Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague the member for Acadie—Bathurst for his remarks.
I have just come from the HRD committee. The former deputy minister of HRDC was before the committee for a couple of hours. I managed to get in a couple of questions before coming to speak in the House.
One thing really struck me. Obviously committees are important for questions and answers and trying to uncover what happened at HRDC. But if anybody in the House or in the public believes that we will get to the truth of what happened at HRDC in terms of the internal audit and the findings that have come out of that and what happens at this point, they are badly mistaken. It is a very limited format. The deputy minister was there for a couple of hours. A member gets one or two questions. The limits of that format really prescribe that we will not get at the truth.
I wanted to say that because the Bloc Quebecois motion before us today calls for an independent public inquiry. As my colleague from Acadie—Bathurst has said, we in the NDP wholeheartedly support the motion. We have been calling for an independent public inquiry from day one, for the last six weeks when the issue first surfaced in the House. We believe that if the Canadian public is really to understand what has happened at HRDC and in fact to understand how government works and how these decisions are made, it will take an independent public inquiry to do that job, with the resources and scope, and unfettered by the rules of the committee and even what happens here in the House. We support the motion.
There is another very important reason for holding a public inquiry. We in the NDP philosophically have always strongly supported job development programs. We support the role of the government in intervening in the marketplace and trying to ensure that we bring about a greater equality in our society. The marketplace is the greatest instrument of inequality in the country. We believe very strongly that the purpose and role of government among other things is to provide an intervention and to use public funds and to say that job development is a legitimate use of public funds. We believe that.
What has happened in the last six weeks in the House has undermined that. If there is any question about that, just look at the Reform Party opposition day motion yesterday. What have Reformers been doing? They have been asking questions every day in the House about the HRDC scandal. They have chosen the path basically to undermine these programs and now even say that they want to divert moneys from other programs in the last federal budget and put them back into the Canada health and social transfer.
We have a very different view and perspective on the issue. We want to see public programs strengthened. We want to see these public programs have credibility.
The Liberals have played right into the hands of the Reform Party. Because of this scandal, because they have refused to come clean, they have played right into the hands of the Reform Party. Now there is a great public cynicism about any expenditure of public funds. Our job is to restore confidence. One way to do that is through a public inquiry.
What would a public inquiry do? Two key issues need to be looked at and as I said earlier, they will not be addressed in any parliamentary committee.
The first is administration. There is no question that the internal audit uncovered very sloppy practices. Paperwork was not done. Follow up was not done. Accounting was not done. There are the administrative issues in terms of what happens when the public service is cut back, what happens when people are thrown out of work and the work is loaded on to the remaining public servants. I think it was 5,000 people who were thrown out of their jobs at HRDC.
Issues in terms of the administration of the department, the accountability, the hierarchy, how those decisions were made are very important to get at because my guess is, and I think everybody in the House would agree, that what has happened at HRDC is probably a reflection of what goes on in other departments.
We are talking about a massive department. It is the single largest federal government department. If those problems were uncovered in a random internal audit, what else is there that needs to be dealt with and brought into line?
That would be the first major issue in terms of a public inquiry. It must look at the administrative questions in terms of this huge department that effected cutbacks and has sloppy administration and what needs to be done there.
The second issue and the reason for our support of the motion is to get at something that is a lot more difficult to examine. It has to be done very carefully and with a sense of good faith and genuine process. It is to look at the relationship of a parliament, a governing party and the bureaucracy. That is the political nature of the grants and contributions.
We are all elected representatives. We are political creatures. I have been involved in politics for 25 years. I understand politics. I know we are political people. We make political decisions. However something that happened at HRDC goes beyond that. I believe that billions of dollars were being used for a partisan political purpose. To me that goes beyond the line. The questions that have been raised in the House day after day have not been answered. That is another reason an independent public inquiry is needed.
We in the NDP want to know exactly what are the rules. I asked Mr. Cappe that a few minutes ago in the committee. The knowledge I have is that there is a huge variation in terms of how members of parliament were involved in these decisions. In some areas, and I would suggest Liberal dominated areas, the involvement of the members was massive and it was very politicized. In other areas it was much more of a staffing decision about the transitional jobs fund or other programs.
As one member of parliament I want to know that there are fair rules. I want to know that my riding or my colleague's riding of Winnipeg Centre are not being treated differently from a government member's riding because we are in opposition. It scares the hell out of me when we see what is coming out of the audit and the questions that have come up. We see the contradictions, the double standards, the different rules depending on where people are from and who they are. That is scandalous. We have got to get to the bottom of that.
Some members represent ridings that have very high unemployment, yet they did not qualify for transitional jobs funds. Why? We were told that the unemployment rate was not high enough, because the region we are part of, such as Vancouver or Winnipeg, did not have high enough unemployment. We said fine, if that was the rule we could live by that. Then we found out that in other areas exceptions were made. Fuzzy little pockets were created and somehow lots of money slipped into areas with much lower unemployment. Warning bells went off in my head when I heard that.
We want there to be clear rules. We want there to be an end to the politicization. We also want to get at some questions of where public funds should go. I heard the government member in response to my colleague from Acadie—Bathurst say that it is not a matter of who gets the money, it is the jobs that are created. I say that it is a matter of who gets the money.
I have big questions about why when we look at the 100 most profitable corporations in Canada 49 of them including the five major banks get public funds. Who is handing out what and to whom? That is the question. Why would we support a program that puts other businesses out of work? If some guy wants to create the sock company of the world and it turns out that he is putting every other poor little business person around him out of business, is that a good expenditure of public funds? I do not think so. There are some very major questions.
At the end of the day we represent the Canadian public. Canadians have a right to feel a level of confidence in the expenditure of their funds. It is our duty to be accountable in the House for those funds. It is the government's duty to be accountable.
I believe that only if there is an independent public inquiry will the public's confidence be restored in terms of HRDC and other departments and then we can move on. We support the motion. We call on the government to not let politics get in the way of this. Do the right thing and support an independent public inquiry.