House of Commons Hansard #108 of the 36th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was hrdc.

Topics

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10:50 a.m.

Oakville Ontario

Liberal

Bonnie Brown LiberalParliamentary Secretary to Minister of Human Resources Development

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Peterborough. I am very happy to have the chance to take part in this debate because I would like to help set the record straight.

For almost five months now, the House has witnessed the same old story being trotted out almost on a daily basis by the opposition. The government has been subjected to all kinds of hearsay and all kinds of claims. I would like to ask the House to step back and take a look at the reality.

The motion before us calls for an inquiry into grants and contributions at Human Resources Development Canada. The first reality is that the issue of grants and contributions has already been subject to an inquiry, that is an examination by the House through its Standing Committee on Human Resources Development.

The committee has spent almost four months on this project, day after day, and just last Thursday tabled its report with its recommendations. The government will respond to that report within the 150 days provided by the rules. That is the first inquiry.

The second reality is that the issue continues to be thoroughly examined by the auditor general, an independent officer of parliament. The auditor general has promised to report to parliament in the fall. That is the second inquiry into this situation.

The third reality is that it has been examined by treasury board and by independent private sector firms. As a result, the President of the Treasury Board announced the implementation of a revised policy on grants and contributions, strengthening the management of public spending.

From three separate angles the public interest is being protected by parliamentarians, by the auditor general and by the officials of treasury board measuring all spending against their strengthened guidelines.

We would not have had this issue if not for the fact that the government is always looking for ways to do a better job. That is why HRDC, like other departments, does internal audits looking for opportunities to improve what it does and how it does it. Last year one of those audits focused on the management of grants and contributions. We all know what it said, but I will repeat it because the opposition seems to be incapable of remembering a few simple facts.

The audit found paperwork missing, not money but paperwork. It found this fact to be far too common across the department. Paperwork matters, particularly when it relates to ensuring accountability for the proper spending of Canadians' money. The department appreciated this and put together a number of steps to respond. When it took those steps to the minister, she said they were not strong enough and asked for a stronger response to ensure full accountability to Canadians. The department understood the priorities the minister placed on the matter and brought forward a six point action plan that the minister announced on January 19.

From one end of Canada to the other, HRDC staff began by reviewing the 461 files covered by the audit. Then they reviewed 17,000 active files and made sure they were all in line with the new guidelines of the six point plan. The result of this file by file review was that out of $1.5 billion in projects, $6,500 is still left as overpayments to be recovered. That is only a fraction of 1%. The department did not just look at the projects already in place. It put in place new conditions to make sure that every payment meets all the financial and administrative requirements before it goes out.

HRDC also set about to train staff on the new guidelines and to make the new expectations clear. That training has reached about 3,000 employees across Canada. There has been accountability for the action plan. The minister has already released a progress report as she promised. There is a special team in place to track performance. The minister has already told the House on various occasions that the auditor general and others would carry out their own reviews.

The department wanted to get the best advice on making the action plan a success, and that is why it worked with the auditor general, Price Waterhouse, the private sector blue ribbon committee, the Standards Advisory Board of the Comptroller General, and Deloitte & Touche. The minister said the department would report to Canadians and to parliamentarians regularly. Even the most meanspirited critic would have to say that commitment has been met.

Has there ever been an issue in parliament where the information has been more open and transparent than this one? Let us take access to information requests. In the year 1998-99 HRDC got 531 access to information requests. In 1999-2000 that jumped to 1,073 or twice the volume of the previous year. Fully half of those requests came in the last 10 weeks of the fiscal year. It is not surprising that as a result HRDC released almost 115,000 pages of documentation under access to information.

A researcher in the office of the Leader of the Opposition told CPAC that the department had one of the best access to information offices in Ottawa. He is not the only one who believes that to be true. The information commissioner has also cited HRDC as an example of a department that takes its access obligations seriously. Those accolades make sense because this is the minister who put more than 10,000 pages of detail on specific grants and contribution projects onto the Internet. All that transparency is a far cry from the histrionics and wailing that goes on among the opposition about information.

