Debates of Feb. 7th, 2000

Human Resources Development

[Jean Dubé, Progressive Conservative, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Mr. Speaker, the minister cannot be part of the solution because she is part of the problem.

Why did the minister stand in the House of Commons and tell Canadians just before Christmas that everything was all right with the department? When did the minister know and when did she forget?

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

Mr. Speaker, I received the audit and took it seriously. I demanded that my department prepare a full response so that we could deal with this issue.

We made the full report public. Now I would say that as a minister it is my responsibility to ensure that the action plan will be implemented and that this problem will be fixed once and for all.

[Deborah Grey, Reform, Edmonton North, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is one thing for the minister to say that everything is going just great in her department. She has borrowed a pair of flip-flops from the industry minister.

First she said everything was really well managed and that she was just proud as punch of it. On November 4 she said, “Nothing inappropriate was done in terms of the administration of the approval process”. But now she admits that maybe some things were overlooked, little things like application forms and things like that.

Why will the minister not just accept the responsibility she has for this billion dollar bungle and resign from cabinet immediately?

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

Mr. Speaker, let me repeat again that there has been no $1 billion lost. We know where the money is. It is in the ridings of all the members of parliament in this House. There is nothing in the internal audit that I received that would change anything I said in this House to date.

[Preston Manning, Reform, Leader of the Opposition]

Mr. Speaker, it is unbelievable. As late as November of last year the minister told the House the appropriate approval process was being followed and nothing inappropriate was done. But while the minister was making those statements, we know that she had an audit on her desk that showed that eight out of ten files reviewed showed no evidence of financial monitoring, 87% of the files showed no evidence of supervision and 15% did not even have the name of the person they were giving the money to.

Why should the House believe the minister's current explanation when her original story to this House was false?

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

Mr. Speaker, I just ask the hon. member to review Hansard where I was forthcoming and identified that there were administrative problems in the particular program that they asked questions about.

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

Mr. Speaker, as usual, the Prime Minister has attempted to downplay the problems at Human Resources Development Canada by reducing the boondoggle to 37 cases.

Does the Prime Minister still persist today in claiming that the scandalous mismanagement at HRDC is limited to these 37 cases?

[Jean Chrétien, Liberal, Prime Minister]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. members may have exaggerated the press reports a bit with their stories of billions of dollars. The reality is that the auditors audited $200 million worth of projects, or 459 projects.

Of those 459 projects, 37 had problems considered serious enough to warrant further investigation, and in those 37, which represented about $30 million, a figure that has now been dropped to about $20 million, if there are people who received money wrongfully, received too much or cannot justify their expenditures, then the government will take steps to recover the money.

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

Mr. Speaker, last November 17, the Minister of Human Resources Development became aware of the incriminating report on her department.

How can the minister justify boasting here in this House, on December 1 and on December 16, 1999, of her manpower programs, when she had been aware of the disastrous internal audit report since November 17, 1999, that is two weeks earlier?

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

Again, Mr. Speaker, I talked about how effective the transitional jobs fund has been for the 30,000 Canadians who did not have work before that program was implemented. I today would continue to say that that program has worked very well. I repeat however for the particular programs that were addressed and of which questions were asked in this House, I was forthcoming and identified that there had been administrative problems.

[Rahim Jaffer, Reform, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the human resources minister should take the advice from the Prime Minister. Back in his righteous days he said, “When you are a minister and your bureaucrats do well, you take the credit. I always took the credit. On the other side of the ledger, when I made a mistake, I took the blame. I never ran away from it. It is the only way”.

Why will the human resources minister not stop running, do the right thing and resign from cabinet immediately?

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

Mr. Speaker, walking away from challenges is never the right solution.

I received the information on this internal audit. I identified that there were problems in my department in the area of administration of grants and contributions. I demanded a strong response from our management team. We made the whole report public so Canadians would know that we have challenges but so that they also can measure us by our actions.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh.

[The Speaker]

Order, please. I am sure we all want to hear the questions and the answers.

