Debates of June 6th, 2002

Main Estimates, 2002-03

[Dennis Mills, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the statement by the member for South Shore is not accurate. I will tell the House why, and I made that comment in my speech. A senior public servant, if he or she is ever asked to do something by a political master that is not right and is against the Financial Administration Act, that deputy minister has the right to report to the Clerk of the Privy Council.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

He will likely lose his job.

[Dennis Mills, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

The hon. members must be joking. He said he will lose his job. No one will be forced to do anything that is against the Financial Administration Act and risk a criminal offence.

[Bill Casey, Progressive Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I find it ironic that the member just stood up and said that the bureaucrats do not answer to their political masters. If they are their political masters, they are the bosses. We cannot say that they are the masters and that the bureaucrats do not answer to them. It just does not make sense.

I would like to ask the member a question. The Prime Minister has proposed a new ethics regime that applies to ministers, senators and members of parliament. He is making a big deal about the ethics standard applying to members of parliament. What this is for is to cover up the failure and the improper actions of the ministers. He is trying to drag in the members of parliament.

Could the member name a member on this side of the House who has been in trouble, or has been involved in a scandal about misappropriation of government funds, or has written a $500,000 contract with no report, or has misplaced $1 billion or whatever? Could he name one member of parliament on this side who has caused a problem and is being swept up in this big ethics net that the Prime Minister is creating to cover up the failure of the ministers?

[Dennis Mills, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I was taking this debate quite seriously and that question does not deserve an answer.

[Val Meredith, Canadian Alliance, South Surrey—White Rock—Langley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate what the hon. member is saying about the civil service having a couple of masters.

My question to the hon. member is how do we hold that civil service, the deputy ministers and the ministers, accountable for situations? The supposed scandal of the Groupaction is only one department. I found out today there has been three audit reports done, one on heritage, one on HRDC and one on public works, that found missing information from files and contracts that were let without proper procedures being followed.

The hon. member mentioned that the rules and the treasury board guidelines are there. How do we hold the civil servants accountable and how do we hold the ministers accountable for running the show, because the buck does stop with the politician?

[Dennis Mills, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I think that we are holding them accountable. The auditor general has recommended RCMP investigations on a number of files. Does anyone believe that the auditor general and the RCMP are not going through some kind of very serious accountability exercise right now? It is almost as if nothing has happened since these mistakes were discovered.

The reality is that a lot is happening right now not only with the auditor general in three departments as was just acknowledged, but also in certain instances where the auditor general has recommended the RCMP become involved. That is accountability.

[The Speaker]

A very brief question or comment from the hon. member for Pictou--Antigonish--Guysborough. However, this is only 10 or 15 seconds and none of these rants.

[Peter MacKay, Progressive Conservative, Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough, NS]

Mr. Speaker, as the hon. member knows all too well, the problem is there is a much different standard for a criminal investigation than there is for an ethical breach. That is where the rubber hits the road.

The RCMP can investigate criminality within a department, but where is the standard for government itself to be accountable, to be open, to be transparent and to be ethical? This has all been covered up and it is somehow suggested that the RCMP is looking into it and the auditor general is looking into it.

We can put lipstick on a pig. This is improper, unethical and immoral behaviour on the part--

[The Speaker]

I was trying my best. A very brief reply with a similar admonition to the hon. member for Toronto--Danforth.

[Dennis Mills, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member knows that I have an immense amount of respect for him but if he is suggesting that the actions of the RCMP are not sufficient, then I do not--

[Peter MacKay, Progressive Conservative, Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough, NS]

That is exactly it.

[Dennis Mills, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

That is exactly what the member is suggesting.

[Peter MacKay, Progressive Conservative, Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough, NS]

There is a different standard between a criminal investigation and an ethical breach.

[The Speaker]

The hon. member for Toronto--Danforth has the floor. We want to hear his very brief reply.

