Mr. Speaker, I asked a question of the Minister of Health sometime earlier in the session with respect to the Virginia Fontaine clinic in Manitoba receiving a $37 million grant through the government. The clinic itself is owned by an individual by the name of Perry Fontaine.
Evidence of highly questionable funding and spending practices accompanied the exorbitant amount of money that was approved by Paul Cochrane, assistant deputy minister of health at the time. Mr. Cochrane later resigned in January. It came to light that his wife had in fact purchased condos at Mont Tremblant on behalf of the same Mr. Fontaine who received the government grant.
On February 6 when I asked the Minister of Health about this situation and if he could explain how his former assistant deputy minister could authorize such an enormous amount of cash with little or no departmental scrutiny, the minister's response was that the transactions were the subject of an inquiry by the police, auditors, or both, and that the matter was before the courts in Manitoba. This would ensure that the department would get access to all documents and would understand exactly how the public funds were spent.
He assured the House that the department would do everything possible to trace every one of those public dollars, if any was misspent, and to recover them on behalf of the public. We would like to know whether the minister was aware of this at an earlier time and what he did. Why was there a delay with respect to this important question? We have seen over the last seven years massive funding cuts to health care, while at the same time there is increasing evidence of irresponsible spending on the part of the government.
With the HRDC scandal we found that being close to the Prime Minister in the Liberal government is often of great benefit and a great privilege to those who are in receipt of this kind of money. Whether it is extravagant cruises, water fountains in the Prime Minister's riding, canoe museums, monkey pavilions or a hotel, all these things raise great doubts and great concerns on the part of Canadians when it comes to the spending of taxpayer money.
I asked the minister at the time whether a forensic audit would inquire into why department officials delayed so long before acting on this matter. There was no response forthcoming. The minister simply gave a non-answer, stating that the department had suspended further payments to the centre until all questions were answered. There are still a number of questions outstanding.
The Virginia Fontaine clinic simply provides another example of highly questionable spending practices on the part of the Liberal government, which also leads to a question of ethics, which again brings back questions on the HRDC scandal, the case of Pierre Corbeil who was criminally convicted in his fundraising activities, and the Prime Minister's bank loan controversy concerning the auberge. All of these raise questions of ethics and raise questions of government priorities and how it is spending taxpayer money.
Nothing is wrong with the traditional job fund that is out there, but it is the way in which the follow up is done or not done. It raises alarm bells when it comes to the amounts of money that hard working taxpayers are paying to the government only to see these programs go awry and the money being spent in a highly questionable fashion.
I appreciate the indulgence of the Chair and the opportunity to make these points on a question that I raised in the Chamber.