Debates of April 4th, 2000

Supply

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

moved:

That an Order of the House do issue for all departmental audit reports to be tabled within 15 days of their completion and permanently referred to the appropriate standing committees, that audit reports since January 1, 1999, be tabled within 15 days after the adoption of this motion, and that all audit reports requested under the Access to Information Act be tabled forthwith.

Mr. Speaker, today is the day that the Canadian Alliance Party is able to set the agenda for debate in the House. The topic for debate, the issue which we wish to have debated today, is the issue of unlawful and unreasonable delays in providing to members of parliament documents under access to information.

This may at first glance seem like a rather administrative, routine matter to be debated in the House of Commons, but in fact the issue goes to the very root of democracy. Democracy means rule by the people, but clearly the people cannot govern in any effective or meaningful sense if they do not know what is happening, if they do not know what is going on, if they do not know what government is doing with their money and with their affairs.

In recent days we have come up against a refusal or delay or neglect of the government to follow legislative guidelines, that is the law with respect to the provision of information requested on behalf of the people of Canada.

This is an extremely serious matter. I urge all members of the House to take it seriously. If government is able to hide and cover the actions it is taking then clearly the transparency, openness and accountability which are necessary in a true democracy are being undermined and even destroyed. Therefore we have brought forward the motion today for debate. I will read it for the House and for Canadians:

That an Order of the House do issue for all departmental audit reports to be tabled within 15 days of their completion and permanently referred to the appropriate standing committees, that audit reports since January 1, 1999, be tabled within 15 days after the adoption of this motion, and that all audit reports requested under the Access to Information Act be tabled forthwith.

What is so alarming about the motion is that it should not have been necessary. Under the law, under the government's own guidelines and indeed pursuant to its own promises to Canadians, the motion should never have had to be brought before the House.

It is a treasury board guideline that all departmental audit reports are public as soon as they are completed. We should not be having to ask that those reports be tabled. They should automatically be made public, but the guidelines of the government are being ignored and flouted by the government itself. It is a shameful situation.

We have asked that when these reports, these audits come forward, they be immediately referred to the appropriate standing committee of the House. Instead they are being hidden and kept under wraps. We have had a very difficult time receiving them. Even audits that have been produced years ago have not been forthcoming to committees of the House.

We are also asking that all audit reports since January 1, 1999, be tabled within 15 days. Again we should not have to ask that. This is a clear guideline already of government which it is not following. We are also asking that all the audit reports we have requested under access to information be tabled immediately.

Why are we asking for that? It is because a number of audits the official opposition and other opposition parties have requested have not been provided as the law requires. The law requires that access to information requests be responded to within 30 days. Contrary to the law, the government has now delayed some requests for audit reports for over 45 days.

I am a member of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Human Resources Development. The committee asked for two audits which were completed in 1991 and 1994 for the Department of Human Resources Development. It was fully three weeks before a committee of the House was provided by that government department with the documents requested, documents which were done years ago. There is absolutely no excuse for this lack of openness and responsiveness to clear direction and requests from members of the House.

The department kept saying it had to translate them. In an officially bilingual country it is (a) beyond belief that those important documents had not already been provided in both official languages and (b) unbelievable that they could not have been translated very quickly with the first class translation services available in the House of Commons. I have seen the government translate reams of material virtually overnight when it is motivated, but all of a sudden when it does not want documents to be provided to members of parliament all these procedural obstacles magically appear.

It is completely unacceptable. I hope that every member of the House, whether on the opposition side or the government side, will be outraged by this abrogation of their clear privileges and of the clear duty owed to Canadians for openness, transparency and timeliness in the provision of information.

We are all aware that the government's refusal and delay in providing even the most basic information requested is due to the fact that it has been caught in the most flagrant and outrageous abuse and misuse of public money in the human resources department. There is troubling evidence and increasing evidence that misuse and abuse is happening in other departments as well. I would like to advise the House that I am splitting my time with the member for Nanaimo—Cowichan.

