Mr. Speaker, the member has raised an excellent point. We must not forget that the Employment Insurance Act is based on the presumption of guilt. If there is any doubt about someone, that individual is guilty until he or she has been able to prove his or her innocence before the whole bureaucratic system.
In the case before us, it is the opposite. There is a proof of guilt, we are sure the person is guilty, but someone—not just anyone, the Prime Minister of Canada himself—is telling us that an internal audit has shown problems in 37 cases out of 459. He claims that only 37 cases are problematic, and the rest does not exist.
He denies the fact that this department handled 30,000 cases. hope the auditor general puts these facts on the table next fall. He will be asked to appear before the committee so that we can look specifically into this matter. My assumption is that, once our review is over, these 37 cases out of 459 will not look like a little sore but rather as the sign of a growing cancer within the department, a cancer which has been tolerated by the present government, which wanted it and took advantage of it in the 1997 election.
In this sense, the member is perfectly right. There is a double standard, and we are here to speak out against this situation and to bring the Canadian government to put all the facts on the table so that we can make a final judgement on these issues. government, particularly the predecessor of the present Minister of Human Resources Development, is responsible for wasting billions of dollars, which is totally unacceptable.