Debates of Feb. 8th, 2000

Supply

[Antoine Dubé, Bloc, Lévis, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I was a member of the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development before the election. We had suspicions as to what was going on, but we realize today that things were even worse than we expected.

I would like to give an example to my colleague who is now a member on that committee, and ask him whether there is a link. Before the election, members used to be consulted about the summer career placements program. When the election was called, strangely enough, the former minister mentioned by the hon. member took it upon himself to make those decisions.

I am from the Quebec City area, and, before the election, we used to have a centre where the unemployed could get help in dealing with all the red tape. It was moved to the Prime Minister's riding—such a coincidence—where there was no unemployment office. We used to have about ten offices, and their number had to go down to just two. They closed down all of them and opened two, one in Montreal and the other one in the Prime Minister's riding. Of all the ridings in Quebec, guess where they got the best percentage during the election? Something tells me it is in the Prime Minister's riding.

My colleague is absolutely right. The former minister is to blame, and the present minister is also to blame, because she does not want any light to be shed on this issue. However, who was it who appointed these two ministers? Always the same person, the Prime Minister. Does he not have the primary responsibility for this boondoggle?

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

Mr. Speaker, I took notice of what by my colleague from Lévis-et-Chutes-de-la-Chaudière said about the summer career placements program. It is true that hon. members stopped being consulted during the election campaign. That is part of what we could bring up if we are ever allowed to have some light shed on this issue.

We could check if discretionary choices were purely partisan choices. There were two ways to go about this. On the one hand, there were the summer careers placements program and other programs. On the other, contributions were coming in.

Last year, we had a good indication of the way things were going. Members probably remember the Corbeil case. Supposedly, that meant nothing. HRDC was as pure as the driven snow. Corbeil was found guilty, but that did not trigger any alarms and nothing changed in the government's ways. It took an internal audit which the minister was made aware of on November 17 and which she made public in January for the government to start dealing with the issue.

There is a fundamental problem with this government, and that is the Prime Minister's style of politics. Throughout his political career, the Prime Minister has been known to resort to partisanship, to show contempt and to disregard democratic principles and the will of the people.

I will speak to the Prime Minister in terms that he will understand. If he sees the Government of Canada as his business and his business alone, I remind him that the shareholders of his government are the citizens of Canada. They are the ones who want us to shed light on this situation. Not only will parliamentarians not stop, but people all over the country will ask for clarifications on this issue. At a time when people are paying so much in taxes, we simply will not let the government waste that money. It cannot afford to do so. This is a period when the federal government has money.

In the past, it had developed a habit of wasting money and creating deficits. Now that fiscal balance has been achieved, the government is back at it again. However, the internal audit that was conducted revealed a deep and serious problem. We absolutely must shed light on the whole situation at the Department of Human Resources Development and also see what is going on in the other departments.

Last week, a deputy minister from Treasury Board wrote a memo to all the departments that give grants and subsidies. He said “Are you sure that what is going on in Human Resources Development Canada is not also going on in your department?” You can be sure that we will get to the bottom of this and see to it that the Prime Minister takes full responsibility.

[Gérard Asselin, Bloc, Charlevoix, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the member is right. During the election campaign, in 1997, the members were not authorized to sign job creation programs for students in their ridings.

The minister traveled a lot; he came to Charlevoix. Two investors from Montreal accompanied the minister to Saint-Hilarion, in the riding of Charlevoix. The “Poulette Grise”, in La Malbaie, was closed; 150 jobs were lost.

A few days before election day, to benefit from the situation, he came to announce that Aliments Charlevoix would export chicken and reopen the La Malbaie slaughterhouse, that everything was all right, thanks to the savior, the Minister of Human Resources Development of the day, the member for Papineau—Saint-Denis. I am sure the Prime Minister found shortcomings in that department. After the 1997 election, he saw what had happened in Canada, chiefly with the minister we are talking about, the former Minister of Human Resources Development, the member for Papineau—Saint-Denis.

I would like to ask the member for Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup—Témiscouata—Les Basques if he would agree with me that the Prime Minister probably noticed the incompetence of the former Minister of Human Resources Development and stripped him of this department, which involves a lot of management, a lot of money and a lot of responsibilities and gave him a department involving no responsibilities.

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

Mr. Speaker, I can hardly read the Prime Minister's thoughts. I am convinced that he had a very good idea of what was going on.

Today, he denies being aware of those issues. He said he was not aware that there was an audit on an amount of $2 billion at Human Resources Development Canada. If the Prime Minister is not aware of such situations, what kind of work does he do?

