Madam Speaker, I must say that if the member opposite questions why we are still talking about it, we are still talking about it because the opposition members seem to be obsessed with it. That is why we are still talking about it. In addition to their wanting to talk about it, their motivation is probably because the newspapers are covering what they are saying about it. That is why we are still talking about it.
One journalist in particular has talked about the trivialization of the House of Commons with the persistence in talking about this single subject which the member insists on calling a scandal. Is it a scandal when in one of our programs we had 10,000 projects which probably interacted with about 100,000 people when we consider the boards of directors and other investors? In that particular project a year after the start-up of these businesses, 95% of them were still going ahead. That is a better rate than a bank. When a bank comes in with capital for a new business or an expansion, its success rate one year later is usually that only 77% of its projects are still alive.
I do not call it a scandal when the Government of Canada sponsors projects that have a better success rate than those sponsored by a bank. I think that is a darn good record.
As far as the Deloitte & Touche comment on the minister's six point plan to fix the problems at HRDC, one has to think about the order in which things happened. Officials of the department developed a plan and they presented it to Deloitte & Touche. Deloitte & Touche was hired to comment on the first draft of the plan, as was the auditor general. All the various players made comments.
Deloitte & Touche has not seen the revised plan because it was not hired to come back and comment on it. The hon. member is quoting from the first set of comments and neither he nor Deloitte & Touche really know whether in fact those suggestions were incorporated or not.