Mr. Speaker, I am on my feet tonight in relation to a question I put to the Minister of Health after the tabling of the auditor general's report. I was in that lock-up and had an opportunity to examine that report before question period last week. In that report the auditor general criticized the government for $16 billion in grants and contributions. Many of those grants and contributions never came to the floor of the House of Commons for approval.
I will get specifically into health care, which was the focus of my question. However, in addition to health care, just as an example to the listening public, the fuel rebate program was never approved by parliament. As an example of mismanagement, 7,500 dead people, 1,600 federal prisoners in our penitentiaries and 4,000 people living outside of Canada received fuel rebate cheques. The horror of all horrors is that 90,000 people who were entitled to these cheques did not receive them.
I went on to point out some deficiencies in the health department. For the record, the Department of Health spends $2.3 billion a year of taxpayer money. Of that $2.3 billion, $954 million is given away in grants and contributions under that section with very little scrutiny. Many of those programs have never come to the floor of the House of Commons. The auditor general has identified that as being a real problem, which it obviously is.
I just want to point out one of those programs. As many people know, the HIV-AIDS epidemic is the number one health problem in the world. In Canada many of those HIV-AIDS strategy projects were poorly managed, regardless of the dollar amount funded. I am quote from chapter 9 of the auditor general's report, page 1, which states:
Six large national projects in the Population Health Fund suffered from specific and significant problems.
This was done without the proper authority to fund projects in the prostate cancer research section.
Therefore, just about every department of government has exercised that kind of executive power of writing cheques without bringing those programs before the House of Commons. In other words, there has been no scrutiny by elected members of parliament in this place. That allows for sloppy bookkeeping and management on the part of the government.
There used to be a day when all these estimates would come to the floor of the House of Commons. The House of Commons could hold up and deny that spending by a minister. However this was done simply on a minister's signature.
Many millions of dollars are spent without that scrutiny. We are here to examine the detail. The Prime Minister of Canada has taken that power away from parliament. We are saying that hundreds of millions dollars of that $16 billion could have been better spent on programs that would benefit the Canadian people. We do not believe in wasting taxpayer money.