We are talking about the government's monitoring role. Governments are not only responsible for announcing projects. They must also make sure that those projects yield results, see that they are out in the open so that we can see, for instance in the case of a job creation program, that jobs actually have been created.

The minister cannot be evaluated only on how he makes an announcement. In this regard, I agree that the former Minister of Human Resources Development at announcing things, but he certainly lacked the other necessary skills. Personally, I consider his appointment as Minister of International Trade as a demotion. However, in a way, this may have allowed us to avoid an ever greater mess than the one we appear to be in.

I hope that all this will all be out in the open as soon as possible. Otherwise, we would not be fully doing our duty as parliamentarians if we did not get to the bottom of the issue and allow all Canadians to see the whole truth.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, as the spokesperson for the federal New Democrats on Human Resources Development Canada, I am very pleased to speak to this opposition day motion.

New Democrats concur and support the motion because we believe it gets to the issue that we have been debating and it certainly expresses our concern about the gross mismanagement of more than $1 billion annually in grants and contributions by the Department of Human Resources Development, as the motion outlines.

The motion and the issue that we are debating today gets to the core of something that is very important in our democracy and in our system of governance, the issue of ministerial responsibility.

After looking at the information that has come to light over the last several weeks about the internal audit of HRDC, it is clear that this is an issue on the proper management of public funds. This is an issue on the integrity and credibility of the government. Even members of the government have admitted that the practices that have gone on in that department have been astounding and scandalous and, as the minister has said, she herself has called for further information.

What is most disturbing about this issue is that the government itself is also in denial about what is really taking place. Yesterday in question period, and in other debates that have taken place, it has been very interesting to see the government now madly back-pedalling to defend its record and to defend what has happened. It is now switching tactics. It is now saying, as I heard today in the House from government members, that opposition members do not support job creation or job development, and that the government is now the big defender of job development in the country.

The government's second tactic is to attack opposition members on legitimate projects that were approved in various ridings through existing programs, with all the rules in place, with the proper application forms and so on. The government is now in denial and is trying to put up some smoke and mirrors to switch the line of attack.

As New Democrats, we have always supported legitimate and worthy job development programs. Many of us represent ridings in Canada that have high unemployment and high poverty. It was in fact our party that pushed the government to be more forthcoming in its support for job creation and helping the unemployed. Let us be very clear that the issue is not about whether a job development program is good. We are the first to say that job development programs and job creation are very critical in the country.

Canadians are not fooled by the Liberal counteroffensive. They understand that at issue are the findings of the government's own audit which gave very clear evidence about the mismanagement of this fund. The issue is the absolute mismanagement of huge amounts of public funds and the partisan political decision making that is taking place.

Partisan political decision making is the nicest way to say it. To be quite frank, it is also a slush fund. The concern has been that public funds have been used by the Liberal government, breaking its established criteria for the transitional jobs fund and other programs, and basically shovelling the money into its own ridings, which are not in need, when other areas are greatly in need. What is at issue is the management of the fund and how it has been administered in a very political and partisan way.

What disturbs us as New Democrats is the complete lack of accountability, not only in the management of the fund and what has come from it but, now that this has been put on the table and the internal audit has become public, the lack of accountability in the government's response and the lack of accountability from the current minister and the previous minister.

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Winnipeg Centre.

In our democracy, our parliamentary system, there is a very honourable tradition that when there has been a lack of accountability and mismanagement, at the end of the day it is the minister who must take responsibility. The minister is accountable and the government is responsible for decisions that have been made. That is why opposition parties have been very clear in telling the current minister and the previous minister that we want accountability.

We have a number of questions about this fund. Looking at the internal audit, we see that it was only a sample audit, not a full detailed audit. In reading the report, we read “there was concern with respect to some political presence in the programs at times. While a certain amount of political involvement is expected in a program involving partners from the various levels of government, there was nevertheless some uneasiness amongst some respondents regarding projects which may have been approved for political reasons rather than based on the strength of the business plan”.

The NDP has a huge amount of concern about the very diplomatic language that is being used in an audit that clearly points to the political decision making and political management that took place to the advantage of the government for their Liberal members and its party.

We have questions as to where those funds ended up. Why did they end up in the minister's riding, the Prime Minister's riding and other Liberal member ridings that clearly did not meet the criteria for the fund? Why did affluent ridings receive a disproportionate amount of these funds? They may have had some unemployment but certainly not as high as other parts of Canada, such as Vancouver East, the area that I represent. Look at the downtown eastside which has the lowest income postal code in Canada. There was one transitional jobs fund program approved in 1997, before I was a member of parliament. It is an area of incredibly high unemployment. Why has that area not received anything? Why has money gone into the member's riding? Why has it not gone into the riding of my colleague from Winnipeg Centre, which also has high unemployment?