[Dennis Mills, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I think that this has been a very healthy exchange because the reality is that the Privy Council Office is ultimately responsible for making sure that the head of the Public Service of Canada has a new, reinvigorated service to the public. That includes ethics and everything else.

[Monte Solberg, Canadian Alliance, Medicine Hat, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to join in this spirited debate this evening. I just hope the debate at the other end will shut down so I can actually do what I am expected to do.

This debate is all about how the government spends money. It is all about accounting for government spending. It is about transparency. It is being held in the context of the current scandal that has shaken the government and it is within that context that I would like to address my remarks.

Let us back up a little and review some of the facts. I have to give this speech with a nod to the member from Toronto who just spoke because he has helped frame this debate tonight and some of his remarks have been very important. They have been important because we cannot have a debate about the hundreds of billions of dollars the government spends every year, the $170 billion that it will spend, without talking seriously about the systems that need to be in place to ensure that the money is spent not only wisely but also ethically and within the bounds of the law. That is some of the discussion that has been occurring this evening.

I have to say to my friend that while he has been quite open about the need to find ways to ensure that happens, he has been a very good Liberal in defending his government when it has done things that are simply indefensible. I want to address a few of those things right now.

For instance, the information commissioner has brought down a very critical report of the government with respect to how transparent the government is and how easy it is to get information.

One of the problems that everyone in the House acknowledges is how difficult it is to determine from the estimates exactly where the spending is going, to determine from the public accounts exactly how money is being spent, but it gets much worse than that.

When there are specific questions about things that are going on in government, we use access to information to try to find out what is happening. The government has started to put roadblocks in place that make it virtually impossible to get access to information requests responded to in a timely way, if at all. The information commissioner just released his report and has been very critical of the government and its gatekeeping when it comes to access to information.

We know for instance that through the Prime Minister's Office there is a committee that is now in place comprised of some of the Prime Minister's key political advisers. They screen all the access requests to determine which ones are politically damaging and then they do everything in their power to hold those back year after year.

I stood in this place the other day and asked a question of the human resources minister about an access request that goes back two years, an access request that the information commissioner has ruled on and has stated that the Minister of Human Resources Development must respond to. She has refused to do that. I suppose it will end up in the courts. We know that when it goes to the courts the government is all too willing to pour all its resources into defending whichever minister it is who is trying to block these things, ultimately defeating the idea of access to information, which is completely contrary to the whole act.

That is one of the concerns we have on this side today. In the report that just came down the information commissioner said that the government does not pass the smell test when it comes to its willingness to abide by the spirit of the act. That should cause right thinking people everywhere some pretty deep concern. It does not pass the smell test. That is what he said.

He had many other criticisms. He told of a situation where someone had filed an access request and that person's name was revealed to someone within the government, who then wrote a threatening letter to this person wanting to know why the person was inquiring about expense accounts. It all went to court. In the end the complainant won, but the government backstopped the people who were inside government, the ones who were being threatened by the lawsuit, to the extent that it paid all their legal fees and paid the fine, the whole thing.

The government is using the treasury of the Government of Canada to defeat the intent of the Access to Information Act. We should all be concerned about that. The government is not abiding by the spirit of the act.

It does not end there. Remember that we are talking about an officer of parliament, the information commissioner. The government had promised in the 1993 election that it would give us another officer of parliament who would be the ethics counsellor. Unfortunately the government has failed to do that. The result is that whenever there is an ethical breach, all of this stuff gets buried. It is someone who was hired by the Prime Minister and who answers to the Prime Minister alone who investigates these ethical breaches.

Lo and behold we do not get the type of frank talk and criticism from our ethics counsellor, Mr. Wilson, the way we do from the information commissioner, the privacy commissioner and the auditor general, who are officers of parliament. What we need is for the government to fulfill its promise, which was to give us an officer of parliament who would be responsible for looking into ethical breaches. It failed to do that.

Remember we are talking about a situation where the government side is in control of $170 billion. We need that type of person in place to investigate these sorts of ethical breaches. There have been a number of them lately in public works and human resources development. There have been all kinds of them over the years. That person needs to be in place.

