Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my colleague from Regina--Lumsden--Lake Centre. It is a pleasure to speak to our motion which calls for repriorization in the upcoming budget to ensure there is no excess or wasteful spending. As international development critic for the Canadian Alliance I will use this supply day motion to speak about international development and the role of CIDA.
In the post-September 11 world there is a growing consensus that Canada must do more to promote both broad based economic growth and the alleviation of suffering in the developing world. Under the Liberal government Canada's commitment to the developing world has dropped below our capacity to help. Nevertheless we cannot increase Canada's capacity by simply spending more money.
CIDA has had only marginal success in its history. It has been subject to criticism by the auditor general and to political interference, the latest example being the diversion of CIDA funds to the minister's campaign workers in her riding.
This is the minister who goes around the world promoting transparency and lecturing other countries about how to ensure their dollars are well spent. Yet in her own riding the minister is stretching treasury guidelines as far as she can without breaking them to reward her friends and campaign workers. That is ethically wrong.
We must ensure our development aid meets value for money criteria. The government must launch a new international development white paper proposal before it seeks to increase the aid budget. This afternoon the Canadian Alliance called for a white paper to discuss Canada's role in development aid.
The Minister for International Cooperation held town hall meetings across the country to try to come up with what she says is a new focus for CIDA. These town hall meetings are not a white paper. They are not a comprehensive long term study of where our development money is going, how effective it is and how effective it has been in the past.
From experience I can tell members development dollars that have gone out of Canada have had only marginal success. As we have seen and as has been stated time after time, poverty has risen in many countries where we have given money without accountability. We have never asked for accountability from the other side. There are numerous examples.
The parliamentary secretary talked about going through the WTO and the trade route to give these countries access to our market. Yes, that is the new approach and I am glad the government is finally recognizing it would assist people in the developing world to come out of poverty.
The parliamentary secretary mentioned Doha, Qatar. This was the second WTO meeting I attended. It was the first time I saw CIDA representatives at the meetings so there has been some thinking in this department.
However in my experience as an official opposition critic I have found CIDA to be one of the most secretive departments. People do not know what the department does. Although it likes to claim it is responsible to parliament, I as an official opposition member do not know what CIDA is doing. It gives us information in pieces. It gives us what it wants to give us.
This agency is under the scrutiny of the country and parliament. It has a budget of $2.2 billion and it hides behind a curtain. It is an agency that dreams about how to spend its money on projects.
When I was going to Doha I spoke with the president of CIDA who was accompanying us. He did not know who the critics were, who was speaking about international development in parliament or what we were trying to hold them accountable for.
The minister stands and talks about the fact that there is transparency. I have talked to parliamentarians and to NGOs that have called numerous times. I can say that this agency works in secrecy because its policy advisers refuse to talk to them.
I went on a trip to Brussels with CIDA officials. I was amazed at how much they were trying to keep things to themselves rather than have them out in the open. These are Canadian taxpayer dollars. Why are they not accountable? They are not accountable because they are subject to political interference. They are subject to giving money to their friends.
I was in China where its growth was an amazing 8%. Yet it was one of the largest recipients of CIDA money. May I ask why? CIDA was supposed to help developing countries with issues such as AIDS suffering and education, but here it is helping China. Maybe I can speculate that it is because the friends of the Liberal government get business contracts in that country.
As a member of the official opposition I feel that this is a highly secretive agency which is not accountable to the Parliament of Canada. It is difficult because we have to sit and wait for the auditor general to come out with her report. Every auditor general's report had something to say about CIDA's wasteful management.
The example I gave about how the minister used CIDA money to reward her campaign workers is one of the biggest, blatant abuses I have seen from a minister, a minister who is supposed to keep this agency accountable. Instead we have this biggest abuse of blatant and unethical behaviour.
She stands and hides behind the fact that she had met treasury guidelines. We can read the treasury guidelines to see that there are lines which should not be crossed. She did not cross that line; she stayed behind the line. Was it ethical to give these contracts to campaign workers who helped work on her report? Nobody knew this. When we asked for access to information this agency denied us access. I hope the bureaucrats in CIDA are listening and realize that parliament is asking for accountability from this agency.
I want to speak to another issue dealing with tied aid. Tied aid is a protectionist policy that reduces the effectiveness of development aid. In a recent study $800 million of CIDA aid money was tied to the procurement of Canadian goods and services by recipient countries. According to the World Bank and the OECD, tied aid inflates the cost of goods and services as it reduces the real value of aid by 25%.
The government reduced Canada's untied aid from 62% when it came to power in 1993 to 30% today making it absolutely ineffective. This 25% translates to $200 million. This is one area where we can start to reform, repriorize and ensure that other dollars are spent effectively. These are examples where we feel it is time that the budget looked at repriorization and not at new spending.