There are some very serious questions about why a massive amount of public funds have been directed in such a way that they have clearly benefited government members and to the detriment of other needier areas in Canada.

Our critic for EI, the member for Acadie—Bathurst, wrote a letter to the auditor general calling for an immediate special audit of the situation in HRDC. The letter he received back made it clear that the staff of the auditor general, who were conducting an audit into the grants and contributions, believed that there was so much work that needed to be done that the audit would not be completed until the end of July and the report published in October. It is important that the audit be done.

Members of the NDP support the motion because we believe it is very important to get to the bottom of what took place. We know that Canadians support legitimate, transparent and accountable job creation and job development programs.

We in the NDP have always supported those programs. What we do not support is the denial, the lack of accountability, and what is now obviously political management of the fund that is benefiting government members and denying areas most in need. Those are the questions that we want to see fully made transparent.

In conclusion, the motion deals with the issue of accountability and integrity of the government. We think that is very critical. At the end of the day the current minister and the former minister who are both involved in this matter must be responsible and must do the responsible thing in terms of being accountable for what has taken place within the department. We have called for their resignation and will continue to do that. We support the motion.

[John Bryden, Liberal, Wentworth—Burlington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for her remarks. As the member might be aware, I as a backbench MP have done a number of studies on NGOs, non-governmental organizations, particularly charities and non-profits. I have encountered a lot of problems with transparency and accountability in these organizations and I have reported on them.

Would she be of the view that if we are going to clean up this whole issue of giving government grants and contributions to organizations one shoe should fit all and that non-profit organizations should be required to meet the same standards of transparency, accountability and corporate governance as for-profit organizations in order to be eligible for public funds and, moreover, that they should submit themselves to performance reviews in order to be subject to further grants?

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the question but again it is another example of how Liberal members are really trying to deflect what is taking place in the debate. They are shifting the attack and now saying is it not non-profits that are somehow at fault.

I have a long history of close to 30 years of working with non-profit organizations and NGOs. I can tell the member that non-profit societies in terms of their democracy, in terms of their transparency, are probably the best model that we have in the country of how things should work. If the member wants to look for where there is corruption or where there is mismanagement then perhaps he should go into the business community, into some of the financial institutions, to see what is going on there.

Of course we expect that non-profits will make applications in good faith, will fulfil those applications and will meet the mandates of the program. The groups I have dealt with spend a huge amount of time doing that and trying to meet all the criteria.

That is not what this issue is about, though. This issue is about the mismanagement of the government, the political mismanagement in the administration of the fund. Why is the member not raising that question?

[Paul Forseth, Reform, New Westminster—Coquitlam—Burnaby, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is refreshing to hear a member from the NDP talk about fiscal responsibility. What we are looking at today is that the old way of spending for votes is with us, rather than wisely administering the public trust. That is what is staring us in the face.

The minister of HRDC seems to be characterized as a starry-eyed idealist defending cash transfer programs, taking from the many to give to the few. The Liberals are like the Liberals of old, the do-gooders for their friends who stupidly believe that top down broad bureaucratic job creation programs actually create lasting economic transformation. The Liberals cannot manage. Especially starting in the Pearson-Trudeau years, federal ministers are inherently expansionary. They exist; therefore they will spend.

Will the member vote against the socialism of the Liberals in the next budget? What we are looking at today was in last year's budget. The Minister of Finance has to bear a lot of responsibility for the philosophy and the program allocation, what were the stated goals of the program. I am looking for a critical evaluation come budget time if there is an appearance of these kinds of programs in the next budget.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his question. Previous Liberal budgets or the ones we expect are certainly not my idea of what socialism is about, but I assure the member we will provide very rigid scrutiny of what the budget contains.

His question really pertains to fiscal accountability and responsibility. It is unfortunate the member has the idea that somehow New Democrats do not stand for that. Of course we do. If he looks at the Government of Saskatchewan or the NDP Government of British Columbia, and if he looks at the work we do in the House, he will see that we take very seriously fiscal responsibility and ensuring that public funds mandated under specific programs go where they are needed.

