Mr. Speaker, let us try to clarify things here. My colleague has several different elements to his question.
First and foremost, the situation that was brought to our attention related to an internal audit. It is totally normal for a minister to have an internal audit done. I would say it was the ABC of administration for a department to have an internal audit. It is an essential administrative tool for proper knowledge of what is going on as far as departmental programs are concerned, in order to see what is going well or less well in the application of those programs.
Let us put ourselves into the proper context. This was an internal audit carried out by the department, which had decided on its own to audit seven separate departmental programs. As soon as the internal audit report was completed and submitted to the minister concerned, it was made public.
The minister herself considered the situation so important that she released the report to the public, immediately proposing an action plan to remedy the problems. As far as I know, nowhere in the internal audit report was there any proof that there had been problems relating to partisan funding, as my colleague over there has said. These are his own conclusions, and I do not share them, absolutely not.
Let us not forget that the programs addressed by the internal audit were not strictly job creation programs, but also ones for other clienteles. I am thinking for instance of the literacy program. Various HRDC programs were covered in the audit report.
The programs covered by the internal audit were evaluated. Nowhere was this program mentioned. These are national programs.
Once the situation became known, the Minister of Human Resources Development called on treasury board for help in putting an appropriate action plan in place. And that is what we did. We worked very closely with Human Resources Development Canada. I even delegated a very senior official from my department, who worked with Human Resources Development Canada to put the plan in place. In addition, the plan was approved by the auditor general.
I see no need anywhere for a public inquiry. We are aware of the administrative problems of this program, and we have, accordingly, formulated an action plan that, at the moment, is in place and rectifying the problems in the system.