Debates of Feb. 24th, 2003

Supply

[Michel Guimond, Bloc, Beauport—Montmorency—Côte-De- Beaupré—Île-D'Orléans, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to answer the question put to me by the hon. member for Prince George—Bulkley Valley with whom I have had the opportunity to sit on the Standing Committee on Transport from 1993 to 1997. I want him to know that I really liked working with him. He is an experienced and serious member of Parliament, as evidenced by his question.

The Liberal government seems to forget that the money it is managing is not its own. We saw it again last week when the budget was brought down. The finance minister allocates funds for various ministers to manage. They should be reminded that the money does not belong to them. It is the taxpayers' money, the money of the constituents we are all here to represent, regardless of the party we are from or the side of the House we sit on. Canadian taxpayers are tired of always paying. They are sick and tired of paying for all this abuse and mismanagement. In focus groups, people often wonder why the public has lost confidence in politics and politicians. We should perhaps ask ourselves that question when faced with such telling examples of mismanagement.

We work hard to show our constituents that we are honest. We work in good faith. We fight hard to effectively represent our constituents in Parliament and to help them in their dealings with the government. But when people watch the news at night and compare all of this with their paycheque, with what is left of their paycheque once all the taxes, royalties and fees have been paid, they say, “It does not make any sense”.

A program which was supposed to cost $2 million will end up costing over $1 billion. Fortunately, the Auditor General agreed with us. We argued that the management of this program made no sense at all.

[Dick Harris, Canadian Alliance, Prince George—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from the Bloc for his words. It has been said, as a matter of fact I may have said it, that the Liberal government will go down in history as being the most corrupt government Canada ever saw.

I want to ask the member if he could agree in theory about this. By the deceptive and corrupt actions of the government, have members of the government somehow violated the privileges of other members of Parliament? Members of Parliament have a right to work hard and be honest. We want to give the image that there are politicians representing Canadians in this place who are honest, work hard and believe in being up front and transparent in everything they do. However the government, by its actions, is wiping away what we are trying to do as representatives of the people. I feel somehow this is a violation of our rights to do that.

Would the member agree with that type of scenario or theory?

[Michel Guimond, Bloc, Beauport—Montmorency—Côte-De- Beaupré—Île-D'Orléans, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Prince George—Bulkley Valley is right. We can look at the example of the Minister of Canadian Heritage who, during an election campaign, said the GST should be scrapped. She promised if she were elected that the Liberal government would abolish the GST, which was an issue during the election.

She was elected and was confronted about this. Fortunately, she had said on television that she was committed to having the GST abolished. Reporters did their work; they kept after her and showed how she had contradicted herself, using what they had on tape, on video.

She resigned and ran again. By the way, the member for Hamilton East is a candidate to succeed the Prime Minister. She cost Canadian taxpayers, the taxpayers of Hamilton, half a million dollars for a by-election just for kicks. She just should have been honest from the start.

I have another thing to say to my colleague from Prince George—Bulkley Valley. When he was elected in 1993, the Prime Minister made fun of the Conservative government before him, saying that none of his ministers would ever resign. “There will be no Sinclair Stevens, no Michel Côté, no Bisonette”, he said, naming the Conservative ministers who resigned under Mr. Mulroney's reign.

Let me add it up—off the top of my head there are seven or eight Liberal ministers who have resigned for one reason or another, when the day before they denied there was any problem. When confronted later, they were forced to resign. Is that an honest government?

[Dick Harris, Canadian Alliance, Prince George—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member from the Bloc again. I guess skulduggery is a good word for what went on with Groupaction. I would ask him to comment on that. The government once again broke every procurement rule in the book, with the intention of course of awarding these contracts to political friends. If this was done in private practice and a purchasing agent was responsible for breaking the rules, in his opinion would a purchasing agent be fired on the spot? The government still has ministers are carrying on?

[Kevin Sorenson, Canadian Alliance, Crowfoot, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The questioner just mentioned that the Liberal government broke every rule in the book. We know there could be close to a thousand rules. Is there not at least one rule that it did not break?

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Bélair)]

If the hon. member for Beauport—Montmorency—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île-d'Orléans wishes to answer the question, I will be indulgent and give him one minute to do so.

[Michel Guimond, Bloc, Beauport—Montmorency—Côte-De- Beaupré—Île-D'Orléans, QC]

I thank you for your indulgence, Mr. Speaker. However, the hon. member for Bulkley Valley will probably not like my answer. I agree totally, but earlier I ran out of time before I could say that this whole issue of the Groupaction reports was set in the context of collective political psychosis in English Canada.