This is why in terms of this issue we are scandalized and outraged at what has taken place under the Liberal administration. There has been a complete lack of accountability, a complete lack of proper political administration of the program for very political purposes. This is fiscally irresponsible and we are the first to stand and say it.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague from Vancouver East for agreeing to share her time with me. As she has correctly pointed out in her speech, our two ridings share a great deal of common items, most of which are not very enviable. The very things we share are things people would probably not want to share. One of them is that both our ridings suffer from chronic long term poverty and all the predictable consequences that come with it.

As the member pointed out, she represents what is the poorest postal code region in the country, downtown Vancouver East. My riding is the third poorest riding in the country when measured by the incidence of poverty and average family income. However, the point I would like to make is that neither of us qualify for any transitional jobs fund money. Although we are suffering from crime, violence and all issues surrounding chronic long term poverty, we do not qualify for the help these funds were presumably set up to assist ridings in dire straits. Frankly there has not been one red cent for the riding of Winnipeg Centre.

That really irks us. It is galling, as we see the onion being peeled back layer by layer and the truth starting to come out, that the ridings benefiting from these funds are fairly affluent and well to do ridings. More often than not there has been some political influence in how these grants were allocated to various ridings.

The most glaring and best example we could use is the riding represented by the current minister of HRDC. With an unemployment rate of 6.6% and an incidence of poverty of 10.7% in her riding, how does she justify pouring job creation money into the particular riding? Most of us in poor inner city ridings look to statistics such as these and are envious of them.

Another glaring example came to light when we looked at the Edmonton East riding of the current Minister of Justice. Most of the country is flocking to Edmonton because there are jobs and opportunity and prosperity. I am not sure what the unemployment rate is in Edmonton West but I am sure it is not the 12% that we were told was necessary to qualify for these funds.

A $1.3 million grant went to banding trees to prevent Dutch elm disease in the riding of Edmonton West. This is a laudable concept. I am all in favour of saving elm trees, but why do we not qualify for anything with an unemployment rate that is staggering in the inner city of Winnipeg and an incidence of poverty that is 31.1%? Some 31.1% of all people living in my riding are poor and we do not get anything, zero, zippo. We were told that we do not qualify.

The rules keep changing. First there had to be 12% unemployment to qualify. Now we learn that maybe in the riding of Edmonton West it is not under 12% but that there are pockets of unemployment. That is the term they are using. Aboriginal people in her riding are disproportionately unemployed. That is a legitimate point but she did not tell that to us.

We have the same argument in Vancouver East or Winnipeg Centre. I could point to and illustrate pockets of unemployment all over my riding, but we were told that we do not get anything. This is what is really galling and grating to people who are representing areas in genuine need.

The hon. member for Vancouver East pointed out two flaws in the current system. One is the glaring errors in the administration of the fund. That is really what came to light first. Nobody can deny there is a serious problem. Even the minister is recognizing that there is a serious problem. I can indicate why we have this serious problem. It is because when one-third of the public sector is cut, hacked and slashed and everybody is laid off, how could we expect the same amount of work to be done?

It is unreasonable to think the same kind of scrutiny can be applied to these projects when everybody has been fired. In the federal public sector 50,000 people have been laid off. Now the chickens are coming home to roost. We are starting to see the predictable outcome of laying off all those people.

The next glaring point about the TJF is the allocation. It was a mystery to all of us how some ridings got these grants and some did not. Now it seems pretty clear. It is political influence. The Liberals are using it as a Liberal slush fund to further their own interests in their own ridings.

Obviously on a personal level I can point out that it is tragic we did not get any of it in my riding, but the real tragedy is that it makes members of the general public even more cynical than they already were about the political process and about what we do in this place as politicians.

If they were not jaded enough already, as the real horror of this disastrous story unfolds more and more Canadians will be even more cynical about their government. That is the tragic point I would like to make. It is tough enough to do our job and try to maintain some semblance of dignity without this kind of thing tarnishing the image of every person who stands in the House of Commons.

In the Prime Minister's riding there were 17 of these TJF grants. Let us imagine the millions and millions and millions of dollars. Actually we have a total list of all grants that went into the riding of the Minister of Human Resource Development. Over three years there were $30 million in grants or $10 million a year. It is a booklet as thick as the Manhattan phone book. Virtually every little business in the whole riding has had something shovelled toward them from these many, many, many programs. Not all of them were TJF grants. I think there were only three transitional jobs fund grants in her riding, but in an area with 6.6% unemployment, not even half the minimum standard which the rules say have to be met before a riding qualifies for anything, it makes one wonder how that money was directed to that riding.