To summarize, a substantial set of reviews of the work of HRDC on grants and contributions are already taking place. HRDC is working hard to meet the avalanche of access requests. Reporting to Canadians on the progress of the action plan is taking place on a regular basis.

All that adds up to a clear and sincere commitment to give Canadians the facts about grants and contributions and a determined effort to get the management of these programs up to the level where it ought to be.

Is this just about paper? Of course not. It is about accountability. It is also about continuing the effectiveness of some very special programs and services. We believe grants and contributions are useful ways to put some taxpayers' money to work in partnerships; that is, to leverage it to get better results for Canadians.

I am proud to stand up and defend programs that build partnerships with other governments, with community agencies and with many other groups in our society to get some important work done, work that Canadians want their government to do.

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11 a.m.

Reform

Diane Ablonczy Reform Calgary Nose Hill, AB

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—

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11 a.m.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)

I must interrupt the hon. member. The hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Human Resources Development.

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11 a.m.

Liberal

Bonnie Brown Liberal Oakville, ON

Mr. Speaker, starting with the end of the member's question first, one of the reasons that it is becoming almost impossible to get access to information requests out within 30 days is because of the avalanche of requests that are coming forward. We do not know exactly where these are coming from, but from the tone of some of the requests one could guess that many of them are coming forward from the opposition.

Why is that? Does the opposition want to look forward? Does the opposition want to take advantage of the new accountability measures around spending on grants and contributions? No. The opposition is focused, as usual, backwards, looking back into the past.

I am really glad the member described what was bothering her which came out in the news yesterday. It gives Canadians the opportunity to see what went on in the committee. While members on the government side were trying to fix this particular situation so it would never happen again, the members of the opposition were acting like children in a schoolyard wondering who said what to whom and who was at what meeting. It was like the gossip capital of the world. It did no one any good as far as making sure that Canadian tax dollars are well spent and invested in Canadians, as they are supposed to be.

This whole thing about who did what to whom, on what day and what day a memo was sent is just so wasteful. In a way it sort of dirties up the whole process.

I have been accused of whitewashing. I am trying to state the facts as I know them in a clear way and keep my vision on the future as to how to make things work better for Canadians. I am not obsessed with looking backwards. If that is considered to be a whitewash, then so be it.

I think Canadians want to march toward hope. They want to know that their government members are working hard on their behalf to make sure things work out well with their tax dollars. That is exactly what we are doing and we are being assisted by the auditor general.

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11:05 a.m.

Liberal

Peter Adams Liberal Peterborough, ON

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to join in the debate this morning, although I have to say that I regret that I have to do so.

Today the House of Commons will be spending a full day of activity considering a motion that there should be a full public inquiry into the grants and contributions matter at HRDC when only last week the largest standing committee in the House of Commons tabled a report in the House based on hearings begun in January.

I do not think it would be possible for the House to conduct more open and full public hearings for four or five months than has taken place on this matter.

Responding, for example, to opposition requests, virtually every one of those public hearings, only in the sense, as are all our committees, that records were kept and published, but they were also televised and run on several occasions in real time on more than two channels, in every case run more than once following the closing of the House of Commons itself, and ran a full four or five months of public inquiry.

I would say that the vast majority of witnesses who appeared before that committee, and given the time constraints we certainly met with many witnesses from various parts of the country, were there at the request of the opposition members of the committee. All parties were able to submit lists. We went through as many of those lists as was possible. The majority of people were opposition witnesses.

Going back to this public inquiry that we have just finished, I have to say that it attracted an enormous amount of public attention. I cannot imagine a public inquiry that could have received more coverage on the front page of newspapers, on the editorial pages of newspapers, as the first issue in television and radio newscasts and so on.

Here we are debating whether there should be a full and independent inquiry on something which is very important, but to which parliament has already allocated an enormous amount of time.

