Madam Speaker, the Reform Party continues to accuse the government of having a billion dollar boondoggle.
I must say once again that there was no loss of a billion dollars in this particular situation. We had a report on poor management and poor administration. We are addressing it with a very serious six point program which has been approved by the auditor general.
The member opposite should realize that partnerships with the private sector, through which we leveraged $330 million into $3 billion worth of economic activity, also involve the same risks that private sector firms face every day. They face the ups and downs of the business cycle, and some of our projects did that too.
However, in the long run, 95% of our projects survived their first birthday, which is better than the 72% of projects that the banks managed.
On the attack that this has something to do with a slush fund, this is usually tied to the flexibility component of our program which has to do with pockets of high unemployment. If indeed it was a slush fund, how in heaven's name could it be that more than 50% of those particular projects went to opposition ridings?
Once again, those members are singing the same song but it has no basis when we look at the numbers.