Most of us on the prairies look to Ontario as a land of opportunity and prosperity. How do towns like Brant qualify for these grants? I am sure that there are problems all over the country and everybody deserves equal access to these types of training funds and subsidies, but it seems it is disproportionately going to areas that cannot really argue they need it.

The average family income in the riding represented by the Minister of Human Resources Development is $45,000 a year. The people in the core area of Winnipeg can only dream about aspiring to that level of income. The average family income where I live is $28,000 a year. We are talking about a disparity. It may just be a different standard of poverty, but it is certainly a lack of understanding of what it means to be locked into the inner city core area without opportunity. These programs should be there to assist on a broader level.

We talked about the Prime Minister's riding with 17 of these grants worth $7,296,000. Is this justifiable when other ridings are being given absolutely nothing?

I echo the comments of my colleague that frankly the NDP is not against job creation programs. If the transitional jobs fund did not exist the NDP would probably be calling for such a program to be created. We are in favour of this kind of thing, but we make the argument that everybody should have equal access to those opportunities. They should not be spread out in as disproportionate a way as they are currently.

It really does make me wonder how the minister of HRDC with 6.6% unemployment can qualify for any kind of grant at all. Then of course there is Edmonton West with $1.3 million to band trees to prevent Dutch elm disease. There is a Dutch elm disease problem in Winnipeg too, but I do not think anybody would be so presumptuous as to apply for a transitional jobs fund grant for it.

I close by saying that the NDP will be voting in favour of the Reform Party's opposition day motion. We think we are seeing only the tip of the iceberg here as has been pointed out over and over again. As we get deeper into this scandal, and that is the only word we can use as it is going to be the scandal of the spring, I regret as well that we are being diverted from the many other pressing issues of the day. Frankly, it is a bit of a diversion that we are concentrating on this subject instead of all the important work that we could be doing, but it is necessary. To restore the confidence of the general public it is a process we are going to have to go through as painful as it is.

The real tragedy is not seeing one minister toppled, if that is to be. The real tragedy is that the general public is so disillusioned as they watch this unfold that we are doing permanent damage to the reputation of the whole political system. This should be dealt with swiftly. If the government were honourable it would not be dallying around. It would not be trying to build barricades and fences around the issue. It should treat this issue honestly and admit that something terrible is taking place. A very transparent process must take place to heal the wounds because some cuts do not heal.

[Jean-Guy Chrétien, Bloc, Frontenac—Mégantic, QC]

Mr. Speaker, this is a very interesting opposition day we are having today.

We have a real scandal before us. Even in the opinion of the Prime Minister, it hearkens back to the great Mulroney years. The Prime Minister got carried away last week saying that things were no worse than they had been in Brian Mulroney's time.

I think they are worse. Here, a deliberate effort is being made to play with democracy. For example, in the riding of Saint-Maurice, the week before the election on June 2, 1997, there was an avalanche of often questionable grants, including to the golf club and to a certain motel the Prime Minister is quite familiar with.

In Anjou—Rivière-des-Prairies, my friend and former colleague, Roger Pomerleau, was beaten by my former union head. Thanks to the abuse, his election cost taxpayers $25 million.

In the riding of Brant, where there is almost no unemployment, millions and millions of dollars were invested in mismanaged programs.

According to the polls, as they put it so well, if the trend continues, we have taken at random 459 files, which we have systematically studied and have come up with 37 nebulous cases, really nebulous.

There is no need for me to mention Vidéotron, McGill or the natives who repaid jewels with taxpayers' money. Off the top of my head, this represents an 8% rate of error in the administration of HRDC.

If there are in fact 10,000 files, at the rate of 8% there would be 800 cases, and 37 have been found. There are another 763 they will have to start looking for tomorrow morning.

I do not understand. I wrote a letter to the former Minister of Human Resources Development because, through his delivery assistance program, an arbitrary decision, he had allocated a certain questionable amount in my riding. I wrote him saying “Be careful, Mr. Minister. You are playing with public money. You are cutting the benefits of the unemployed and using the money to pad those who do not need padding. They are already well padded financially”.

Three months later—he often went to Paris too often, apparently —he wrote me to say “I do not understand, Mr. Chrétien, your not being proud at having $35,000 distributed in your riding”.

I am happy to have him give $35,000, but properly.

[The Deputy Speaker]

The hon. member has already used three minutes of his time and many members would like to ask questions. That is not fair, I feel.

The hon. member for Winnipeg Centre, to give a short answer to the question.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for the comments which are very much in keeping with my speech.