Perhaps the hon. member remembers the 1995 referendum. I am not sure whether or not he took advantage of the plane tickets graciously provided by Canadian Airlines at $99 for a return trip from Vancouver to attend the love-in held in Montreal, at Canada Place, and tell us, “We love you. The rest of Canada loves you”.

The Groupaction reports fit in this context.

[An hon. member]

I was there.

[Michel Guimond, Bloc, Beauport—Montmorency—Côte-De- Beaupré—Île-D'Orléans, QC]

The hon. member from the Toronto area was there. However, as regards the Groupaction reports, the Liberals were just afraid of losing the referendum in 1995. That is why they inundated Quebec with advertising. They did so only in Quebec, and not at all in the rest of Canada. We had Canadian flags all over the place in Quebec.

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

Mr. Speaker, I have to begin by saying how shameful it is that the Canadian Alliance would pander to members of the Bloc Quebecois who come to this nation's boardroom with the sole intention of splitting the country apart. If we really want to be constructive in this House, we have to go back to a very difficult moment in 1993-94 when a collective decision was made in the House to fortify the Government of Canada's presence in Quebec and to educate Quebeckers so they knew their place was in Canada, not outside of Canada. It was regretful that a lot of mistakes were made in that campaign.

No member of Parliament on the government side of the House would ever condone the Groupaction screw up. Those were mistakes, and we condemn not only those mistakes but any mistakes involving a waste of money. It drives me crazy when I listen to the separatists in here who try to pretend they are here for Canada. We know in fact that they are here for other reasons.

I cannot imagine a single member in this House who does not praise the work of the Auditor General and her team. However we are missing the boat when we do not explain to Canadians in concrete terms why all members of Parliament appreciate the Auditor General. I would like to speak from my vantage point as a member of Parliament from the greater Toronto area.

Right now there is a situation in the House of Commons where the trust of Canadians toward MPs is very fragile, and on that point I agree with my colleague in the Canadian Alliance. We have to ask ourselves why it is fragile. Canadians say that it is because they do not have an understanding of what the chamber does for them on a day to day basis.

One year ago the Toronto Star , one of the newspapers in my community, did a feature story in the editorial section entitled “Greater Toronto Area Members of Parliament Missing in Action”. We were stunned by that slam. We took it upon ourselves to research what exactly was going on in the greater Toronto area with regard to the Government of Canada. We discovered in very short order that the people of the greater Toronto area sent taxes to the Government of Canada of approximately $32 billion. They received back in statutory cheques and program cheques, that is programs from various departments of government, close to $24 billion. One might say that is a lot of money.

The next question by critics is where does all that money go? We certainly know a large percentage of it goes to the Canada pension plan, health transfers and unemployment insurance. The reality is about $8 billion or $9 billion a year go into the greater Toronto area program spending, that is dollars for various programs and services from the Government of Canada.

Today in this government we have an antiquated technology, antiquated to the point that government departments cannot tell us exactly where every dollar is going. They can tell us where large projects go, like the ballet or the waterfront, but those large projects represent maybe only $1 billion. Where is the other $9 billion? These are moneys that go into the greater Toronto area through the Department of Industry, the Department of the Environment, Human Resources Development Canada, Veterans Affairs and the Department of National Defence. These are large sums of money. Our system of government, as of this date, is not designed in such a way that elected MPs can look to see whether or not those moneys are going to the right place.

I want to give a specific example. I went through the estimates about six months ago and I discovered that last year in grants to banks in the greater Toronto area, we disbursed about $20 million. What member of Parliament in the House would stand up and say, “I vote to give $20 million to banks under the heading of labour adjustment”, when collectively banks made about $4 billion? There is absolutely no political rhyme or reason we would do that when we are short on money for housing and short on money for kids living in poverty, et cetera.

The idea of elected members of Parliament not knowing where every dollar goes is, I find, an abuse of my privilege as a parliamentarian.

I know that my colleague from St. John's, Newfoundland knows where every dollar goes in his riding. In fact, I have talked to many of my colleagues and they know. In smaller communities they know where every nickel goes and that is how they justify whether or not they are doing their work as members of Parliament.

I am sure, Mr. Speaker, that you know where most of the money goes in your riding. Could you imagine millions of dollars being spent in your riding without you knowing about it? I doubt it. However, in large urban centres there are billions, not millions, of dollars being spent and we do not know exactly how it is being spent. We know of a lump sum here and a lump sum there, but we do not know exactly where it is going.

I contend that this Chamber's privileges are being abused when we do not know where the money is going in our communities, the communities we are responsible for. How can we be accountable if we do not know where the money is going? I believe it is wrong that unelected, unaccountable officials know where the money is going but do not inform elected, publicly accountable MPs.

