobs fund which came into vogue in 1996 and ended in 1999 and the Canada jobs fund which began in 1999. I think that would provide assistance to the opposition.

[Jay Hill, Reform, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Mr. Speaker, what we have here is a very clear discrepancy between what the minister said yesterday in the House and what she is claiming today.

The reality is that she claims when she took over the job of the human resources development department, which was last summer, she instructed by letter, according to what she says today, that the deputy could approve those grants. The information we received that was updated as of November clearly shows that only the minister could approve all the grants, including the ones in her own riding. Why does she instruct her employees in HRDC to respond to access to information requests with false information?

[Jane Stewart, Liberal, Minister of Human Resources Development]

Mr. Speaker, as I say again, I have indicated to members of the House that I am prepared to table information they might find valuable, and I would be glad to do that.

[Gilles Duceppe, Bloc, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, an internal audit done in 1997 by Consulting and Audit Canada has confirmed what the Bloc Quebecois' analysis clearly showed— political pressure was brought to bear on the administrative staff of Human Resources Development Canada in order to speed up the grant approval process.

Is the minister going to continue denying that the Liberal government has literally transformed the transitional jobs fund into a propaganda tool for the purpose of winning votes?

[Jane Stewart, Liberal, Minister of Human Resources Development]

Mr. Speaker, first let me clarify this was not an audit that the hon. member is referring to but it was a review of the program that was done in the spring of 1997.

Let me also confirm for the hon. member something he knows very well, that these projects exist not only in ridings held by Liberal members but very significantly in ridings held by Bloc members as well.

[Gilles Duceppe, Bloc, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, if the minister understood French better, she would have known that I was talking about an audit. Audit is part of the company's name. In addition, if they injected money into a riding such as Anjou—Rivière-des-Prairies, it is because they thought they could wrestle the riding away from us. My riding did not get one red cent. We may be naive, but we are not right out to lunch.

Is the minister going to continue to deny the evidence, when the same audit shows that the most dubious projects did not follow the standard approval process?

[Jane Stewart, Liberal, Minister of Human Resources Development]

Mr. Speaker, let us be clear in talking about this review. It talks about the role politicians play in the transitional jobs fund. Indeed this is quite unique. The review did not suggest in its recommendations that politicians, local members of parliament who have information and knowledge about their ridings, should not be consulted in this undertaking.

In fact some of the other things the review said were quite positive. It said that the approval process and criteria appear to be working. It said that the transitional jobs fund was an effective way to pool information—

[The Deputy Speaker]

The hon. member for Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup—Témiscouata—Les Basques.

[Paul Crête, Bloc, Kamouraska—Rivière-Du-Loup—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, for the past ten days, the minister has not stopped being in a muddle and hiding behind her six point action plan, which convinces no one.

Will the minister acknowledge that this new overpowering bit of news revealed by the 1997 audit inquiry proves the offensiveness of the position taken by the Prime Minister, who is trying to put the blame for the scandal onto the backs of officials, when the whole operation was planned in his own office?

[Jane Stewart, Liberal, Minister of Human Resources Development]

Mr. Speaker, everything the hon. member says is absolutely untrue. I would remind the House that it is this hon. member who in quotations to his local newspapers said that clearly because of the success he has had with getting grants and contributions in his riding there is no political undertaking here at all.

[Paul Crête, Bloc, Kamouraska—Rivière-Du-Loup—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, on the contrary, we are seeing more and more that this affair is covering up institutionalized political interference.

Will the minister not agree that, under the circumstances, the testimony of her predecessor, the current Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, and of the Prime Minister are vital to shed light on this misappropriation of funds in order to serve the election objectives of the Liberal Party of Canada?

[Jane Stewart, Liberal, Minister of Human Resources Development]

Mr. Speaker, that is patently untrue. Let us review the facts again. The transitional jobs fund and the Canada jobs fund were programs and grants to help communities of high unemployment and to provide opportunities for work for men and women in those ridings, and those ridings include ridings held by the New Democrats, the Reform, the Bloc, the Tories and the Liberals.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Speaker, the minister of human resources was talking about the fund being there to help the people who need jobs in areas where there are high rates of unemployment.

We well know that she will not answer our questions about such places as Vancouver with pockets of high unemployment at 13.1% that never received transitional jobs fund grants.

Could the minister answer once and for all why MPs in the House did not know about those changes in the transitional jobs fund so that they could have had the opportunity to get the money too?

[Jane Stewart, Liberal, Minister of Human Resources Development]

Mr. Speaker, as I said at the outset, I am very happy to table the terms and conditions both of the transitional jobs fund and the Canada jobs fund in the House today.

What is very clear is that these undertakings have made a real difference in areas across Canada. We on this side of the House know that the federal government can play a role to ensure where we need to help provide opportunities for men and women who do not have the opportunity for the dignity of jobs that they can be funded.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Speaker, how is it that, in the riding of Vancouver East, money was available from the transitional jobs fund when there was a Liberal incumbent but it is no longer available with an NDP incumbent there. They have received no money and are not eligible. There is a double standard.

We would like to know the truth in this business. How do we ensure that all the members in this House may take advantage of these funds, and not just the Liberals?

[Jane Stewart, Liberal, Minister of Human Resources Development]

Mr. Speaker, the truth of the matter is that in the riding of Vancouver East indeed there was a transitional jobs fund project that created 18 jobs. I have been made aware that there were no further proposals after that.

[Peter MacKay, Progressive Conservative, Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough, NS]

Mr. Speaker, daily the minister of HRDC subjects Canadians to the sad spectacle of self-destruction with the documented mishandling and mismanagement of taxpayers money uncovered by the internal audit, the subsequent fallout, the spin-doctoring, the withholding of information, the manipulation of statistics and the sliding scale of eligibility. Could the minister explain why Canadians should trust her at all?

[Jane Stewart, Liberal, Minister of Human Resources Development]

Mr. Speaker, I am very glad to have the opportunity to review again for the hon. member and for the House the undertakings here and the importance we have put on this issue.

It was an internal audit of the department that highlighted administrative deficiencies which we had to fix. As minister I received that information. I took it seriously and we are now implementing a plan that will fix the problem.

[Peter MacKay, Progressive Conservative, Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough, NS]

Mr. Speaker, we know the minister had that audit in hand on November 17. Why did she not come before the House then and come clean with Canadians?

For days the minister has dodged questions in the House and pointed the finger at officials, previous ministers and members of the opposition in a weak attempt to lend credibility to what was an obvious effort to pad employment in her own riding. This type of creative accounting has baffled Statistics Canada officials, MPs and Canadians generally.

With this fiasco now firmly stuck to the minister, will she display some semblance of credibility and ministerial responsibility and simply resign?