Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to Group No. 3 at report stage. The Canadian Alliance supports the minister's amendment. I share the opinion of my colleague from South Shore who just spoke. It is reasonable that the minister would make the amendment.
It is the sixth amendment the minister has made to the bill and it has not even passed report stage yet. It is one more indication of how sloppily the bill was drafted. The wording should be right before it is brought before the House.
Group No. 3 contains my amendment, the only amendment that the Canadian Alliance is suggesting for the bill. It is an amendment, if accepted by the government, that would allow us to support the bill because my amendment would allow access to the foundation by the Auditor General of Canada.
I raised the issue in committee where we had some discussion. The minister suggested that what I was asking was unnecessary because the foundation under the bill has a responsibility to appoint its own internal auditor to do the auditing of the foundation's business.
His suggestion that it was adequate to provide value for money by the foundation was ludicrous because the internal auditor has the responsibility spelled out in his job description. The auditor's responsibility is to audit the figures of the foundation, to see that the columns of figures add up properly and that the figures presented by the foundation reasonably reflect the business of the foundation.
The internal auditor in no way has any authority to look at the appointments of the foundation members, the board members or the chairman of the foundation, to see if those people chosen by the government have the qualifications to sit on the foundation or the board of directors. The internal auditor would have no way of passing judgment on whether or not groups of people or projects applying for funding under the foundation met the criteria for that funding.
There must be some check or balance. The auditor general could provide that because we do not want a repeat of what we saw in the billion dollar boondoggle of the human resources department where taxpayer money was shovelled out to ministers' ridings and to friends of the government who did not meet the criteria laid out in the bill. That could happen here again.
What happens if a business acquaintance of the minister or the Prime Minister, and we have just seen it with the Business Development Bank of Canada, applies under this foundation for funding for a project and does not meet the criteria laid out in the bill? The minister then suggests to the appointed chairman of the board that he would surely love to see this person's project qualified. Suddenly there is a change of heart and the project is qualified and away it goes.
It is fundamentally wrong. It is unethical and it has happened. I have used two example of how it has happened within the last couple of years with the government. There is no guard against that same thing happening with this foundation. That is unacceptable.
I would love to hear the minister defend how that would be prevented in the bill. It is a good initiative and we want to support it. I was sorry to listen to the Bloc Quebecois in debate going off on a tangent congratulating the new premier, most of his cabinet and all the rest of it, and talking about $100 million not being enough money to do what the foundation does.
The idea has merit. Even the flexibility built into the bill allows the government to take $100 million and leverage that many times over through the private sector to do some real good things.
If it is simply used to reward friends of the Liberal Party through misuse of the criteria and guidelines, and to shovel taxpayer money on to those who donate to or support the Liberal Party, that is unacceptable. We cannot accept that.
We in the Canadian Alliance are just as concerned about global warming and climate change. We want to do as much about it as we can. We support the idea of developing technologies that have the potential to reduce fossil fuel emissions and make the world a better place for ourselves, our children and our grandchildren.
At the same time we have a responsibility to use taxpayer dollars in a proper, ethical and legal way. I cannot help but conclude that the bill is deliberately drafted as loosely as possible to allow the abuses to continue. It is such a mistake.
One of the members in committee suggested that somehow we were straying from our fundamental philosophy of smaller and less intrusive government. When I suggested I would rather see the initiative stay in the Department of Natural Resources than be hived off to a foundation at arm's length from the government and out of reach of the auditor general, the member suggested that was somehow a breach of our basic philosophy.
I cannot see how whether the foundation is within the department or at arm's length from it would affect the size of government in any way, except to make government bigger and make eight more patronage appointments available to the Prime Minister.
Much is wrong with the bill. The safeguards required against the squandering of taxpayer dollars could be put in the bill by giving the auditor general access. I have not yet heard, either in committee or from the minister in the number of times he has addressed it, why that cannot happen.
I heard him defend the bill loudly last Friday when someone referred to the foundation as a crown corporation. He was quite adamant that it was not. Why, then, does he not allow the auditor general access to it so he can judge whether taxpayers are getting value for their dollars and whether it is achieving the wonderful things the minister suggests it can achieve?
It would be in the government's own interest to allow that to happen. It could then hold it up as such a shining example of an initiative toward cleaner air and the Kyoto commitment. It appears it will be much like everything else the government has said about the climate change initiative in the Kyoto accord. The government is forever talking about it and essentially doing very little about it.
The minister referred just minutes ago to his implementation plan to meet the commitment under the Kyoto accord. That too is quite ridiculous. If every objective including this one under action plan 2000 was met, it would take us only one-third of the way to meeting the government's commitment under the Kyoto accord.
I am truly disappointed that the government has not been more responsive to my suggestion. If it would accept it and allow us to go forward we would love to support the bill.