Debates of Feb. 8th, 2000

Questions Passed As Orders For Returns

[The Deputy Speaker]

Order, please. The point raised by the hon. member is right but not exactly.

The parliamentary secretary did not ask for the unanimous consent of the House to table documents. He is entitled to do so. He asked for the unanimous consent of the House to table a motion for the adoption of a committee report because he did not give notice of motion on this point. It was refused so he could not present that motion. That is the end of it.

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Verchères, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I have indeed understood—and your explanations were very useful but unnecessary—that this motion was on the Notice Paper. I did indeed understand that you asked whether members wanted to speak to the question. I indeed understood that you put the motion to a vote and that there was, apparently, from what you heard, unanimous consent.

I simply want to draw to your attention the fact that there was not unanimous consent, since my colleague from Charlevoix said no.

So I am asking to have today's Hansard record that there was not unanimous consent and that the report was adopted on division.

[The Deputy Speaker]

That is certainly possible. I will tell the clerk that is to be done. Everyone will no doubt agree.

Supply

[Preston Manning, Reform, Leader of the Opposition]

moved:

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.

[Dave Chatters, Reform, Athabasca, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to inform the House that all the Reform speakers will be splitting their time today on this motion.

Request For Emergency Debate

[The Deputy Speaker]

The House has received notice of a request for an emergency debate. It was not on my list and the Chair apologizes to the House.

[Guy St-Julien, Liberal, Abitibi, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I hereby request, under Standing Order 52, on behalf of Canadians, that the House now adjourn in order to hold an emergency debate on the dizzying increase in the price of gasoline at the pump, of diesel and of heating oil in Canada. The consumer has few if any ways to act.

My request is intended to remedy this by giving the Government of Canada the opportunity to take concrete action to bring costs to some reasonable level in the short term or for a temporary period.

I thank you, on behalf of the people of Canada, for considering my request and giving all members of this House the opportunity to intervene in this debate.

[The Deputy Speaker]

I am sorry to have to inform the hon. member for Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik that, at this point, his motion does not meet the requirements of our standing orders.

[Michel Bellehumeur, Bloc, Berthier—Montcalm, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I do not want to question the ruling you just made regarding the request for an emergency debate, but I have read Standing Order 52 and, given the extremely high cost of gasoline and its very significant impact on all Quebecers and Canadians, I absolutely cannot understand why, at this point, you would refuse to hold an emergency debate, in light of the importance of this issue from an economic point of view.

If you were to decide—

[The Deputy Speaker]

Order, please. The hon. member for Berthier—Montcalm is quite knowledgeable and knows the rules of the House very well. He knows that following a ruling from the Chair there is no opportunity for members to ask questions about or to question that ruling.

The Chair has made a ruling in the case of this motion for an emergency debate. At this time the Chair has ruled it does not meet the requirements of the standing order.

Hon. members are free to try again tomorrow or the next day or the next. It is possible that circumstances will change and the Chair will make a different decision on a different day, but at this time the Chair has made a decision, the matter has been decided, and despite enthusiasm members are free to arrange a debate on their own if they wish to do so.

As we all know, we often make arrangements to have such debates take place during the evening. The Chair is certainly always available to hold such a debate in the House. It may be that this evening, with the unanimous consent of the House, we could have such a debate.

Therefore, this is not a point of order, as the ruling has already been made. I hope everyone will accept that ruling from the Chair.

[John Solomon, NDP, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. This is not to suggest what your decision might be, because you make the decisions and we appreciate and respect that, but energy is the underpinning of our economy. Everything we do depends upon the price of energy. Right now the price of gasoline is about 10% higher than it was when the price of oil was 25% higher.

[The Deputy Speaker]

I know the hon. member could go on at length about the price of oil. We know that energy is important for the House as well. I can see that the House is bubbling with energy to get on with the debate on the motion of the hon. Leader of the Opposition, and I respectfully suggest this is where we should go.

The House resumed consideration of the motion.

Supply

[Preston Manning, Reform, Leader of the Opposition]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time this morning with my colleague, the hon. member for Calgary—Nose Hill.

