Mr. Speaker, the parliamentary secretary does a manful job of trying to whitewash this situation. I commend her for carrying out her duties so diligently. Unfortunately, she is not able to cover many of the unanswered questions and concerns that have been raised on this whole issue.
One of the more troubling aspects of the grants and contributions mismanagement is that new information and instances of questionable administration and dealings in the department keep coming up day after day. We do not even have to go back and revisit some of the issues that have not been resolved in past weeks because something new comes up each week. Yesterday, a briefing of the minister came to light where the minister apparently asked her officials to brief her on hot issues. We knew that the audit was a hot issue at the time yet the minister claimed that her officials did not bother to tell her about it and that was okay with her.
A direct request from the minister was completely disrespected by the officials and the minister says “I asked for hot issues. This was a hot issue and they did not mention it, but that is appropriate. I did not need to know. My leadership was not important even though there was a ticking time bomb”. That happened just yesterday. I could go back on all the days where the most incredible, outrageous circumstances came to light that were completely unanswered by the government or the answer was absolutely ridiculous.
How can the parliamentary secretary explain the fact that access to information requests to this department are now not given to the opposition within the 30 days required by law? They are routinely—