In one way today's motion can be looked at, and people watching this debate can say “Oh yes, they are looking for a full and public inquiry into another of these great big government departments”. By the way, I am one who is of the view that HRDC unfortunately, now we can tell after some years, is too large and too diverse. However, this debate is not about that.

This $1.3 billion worth of grants and contributions goes out to thousands of individuals and organizations who work in all our communities. These are organizations that are devoted to literacy at the community level and to the full inclusion of disabled persons in our society. These are organizations that are involved with the training and retraining of people in the workforce, young people, older workers, disabled people and so on. These are groups that help to rehabilitate persons who have been released from prison and help get them back into the workforce. These are the sorts of things we are actually debating today.

We are not debating a full public inquiry into a very large government department. That inquiry has just been completed.

Witness after witness in the full public hearings that we held warned us. By the way, these were not simply social do-gooders or people like that. They were people who understood the importance of the proper management of files and money. Knowing needs of the organizations I have just tried to describe, they warned us about overcompensation.

The expression overcompensation kept recurring. What they meant by that was that we should, by all means, get fully to the bottom of the serious mismanagement of those files, but that we should also put in place better systems for the future to ensure that the organizations, which, in partnership with other areas of funding support, depend on this type of funding, are not put at risk.

One of the large national organizations for rehabilitation which deals with the rights of disabled people told us that it was close to being bankrupt, not because it depended entirely on the federal purse but that the federal contributions that it received allowed it to go out and get matching funds elsewhere. The reason its funds are not flowing at this time is not that there is something wrong with its file, but that there is so much concern in HRDC about these inquiries, which have been going on for five months, that overcare is being taken and the funds are not flowing.

When these inquiries began in January and February, as soon as I possibly could I arranged for the full list of HRDC grants and contributions in my riding to be published in our main daily newspaper and in our main bi-weekly newspaper. I have to say that once I did that, my phone stopped ringing on this issue. It was not that the people in my riding were not concerned about HRDC moneys being properly managed. It was not that at all. They knew that we were engaging in a very full and public inquiry.

Once those people saw which organizations we were dealing with, such as the Trent Valley Literacy Association, the Housing Resource Centre and the Emergency Preparedness Organization in Peterborough which watches out for future problems like the ice storm, they said to themselves that, yes, there was improper handling of these government files but that they would wait to see what the House of Commons would to do about it. In the meantime, they knew that these were not the sorts of organizations that would rip off the taxpayers of Canada.

I would suggest that while we go through what I believe is a wasted day of debate—and, yes, it is right that we look at federal departments all the time—that today's debate is about those organizations that deal with things such as literacy, apprenticeship, pre-apprenticeship, employment programs, entrepreneurial programs and things of that type.

I want to point out to hon. members that the full public inquiry completed last week tabled a report which I have here. It contains 30 detailed recommendations dealing with what the department is doing, what the department should do with respect to grants and contributions and what Treasury Board is doing.

I am glad to see that treasury board has already released new guidelines for across the federal system on grants and contributions and on what should be done. The committee looks forward to the auditor general's report, another report which my colleague just mentioned, which will be coming out in a few months.

The committee itself is committed to revisiting this issue. We have recommendations which suggest that the system can be improved, that the tracking of grants can be more effectively carried out without slowing or reducing the flexibility at the grassroots where we are dealing with thousands of small organizations.

We suggest the idea of an advisory committee in the ridings, which would be comprised of citizens who would deal with the larger grants, where the grants deal with the private sector. We think that would help.

We have suggestions with respect to third party accountability. Remember, the federal government delivers these grants, in some cases with provincial governments and in some cases with not for profit organizations. There are various partners. Those partners have to be accountable, as well as the federal government, and we have recommendations for that.

We are glad that HRDC has completed its review of the active files and will now proceed to deal with the closed files.

This is about HRDC, yes, but much more significantly it is about human resources development in a real sense; how we develop the fantastic human resources of 30 million Canadians. I oppose the idea of yet another review of this matter. As the chair of the committee, along with my colleagues on the committee, I commit myself to following through on the report which the committee has tabled in the most thorough fashion.

