My colleague says “Maybe he made a donation to the Liberals”. These are serious questions. In fact we in the NDP have called for a code of conduct. This is something we have included in our minority report. It is very important that there be transparency in the decision making process.
We do not object to members of parliament being involved in a process by signing off on a particular grant or contribution. A member of parliament should be involved. The question is: Are the rules being applied fairly, consistently and without an overriding political culture? That is where we have a problem.
We in the New Democratic Party have recommended to the government that the treasury board, in conjunction with the Auditor General of Canada, develop a code of conduct for all departments, not just HRDC, that award grants and contributions. We believe this code of conduct should incorporate transparency, disclosure, fairness and standard practices. That is something Canadians could agree with. Everyone in the House would agree that the same rules should apply for everybody. The government side should not be favoured because it is using the funds for partisan purposes to bolster its re-election efforts.
If we are genuine about wanting to invest in job creation, let us do it on an objective basis. Let us do it on a basis that we can all live by. Then Canadians could see where the funds are going, that they are being put to good use to create real jobs and not just a political slush fund.
Again I come back to the motion that is before us today and reiterate our support and our ongoing call for an independent inquiry, which we have called for from day one. We will continue to do that until there is accountability, until there are answers to the questions, some of which I gave today, many of which we have put in our report and many of which have been put at committee.
The last matter I want to speak to is the future of the department. The NDP, as well as Bloc members I think, agreed with the main report, with some reservations. Because there has been such a spotlight on the department, one of the things which came to light is that this massive department, which is the largest federal department, needs to have a further review in terms of its ongoing mandate and structure. I want to be very clear that we want to do that to restore the confidence in the programs that have been delivered and should be delivered. We do not want to use the people who work there as scapegoats, nor do we want to use them as a further reason for cutbacks or massive layoffs. For that reason we would support a further review.
We cannot escape what needs to be done in the House. There must be an independent public inquiry to really get to the bottom of what happened in the department. We will not rest until that happens.