Madam Speaker, I am pleased to participate in the debate on a motion which recommends that the government transfer $1.5 billion from HRDC to the CHST. It is an interesting motion because it brings to the table two very important subject matters.
First, I want to comment on the HRDC side of the equation. When this issue first came to the House there were a lot of numbers being thrown around. As time has gone on the numbers have been refined substantially.
I watched with interest a press conference with HRDC officials who were answering questions about the so-called 37 flagged files which had problems. Being a chartered accountant and having headed up an internal audit department in a large corporation, I know what is involved in an audit. I know about the planning and the due care and the checking that is done and the time that is associated with it. The HRDC officials described to the media and to Canadians that the work that had been done with regard to those 37 files was, in fact, not an audit at all. The reason it was called an audit report was that it came out of a department called internal audit. What it was, as they described it, were reports on visitations by HRDC employees who went to organizations that had received program funding. They looked at a file and saw what was or was not there. They had a little bingo card, checked off a few things and then they were on their way. By any criteria whatsoever, those were not audits.
The proof that they were not audits was that if audits had been done they would have made reasonable inquiries to satisfy the deficiencies they noted.
Subsequent to the flagging of those files, auditors were sent in. Based on the last report I saw, I understand that audits have been done on 34 of the 37 files and each and every one of the deficiencies noted by the visitations have been cleared.
We have to take some care about how we characterize the work that has been done in the internal audit area with regard to deficiencies. In fact, the deficiencies were apparent deficiencies and subsequently proved not to be deficiencies.
I look forward to the final report on the balance of the three audits to judge for myself whether funds were appropriately or inappropriately used. I have been assured, and Canadians should be assured, that in the event any funds which were transferred or provided to groups or organizations were inappropriately used, the government always has the option, and will exercise the option, to recoup the funds which were not spent properly or take collection actions through legal means. Canadians should have that assurance.
There are also ongoing RCMP investigations. Some of the work in other areas has led to questions and allegations have been made. The appropriate step is to ask the RCMP to do the work, and that has happened.
It should be pointed out that the allegations of mismanagement are not against the government. Rather, they are against the participants or recipients of the moneys. It is very important for members to understand that the RCMP is looking into allegations of mismanagement by third parties, not by the government.
I would like to cite a couple of examples of media spin. One example was Wal-Mart. There was a big story that Wal-Mart got a big grant. The facts are that a construction company got a grant to hire people to work on a construction site. They were constructing a distribution centre for Wal-Mart, which was going to have its products shipped through that centre. Wal-Mart did not get the grant, but it was convenient for the press and others to suggest that somehow it did. That was not the case.
There was also the case of McGill University. It submitted an application for $60,000, but it ultimately received $160,000. That was not because someone arbitrarily decided to give it extra moneys for some unknown reason. The additional moneys were advanced to McGill because the program it was proposing, on a small scale, was an excellent program and it was encouraged to expand it to provide a broader number of employment opportunities to people, which raised the amount of the grant to $160,000.
With regard to the McGill file, there also was an item of some $10,000 which was flagged. It was one of the 37. The proper documentation was not within the file. Subsequently the auditors found, to their satisfaction, proper documentation for each and every penny that McGill was advanced. There is another example which received quite a bit of play in the press, and yet once all of the facts were in, once people had done their jobs, the allegations that were raised were appropriately discharged.
I want to say that at this point I am not passing judgment on all of the files. Obviously we have not seen all of the information. However, it appears, with the substantive work that has already been done, that it is clear the government and HRDC officials, those important employees, are doing a good job of protecting the resources of the Canadian taxpayer, because the government does not have its own money.
I want to shift to the health care side, only because today I had lunch with Sir George Alleyne, who is an inspiration to a lot of people because of his work around the world. He was actually knighted by Queen Elizabeth. We spoke about the importance of our health care system. I wish he could address this Chamber to let us know about the state of health care around the world and how important it is that we have a value system associated with health care.
I raise this issue about a value system associated with health care because the National Forum on Health began in 1994 at the request of the government. Health care experts from across the country spent two years studying Canada's health care system and consulting with Canadians about what they wanted from their health system.
One of their most important observations was that health care costs had risen disproportionately to the marginal improvement in health status. They gave the example that from 1975 to 1993 real per capita health expenditures increased from approximately $1,100 to $2,000 per capita. That was according to Health Canada in 1996. They concluded that spending more money on health care costs does not necessarily lead to better health. That is the crux of the issue.
The experts which the Parliament of Canada engaged to look at our health care system came to the conclusion and the direction that parliamentarians should all be aware that spending more money does not necessarily translate into better health.
The value question which I am sure Sir George would want to tell us about has to do with what Canadians want from their health care system. In looking through the annex documents to the National Forum on Health I found some interesting points. They said that an opinion formed with relatively little engagement or with poor information would be less stable in the long term than one formed under conditions of high engagement and good information.
What they were saying was that we have to work together with the provinces and with Canadians to determine what the value system is that should be underpinning our health system. It is not simply a matter of throwing more money at the health care system and saying “Keep doing what you are doing”. The important thing is to determine whether we are getting good value for our money.
I have many more points that I would like to raise, but I will highlight what Canadians said to the National Forum on Health on what their various values were for our health care system. The first and most important was efficiency in the system. Second was the quality of access. Third was the performance on results. Fourth was prevention. Fifth was freedom of choice. Sixth was a compassionate system. And seventh was flexibility within our health care system.
I believe the important thing for Canadians to know now is that the Minister of Health has undertaken to meet with his provincial counterparts to have the dialogue necessary to start the process of determining how our health care system can be reformed to meet those values which Canadians hold so dearly. Once those ministers have agreed, then we will be able to come back to parliament and determine how we can establish sustainable funding for Canada's health care system.