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11:15 a.m.

Bloc

Paul Crête Bloc Kamouraska—Rivière-Du-Loup—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC

Mr. Speaker, I am somewhat surprised to hear the chair of the standing committee on human resources development intervene in this debate today when last week he was boasting about chairing the committee and remaining neutral.

I think by speaking today that he is proving the need for an independent public inquiry. The member chairs the standing committee on human resources development. Today he rises in the House and defends the position of the government. I think he is in conflict with himself. I want him to know as well why I think an independent inquiry is necessary.

Is it not true that all the witnesses called, who were involved in the matter of the use of funds for partisan purposes, were rejected out of hand by the committee, by the majority, and not heard?

Does he consider it relevant to leave Human Resources Development Canada employees in the very awkward situation of not being exonerated? It was not the officials who misused public funds during the electoral period. It was the MPs, the Liberal candidates, the ministers and the Prime Minister who initiated a system to use funds for partisan purposes.

Does this situation not warrant an independent public inquiry so we may finally know just why the government is systematically hiding the situation?

I heard the member's words. He said “This has to be the last inquiry. It has to be settled here and we have to stop talking about it”. That is not what the people are saying at home. They are saying that this whole issue must be studied in depth, because otherwise, the next election will be like the last, and elections will continue to be won with public money. What does the hon. member say to that?

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11:15 a.m.

Liberal

Peter Adams Liberal Peterborough, ON

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that the member opposite is a very devoted and hard-working member of our committee.

The report I am referring to, and I would say this to anyone watching, is the report of the majority. At the back of the report there are four different dissenting reports. It is the importance of this report which encouraged me to stand today. The purpose is not to close down discussion, but to continue proper discussion to carry through with the committee process which we just finished.

Our standing committee met for four or five months. Its report, after all that time, would be washed aside with the calling for an independent review.

We could spend today debating whether there should be an independent review before the report has been fully digested by HRDC and before the House of Commons has seen what sort of response there is to it, but that would not be fair to the committee process and the work which I do as chair. I do my best to be an independent chair. I am not some sort of political eunuch. I am here to defend the committee process. I am not here to say that we will not talk about this issue any more, but that things are in progress. The committee itself should revisit this issue.

This is a waste of the time of the House today and it would be a waste of the resources of the House of Commons to conduct yet another independent inquiry.

With respect to the HRDC employees, we called as many witnesses as we could. The vast majority were on the opposition lists. If I might say, personally, I have great concern for the stress which frontline, devoted HRDC employees in our communities have already experienced during the public hearings. That is one of the reasons I do not think we need another independent review. We should follow through fully with this process.

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11:20 a.m.

Bloc

Paul Crête Bloc Kamouraska—Rivière-Du-Loup—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak today on the motion presented by the hon. member of the Canadian Alliance. I will repeat it so that people will be clear on what we are debating.

This is a call for the establishment of an independent commission of inquiry into the mismanagement of grants and contributions in the Department of Human Resources Development, and into any attempts to control the disclosure of this mismanagement to the public, with a report by December 2000.

Mr. Speaker, before I continue, I would like to inform you that I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Frontenac—Mégantic.

Why do we have a call today for an independent inquiry? The Bloc Quebecois called for one back on March 21, 2000, and this motion was voted on in the House. Since then, we have come to realize that this public and independent inquiry is still being called for, in both the interim report of the standing committee on HRD and in its final report. The position remains unchanged.

Why are the opposition parties not satisfied with what has been done to date? Because the government has systematically hidden behind the committee in order to avoid having to get to the bottom of the main issue, that is the use of funds for partisan purposes.

The conclusion of the departmental internal audit was that the Minister of Human Resources Development had totally lost control over all of her department's grants and contributions programs. There is talk of $1 billion in public funds over which the government could no longer give assurance that it had control.

