It was pretty well that. I hear members of the opposition saying it was to buy votes. We will certainly let the public decide that. We will tell them the facts and let them decide what is really going on.
These programs were brought in to help regions with high levels of unemployment, regions which under TJF had to have 12% and higher, like my riding. I was fortunate enough to receive TJF funds and the funds worked well. But mishandlings went on in the department and that is the problem. We have to find out exactly what is going on with the department so we can maximize the impact of what this was supposed to do in helping the regions.
The minister's own riding of Brant has an unemployment level of 6.6%. Where is the justification for qualifying projects in that riding? If my riding had 6.6%, we would not have received a cent, but it has something like 25% to 30%.
The bureaucrats yesterday, when being questioned by the media, stated that there are pockets of unemployment within that riding. We have a hard time getting the unemployment rate in a riding. How can we get a reading of the unemployment rate in a pocket of a riding? In my riding of Madawaska—Restigouche, the Restigouche portion is calculated with the area of Charlotte in southern New Brunswick. How can we calculate a pocket within a riding? Is it by street number? I am not sure, but I would certainly like to see how it is done. I would like to see the pocket in my riding which is the highest.
We are very concerned with what has gone on in the past couple of weeks, and probably the past couple of years. We are talking about $1 billion, maybe a lot more. We could call it shovelgate, or whatever we want, but it is the biggest scandal in Canadian history and it is on the Liberal government's head. The only way we can get around this, the only way we can bring transparency back to this parliament, is to ask for an external audit. We cannot ask the very same department to audit what it has done. That is like asking the RCMP to investigate the RCMP. We cannot do that.
We have a responsibility as a parliament to the people of Canada to be transparent. Therefore, I ask the minister to call for an external audit to get to the bottom of this.
I want to congratulate my colleague for putting forward this motion. This party wholeheartedly supports the motion.