Our subject will be the supply motion which deplores the mismanagement of taxpayers' dollars by the Department of Human Resources Development and expresses our total lack of confidence in the minister. If the motion is carried by the House, the minister would be obliged to resign.

In the course of the debate, my colleagues and others will be laying before the House the evidence that taxpayers' funds have been grossly mismanaged by the minister. In my remarks, however, I want to address violations of the principle of ministerial accountability by the Minister of Human Resources Development, violations which in themselves should oblige the resignation of the minister.

There are many definitions of the principle of ministerial accountability but one of the latest and best is contained in Erskine May's treatise on the law of privileges, proceedings and usages of parliament, the 22nd edition, 1997. It reads as follows:

...the following principles should govern the conduct of ministers of the Crown in relation to Parliament: ministers have a duty to parliament to account, and to be held to account, for the policies, decisions and actions of their departments and Next Step Agencies; it is of paramount importance that ministers give accurate and truthful information to Parliament, correcting any inadvertent error at the earliest possible opportunity. Ministers who knowingly mislead Parliament will be expected to offer their resignation to the Prime Minister;

As hon. members know, the handling of money through the transitional jobs fund has been suspect for years. Numerous questions have been asked concerning its administration, particularly respecting funds allocated to the Prime Minister's riding during the last session of the House.

As late as December of last year, inside and outside the House, the minister repeatedly denied that there were any problems worthy of concern. The appropriate approval processes were being followed. No moneys flowed until the approval process was completed. Nothing inappropriate was done. On and on she went denying any mismanagement and constantly affirming that all was well.

Now we discover that while the minister was making these very statements to the House, she had on her desk a departmental audit covering some 459 project files which revealed the following: 72% of the projects reviewed had no cashflow forecast; 46% had no estimate of the number of participants; 25% had no description of the activities to be supported; 25% provided no description of the characteristics of the participants; 11% did not even have a budget proposal; 11% had no description of expected results; 15% did not have an application on file from the sponsor; 8 out 10 files reviewed did not show evidence of financial monitoring; 87% of project files reviewed showed no evidence of supervision; and 97% of the files reviewed showed no evidence that anyone had checked to see if the recipient already owed money to the government.

This is overwhelming evidence of gross mismanagement of taxpayers' money. However, the fact that the minister knew these things and continually repeated and reassured the House that all was well, is an obvious violation of the minister's obligation to give accurate and truthful information to parliament. Because the minister has repeatedly violated this principle, the House should express its lack of confidence in the minister by passing the motion and she should resign.

In enforcing the principle of ministerial accountability, it is imperative that the House dig deeper into the root causes of ministerial accountability for funds spent by the human resources ministry. Here the trail leads right back to the Prime Minister himself and the use or misuse of the transitional jobs fund.

Prior to becoming Prime Minister, the current Prime Minister said in 1991:

When we form government, every minister in the cabinet...will have to take full responsibility for what is going on in his department. If there is any bungling in the department, ...the minister will have to take responsibility.

This was a statement of ministerial accountability by the Prime Minister but it has never been put into practice. The Prime Minister's ability to put it into practice has been compromised by his own conduct with respect to the use of the transitional jobs fund in his own riding.

When a transitional jobs fund grant was put into a trust fund to help a failing company in the Prime Minister's riding and someone eventually got $1.19 million from the suspect trust fund, which later proved to be illegal; when that someone was Claude Gauthier who had already purchased land from the Prime Minister's golf course and donated $10,000 to the Prime Minister's election campaign; when the business then being run by Gauthier got the money and laid off all but 62 of the original 115 employees for a net job loss of 53 jobs, all this done in the name of job creation; when Mr. Gauthier had already received a $6 million CIDA government contract; when another $11,000 got into the hands of René Fugère, a man who was under RCMP investigation for doing illegal lobbying for three other companies; when, in a memo to a department official, one of the human resources minister's staff instructed that the dollar amounts given to the two hotels in the Prime Minister's riding had to be artificially inflated to “keep the same amounts suggested by the Prime Minister during discussions with the promoters”.

When all these things happened with human resources funds in the Prime Minister's riding, and the Prime Minister excuses these things and refuses to accept any responsibility, what message does this send to other ministers, the civil service and the public at large?