The government has gone into an alarming bunker mode. That alarm was brought forcibly to the committee one week ago by the information commissioner, an independent individual appointed to be a watchdog over government to ensure that it carries out its responsibility to Canadians to be open and timely in the provision of information to which Canadians are entitled.

The information commissioner tabled with the committee what I believe is an unprecedented document, a memo from the Treasury Board of Canada which essentially said two things. One was to make sure it knew about any access requests brought forward. Big brother is watching. Instead of information just going out, now the highest reaches of the government are making sure they are told everything that is being requested. The memo also asked for the audit reports so that it could look them over and decide how to deal with them.

We have some very troubling developments in the way the government is operating. We see a lack of openness and transparency that Canadians have a right to demand and expect from their government. We also see the tendency of the government to flout the rules, regulations, safeguards and even the laws put into place to ensure openness in government.

This will be our concern for debate today. We urge all members of the House to support our motion to put an end to what we see as a very difficult and unacceptable situation for the House and for Canadians.

[Lynn Myers, Liberal, Waterloo—Wellington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with some interest to the member opposite and was quite dismayed that she would use words such as flout the law and like skirting around the issues.

She has tried to grandstand on the precise issue of HRDC for way too long and to carve out her so-called 15 minutes of fame. It will not work. Canadians see through that kind of shenanigans by whatever that party is now calling itself, be it Reform or CCRAP, or Alliance of whatever nature it tries to be. She has never once apologized to the House and to Canadians for the outrageous statements she has made vis-à-vis the HRDC department.

Here and now in this great house of democracy, the Parliament of Canada, I ask the member whether she has the internal fortitude to stand on her feet in the House and apologize for the outrageous statements she has made against people who are disabled and have received HRDC grants, students who have received HRDC, and people in need across this great country of ours. Will she stand on her feet today to apologize and say full well that it was not, as she likes to say, a boondoggle but rather money well spent?

Instead of going after us on the government side for investments well made in terms of jobs and other things, will she state finally and categorically that she apologizes for the outrageous statements she has made repeatedly?

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

Mr. Speaker, it is outrageous that a member of parliament, an elected representative of the people of Canada, would ask for an apology from someone who is doing a job on behalf of the Canadian people.

I hope the member's constituents were listening to him just now, demanding an apology for someone holding his government to account and trying to stop it from stonewalling and hiding information to which the people of Canada are entitled by law.

I notice the member is not dismayed that his own government is flouting the law of the land because the law of the land under the Access to Information Act says that documents requested must be provided within 30 days. Access requests are now routinely delayed far past the 30 day limit. Some of them, without any notice or request, have already been delayed for 45 days.

We have also received letters saying that we will not receive the information that we requested which, by law, we must receive within 30 days. That is not being done. In fact, we have been notified that we will not receive it for 60 or 90 days. In other words, we will not receive information to which Canadians are entitled until after the House recesses for the summer in which case the government will be off the hook.

I wonder if the member is dismayed by this clear breaking of the law by the government and the disrespect for Canadians that entails.

[Reed Elley, Reform, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to join in this most important debate. The motion before us should not be necessary. Unfortunately, the Liberal government has taken upon itself to eliminate or reduce the ability of any of the opposition parties to effectively hold the government accountable for the public good.

Since 1993 the government has used one form or another of time allocation over 60 times in the House of Commons. That does not include the many times that committees have used similar tactics to limit or pre-ordain the witness list and the amount of time the committee will spend on a given topic or to select an issue and where or if the committee will travel.

In addition to the time allocations the government has imposed on all opposition parties in the House, I believe that it has made every attempt to thwart true democracy. When the government attempts to hide the information that should by law be readily available to all members of the public, including the opposition parties, then we have a travesty of democracy. It is for this reason that the Canadian Alliance has brought forth this motion today. It is appalling that the official opposition must be forced to bring this motion forward. Let us look at the government record. Unfortunately it is not a very pretty sight.