The auditor general is another officer of parliament who has done an outstanding job and has spoken very frankly about what has been happening in public works. In the internal audit of 2000 which was revealed because of access to information requests, we found that public works had all kinds of problems. The government was embarrassed. It knew it had a political problem. It had no choice but to send it off to the auditor general.

I just want to point out that sometimes the government members will say that they turned something over to the auditor general, like they did it voluntarily. Why did they not reveal it the moment they found the problems through their own internal audit? If they are so concerned about transparency and about doing what it is right, why did they not make it public at that point? No, what they did was hide it as long as they could until it was revealed through an access to information request and only then, when they were suffering political damage, did they turn it over to the auditor general.

What did the auditor general find? The auditor general said that the accounting practices in public works were appalling. She used the word appalling over and over again. She said that they broke every rule in the book. We have found since that time that instead of being forthright about what is going on in public works, the government has continually tried to cover up.

When we brought the former public works minister before the foreign affairs committee, when he was called back from Denmark, the foreign affairs committee stonewalled and blocked any questions about his tenure as minister of public works. The government knew there was all kinds of explosive information to which he had access and knew about and it did not want him to be embarrassed in front of the committee. The government arranged for the committee to block all questions about that.

We have seen situation after situation where the government stonewalls and only releases information when it starts to suffer political damage. A good example was today right here in the House during question period. The Canadian Alliance stood up and asked questions of the new public works minister, the third one in about three months. We said that we had found out on Tuesday night that the government was still giving contracts to Groupaction despite the fact that it had been revealed to have, in my mind, effectively defrauded taxpayers of at least a half a million dollars, maybe more. This was all revealed in the auditor general's report.

Despite the fact that it was under criminal investigation, despite the fact that the minister revealed on Tuesday night that it did substandard work, the government was still giving Groupaction contracts. It was only after being pounded today in the House that the minister finally said “We are not going to give them any more contracts”. He said it in such an equivocal way it took us several questions to really confirm that the government would not do it any more.

My point is that the government is being dragged kicking and screaming to the place where it will now supposedly start to enforce the rules that currently exist. That is not good enough. We are talking about expenditures of $170 billion a year.

Canadians have a right to expect that there would be the highest possible standards when it comes to scrutinizing how the government does business, but at every turn the government blocks every attempt to gather information about what is going on inside the government.

If that is the case then the public has every right to be cynical about what the government is doing. They are cynical. We all know that. We have seen the polls. We know that they are cynical. They do not trust politicians. One of the reasons is that the government has been so stubborn about being open to how it does business. I think that is a well established fact.

There are a number of things I could talk about. Let me just talk for a moment about the need for a full public inquiry into all of this mess.

My friend from Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough in Nova Scotia stood up a moment ago and he was correct in saying that the RCMP will investigate instances of criminality, but many of the ethical breaches that we are talking about technically are not against the law. They are simply unethical and they are ethical breaches that put money into people's pockets. They may not necessarily meet the high test of being criminal but they are still absolutely and completely wrong.

Sometimes the auditor general will report on them and find that what has happened is wrong. Sometimes what we find is that there are holes in the Financial Administration Act or that the treasury board guidelines do not cover these things off. That is why we need somebody else who will come in and say that the treasury board guidelines did not anticipate a particular type of action that has been uncovered and they should, or that the Financial Administration Act did not anticipate what has been going on in public works and it should.

That is why we need a full public inquiry. We need a judge effectively to come in and take a look at this and make recommendations about how to tighten up the guidelines so that we do not have problems like we have had in public works and other departments over the years, but especially in public works right now. We need somebody to come in and make those recommendations. If that happened there would be a lot more faith that the money the government spends, $170 billion, is being spent if not wisely, at least within the bounds of what is ethical. Right now I do not think there is any question that that is in question.

That is the best possible case I can make for the need for a full public inquiry into what is going on in public works and frankly, throughout government. I think that is very important.

