Mr. Speaker, I understood every word and frankly, I have made history before in this place so we might as well add that to the record.
He said further in the London Free Press on February 19, 2000, “I think it happens to you at the end of the month to see that you have spent a few more dollars than expected”. A few more dollars. We have all been in that position where we have spent a few more dollars but $1 billion seems a little excessive. All of a sudden the Liberals had no idea where this money was with this great boondoggle. There were hundreds of projects and they had no idea where the money was and what the people were doing with it and he said that it is a few dollars at the end of the month. It is unbelievable.
In the London Free Press on February 19, it was a busy day, he said, “Recipients have not complained at all”. As the kids would say, well, duh. Who will complain about getting free money? It is pretty sad. It goes on and on.
I made reference to the six point plan. The minister has told us time and time again, “We have instituted a six point plan and everything will be wonderful”. Everybody can just sit back and feel so much at ease that the government is really managing its money because it has a six point plan and all will be well.
The minister claims that she incorporated the views of Deloitte & Touche in the final draft of the six point plan to strengthen the administration of grants and contributions. She made the following claims on May 3 a few days ago. She said in Hansard :
We have added aspects of training and aspects focusing on accountability. We have have ensured that senior management know what their roles are and what accountable role they will have to play. We actually put together a grants and contribution team, a team focused on this.
Should the focus team not have been in place before the whole thing started rather than after the boondoggle was blown loose?
She also said “We made sure that senior executives were making the final sign-off on those transfer terms”. She should have been doing that a long time ago. She went on to say “They said that we should make sure we address the root cause of the audit findings. We are doing a number of things in that regard, making sure employees have training”. That is great. They should have training. She went on to say “We did indeed address and assign authorities and responsibilities”.
The day before that, the minister for HRD said in Hansard , regarding her six point plan:
They said that we needed greater cohesiveness to orchestrate the various actions in an integrated fashion. What did we do? We established a grants and contributions team to ensure that we meet their recommendations.
Perhaps they have jerseys too or maybe the hon. member could buy them some. She went on to say:
They said that we needed assurance that funds had been transferred according to program requirements. What did we do? We put in place a departmental directive on the issuance of payments which require sign-off by senior executives to ensure that the payments are made appropriately.