This past January the Minister of Human Resources Development held a hastily prepared news conference to break the bad news that an internal audit did not meet the standards that are expected by Treasury Board guidelines and more important, the standards of the general public. Although the minister has unsuccessfully attempted to overshadow the real reason that she suddenly came clean on this issue, the truth is easy to see for all who want to see it.

She did not release the audit simply because she wanted to act in a transparent and clear manner. She did not release the audit because the audit had just been completed and an update to the general public was therefore appropriate. She did not release the audit because her colleagues in other ministries were conducting the affairs of government in an accountable manner. That would be too straightforward for the government and it does not like to do things in a straightforward manner.

No, the minister released the damning audit for one simple reason. The official opposition had filed an access to information request for it. The official opposition had asked for it and both the minister and her officials knew that the report must have the government's spin prior to its falling into the hands of the opposition. The audit paints the Ministry of Human Resources Development in a terrible light. Full disclosure is required; in fact, it is absolutely necessary.

Within days of the access to information request being filed, the minister found herself in front of the cameras and media and the firestorm had begun. The minister has felt the heat of the opposition in the House of Commons and the heat of the press throughout the country. Even the spin doctors cannot control this one. The government has been caught in its own web of arrogance and will ultimately fail because of it. Of that I am certain. We only wait for the day when it occurs.

We all know the access to information guidelines. For the benefit of those who do not, let me summarize the overall concept.

The government maintains a vast database of information on everything that it does. The access to information regulations state that the majority of this information is to be available to the public.

I recognize the benefits of the Internet in this part of the equation. Many documents, including the words that we speak today, will be on the Internet by tomorrow, available to virtually anyone who has access to a computer.

The guidelines also state that the citizens of Canada have access to these documents. By filling out a simple request form and submitting it along with a $5 administration fee, they can ask for almost anything that the government has on record. The guidelines are also very clear in the length of time that the department has in order to complete the access request. All requests, by law, must be completed within 30 days.

Let us look at the reality of the situation. Does the government meet its own guidelines? Unfortunately the government does not even come close. While many requests are submitted, the results are often extremely slow in returning. For example, the official opposition currently has 29 access to information requests that one government department, Human Resources Development Canada, is now late in responding to. That should not come as a great surprise. However, some responses are as much as 90 days overdue.

Some will ask is this is really important; is the opposition just being picky with its criticism? The answers to these questions may be found in a quote from the information commissioner when he appeared before the standing committee on HRDC on March 28, 2000. He stated, “The right of access is one of the cornerstones of our democratic process and one of the best tools available to ensure responsible government”. The information commissioner, the person who oversees the access to information process for the federal Government of Canada, regards the right of access as one of the cornerstones of our democratic process and one of the best tools available to ensure responsible government.

A cornerstone of our democratic process, that is what the government is sadly lacking. Simply put, the party opposite lacks the integrity of a democratic government. Its arrogance and lack of accountability have placed true democracy on the endangered species list.

This is not just some pie in the sky theory that my colleagues and I are addressing. Listen to what Treasury Board stated in its letter of decision dated May 26, 1994. The access to information policy is: “To simplify the process for acquiring copies of reports, and to deliver on the government's commitment for more openness, the policy requires that departments make the final version of review reports, including internal audit and evaluation reports, accessible to the public”, and this is the really good part, “without requiring a formal access request”.

HRDC and Treasury Board are breaching their own policies by withholding this information until an access request is final. This is not acceptable. Furthermore, it is not right. Public access and disclosure is being grossly mismanaged. Now, as a result of the negative report that has slammed HRDC, both Treasury Board and the Privy Council Office require that they be told what audits have been requested, what bad news is within them and what the official spin will be prior to their release.

Listen again to what the information commissioner stated on March 28, 2000 when he appeared before the standing committee on human resources development. He said “The problem, however, arises when the communication concerns of the government are allowed to take precedence over the public's right to timely access to information”. I hope that the members of the government are listening today to what that means and what it says.