The administrative causes of this situation were sought out and certain conclusions were reached. But there is another side to the analysis that was not done by the government, and that is to know why it is that, during this time of loss of control, the political machinery, the partisan machinery of government, knew how to take full advantage of the money available.

There were several instances. First of all, we realized that, during the 1997 election campaign, a whole series of grants had suddenly been handed out, particularly in ridings the government wanted to win in the 1997 election.

During the campaign, 54% of the transitional job fund, a program that was supposed to extend over three years, was spent in Quebec. In Bloc Quebecois ridings, the figure was 63%. This means that ridings suddenly became very interesting because there was an opportunity to win them over in an election.

This is something that should be looked into so that it does not happen again in future.

After the interim report, the Placeteco affair hit the news. It involved $1.2 million paid out by a bank in the absence of any invoices, and the government is still unable to produce invoices for us showing that payment was justified.

Then there was the case of Conili Star. The Bloc Quebecois brought this case to light and got to the bottom of it. This forced the government to take action, because, left to its own devices, it would have done nothing in this case either.

There was also the case of the company that moved from the riding of Rosemont to the riding of Saint-Maurice, for no apparent reason. The opposition parties had to conduct investigations, as though they were the police, to sort all this out.

In the meantime, more than a dozen cases are being investigated by the RCMP, following information that came out in the House or was revealed by other sources. The government is still denying that it used funds for partisan purposes. What is more, it is denying the right to get to the bottom of what happened.

An election is in the offing. In a few months, we will have another election. If we end up with the same situation, if the federal government, the party in power, uses public funds for partisan purposes, it will debase our country's democracy. This strikes me as totally dangerous and unacceptable. This is why is it is so important to get to the root of the issues on the table.

Two things need analyzing in this matter. There is the disastrous period when the new Minister for International Trade was the Minister of Human Resources Development, when there was a total lack of control over the use of funds. During that time, a lot of grants were handed out on the q.t. during the election.

Since the arrival of the new minister, operation “camouflage” has been in effect to cover the previous situation and because the minister is trying to convince that she was the minister for several months without being responsible for anything, that when she came to the department no one informed her about the most important administrative activity in process, the internal audit, and that she did not learn of it until last November.

If the present minister had really assumed her responsibilities, we would not be faced with the current situation. We would be having an independent and public inquiry. We could say “Things in the past were not right, certain behaviour was unacceptable, now we will correct the situation and return to the quality of our democratic life”. In the end, this is the issue on the table.

I believe it is important for us to have this independent inquiry. It is important for us to have it as soon as possible. Since the parliamentary majority on the human resources development committee systematically arranged things so that the witnesses involved, the buddies of the regime, were not heard, those who were really connected with the use of funds for partisan purposes, the entire matter must be investigated thoroughly. That was not possible in committee.

It seems to me that, as long as there is no satisfactory appearance of justice, we must continue, as opposition parties, to call for a public inquiry. It is important to point out that this is not a partisan approach by one of the parties, but all the opposition parties together who share the belief that an independent public inquiry is called for.

There are some who have made different choices, some who would like to see job creation programs abolished, others who want to see them maintained. They may hold widely divergent social views, but all have joined together, with the same concern for honesty and justice, in order to expose to public view whether public funds have been properly used.

I believe that today's motion is highly appropriate in this connection. As long as we do not have the invoices from Placeteco, as long as we have not got to the bottom of other matters, as long as we do not have an accurate picture of the responsibility of the present minister, there is a large chunk of information missing. The public must know what is being done with their tax dollars.

It is one of parliament's responsibilities to be in a position to provide the answer to that question. An auditor general investigation is not the only way that this can be done, nor one by members of parliament. There is one part of this that concerns the role of members; they must be asked to evaluate themselves, to reach a judgment on their own behaviour.

Would there not be grounds for an independent public inquiry so that we may cast light on the role of members, and on whether or not they should continue to play that role? As far as the parliamentary majority is concerned, it did not say much on this in the report. There was much attention given to the administrative problem, but it went along with a systematic avoidance of the political problem. As long as this matter has not been settled, we will have unfinished business on our hands, and this reflects badly on those who sit in this House.