That is why I support the motion today. If I had my way around here, I would have an auditor general monitoring every department of government for the next 18 months to two years until we had a system in place where every single dollar was tracked and we could trace it. Then, every single MP, and I do not care whether it is a government member or an opposition member, it does not matter what party to me, would know where the money goes. We should know.

Could hon. members imagine running a company, a small business, where hundreds of thousands of dollars were going out the door and we did not know where? It just defies basic logic that we would not know where it was going, yet here billions of dollars are being spent and elected MPs do not know where it is going.

I am not suggesting that all of this money is being spent on bad things. I am sure that 99.9% of it is spent on good things, but the challenge that we in the House have is to deal with priorities, with expenditure priorities. I believe there could be hundreds of millions of dollars being spent on things that unelected, unaccountable officials would like it to go to, but it might not meet the test of the political priorities. I say political priorities because we were sent here, we were elected, based on a certain set of political priorities being executed. If we look around and see that we are short and that we do not have enough money to deal with those priorities on which we campaigned during the last election, then we have to re-profile some of the money that is being spent. And how do we re-profile it and re-address it when we do not know where it goes?

Therefore, I am passionately committed to the Auditor General having the resources that she and her office need so that we can make sure there is value for every tax dollar going into our communities, right across the country. I want to know that the deal we did with Union Station in Toronto is a good deal for Canadians. I want to know that the deals that Canada Lands does with taxpayers' land, built over years, are meeting the public policy objectives of why we were sent here, as Canada Lands is now doing joint ventures with private developers. I do not want unelected, unaccountable officials doing these deals when we as elected MPs are shut out from what is going on. It is wrong. I want an Auditor General and a team within the Auditor General's office to make sure that elected members of Parliament have that information.

If there is anybody in this Chamber who does not want to know what is going on in his or her riding, I would love for them to stand up. If we took a vote here, I think every single MP, and I do not care from which party, would want to know where the money is going. If money is being spent on things in which they do not believe, they can call the officials or call the minister responsible and say, “Do not give any more money to chartered banks for labour adjustment programs when we have other needs. Do not give money to foreign multinational food companies when we have small businesses that are Canadian. Do not give away Canada's lands by selling them to five star hotels in downtown Toronto when we need those lands for affordable housing”.

That is why we are here and that is why the role of the Auditor General is critical. I support it. If we are to begin the process of rebuilding trust for all of us who come into this privileged place, if we are to have any shot at all at rebuilding trust, then I think it has to begin with our ability to say to our electors, “I know where the money is going in my riding and I stand by it”. But I cannot stand by it if I do not know where it is going, and the Auditor General is the only person who can make sure that this system of governance happens, department by department.

[Kevin Sorenson, Canadian Alliance, Crowfoot, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for Toronto--Danforth for his speech. We are here today to consider the motion that the House consider the reports of the Auditor General presented in 2002. Much of the Auditor General's report was a scathing commentary on the Liberal government's approach to the way it manages the country and there were a lot of real concerns for the government within that report.

I do appreciate some of the comments the member made. It seems that to get any accountability around the House anymore, one either has to be entering a race or leaving the leadership. Some are leaving and they are considering changes to a system of financing political parties. Others who are coming in suddenly have come up with ideas for accountability to the House. We applaud those efforts.

Here is my concern. With a government that is in a position where it has the ability to spend, spend, spend without much accountability, we need checks and balances. In his speech, the member made it very clear that if he had his way every department would have its own auditor general who would be reporting to the people. I applaud him for those types of comments.

However, some members of the Liberal backbench have made some comments that are very disheartening. I think they are disheartening to certain members in the Liberal Party, they are disheartening to the opposition, and I think they are disheartening to all of Canada.

The member for Pickering--Ajax--Uxbridge and the member for Beauséjour--Petitcodiac dared to suggest that the Auditor General's audit on Groupaction was nothing more than a smear campaign. In an Ottawa Citizen story in May, the member for Pickering--Ajax--Uxbridge suggested that the Office of the Auditor General had become nothing more than a politicized position. I want to quote what our colleague on the Liberal side of the House said:

We want to make sure that going and doing her job is different than going on a witch-hunt...Is it truly an office that's independent or is it a political office?

When the opposition and all Canadians hear these types of comments coming from members on the backbenches of the governing party, what are Canadians to believe about the way the country is governed?