I respect any member of the House when we have philosophical differences of opinion. When we are collectively trying to solve a problem, I may not agree with their proposed solution. But it is a very sad day indeed when members of the public and the opposition parties are thwarted in their ability to have full disclosure to the government's activities. With the loss of access to information is the loss of trust, the loss of public accountability and the loss of true democracy.

I fully support this motion and ask for the support of the members of the House of Commons.

In conclusion, I move:

That the motion be amended by replacing the number “15” with the number “30”.

[Ken Epp, Reform, Elk Island, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. For clarity's sake, did you read the motion to say the numbers 15 or the number? I heard only number and it is plural.

[The Deputy Speaker]

I believe it is only one number but I will check the wording on the motion. There is only one number in the motion. The number is 15 and it is being replaced I understand with the number 30.

The question is on the amendment. The hon. member for Waterloo-Wellington.

[Lynn Myers, Liberal, Waterloo—Wellington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with some interest to the member for Nanaimo—Cowichan. I was astounded to hear him try to take credit for somehow flushing out the government in this all-important area when in fact it was the minister herself who brought forward the audit results.

I find it somewhat disconcerting that the members opposite, the Reformers, CCRAP party, alliance, or whatever they are these days would try to take credit. They should apologize.

[Ken Epp, Reform, Elk Island, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. It was only a day or two ago that the Speaker ruled specifically for the second time that the proper name of our party would be used. It is the Canadian Alliance. I urge you to not allow other people to distort that.

[The Deputy Speaker]

I had pointed out the name Canadian Alliance to the hon. member for Waterloo—Wellington. I hope he will use it since that is the name of the official opposition.

[Lynn Myers, Liberal, Waterloo—Wellington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad to be told about the real name by the hon. member for Elk Island who not so recently called me a liar in the House. It was so recorded in Hansard .

[The Deputy Speaker]

I do not think we had better go there. It would be better if we stayed with questions and comments on the speech of the hon. member for Nanaimo—Cowichan.

[Lynn Myers, Liberal, Waterloo—Wellington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I was thinking about the grandstanding by the hon. member for Calgary—Nose Hill. I read a comment from her constituent, a Calgary psychologist, Dr. Allan Mandel, about her allegations with regard to the HRDC money which she raised this morning. He said, “In my case, I can certainly say that this is absolutely not true”, and that he in fact had not donated any money especially to the Liberal Party. He said, “To me, this is a program to stimulate employment and to stimulate getting young workers into the workforce. I think it is great”.

Gina Cameron, program co-ordinator for the Beddington Heights Community Association in the member's own riding had this to say about her MP attacking these all-important programs: “To say that they are a waste of money, she has not been in these doors, she has no concept of what goes on, so it is sort of probably an empty statement”—coming from the member for Calgary—Nose Hill—“I could not run an efficient, well-run program without it. I really could not”.

I would say to her she should get into her constituency and try to see the good work that is done.

[Leon Benoit, Reform, Lakeland, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The last presentation was made by the member for Nanaimo—Cowichan. Any member who would like to make a comment or ask a question should be referring to the presentation made by him, not by the former speaker. If the member wants to make political cheap shots at least they should be directed at what the member for Nanaimo—Cowichan said.

[The Deputy Speaker]

The hon. member for Waterloo—Wellington can ask a question of the member for Nanaimo—Cowichan. It is supposed to deal with his speech.

It may be a question that arose out of the other speech and there may be some connection so the Chair has been patient, but I agree with the hon. member that these are questions and comments on the speech of the hon. member for Nanaimo—Cowichan and not on the speech of the hon. member for Calgary—Nose Hill which is now finished. I know the hon. member for Waterloo—Wellington will want to pose his question quickly.

[Lynn Myers, Liberal, Waterloo—Wellington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am getting to the hon. member for Nanaimo—Cowichan but I needed to build my case a bit. I was interested in the first ballot that went out from the United Alternative.