Going back to the member's first point, it does remind us of the Mulroney years and we should be reminded of what the Prime Minister said during those Mulroney years when he talked about the corruption that was so rampant in that cabinet. This is a quote from the Prime Minister in 1991. He said, “When we form the government every minister in the cabinet that I will be presiding over will have to take full responsibility for what is going on in his department. If there is any bungling in the department, no one will be singled out. It will be the minister that will have to take the full responsibility”. Those are very strong words and it was a zero tolerance attitude maintained by the current Prime Minister as the opposition leader in 1991.

We would like to see the same sort of swift action, take no prisoners. If we are going to restore the public's confidence, swift action must be taken. Frankly the minister is going to have to go. We are going to hold the current Prime Minister to his word and the comments he made in 1991. The same should still apply today.

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

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with my colleague the hon. member for Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough.

The saga continues. Let us go back in time. We have heard different members get up in the House of Commons today and speak about whatever we want to call it, shovelgate, or Place du Portage gate, which is the building which houses this department, or the bunker. We could name it what we want but it is certainly a huge scandal.

Let us go back to January 19 when the minister of HRDC came into the foyer of the House of Commons and delivered the internal audit dated January 2000. That very same day I called the department for a copy of the audit and it was so kind as to send a copy to my office. Then 10 minutes later I got a phone call from the same department to tell me that I had been sent the wrong cover sheet and I was asked if I would destroy that cover sheet and throw it in the garbage. I asked to be sent the other cover sheet and I would take a look at it. When I received the other cover sheet, there was no date. The date of October 5 had been deleted. I checked with the various media to see what cover sheet they had received and they had received the one with no date.

It is obvious from that that the department was in a massive cover-up. It might be a strong word but it is certainly a lot of money. We are talking about a billion dollars here, not a million. We are talking about a billion dollars of taxpayers' money, money that people work hard for every single day, and they pay hard taxes as well. We have come to find that a billion dollars has possibly been mismanaged. I think it has been mismanaged.

We are looking at 459 cases out of 30,000 cases and 37 could be very serious. Let us do the math. The math was done to do the audit. They picked 459 different cases. If we do the math and take 37 cases out of 459 out of a universe of 30,000, that would give us 2,400 files with a problem for a possible total of $2 billion.

Two billion dollars is a lot of money and we are only talking about one department, HRDC. Out of this big universe in Ottawa, HRDC is not the only department that gives out grant money. There is Heritage Canada and industry. There is a serious problem.

We have been asking for an external audit on this. The minister sent out to the press conference yesterday the very same people she accused of being in the dark ages just the week before. I have questions for the House and the minister. Who is in charge of the department? Is it the senior bureaucrats we saw yesterday or is it the minister? We all saw the scrum coming out of the PMO last week. We have good reason to think why she was not there.

We also asked yesterday for the resignation of the minister because the buck stops there. The buck stops with her desk, not with anybody else. She accused bureaucrats of bungling this. I state in the House of Commons that when I deal with the bureaucrats in my riding, they are very thorough and very transparent. If she is going to point the finger at somebody, she had better put a mirror in front of herself and point at it. That is the person she has to blame.

We also find with this audit that there was a concentration of grants given during the 1997 electoral period, 54% to be exact. That can be put in the calculator too. Fifty-four per cent of the grants were given during an election period. It is absolutely scandalous that taxpayers' money that was supposed to go into regions affected by employment insurance reform was being used to try to elect Liberal members.

[An hon. member]

Buying votes.

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

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.

[Dennis Mills, Liberal, Broadview—Greenwood, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have listened to many of the comments which were made today. What absolutely amazes me is that the member would suggest that $1 billion—

[Some hon. members]

It is $2 billion.

[Dennis Mills, Liberal, Broadview—Greenwood, ON]

Now we are up to $2 billion. It has been suggested that somehow every dollar of the total went to bad projects.

The member said himself that he applauded the work of the public servants in his riding. Right off the bat, I would presume he is saying that the work which was done in his riding by those public servants was satisfactory.

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

It was excellent.

[Dennis Mills, Liberal, Broadview—Greenwood, ON]

It was excellent. The member said that the work done in his riding by public servants was excellent. I believe that in the House of Commons, with almost 301 members, the member does not have the only team of public servants whose work is excellent. I happen to believe that about my own riding and I know there are other members who feel the same way.

Are there files on which ongoing investigations needed to be pursued? Everybody has acknowledged that on the sampling of over 400 files, 37 needed extended work. That is happening. This is totally transparent.

