Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take part in today's debate. I intend to be as non-partisan as possible. I have been a member of the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development since 1994. I have been working with that committee for several years and a number of issues have been referred to us.
Let me read you today's motion from the Reform Party:
That this House express its concern over the gross mismanagement of more than one billion annually in grants and contributions from the Department of Human Resources Development, its support for the doctrine of ministerial responsibility, and its lack of confidence in the Minister of Human Resources Development.
The Bloc Quebecois will support that motion.
Why do we find ourselves in that situation? In early January 2000, the current Minister of Human Resources Development—who, unlike the Prime Minister, did not consider this issue to be a minor problem involving only 37 cases—released an internal audit report which told Quebecers and Canadians that “there is a serious problem in the Department of Human Resources Development. The department has lost control over at least $1 billion. An internal audit investigation was conducted”.
It is important that people know what an internal audit is all about. It is really a sampling. In this case, 459 files were pulled out and reviewed. We were told that they took 459 files out of 30,000 in the department. So, it is a very small sample. Out of these 459 files, 37 were found to be very serious cases involving some $30 million.
When the Prime Minister tells us that the present situation is not serious, that only 37 projects are problematic, he is abusing statistical science and misrepresenting how internal audits are done. I urge the Prime Minister to find out from chartered accountants what such an internal audit means. It is a test done to check whether in fact a department or a company is operating properly.
When a certain number of cases are unacceptable, a red light goes off. This is what the Minister of Human Resources Development made public on January 17.
What we now have is the government trying—and the remarks by the member who preceded me were irresponsible—to tell us that in the whole of the department there were 37 problematic projects, when the number of projects audited was 459 out of a total of 30,000. Statistically speaking, these 37 projects represent almost 2,400 problematic cases. This could involve nearly $2 billion.
That is the fact of the matter and that is what the motion before us is critical of. If the federal government, because of the position taken by the Prime Minister, says there are only 37 cases, it is being completely irresponsible. We see the result. The result is that the parties opposed to job creation programs are saying that such programs are no good. In an attempt to get itself out of hot water, the government is accusing the Reform Party of wanting to kill these programs.
The problem we are now facing is not the relevance of job creation programs but the Liberal government's management of them. In so doing, the Liberal government ends up negating the effectiveness of the job creation programs, and that is very serious.
As for the scandal itself, what the internal audit showed up, let us recall that, out of the 459 files examined, 15% contained no application from the promoters. This means that, in 15 of every 100 projects, the project promoter could not be identified.
In 72% of the remaining applications there were no forecasts; in 46% there was no anticipated number of participants; in 25% there was no description of the activities to be supported.
And so it goes on. Most impressive. If something like this happened in a small five-employee business in the private sector, the boss would call operations to a halt and say “Everybody into my office. We are going to see what is going on. This makes no sense. We're in an awful mess here”. The fact is the business would likely have already closed, if it were in such a situation.
There are some other very important elements. For example, 97% of files bore no indication that the promoters had been checked for outstanding debts to HRDC. In 70% of project files, there was nothing about expenditures. In other words, 7 out of every 10 files contained no invoices or payslips to justify expenditures.