If the Prime Minister can play fast and loose with taxpayers' money, allocated under inadequate financial guidelines for job creation, what is to stop other ministers or MPs from doing the same thing? What is to stop high and lower level bureaucrats from assuming that this type of conduct and handling of federal funds is perfectly acceptable behaviour?

Once that happens, when there is no example of financial accountability, responsibility or integrity at the top, the fish rots from the head down. Now the little scandal in Shawinigan has mushroomed into a billion dollar boondoggle at human resources.

The Prime Minister refuses to enforce the principle of ministerial accountability in the case of the human resources development minister. Why? Because he lacks the moral authority to do so.

It is therefore the duty of the House to enforce ministerial accountability in this case. It can do so by simply supporting the motion that is before us.

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

Mr. Speaker, I find it extremely ironic that the Leader of the Reform Party should be calling for transparency in the government, when his party just today and yesterday blocked a private member's bill that would open the access to information bill and enable members on all sides of the House to access all kinds of information.

I wish to draw to the attention of the member who just spoke that the government House leader of the Reform Party attacked my private member's Bill C-206 based on false information. Yesterday, the member for Fraser Valley said that the reason my revised bill should be blocked was that it unfortunately excluded polling information on the national unity file.

I will read to the member who just spoke what the bill actually says. It says that a head of a government institution may refuse to disclose any record requested under this act that contains advice or a recommendation developed by or—

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh.

[The Deputy Speaker]

Order, please. The Chair is reluctant to intervene without being provoked or pushed. I am feeling a little bit of provocation because I think the member for Wentworth—Burlington knows the rule, which is that a question or comment must be relevant to the speech of the member who spoke. I must say I am having trouble understanding how the Leader of the Opposition got into a discussion on the hon. member's private member's bill. I hope his question or comment will become correctly relevant to the Leader of the Opposition's speech.

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

Mr. Speaker, I just wanted to say that clause 21(1) says that opinion polls will be available under my revised Access to Information Act.

My point is simply that when an opposition party calls for transparency on the part of the government, which the member just did, surely it should not try to block private members' initiatives that bring out that very transparency.

Why on the one hand is the member calling for transparency on the part of the government and on the other blocking a private member's bill that would bring transparency to government?

[Preston Manning, Reform, Calgary Southwest, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the member's comments illustrate what is wrong with the government. The member does not want to talk about the issue at hand. The government does not want to talk about the issue at hand. The minister does not want to talk about it. The issue has nothing to do with the member's private member's bill.

The issue has everything to do with the mismanagement of a billion dollars of taxpayers' money and the fact that the minister stood in the House and said that all was well when an audit was sitting on her desk saying that all was not well. That is the issue being discussed here and not the subject being raised by the hon. member.

[John Solomon, NDP, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

Mr. Speaker, Canadians want their government to be accountable and responsible, if nothing else. In this particular situation, with the HRDC grants, we see a government that is not responsible and, it appears, will not be accountable either.

This is an important issue and one which the leader of the opposition and the Reform Party have undertaken to bell the cat, so to speak.

Would the Leader of the Opposition give us his views on the Minister for International Trade, who was brought from Quebec by the Prime Minister as the person who would save Canada, the éminence grise who was going to do all the wonderful things to back up the Liberal Party and make our country united, the man who was put in charge of the department, and who has, in my view and I think in the view of all Canadians, been a royal American disaster?

Can the Leader of the Opposition tell us whether we should have both the Minister for International Trade and the Minister of Human Resources Development resign or just the Minister for International Trade? Also, would he support an investigation by a parliamentary committee or the RCMP into this terrible waste of taxpayers' money?

[Preston Manning, Reform, Calgary Southwest, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I agree with the hon. member that the responsibility for this boondoggle does not stop with the current minister. It does go back to the previous minister of human resources. I would argue that it even goes back to the minister for human resources before that, who is now the foreign affairs minister but who was there when the government set in place this type of program.

I would be quite in favour of those ministers being held accountable for this.