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

Mr. Speaker, the member for Crowfoot obviously missed my point, because I did include in my remarks all my colleagues in the greater Toronto area. I have been in the House now for 15 years and I can say that the member of Parliament for Pickering--Ajax--Uxbridge is one of the finest members of Parliament. Our member of Parliament has collaborated with the opposition many times, and as for the notion that in his incredibly experienced and positive parliamentary career he would suggest that he was not in favour of accountability, no one would take the member for Crowfoot seriously. He is taking things out of context.

If we are really going to make this work, as members of Parliament we are going to have to collaborate. I am a government member. Does the member honestly believe that I would stand here and say, “Yes, let us give $20 million to chartered banks in downtown Toronto”, when we have kids who go to school hungry? No. I am trying to convey to the opposition that the system needs repair. I am trying to be very specific and constructive on how it needs repair, and I do not think we are going to get anywhere if we just get up here and take cheap shots at one another. I honestly do not.

I think that right now we have a unique moment in the House to really make the place better. I really believe that, because I do not think there is a member of Parliament in the House, it does not matter what party they are from, who enjoys taking the hit that we do not do good work here. Most of it is because the machinery around us needs to be rebuilt. It is not the individual members of Parliament. I know that the man who I will be facing in the next election basically wants to come here to try to do good things, just like the member for Crowfoot, but the machinery around us is broken. Unless we collaborate to fix that machinery, we are just going to continue to take cheap shots at one another and I do not think that is going to make it better for Canadians.

[David Anderson, Canadian Alliance, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I must take exception to a couple of comments that the member made. The opposition, and particularly the Canadian Alliance, has consistently worked hard to bring change to the House. At every point and every time we are stopped and virtually always by government backbenchers who choose not to make a differences. They make the choice that the system will not be different than it has been in the past.

It is fine for members to stand up and give us a lecture while they are on TV, but when it comes time to vote for change, to make a difference, and to make those significant changes that we need here, the government backbenchers consistently back down from doing that. Therefore, the system stays the way that it is and it stays broken, as the member says.

However, he must take responsibility along with his colleague from Uxbridge who asked, as my colleague did, whether the Auditor General was truly an office that was independent or was it a political office because she dared to question what was going on with the government.

I would be willing to listen to the hon. member's comments on this. Backbenchers cannot have it both ways by saying that they stand for reform, but every time that they have an opportunity to do something about it they choose not to.

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

Mr. Speaker, the member has really not read the last budget. The Minister of Finance, Tuesday of last week, had an entire section in the budget dedicated to government accountability and renewing the systems of government accountability.

I am sure all the Canadian Alliance members would feel comfortable with the Minister of Finance and his history of being a fiscal conservative and ensuring that the system is brought up to speed. Therefore, I think there is great hope.

[Keith Martin, Canadian Alliance, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I wonder if my hon. friend, who has a deep interest in matters financial, would support the notion, in the government's bill on campaign finance reform, that all of us should publish what we receive and those who pay should also publish what they pay. It would be along the lines of the European Union proposal which increases and improves corporate social responsibility?

My second question revolves around what one of his colleagues did for his party. He proposed a solution whereby we would need to know what our inputs are as well as what our outputs are in terms of government expenditures. What are his comments on that?

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

Mr. Speaker, I totally agree with the second point. In fact, the Auditor General should get into the business of doing a full analysis on tax expenditures by every sector.

The Auditor General has never done an analysis on tax expenditures. Why not? That is billions of dollars of forgone revenue to the treasury. Why do we not know? We do not need to know the specific organization, but we should know the sector and we should know the amount. I do not care whether it is aerospace, motion picture, auto or whatever.

On the first point, I have absolutely no problem with money coming in, who gives it to us and where it goes. I totally support that. I believe though that in between elections when we do public policy advocacy we should be allowed to go out and generate relationships and funds to ensure that work is done properly.

[David Anderson, Canadian Alliance, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I will respond to some of the comments that we have just heard. I will also be splitting my time with the member for South Surrey—White Rock—Langley.

We are addressing the Auditor General's reports today. First nations governance, the CCRA, information technology security, criminal justice system, defence, departmental performance reports, health, EI and the gun registry are some of the things that the Auditor General has dealt with in her reports.

Why do we need an Auditor General and these reports at all? It is clear to me that we need the reports because the hearts of Canadians just do not trust the government. They do not believe that the government can be trusted to be left alone and be unsupervised. We see a big difference throughout this country on how people view government. I happen to come from western Canada and in western Canada for the most part we see government as being basically a negative thing. It interferes in people's lives and most of the people I know, the people in my riding, would like to see smaller government with less interference in their lives and less taxation.