We are speaking now of audits, transparency and accountability. It printed 6,000 additional ballots and when it came down to the vote all of a sudden, according to one of its executive council members quoted in the Edmonton Sun , it ended up destroying the ballots. This is a party that is trying to lecture us about accountability and about transparency. It really is outrageous.

[Reed Elley, Reform, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I feel very slighted by the member. I took time to make some very valid points and now he is going into the past history of the Canadian Alliance and the Reform Party. He is not talking at all about what I had to say. This again is an example of how democracy is thwarted in parliament.

[The Deputy Speaker]

I think the hon. member for Waterloo—Wellington will want to come to the point very quickly with a question that is relevant to the speech of the hon. member for Nanaimo—Cowichan.

[Lynn Myers, Liberal, Waterloo—Wellington, ON]

I will, Mr. Speaker. Your judgment, as always, is dead on. When the member for Medicine Hat called the programs wasteful, stupid, and garbage, and when the member for Cypress Hills—Grasslands called them a manure pile, I wondered if the hon. member for Nanaimo—Cowichan agreed with that. I wonder if he agreed that loans to the—

[The Deputy Speaker]

I think to give him a reasonable amount of time to reply we will go to the hon. member for Nanaimo—Cowichan.

[Reed Elley, Reform, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad we have you up there guarding the interest of democracy. Again I am astounded at the member who uses a smokescreen to deflect any kind of comments or any kind of good judgment we in the official opposition might bring to the motion by raising these kinds of issues.

We want to talk today about our concern about the lack of democracy in the House. In the opinion of many Canadians, and certainly those of us in the official opposition, the House does not act upon democratic principles.

The matter we are bringing to the House this morning is simply a case in point. We as the official opposition and all Canadians across the country have a right to know what the government is doing. We have filed access to information requests time after time and we do not get the answers. That is the problem, and it would be nice if the hon. members across the way would address the problem and not deal in smokescreens.

[Lynn Myers, Liberal, Waterloo—Wellington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to split my time today with the hon. member for Mississauga West. I wanted to pick up a bit on what I was talking about previously, simply that some members opposite have called the programs of HRDC, among other things, a manure pile, stupid, garbage, and such.

Those members opposite do not understand how important money to the disabled, to students, to the elderly and to community groups across our great country really is. They should take a lesson appropriate to knowing our country and determining that great things are done as a result of the money that flows through grants and contributions. I remind them that with their holier than thou attitude it seems it is very easy for them to dish it out, but it sure seems not so easy for them to take it. Given their new alliance with their right wing friends perhaps they should try to develop thicker skin. I think it would be more appropriate for the House.

We on the government side have processes and procedures in place whereby we fully understand internal audits and how best to proceed. We deal with access in audit reports in a timely fashion. I can say firsthand, as a former vice-chair of the public accounts committee and working with the Auditor General of Canada who is by the way, I need not remind members, an officer of the House, that we have dealt and do deal effectively with audits in a timely fashion.

The motion being presented today is not only flawed, not only silly, but is unnecessary, redundant and otherwise unheard of and quite out of character. In addition to creating additional paperwork, something members opposite seem to claim that they want to reduce, it would actually add to the number of days they would have to wait until they got access to this information.

Let us think about that for a minute. We are talking about members of a party that want to have things done quickly and efficiently. They take the moral high ground and say that they made it all happen, that they put the minister of HRDC under a microscope and therefore must take credit for doing all these things. The very motion they are proposing today would add time to the release of audits. It would add time by approximately 15 days. That simply is ridiculous and not worthy even of those people opposite.

By the way, why should Canadians have to request audits anyway when we under government rules have audits released in a timely fashion in any event? The smokescreen members opposite are trying to portray is quite ridiculous. To have to request under access to information audits that we would in the normal course of events make public in any event is quite frivolous and, in fairness, vexatious.