Is the member not concerned that by casting aspersions on every single grant that was given in every single riding he is casting aspersions in a way that many of those people with good solid projects that have served his riding, my riding and many other ridings well are going to feel tainted, poisoned or stained? Does the member not feel that within that $1 billion there were many good projects?

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his question. However, the person who accused the public servants was the minister of HRDC, not the member for Madawaska—Restigouche. The minister was trying to pass the blame to everyone else.

Yes, in certain areas these programs have worked. But that is not the question. The question is the billion dollars of mismanagement. It could be more. We are talking about 30,000 projects at HRDC. It could be much more.

Last week a former cabinet minister told me to be careful of what I said. I could jeopardize the programs. I will tell the House something. It is important to know where every bloody cent goes that taxpayers pay. That is not going to buy my silence. We are going to get to the bottom of it. We need an external audit.

If we are going to protect taxpayer money, if we are going to maximize what we do with these funds, we need to bring transparency back to this parliament and ask for an external audit.

[Antoine Dubé, Bloc, Lévis, QC]

Mr. Speaker, not only do I wish to congratulate my Progressive Conservative colleague and counterpart, but I am going to ask him a question in French.

Yes, we agree with an external audit but, as a member in an area of high unemployment, does he not find it strange that there were more projects in ridings with much lower rates of unemployment, when his own constituents were suffering?

I know that his colleague in the New Democratic Party told me that he was feeling the effects of this situation because the unemployed do not necessarily have money to invest in a project and because, in other more prosperous regions, such as the present minister's riding, there is more money to launch projects to help the unemployed. How would he describe this situation?

Would it not be better to have a criterion based on the number of unemployed people for this program, which is aimed at the unemployed? Would he agree that this should be the criterion for deciding how to distribute funds fairly?

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, the member for Lévis, for his excellent question, because I know that there are also problems in his riding.

When I look at these ridings with high unemployment and see how the funds are being distributed under this program, I find this absolutely deplorable.

The government is trying to defend itself. This morning, someone said that when an individual makes a mistake in filling out his unemployment cards, he is immediately considered to be guilty “You're guilty, so off to jail with you”. But what we have here is evidence that there was a lot of mismanagement or a huge lack of management, and the government, as well as the Prime Minister is rallying around the minister to try to protect her.

So, this is what we are used to seeing with this government, but some limits and policies must be implemented in order to help all the regions affected by high unemployment.

[Peter MacKay, Progressive Conservative, Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take part in this debate. As alluded to by my colleague, the hon. member for Madawaska—Restigouche, it is very timely that the official opposition brought forward this motion.

As time passes it is like the dance of a thousand veils that we are seeing from the government. We are seeing more and more information coming forward. I would suggest this is not coming forward in a very voluntary and forthright way, as members of the government would have us believe. In fact, the minister literally had the proverbial gun to her head when she knew that access to information requests had been made and that this information was inevitably going to be made public.

Let us start with the premise that the HRDC ministry is set up for a very legitimate purpose. There are areas in the country which obviously need assistance in job creation. As the hon. member opposite suggested, we are not, as an opposition, suggesting that every single program in the country was somehow not legitimate. We are suggesting that it is coming to light daily that a significant portion of them were not legitimate. It is absolutely astonishing when we hear, and when the Canadian public hears, that there are companies which received money that did not even fill out an application. It is absolutely astronomical when one considers the implications.

How did the money get from the government coffers into the hands of an organization that apparently did not even request it?

I believe the most appropriate characterization of all of this is mismanagement. I would suggest that the minister has been very economical with the truth when it comes to the disclosure of information. She has suggested in numerous statements that HRDC knows where the money is, that it is all accounted for. We can go to our bank accounts and see that withdrawals were made. We have the cheques to suggest that the money was received. The question is: How was the money spent? Was it spent in line and consistent with the applications, if there were applications? Was the money accounted for? Was it tracked? Was there any mechanism or system in place which guaranteed the legitimacy of the company or the exercise for which the money was applied?

In my riding of Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough there are regions, in Guysborough County for example, where unemployment is in the range of 20% to 30%. It is devastating for the people in that part of the country. This program, if we are to have faith in it, is aimed specifically at helping depressed regions.

The tragedy in all of this, and my colleague from the NDP alluded to this, is the absolute cynicism and the absolute loss of any remaining shred of credibility that the government and parliament might have in the country. It is on the chopping block. It is now on the altar.

Mr. Speaker, I can assure you that when people look at this their trust and faith is going to go further underground. We heard members of the government, these same individuals and the Prime Minister when in opposition, assuring Canadians that things would be different.