I want to say a few more words about some of the other examples of how the government has found ways around the guidelines that are put in place to protect taxpayers.

In the past the auditor general has been extraordinarily critical of the finance minister for his accounting practices. For instance, in many years we have seen situations where at the end of the year the government will effectively front end load spending. In its bookkeeping it will spend a bunch of money at the end of the year for a program that actually will not come into place until a few years down the road.

We found situations where the government is putting money into foundations in trust, about $7 billion. The auditor general has criticized the finance minister for that kind of behaviour. The concern is that this money is being moved off the books. It is being moved into these foundations and trusts that are beyond the reach of the auditor general.

The government's defence is that audits are done. The official opposition would like to know that a servant of parliament and the people of Canada, the auditor general, who has the interests of the public at heart, is the one who can go in and audit these foundations. We are talking about $7 billion in this case.

There are many other examples of times when the auditor general has been critical of some of the accounting the government does. There are other things the government could do beyond that to give the public faith in how it spends money.

For instance the auditor general does not have access to many of the crown corporations. They spend extraordinary amounts of money. The Canadian Wheat Board is a good example. It is not quite a crown corporation but an entity all its own and it is beyond the reach of the auditor general.

We would like to know that organizations like the Canadian Wheat Board, the CBC and all these different groups have proper scrutiny so that we can know for sure that the spending that occurs, which is in the billions of dollars, is actually being done within proper guidelines. We want to know that the spending meets the Financial Administration Act, that it follows treasury board guidelines, that the organizations are engaging in proper accounting and that all the standards are in place.

What does the government have to hide? Why would it stand in the way of that? It does not make any sense unless there is something to hide. The official opposition is concerned about that.

Mr. Speaker, I have just seen a remarkable thing. Some roses have been placed on the desk of the former finance minister. That speaks volumes about some of the fireworks we are going to experience in the days and weeks to come, not just here but across the country.

At any rate, we are deeply concerned about how the government tries to block the access of servants of the public, servants of parliament like the auditor general, the information commissioner and the privacy commissioner whose jobs are to protect the taxpayers and protect parliament.

I have not touched on the particulars of the $170 billion and how the government spends its money. Suffice it to say that I am very critical of how it does that. Beyond the scandal and all the things that have happened at public works, I am deeply concerned. Year after year there are all kinds of criticisms that come forward from the auditor general that are never responded to adequately. Beyond that there is $15 billion to $20 billion in grants and contributions that the official opposition believes is full of patronage, pork barreling and waste. The government needs to address that.

There are many things we could talk about but I see my friend is anxious to ask some questions. I will leave it at that and I look forward to his questions.

[Dennis Mills, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Mr. Speaker, if we have a system on this side of the House that is blocking information from getting out, then we are not doing a very good job. It seems to me that every single mistake we have made has been well documented and is well known.

The member said himself that the auditor general has done a very good job in bringing everybody to account. The auditor general's function is not something new. It is not something that has just happened in the last six months. The Auditor General of Canada has been here year after year.

It was this government that brought out the fact that these reports on making us accountable would be done quarterly rather than annually. We have quadrupled the pressure on the auditor general to make us accountable four times a year, more times than what has happened in the past. The member should acknowledge that fact. We were the ones who said the auditor general would do her report quarterly. We do not think for a second that we can circumvent the auditor general and in fact we are not.

The member acknowledged that the auditor general was doing a very good job. In no way, shape or form do we disagree with her. That is the nature of our governance. We are constantly in a state of accountability. When we make mistakes those mistakes are corrected.

We would never acknowledge the mistakes that were made in the past few weeks as anything other than mistakes that need to be corrected. The Prime Minister has said that several times himself. What bothers me about the debate in the last three weeks is that once a point has been made, why do we not get on to the challenges that we have in the House such as dealing with the issues of agriculture, the homeless and all the other issues that are a challenge to this country?