There is the issue of the quality of public finances. There is the guarantee for voters that they have a government that can have opinions different from theirs. That is not a problem; they are all prepared to accept that.

What I find unacceptable is that the government is trying to pass the buck, as though everything has been resolved and now everything is back to normal. It is normal that politicians are using public money for partisan purposes. It is part of the system that the Prime Minister has set up and that he has used himself in the riding of Saint-Maurice to get himself elected.

Whether we are federalists or sovereignists, left or right leaning, we do not have to put up with this kind of situation, because it basically undermines democracy. It is unacceptable in a country such as this.

I would like the Liberal members who considered the matter in the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities, and others who saw the whole situation develop to ask themselves today, after several months have gone by: Is this not a situation where we should make up our mind to hold an independent public inquiry?

Would it not benefit both the government and the opposition parties? Would it not benefit all members of the House, all Quebecers and all Canadians to finally get to the bottom of this misuse of public money and especially this denial of democracy by the Liberals?

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11:30 a.m.

Liberal

Peter Adams Liberal Peterborough, ON

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to what my colleague had to say. I am concerned by his apparent disillusionment with the committee process.

I understand the opposition has a role to play. I understand that government members, people like myself, have a role to play. I do have some faith in the standing committees, but I have my own views on how they might be strengthened. When they have the benefit of the spotlight of the media and appear on television, I believe individual members of parliament and the committees can be very effective.

I referred the House to the report. I am interested in some of the opposition recommendations in it. What does the member think of recommendation No. 30 in the majority report?

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11:30 a.m.

Bloc

Paul Crête Bloc Kamouraska—Rivière-Du-Loup—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC

Mr. Speaker, no, I am not denigrating the work of the committee, but I think it is incomplete. In committee, we analyzed the administrative problem in depth, but failed to analyze the political aspect of it, the aspect that was hurting the government, the aspect that revealed the Liberals had used public funds for partisan purposes. This is the aspect we failed to consider.

The report contained valuable recommendations, such as “It is time this department was managed like all the others”. The report said, among other things, that money should not be squandered at the end of the fiscal year simply because it would no longer be available in April or May. This kind of recommendation seems important to me.

But for the root of the problem, which we explained in our minority report—even if I proposed the dismantling of the department—as I have always said, an independent and public inquiry would be necessary. We continue the battle today, and the matter has been brought before the House, because the committee, with its government majority, has ignored the will of the people as expressed by the opposition parties.

This is why I want to get to the bottom of things. We are talking about the integrity of all parliamentarians in this country.

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11:30 a.m.

Reform

Diane Ablonczy Reform Calgary Nose Hill, AB

Mr. Speaker, I should like to ask my colleague about the committee process. I recall a number of instances where the chair of the committee intervened to prevent questioning of witnesses, particularly the minister and the officials. I recall very limited time. We were given a few minutes each to ask questions so that no committee member could really get to the bottom of any issue. I recall documents requested which were not—

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11:35 a.m.

Liberal

Peter Adams Liberal Peterborough, ON

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. It is out of order to discuss committee matters in the House of Commons because committees are masters of their own affairs. The reason for that is that it is impossible for someone like me, the chair of the committee, to debate the issue. The member is out of order.

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11:35 a.m.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)

That may well be, but the member has the opportunity to put her question.

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11:35 a.m.

Reform

Diane Ablonczy Reform Calgary Nose Hill, AB

Mr. Speaker, that intervention was surprising from a member who spent his whole—

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11:35 a.m.

Liberal

Peter Adams Liberal Peterborough, ON

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The standing orders prevent the discussion of committee business in the House of Commons. I am not being awkward about this. I would be glad to debate it if you would so rule, but my understanding is that I cannot.

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11:35 a.m.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)

It is for the hon. member for Calgary—Nose Hill to put a question to the member for Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup—Témiscouata—Les Basques. In the course of debate things spill over from committee responsibilities back and forth. This is not the first time and it will not be the last time.