It was only a matter of time before someone raised the terrible spectre of Brian Mulroney. By comparison, and time will tell, we will see just how legitimate some of these claims are when stacked up against the Mulroney administration.

We all recall that image we saw of the rat pack, appropriately named. Who can forget the image of the current minister of heritage scrambling over desks, howling like a banshee, to get at a member of the Mulroney government? Where is she now? The silence is deafening when it comes to questions being asked of her own government.

My colleague from New Brunswick also alluded to the fact that this is hard-working taxpayers' money. This is the blood, sweat and tears of Canadians who give their money to the government in good faith, on the understanding that it will be spent in a responsible fashion, in the belief that the money is going to be used for legitimate purposes.

What we need from the government is an accounting. What we need is some semblance of responsible reaction, some transparency. These are the types of words the Prime Minister was very free to throw around while in opposition but very reluctant to embrace now that he is sitting on the government benches. Of course, that is not new. We saw similar platitudes and comments made about things like the GST and free trade. All of these were going to change. They were scrapped along with the helicopter program and most of the red book promises after the election.

What we need now is for the government to be completely open about what has taken place. It appears that this so-called scandal goes back to the very beginnings. It goes back to 1993, almost immediately after the government came to power, under the ministry of that now infamous name, Doug Young. The voters of New Brunswick had the good foresight to send Mr. Young a message in the last election. I suggest, and again time will tell, whether under his tutelage in this department the policies, principles and infrastructure were put in place to allow for this scandal to brood, fester and continue for years after.

We saw an unprecedented attempt by the current minister. It was a simultaneously behind covering and face saving exercise to point behind her to the previous minister, but I think she has to go back a little further to Mr. Young, to the very beginning.

I credit the media for this truth seeking exercise. It really began in the off season. It is astronomical when we think about it, but we know the Prime Minister in his comments to his caucus last week said that they should sit tight, batten down the hatches and this would go away. They have a budget coming and there are other things they can distract the Canadian public with. They can talk about clarity. They can talk about the muddy, ill timed, ill conceived bill they have foisted on the country, and hopefully the real issues of the country will go away, such as the problems in health care, the overburdened taxation system, the problems in education, crippling student debt, underfunding to the military and underfunding for the law enforcement agencies, all of which are not priorities. They will talk about constitutional matters which in the meantime will hopefully distract from the burgeoning and ballooning scandal taking place in the HRD department.

The timing and sequence of events set out by my colleague from New Brunswick about the infamous fax sheet that was sent with the deleted date were very interesting. Obviously I suggest an attempt was made to distance the minister from knowledge of the first instance when the matter was brought to her attention.

We know there was a shuffle in cabinet or a change in ministries in August. It stands to reason that an extensive briefing would take place when a new minister took over. The audit was already under way. Surely the previous minister would have had some conversation with the minister to let her know that this was something that might happen on her watch because it had already begun.

The communication breakdown is not new is this instance. We know of a similar situation. The current Minister of Fisheries and Oceans had dropped in his lap the fact that the Marshall decision was before the supreme court. His predecessor did not take the time to let him know that there was a crisis brewing. A lot of Chinese walls and walls of silence seem to surround the government when it comes to sharing bad news. It certainly does not want to share bad news with the opposition or the Canadian public.

This is something that goes to the very root of democracy. This goes to the very confidence of Canadians in their government. As painful and as ugly as it may seem, this entire exercise of uncovering what has taken place in this department is necessary if we are somehow to try to restore some semblance of integrity. It is very sad that using the word integrity in the political process has almost become an oxymoron.

I know hon. members opposite do not like to hear this. It is really tough to get hit with the truth, but I want the Canadian public to know that the Progressive Conservative Party supports the motion wholeheartedly. This is perhaps the beginning of the end for the reign of error of the Liberal government.

Canadians are cynical beyond belief and apathy has begun to set in. Parliament has been darkened by the performance of the minister and the government in this regard. The flag over the Peace Tower should be flying at half-staff today. The death of what remaining faith there was in the hearts and minds of Canadians may be on the altar today.

We need an external audit. It is obvious to everyone in this place and to the millions of Canadians who are watching that this has to take place if there is to be any shred, any scintilla of credibility left in the government. All of what it has said and now all of what it has done are before the Canadian public and have to be laid bare.

I welcome the opportunity to have taken part in this debate and I welcome the opportunity to continue to ask relevant questions of the government. Hopefully we will get some answers.