[Monte Solberg, Canadian Alliance, Medicine Hat, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the member asked a number of questions and I will deal with one which he asked near the end of his comments.

He said that once we have made the point why do we not just move on. The problem is that just making the point does not ensure that any action will be taken.

I point to the problems with the Groupaction contracts that were revealed again today. Today the minister finally said that he will not hand out any more contracts to Groupaction. That would not have happened had we not sat here and hammered at it day after day. If it would have happened, it would have happened months ago when this first came out, but we had to pound away on it. That is why we had to do it. I would like to hear the member's response.

[Dennis Mills, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is important that we understand that the motion we are debating is a motion to support the resources the Privy Council Office needs to do its function for the year. With all due respect, we did not really talk about the Privy Council Office.

Does the member not agree that it is absolutely critical for the functioning of this House and the functioning of the Public Service of Canada to make sure that the best and the brightest in this country are in the Privy Council Office? Will the member support that happening?

[Monte Solberg, Canadian Alliance, Medicine Hat, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I would go even beyond that. Not only do we have to have the best possible public servants in the PCO, but we also have to have public servants who are free from political hectoring that puts them in a position of being asked to do things that are at the very least unethical. That is what happened in public works. That is one of the concerns the public service itself has. Individuals are put in positions where they are asked to do political work for the government at the risk of putting themselves in a completely untenable position.

[Gerald Keddy, Progressive Conservative, South Shore, NS]

Mr. Speaker, following the debate this evening is almost incredulous. The member for Toronto--Danforth has been sole sourced. He is out here all by himself defending the government and its policies. His colleagues seem to have scurried away into the dark corners and recesses of this Chamber. They have left this member all by himself. He has done an admiral job defending difficult policies and deserves a round of applause for doing that.

The member's comments on the PCO do not just pertain to unethical practices. The PCO's practices are bordering on being illegal. That becomes the issue that needs to be brought out into the full light of day. We need to assess whether they are not just unethical but illegal.

[Monte Solberg, Canadian Alliance, Medicine Hat, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is right. The member for Toronto--Danforth is a good parliamentarian. I know he has great respect for the House. He always does his best to hold his own government to account in many situations and he should be commended for that. In this case however I believe he is trying to defend the indefensible.

My colleague is right. The government does not reveal too many situations. We uncover situations where public servants are effectively asked to sign off on contracts or grant oral contracts that anyone with any conscience at all knows are ethically questionable and possibly illegal. Sometimes it is hard to determine these things. Sometimes situations come close to meeting the criteria for what might be illegal and sometimes there are grey areas but my friend is absolutely correct.

If we want to stand up for public servants tonight let us do that by saying that we will put in place a system that will stop politicians from using public servants as their way to reward their political friends.

[Peter MacKay, Progressive Conservative, Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough, NS]

Mr. Speaker, we are drawing near the end of this issue but what the hon. member for Medicine Hat has touched upon is critical to this whole debate. That is one of accountability and, further to that, consequences. He talks about immoral, unethical or illegal activity. Those bring about change and corrective actions which are consequences. That is what appears to be missing throughout this entire process. An RCMP investigation may result in a charge being laid and due process initiated. What we are seeing are immoral and unethical breaches of cronyism, patronage and unbelievable cozy behaviour with no consequences.

The hon. member is right. He talks about the government's first reaction which is to deny it, then to accuse the accuser and finally to blame someone else. I would ask the hon. member to address the issue of whether Canadians should trust the PCO with more money, $101 million.

[Monte Solberg, Canadian Alliance, Medicine Hat, AB]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague is absolutely right when he talks about consequences. What was the penalty that the first public works minister had to pay for his breaches? He was made the ambassador to Denmark. That was the consequence. What happened to the second public works minister when he ran into an ethical problem? He was not fired, he was shuffled into his old cabinet position. What happened with the defence minister? It was only after newspaper reports that he became a political liability and was let go. Consequences seldom happen in any way that are damaging to the person who is guilty. They only do when the government itself starts to run into political problems.