In terms of an investigation, the current minister should resign immediately. I would like to see the auditor general take a full look at this. There are other investigations that could be conducted and then further accountability both at the ministerial and the bureaucrat level be determined and appropriate disciplinary actions taken at those levels as well.

[Diane Ablonczy, Reform, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Mr. Speaker, this is an important debate for Canadians because it involves their money. This is not government money. This is the money of Canadians and we must never forget that because Canadians work hard for the dollars they trust us with and in this case they have been sadly let down.

In the final analysis, we in the opposition can do our very best in the most competent, able manner we know to hold the government to account but in a democracy the people do rule. The people, in the final analysis, will have to decide what messages they will send to their elected representatives, what pressure they intend to put on the government and what they intend to do in giving their support to the people they want to entrust with their money.

We know how effective people can be. We saw this recently when the government made an extremely ill-advised effort to give $20 million to professional hockey clubs. The public outrage was so strong that the government immediately backed down.

I would say to Canadians watching this debate that they need to make a judgment about what they will do, what they will say and what their attitude will be toward this situation.

The Liberals are saying that the opposition is exaggerating. Let me read from the audit report that was produced by the government. It is entitled “Program Integrity/Grants and Contributions”. The first part is a misnomer, I would say. The report is dated January 2000. I will read from page 7. I urge Canadians to get their hands on it and read it for themselves because I do not have time to read a lot of it.

Of the 459 project files reviewed, 15% did not contain an application. This is not the opposition making an exaggerated statement; this is the government's own audit.

Of the remaining applications, the following elements were missing: 72% were missing cash flow forecasts; 46% were missing the anticipated number of participants; 25% were missing a description of the activities to be supported; 25% were missing the characteristics of participants or the audience; 11% were missing a budget proposal; 11% were missing a description of expected results. There was no documentation on internal or external consultations in 70% of the project files reviewed. Two-thirds of the files reviewed did not contain an analysis or rationale for recommending or accepting the project. In 97% of the files reviewed, there was no evidence on file that sponsors had been checked for outstanding debts to HRDC prior to project acceptance. In 100% of the files there were no documented attempts made to identify debts outside of HRDC.

This is not an exaggeration by the opposition. This is the government's own document giving these horrendous numbers, proving government ineptitude and negligence of massive proportions in the handling of public money.

The Prime Minister is trying to say that only 37 projects are a problem. He said that 37 projects have some problems representing $30 million. Let me talk about the facts. The fact is that this audit was a representative sample of all the projects that spend $1 billion every year of taxpayers' and public money. If this is a representative sample, then it is not 37 projects that had some problems; it is projected upward to cover all the projects that were studied.

From the audit, the numbers show that in 100% of the cases there were no background checks done on what kind of money these people might have owed to the government. There are some other disturbing numbers too. In 87% of the cases there was no overseeing or supervision of how the money was spent. In 80% of the cases there was no financial checking. These numbers are so massive they cannot be exaggerated. One cannot exaggerate 100%.

Canadians need to know that the government not only is not acknowledging the scope of the problem, it is actually misleading them by trying to minimize it, by trying to bring those numbers down.

The minister has said she brought this forward because she wanted to be transparent. Let us look at the facts. The audit was done last summer. It is inconceivable that numbers like this, numbers in the 80%, 90% and 100% range, would not have rung alarm bells through the department right up to the minister's desk and the Prime Minister's office.

If that was not the case then clearly the government is not in charge. It does not know what is going on. It is in the dark. It really is not in charge of our affairs because it does not know of massive problems. That is inconceivable. That is unbelievable. That explanation insults the intelligence of Canadians.

The elected people who are in charge of these affairs did know and they chose to hide that in the House. Here are some quotes from the House.

After he was elected, the Prime Minister said on June 16, 1994, “There can be no substitute for responsibility at the top. I vow to you, to this House, to Canadians, that I will never abdicate that responsibility. I will never pass the buck”. What did he do? This is what he is saying when these scandalous numbers come out, “I didn't know”.

Then the former minister who is now the Minister for International Trade said on October 9, 1997 when there were allegations that there was an exchange of grants for contributions to the Liberal Party, “They have been approved by the department and are based on merit all the time, so much so that after I called the police in I asked my deputy minister, Mel Cappe, to review the whole process in which my department was proceeding”. This was in 1997. We were assured that everything was under review and everything was under control, no problem.

