Mr. Speaker, I regret that I have to stand in the House to talk today on a subject of this sort that represents what we would expect to be the very best for Canadians in terms of their use of tax dollars.
I have come to sleuth and to understand more of this big scandal which some would suggest is certainly major mismanagement of taxpayer dollars. I do definitely, individually, have major concerns with the management and the minister's and the whole government's lack of competence in this area.
I would ask this more as a question and the members in the House and people in the gallery and those watching in TV land would be the ones to respond. This government vaunts and boasts often of its competence, managerial ability, fiscal prudence and sound government. We see quite the contrary it would appear. I ask a question and I do not prejudge the outcome but everyone can draw their own conclusions. Is there something of a fraud in the Prime Minister's brag of managerial competence, fiscal prudence and sound government? As I lay out my understanding of what has occurred here I will allow the audience to draw its own conclusions today.
In a very considerable way what has happened over the last number of weeks, or at least what has been exposed, has drawn into question the jobs fund as a matter of principle and whether it is effective in creating jobs. That is sad in a certain sense. I am a believer that there can be tax dollars targeted for social programs for individuals who are disabled and so on. They need equipment and special access. That maybe is another matter. That is a social program. That is policy set in place to help those who need that leg up in society.
Government handouts are very poor at creating jobs in the general sense. If that were not the case then the maritime provinces would obviously be booming, as might other parts of our country.
Generally speaking, when we are not talking social programs—and there is need for that with respect to disabled and other people—job creation, for the most part, should be done by the private sector. It is the engine that drives job creation. Studies have shown that. It is beyond dispute. Reducing corporate tax, payroll taxes and those kinds of things provide incentive and release money for investment.
It is a real shame that this $1 billion or more boondoggle seems to be endemic and systemic in the government. It is money that could well be used in other areas. When we have had significant cuts in health and post-secondary education and we have not had the kind of support for farmers in terms of a subsidy war across the world, it is a real shameful thing in my view.
Tax dollars are justifiably used for things like health care, post-secondary education and a basic social safety net. After that we do have a consensus to break down from there. What is so preposterous about this is that tax dollars have been used for things that they should not be used for and on the other hand we have had a deficit in respect to health, education and basic social needs.
We do need social programs that help people with disabilities and so on, but we do not need them as the driving engine to create jobs. This is a fundamental flaw. They do not create jobs as effectively or in any proportion as the private sector would if it was left to do that.
When seats throughout the west were held by Reform, we did not say, as some people may have thought, that we did not want our share. We said that we had enough of these kinds of programs. We have had enough of the old way of doing things, the dark ages' way of doing things, by patronage and pork barrelling which comes out of the 1800s and 1900s. In a modern democracy, we should not be doing programs in this manner. The west was not asking “Where is our share?” It was saying “Enough of this kind of stuff, enough of these fiascos”, which are now very apparent.
The government failed to create jobs in many cases. It gave $14 million to 32 companies but no jobs were created. We can list many of them and we will over the course of the days ahead. Companies in my own province that created zero jobs were Clifford Smith Trucking, $72,000, and Saskatchewan Dutch Elm Disease Committee, $100,000. No jobs were created. I could go on with a list of companies and projects that received money but where not a single job was created.
We could list companies that have closed. A Cape Breton coffin factory received $400,000 to make fibreglass coffins that would float or last forever underground. Only three of those coffins ever sold and the factory closed.
We could list companies that have wasted money. In the 1988 audit we found, among other ridiculous kinds of examples, that a road that went nowhere was built through the riding of the then revenue minister Elmer MacKay. Two bridges were built but no roads connected to them. It goes on and on. As a matter of principle, the government has clearly not been creating jobs and in fact cannot do that.
The government has used this fund and the grants and contributions to give politically motivated handouts. Some have called it a slush fund. I will leave that for others to state. However, the minister certainly did not keep her own rules. There are 15 pages of grants given to the minister's Brant riding, a riding which should not have qualified for grants. Since April 1999, she has approved other projects. Her riding did not have an unemployment rate of over 10%. The earlier qualifying rate had been 12%. She was signing cheques for her own riding contrary to the most basic rule of the Canada jobs fund criteria, which was to create permanent jobs, new jobs, sustainable jobs and so on in areas of high unemployment, areas where there was more than 12% unemployment, later relaxed to 10%. She clearly violated that rule.
How can Canadians put their trust in a minister who mismanages the money that goes into her own riding?
I can think of other examples that have been mentioned in the House during question period. I refer to the Grand-Mère Inn in the Prime Minister's own riding, the Pierre Corbeil story, an enterprising young Liberal, an individual who thought that he could lever some money for the Liberal coffers by going to them and saying “If you give me a donation, we will make sure your TJF application gets approved”.