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11:35 a.m.

Reform

Diane Ablonczy Reform Calgary Nose Hill, AB

Mr. Speaker, I find that intervention surprising—

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11:35 a.m.

Liberal

Larry McCormick Liberal Hastings—Frontenac—Lennox And Addington, ON

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The member should withdraw her comments about committee time. I have sat on that committee for six years, along with my hon. colleague, and the opposition always had its fair share and more.

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11:35 a.m.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)

I guess everyone has put their oar in the water and should feel that everything is even. The hon. member for Calgary—Nose Hill will please put her question.

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11:35 a.m.

Reform

Diane Ablonczy Reform Calgary Nose Hill, AB

Mr. Speaker, the member for Peterborough spent his entire intervention talking about the committee. I am a little surprised that he would not want any questions mentioning the committee.

I recall information being withheld that committee members had requested. I recall very highly partisan reports coming from the Liberal majority. I recall the last committee meeting where we were expected to ask questions on a document that was not even provided to committee members by the minister until after the committee commenced. I recall the chairman of the committee cutting off—

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11:35 a.m.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)

I am sorry, but we are running out of time for this intervention. I ask the hon. member for Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup—Témiscouata—Les Basques to respond to the question.

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11:35 a.m.

Bloc

Paul Crête Bloc Kamouraska—Rivière-Du-Loup—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC

Mr. Speaker, we will not debate the committee itself, but I recall in particular the minister's reaction when she left for a press conference in order to comment on our report, which had come out at 10 a.m. At noon, she called a press conference, and all she could say was “I have not read the report”. Two hours after it was released, and she had no comment on it.

I find this completely unacceptable, and the only explanation I can come up with is that either the minister is totally incompetent or this is a machiavellian exercise in camouflage.

From all that I have seen of the government's operation to date, I would lean toward the second solution. I think the government is indeed trying to hide an unacceptable situation, which an independent public inquiry would reveal.

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11:35 a.m.

Bloc

Jean-Guy Chrétien Bloc Frontenac—Mégantic, QC

Mr. Speaker, sometimes we have difficult situations to deal with as politicians.

When I agreed to run for a seat in this House, one of my friends showed me a magazine article reporting on a cross-Canada survey which asked people to rate the credibility of professionals and other workers. Politicians were close behind used car salesmen as far as public credibility was concerned.

Looking at what is going on in the House of Commons at the present time in connection with Human Resources Development Canada, it is easy to see why the credibility of elected representatives is dropping every day in the eyes of Quebecers and Canadians.

We in the Bloc Quebecois support the Canadian Alliance, of course, in calling for a wholly independent inquiry so as to restore politicians' lost credibility. There is an unprecedented scandal going on within Human Resources Development Canada at the present time. Unfortunately for the minister, who has held the portfolio since last fall, it is up to her to undo the damage done by her two predecessors.

I would like to remind hon. members of what happened to Douglas Young, who represented Acadie—Bathurst in New Brunswick. He thumbed his nose at everybody. He was the Minister of Human Resources Development. He laughed right in the faces of the unemployed, those who were paying into employment insurance but could not even qualify. The electorate of Acadie—Bathurst taught him a good lesson, such a good one that he barely got 25% of the vote in the last election.

The member for Papineau—Saint-Denis who succeeded him literally devastated the Department of Human Resources Development, and shamelessly moreover. Scandals came out that had been hidden until then. He asked the Prime Minister for a change of portfolio and now the poor minister who took over from him has to defend her predecessor constantly. Again in this morning's National Post , we read that the minister must step down.

The Canadian Alliance is calling for an independent inquiry, with a report to be tabled in the House on December 11, 2000. Right now, the Prime Minister is considering a fall election. He could use this to duck the issue, and hold an election before the results of this scandal are known to the general public.