Then the present minister on November 4, 1999 said, “Mr. Speaker, let us be clear here. The appropriate approval process was undertaken in this regard. The department did the due diligence on the opportunities. The stakeholders reviewed the information and recommended investment. No moneys flowed until the approval process was complete”. This is when the government knew there were massive problems that could not even be exaggerated if one wanted to because the numbers are so bad.

We have to tell Canadians the truth about this matter. We need to do it clearly and they have to have the facts. I would say to Canadians listening to this that they need to make a judgment based on the facts. The facts are in the audit. The facts are as I have quoted. The facts were covered up.

My party requested this audit on January 17 when we found out about it and guess what happened two days later. The minister stepped forward two days later and said, “Because I want to be transparent, I am releasing this audit that was done last summer that I have known about for months because I am so honest and transparent”. She was hiding the fact that she knew very well that the truth was going to come out because we were going to get the facts and we were going to make them public if she did not.

This is unacceptable. Canadians have a right to expect that their money is going to be properly managed. They have a right to expect that there will be no hiding of the truth, no minimizing of the truth, that the government will step forward, be candid with them, have full disclosure and deal with the problem in an appropriate manner. That is not happening.

Canadians should be watching this debate. They should get the facts and they should make a judgment about the competence and trustworthiness of this government in managing their money, Canadians' money, and that is the fact we must never forget.

I move:

That the motion be amended by inserting after the words “express its” the word “deep”.

[The Deputy Speaker]

The hon. member for Calgary—Nose Hill has proposed an amendment which would be in order but it has been seconded by the seconder of the original motion and therefore is not receivable.

The hon. member for Edmonton North is pleased to second the motion. Then I will put the motion to the House.

The question is on the amendment. Questions and comments.

[Gérard Asselin, Bloc, Charlevoix, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask a question, through you, of my colleague from the Reform Party who has just spoken.

It is too easy for the former Minister of Human Resources Development, the member for Papineau—Saint-Denis, to hide behind the present Minister of Human Resources Development. I believe the one billion dollars lost in the departmental boondoggle, money belonging to the workers and to the unemployed who also made contributions, is too much.

Yesterday, during oral question period, many members of all opposition parties called for the minister to resign. It is my personal conviction that the Prime Minister will continue to refuse the resignation of the present minister because he knows the responsibility is not all hers, that the former Minister of Human Resources Development, the member for Papineau—Saint-Denis, is also responsible.

The Prime Minister will not be able to call for the two of them to resign either because, as we saw on television, he trivialized the matter, saying that it was nothing serious, an administrative error, something that happens fairly often. He treated it as if it were just a few crumbs under the table.

Would my colleague agree to acknowledge that the primary responsibility lies with the former Minister of Human Resources Development, now the Minister of International Trade, and that the present Minister of Human Resources Development inherited this mess? Unfortunately, she too has a duty to resign, because she misinformed the House. The two of them must resign.

[Diane Ablonczy, Reform, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is an accurate observation that the former minister also bears responsibility. This shocking mismanagement happened on his watch as well. Just a year ago, on February 4, he said in the House in response to one of my questions: “Mr. Speaker, I want things to be very very clear. Officials from my department reviewed these project applications as they do with much diligence. They review all projects the same way. They recommended them for approval after they met all standard eligibility criteria”.

Clearly this was not the case. The former minister knew or ought to have known this, misled the House and also handed over this huge mess to his successor. His successor unfortunately had the same course of dealings, denying the problem, covering up the problem, refusing to be candid when questions were asked in the House and letting the mess continue until the whistle was blown by the opposition.

Clearly there have been two inept ministers appointed by this Prime Minister. They have been in charge of the largest spending department of this government. This department spends $60 billion of our money every year. A billion dollars is a thousand million dollars. These are huge amounts of money. We have a right to expect competence, believability and trustworthiness in the ministers the Prime Minister puts forward. He has failed us on every count. They have failed us and they must be held to account for that.