I would like to remind the House of something that happened not so very long ago. I was interested in reading in The Hill Times that it was one of the Reform members own researchers, I believe the name was Laurie Throness, who actually was on record as saying that the human resources department was one of the best departments in the Government of Canada when it came to responding to access to information requests.

I take full congratulations on behalf of the government from that wonderful researcher who seems to know what he or she is talking about. It is appropriate to duly note that. It was interesting to see and I think the researchers who are saying that should tell their political masters how important the Government of Canada is in this very important area.

It is somewhat encouraging to have a silver lining in the cloud today. We share the view about the importance of internal audits. The Government of Canada and we on this side of the House have always done that. Audits are a critical tool for managers within the public service and an independent and objective means for parliamentarians to hold governments accountable. We have had that process for many years and I think it has worked effectively.

When I see the motion before us today I know it is yet again that party opposite, the Alliance or whatever it calls itself, trying to grandstand and to score cheap political points where none can be scored. After all, it has to do what it thinks is best for a party that is sinking fast.

Clearly the evidence shows that the government is committed to an effective and independent internal audit function. We are taking the necessary steps in keeping with what we have always done to ensure that the internal audit function is spread throughout government in a meaningful, transparent and accountable fashion.

In 1997, not long before the audit at HRDC, an independent review panel of recognized leaders in the management and accounting professions wrote a report on the modernization of comptrollership in the Government of Canada.

It was a very important document. The report made a number of observations about the role and practice of internal audit in the Government of Canada. As a result, the Treasury Board Secretariat, to its credit, understood the requirements, recommendations and objectives of that report. It indicated and undertook a comprehensive examination of the internal audit function.

The objective of that government-wide study was to set internal audit practices and policies standards geared to the management environment of today. The study was largely conducted in the summer of 1999 and the draft report was completed in January 2000.

I do not want to take a lot of the time of the House to go into the details of the study, but suffice it to say that over the last decade, especially and perhaps even beyond, the whole area of internal audit has evolved considerably. That is important to note. Not only do auditors audit under financial statement requirements and the rules of financial management. They also get into the whole area of management control and the framework of management control.

I need not remind you, Mr. Speaker, and members of the House that it is now an extension of what auditors do not only in the Government of Canada but across Canada in other areas as well. That is important. We need to make sure we have the kinds of checks and balances in place to ensure that the proper internal audits are conducted in a meaningful way which helps and assists not only governments but Canadians wherever they live in Canada.

In the audit that came down there were a number of recommendations. The first priority would be the development of a new treasury board policy on internal audit to set the stage for further development of the function. That is important because it sets the stage, the foundation, where we now act in an appropriate fashion.

The second priority would be the development of a new set of professional standards to support the expanded role of an internal audit. Again it recognizes that there is an important role in this area to play, and I believe rightfully so. I think Canadians expect that. Certainly we on this side of the House, unlike those people opposite, understand fully the importance of those kinds of things and do it effectively in the interest of all Canadians.

Finally, the third of these cornerstones is that once they are in place the Treasury Board Secretariat must then work with the internal audit community to address human resource issues. These include determining the required core competencies, recruitment, professional development and succession planning. There are many more but I do not have time to go into them. I would like to do so for the record but I cannot.

These then underscore the commitment of the Government of Canada to move in this all important area in a meaningful fashion that underscores our party's commitment, the government's commitment under the leadership of the Prime Minister, to ensure that we do the kinds of audits necessary.

I need not remind the House as the Prime Minister did not so long ago that years ago the auditor general would report once a year. It was under our government that was changed to four times a year. Why did we do that? It was because we wanted to enable that the books of Canada and all audits were made in a timely fashion, were done so effectively and efficiently, and were done so knowing that Canadians expect transparency and accountability.

By way of conclusion I want to say that the motion as presented is frivolous. It is vexatious. It is annoying. It is not in the best interest of Canadians and what they should do. It should be voted down because it is simply not something that needs to see the light of day.

