Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my colleague from Waterloo—Wellington.
I want to say at the outset that I am grateful to the member for Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup—Témiscouata—Les Basques for his timely motion.
Everyone knows that this subject has consumed the House since we returned from the winter break. In question period the opposition commands the agenda because it gets to ask the questions. There has been what I would call a feeding frenzy on this particular topic. The reason for that is because in six and a half years this is the first time the opposition has found common ground, one with the other.
Opposition members have not been very successful at criticizing the government or co-ordinating their efforts in the face of our major improvements to Canadian society over the last six years: the reduction of the deficit, the lowering of unemployment, bringing under control the nation's finances to the point that we now have the best financial situation we have had probably in 15 or 20 years.
Canadians know that, but we have found one area that needs a lot of improvement. Through an internal audit we have identified a section of our government that needs some serious work. Our internal audit told us some bad news, and we took it as bad news. We took it seriously and we admitted ownership because we are the government. We came up with an action plan to address it.
We did not dream up the action plan. We devised a plan and into it we incorporated the advice of the auditor general, the other financial institutions of the government, the Treasury Board Secretariat, and we have even called in the private sector to look at our plan and how well it will address the problems raised.
Because the specialty of Bloc Quebecois members is moral outrage, they have found this a very comfortable file to hone in on. I am actually surprised at how well they have slid into the agenda of the Reform Party. We all know why Reform Party members want to go after this file. They want to go after this file because they want to erode the confidence of Canadians in federal social programs.
They want to suggest to Canadians that HRDC is not well managed and to do that they have not painted the full picture. They have taken something that a painter might think of as painting a picture by paint by number. In the paint by number card that they have pulled out they are painting one section out of 60 over and over and over again.
I am trying to put it into perspective. One has to remember that the Department of Human Resources Development has a budget of $60 billion. For eight weeks the section that has commandeered the attention of the opposition and the media represents $1 billion or 1/60 of the department's budget.
I do not hear many complaints from those 3.7 million people who are receiving their old age security cheques. I do not hear many people complaining about their guaranteed income supplement. There are 1,381,000 of them. I do not hear too many people who have qualified for EI complaining about their cheques. There are 1,263,000 of them. Nor do I hear complaints from the 1.4 million families representing 2.6 million children who are receiving national children's benefits. Instead they attack what is a good department, what is representing the social programs administered by the federal government, with the exception of health which has its own department.
The Reformers are trying to paint a black picture based upon essentially a job creation fund that is part of that $1 billion and is worth $330 million. That is 1/180 of the department's budget. Now we have this in perspective: 1/180 of the department's budget is being attacked for eight weeks. That is 1/360 of the Government of Canada's budget. I ask Canadians whether this is worth eight weeks of the time of the House.
I am not trying to trivialize the problem within that 1/360 of spending. That is important and we take it seriously. We accept responsibility and we accept ownership. It has been said that we try to hide things. I invite all members to go their whips' offices to see the 16 binders of information, each one being five and a half inches thick and piled on top of one another. They almost reach to the ceiling. Therein they will find a description of every project that has been funded under grants and contributions across the country.
At the same time as we have collected this information for the perusal of all, the media, the opposition and our own members who want to know, we have been transparent. It is an unprecedented release of information for a government. We did not do that because the opposition was forcing our backs to the wall. We did that because we want to govern well. The population of today wants to know and we want to let the population know.
I have sent lists of the projects in my riding to various constituents who have asked for it. They have phoned me back with questions. It has created a great deal of work but for transparency purposes it is worth it. It is this minister who has led the drive to openness and transparency. I am proud to be assisting her because she is leading into the new era of the new century with that.
It has been said that there was a lot of money spent in 1997. It is true that the budget for this has gone down from the $3 billion, which is part of this, to less now because in the meantime we signed labour market development agreements with the provinces and a huge chunk of money was taken out and moved to them. If we compare 1996 with 1999 we will say that it has gone down. It was not because it went up in 1997 because there was an election. It was after 1997 that one at a time we signed agreements with the provinces and transferred the relevant training money to them, so today it looks like we are spending less. It was not for partisan purposes. That is a figment of the Bloc Quebecois' imagination.
I want to be clear. We are not talking about $1 billion. We are talking about the possibility of worrying about $330 million in the Canada jobs fund. Just to update the House, at this time we have recovered $225,729 because we have identified some overpayments with our work. We have called it back and it has arrived. It will be different tomorrow and it was different last week, as we gather the information and put it together day by day, but as of today we are owed $640.21.
I hope this puts it into perspective for the viewers who have been bored to death by eight weeks of talking about 1/360 of the Government of Canada's budget.