[Rahim Jaffer, Reform, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is obvious that Canadians have lost confidence in the minister and a department that has bungled billions of dollars of taxpayers' money. That we know about. Now the minister is trying to wiggle out of her share of the responsibility. Her department bungled a billion. She was told about it months ago. The minister has to go. If she has so much confidence in her department, why will the human resources minister not resign and let them find her something new to do?

[Jean Chrétien, Liberal, Prime Minister]

Mr. Speaker, everything has been very open. The auditor gave the report. It is known by the public. Not only that, before we formed the government, the auditor general had one report a year. Now we have permitted him to have four reports a year so that he can find out where the problems are and we can rectify them.

There are always mistakes. Take the party that has been formed. I will not say its name because there might be kids in the audience, but at the convention an error was made. There were 1,100 delegates and they had 1,500 votes.

[Michel Gauthier, Bloc, Roberval, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the Bloc Quebecois made public the fact that 54% of the Human Resources Development Canada projects were approved in the period around the election, in June 1997, a few weeks before and up to two weeks after.

Is the billion dollar administrative bungle by the Department of Human Resources Development we are reading about, a bungle the government is blaming on public servants, not rather the result of partisan political decisions made by the government unbeknownst to the officials?

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

Mr. Speaker, let us just remember the 18 projects in the riding of Mercier, the nine projects in the riding of Hochelaga—Maisonneuve, the four projects in the riding of Roberval, and even a project in the riding of Laurier—Sainte-Marie.

When we look at the time when moneys flowed for these very important projects, it began in July, well after the election had been completed.

[Michel Gauthier, Bloc, Roberval, QC]

Mr. Speaker, we know that a lot of projects were announced in our ridings; they tried to win them but did not succeed.

I would like to put a question to the Prime Minister. How does he explain the fact that 75% of all the projects going to his riding were handed out just before the election or just after it other than by the fact that they resulted in a political turnaround, getting him elected when he would otherwise have lost?

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

Mr. Speaker, if the hon. member would look at the data, he would see that no moneys flowed, or the significant amount of moneys flowed from July onward.

I also want to remind the hon. member and the House that when we are approving projects like the transitional jobs fund, we have to get the approval of the provincial governments and that includes the Government of Quebec.

[Val Meredith, Reform, South Surrey—White Rock—Langley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister said that everything was open but it would appear that the only thing open was the vault.

The minister is trying to blame civil servants for following cabinet orders. We know that administrators were concerned about grants to the Prime Minister's riding. We know that the minister's office overruled them. We know that the minister was briefed as early as last August about the mismanaged $1 billion. Yet for months she told the House that everything was fine.

She is the minister. She is responsible and she should resign. Will the human resources minister do the right thing and resign?

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

Yes, Mr. Speaker, I am the minister. There was information in the internal audit, an internal check and balance, which said that we had to make improvements in the management of our grants and contributions. I took it seriously.

I indicated to the department to make this a priority and prepare an action plan with tight timeframes so that we could ensure that Canadians could see the results of our implementations. I insisted that we make this plan public, that we make it available to the Canadian people so they could see that there were problems but that we were prepared to deal with them. Canadians want problems fixed, and that is what I am doing.

[Val Meredith, Reform, South Surrey—White Rock—Langley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Human Resources is responsible for the billion dollar bungle. The auditors gave her the news months ago, but she hoped that nobody would find out. She only made it public after a public privacy request was asked for by our party. Now that she has been caught she should do the right and honourable thing and resign her cabinet position.

[Jean Chrétien, Liberal, Prime Minister]

Mr. Speaker, what amazes me is that money has gone into every riding of all members of parliament. I want the Canadian public to know that all this money is going to the opportunity fund which helps Canadians with disabilities find jobs, literacy programs, youth internship, Youth Services Canada, career summer placement programs, and self-employment assistance programs.

These are programs that are helping those who have difficulties in society. During that time the Reform Party wanted to cut the taxes of multimillionaires by at least 12% so the—

[The Speaker]

The hon. member for Quebec.