[Ken Epp, Reform, Elk Island, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I listened pretty well to every word the hon. member said. Just in passing, it is ironic that he would take a swipe at us and our researchers when he does not even have the name of the researcher right. He cannot seem to get much right today.

At any rate, I would like to ask him a couple of questions. The member said that the motion was vexatious, redundant and all of those things. I agree with that. If this government and if those departments were doing what they were supposed to do, as required by law, then we would have never even thought of this motion today. We put it forward because it is a response to the actual facts.

The other thing that is so very important is, what is the government trying to hide? Why does it not release this information in a timely fashion? It must be because it is not proud of what is in it. Otherwise it would be having press conferences and blowing it up to all proportions. The fact is, it is not only not proud of what is in it, it is ashamed of what is in it. That is why it tries to suppress the information as long as possible and that is why this motion is very much in place today. We are simply asking the government to behave in the fashion prescribed by law and it is not doing so.

I would like the member to retract his statement that the motion is redundant. It is in fact very much in place and it needs to have the total support of the whole House to assure Canadians that there is accountability, openness and transparency in the way their money is being spent in this place, which is totally lacking.

[Lynn Myers, Liberal, Waterloo—Wellington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I need not be lectured by the member opposite when it comes to accountability and openness when his own party had to print 6,000 additional ballots when it came to a vote and then, before the real scoop got out, had to destroy those ballots. Talk about duplicitous. Talk about hypocrisy in the extreme. It really is too much to take, especially from the member opposite.

He should be congratulating the Government of Canada. He should be congratulating all of us in terms of the openness and accountability that we, on this side of the House, portray on a day to day basis, year to year—decade to decade for that matter. We have implemented the kinds of checks and balances in our system which enable us to conduct internal audits and release them in a timely fashion.

Instead of bringing forward this frivolous kind of nonsense that only those people opposite seem capable of doing, he should be celebrating the Government of Canada and congratulating us for the kind of good work we do, not only on behalf of the people in this House, but on behalf of Canadians wherever they live in this great country.

The member for Medicine Hat has repeatedly referred to the grants and contributions portrayed by the HRDC minister as, I believe his words were, stupid and garbage. He should instead take a lesson from his constituents and understand that those are in fact good investments made in the regions of Canada which assist Canadians wherever they are. Instead of bad-mouthing people, constituents in the ridings and people across Canada, he should be celebrating and congratulating the Government of Canada, as should all those people opposite, whatever they term themselves as these days. The member should be celebrating and saying what a wonderful thing that we on the government side are doing.

In direct response to the member for Elk Island, I would simply say that he should go back and do his homework. As a former teacher he should know that we cannot do the kinds of things that members opposite are doing, state the kinds of things they state, without doing their homework. He should do that. If he did, he would begin to understand a little more about what it means to govern this great country of ours.

[Rick Borotsik, Progressive Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I agree with much of what the hon. member said. He suggested that the audit process is a vital tool for management to bring forward, with different eyes, through the auditor general, efficiency audits to identify some of the inefficiencies within the departments.

Recently the auditor general appeared before the agriculture committee with three organizations, three departments of government. The auditor general told the committee that it was necessary that committees be there to get the commitments from the departments in order that the departments follow what the auditor general puts in his reports.

Why does the hon. member have difficulty having those audits tabled within 30 days of their presentation to the departments?

[Lynn Myers, Liberal, Waterloo—Wellington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to say to the member opposite that we on the government side have made a very consistent effort to ensure that this very, very important audit information is released in a timely fashion, and we have done so in a manner consistent with normal auditing practices and in a way which underscores the government's commitment to accountability, to transparency and all of the things that Canadians, wherever they live in this great country of ours, determine to be important.

I am convinced, as are most Canadians, that we continue to do the right thing in this very important area and to do so consistent with the values of Canadians. I think it is important that we continue to do so and that we do so in an efficient, effective, transparent and accountable way.