Nonetheless, I would like to remind the House of what is going on at HRDC. Let us go back to a few months before the June 2, 1997 election, when a Montrealer, Pierre Corbeil, was travelling all over the province visiting companies which had applied for transitional job funding. On many occasions, before grants were approved, he went fishing for funds for the Liberal Party of Canada for the June 2 election.

The contributions he received from companies were not $100 or $200 amounts, but more on the order of $5,000, $10,000, $15,000, $20,000 or $25,000 in certain cases and, generally speaking, Pierre Corbeil demanded cash, not cheques. It is therefore not always possible to determine what he did with it. Did he tuck some away in his car? Did it change hands on the way to the Liberal Party office?

There is no denying that such situations are sad. It is for reasons such as these, the way in which Pierre Corbeil and the Liberal Party of Canada acted, that Canadians and Quebecers are increasingly losing faith in their elected officials. The minister is responsible today for allowing money to continue flying out the window by refusing to let us get to the bottom of this and to put an end to all this wrongdoing once and for all.

I am anxious to see what side the Liberals opposite will take this evening when they are asked to vote in favour of creating an independent commission of inquiry.

The scandals are not limited to Pierre Corbeil. They also concern the riding of Saint-Maurice, the Prime Minister's riding. There was this little trust company, as in the case of the Minister of Finance and his ships in a tax haven, that bought a golf course from a paper company for $1. Shortly afterwards, it sold an infinitesimal part of this golf course for $550,000. That is quite a figure for a bit of rough on a golf course. So this $1 paid off handsomely, and only a fraction was sold.

The person who bought the bit of rough for $550,000 received contracts from our federal government worth nothing less than $6.4 million in the following months. Members will understand that this $550,000 was very well invested by this client of the Prime Minister.

René Fugère earned over $1 million as a lobbyist, even though he is not even registered. He is a friend of the Prime Minister.

Worse yet, public money was used to get Liberal candidates elected in the latest election. This was the case, among others, in the Quebec riding of Anjou—Rivière-des-Prairies, when the candidate chosen was the former head of the CEQ, a friend of Colonel Gaddafi, who visited him regularly to discover the directives he wanted to impose on Quebec and Canada.

This member that the CEQ lost to the Liberal Party of Canada obtained for his riding—although he was not yet a MP, as hon. members will recall—$20 million for one riding alone, from the transitional job fund. By far the majority of the recipients of these funds were very generous contributors to the Liberal Party of Canada. That is why I say that public funds were used to buy Anjou—Rivière-des-Prairies.

The riding of Saint-Maurice, the riding of the Prime Minister, got $7.3 million just for re-electing him. Often these funds went to buddies, to party organizers, in the case of Placeteco particularly. Placeteco received $1.2 million, of which $1,020,000 was used to pay off an increasingly dubious debt to the National Bank. One job was created, with $1.2 million. There was misappropriation of funds in this case.

There are no fewer than 13 RCMP investigations. We know how that will turn out. You know the solicitor general better than I. Thirteen RCMP investigations are currently under way, nearly all of them in the riding of Saint-Maurice. That is what “job creation” means in that riding. RCMP officers have to be imported in order to investigate misappropriation of funds and find out where the transitional job fund money went.

I would like to take a few minutes to refer to a few cases, such as the fact that unregistered lobbyist René Fugère got $1 million. But since I see that my time is nearly up, I will say the following in closing: Please, Liberals, help us improve the credibility Ottawa politicians have with the electorate. That can start this evening with a vote to authorize an independent inquiry.

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11:45 a.m.

Liberal

Peter Adams Liberal Peterborough, ON

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to what my colleague had to say. I am very interested in the full report of the standing committee, the report of the majority and the four minority reports. The 30 recommendations are very serious attempts to deal with a very important and serious matter.

What does the hon. member think of recommendation No. 30, which reads: “The government should divide HRDC into several more homogeneous and focused structures”—

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11:50 a.m.

Bloc

Antoine Dubé Bloc Lévis, QC

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order. I was here when the member rose on a point of order to say that the House could not debate committee business. This same member raised the point again after his intervention. It seems to me that this is totally irrelevant.