People in other parts of this country apparently like the idea of government. They want to see more government and we saw a clash of those two civilizations over the weekend when the Minister for Intergovernmental Affairs took great exception to the premier of Alberta and his throne speech, and decided he was going to step into this issue of Alberta and what is going on there.

One of the things that we realize in western Canada is that people are sick and tired of the government coming in and telling them who they are and what they need to do. They are sick and tired of the government not listening to them. They are sick and tired of the important issues going by and not being heard on these things, and being totally ignored.

The minister happened to mention three of those issues: Kyoto, Canadian Wheat Board, and firearms registry. He said that nowhere in this world is the spectre of secession raised with regard to, and he listed them, an international protocol on the environment, a Wheat Board, or a firearms registry program.

It is not just three issues that have caused the problems and the concerns. We do not just have those three issues, but things that have built up over the years, coming from a government that has refused to listen to people throughout this country. It refused to listen month after month, year after year and decade after decade. Western Canadians are getting sick of the arrogance and the ignorance that is demonstrated by the government.

This same minister has no qualms about pushing his agenda very actively and aggressively when he wants to change this country to fit his image. He is prepared to do that even though he does not understand a big part of this country. He does not mind shoving his agenda down westerner's throats, but cannot hear one word of comment or criticism of the government without sending a condescending letter to western Canadians lecturing them on their role and what he sees as their role.

We feel that we contribute and are part of this country. We are proud of who we are, but we are sick and tired of being treated as second class citizens. I guess no one should be surprised that people at some point begin to look at other options when they are just sick and tired of their government not listening to them.

One of the reasons people in western Canada have a mistrust for government is that they have not been listened to for so long. They do not know whether they are part of this country or not. One of the reasons that we need the Auditor General is because we know that the Liberal government is always going to push the envelope on accountability. We have seen that in our part of the world and people in other parts of this country are starting to catch onto that. We need someone who will regulate that and will look after that.

Why is it important to maintain accountability? We have seen too many times through this century what happens when there is no accountability of government. We have seen it happen in communist regimes where it has been deadly to their citizens. We regularly hear in the House my colleague from Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca indicate that there is no accountability in the government of Zimbabwe which is so dangerous to the citizens and the opposition. It is dangerous to any one who dares to oppose the dictatorship of that country. Accountability is needed there and we need it in this country as well. One of the concerns we have is that the government sets the tone for accountability. I think it is a sour tone sending a bad note.

We see these things right from the top. We see the Prime Minister who, in his own legal dealings, raises questions year after year as to how he is doing business. We saw it in his appointment of an ethics counsellor who the Prime Minister set up and then made the position responsible to him so that the counsellor reports to no one else but the person who appointed him. He is not accountable to Parliament.

We have been talking about cabinet guidelines over the last few days. The rules are set up differently for different cabinet ministers. If cabinet ministers have a set of businesses they must set them up one way, but if someone else happens to be the finance minister, he gets to set it up so that he can run his companies and make it look to the public like he does not have any interest in them or has interfered in those companies. We saw that at least one of them had a special deal.

The elections financing bill came in at the last minute where the Prime Minister decided he would make changes to the country's election financing at the end of his career, not during the middle of it or when it could have influenced him, but after he leaves.

His changes would reduce or try to reduce corporate influence, which is good, but, on the other hand, because the Liberal Party is incapable of raising its own money without those corporate contributions he has to turn to someone else. Who does he turn to but the taxpayers, and forces them to fund his party.

The Alliance is the one party that is for the most part dependent on individual donations and we believe that we could survive very well with reduced corporate donations and be able to maintain our party and keep it going. The Liberals just cannot raise their money and so they turn to the taxpayers once again.

The other parties, of course there are a couple of them swimming in debt, as soon as they see an opportunity to get free taxpayers' money are only too happy to jump on board with this proposal.

Every government agency needs auditing because the goal of bureaucracy is to expand itself. That is why it exists, that is why it is there, it wants to get bigger, and it works on that. We saw it again last week in the budget. The government has decided to expand the bureaucracy. Over the last year it has grown, but it will continue to grow over the next couple of years.

The Auditor General has done some tremendous work in examining departments that she was able to review. There are other reports she has submitted over time. I will talk about one of those, but she has done good work in the taxation department. My colleague from St. Albert talked about that earlier today and did a good job of addressing that.

One of the audits with which I am familiar with is the Canadian Wheat Board audit that was brought down last year. It was interesting that she was called in to do an audit on the Canadian Wheat Board but then limited in what she could audit. She came in and basically was allowed to do an office management audit. She found out that there were problems in overall management and no set ways of measuring performance.

She found that there were problems in planning and that there were major problems in how the board handled its information technology. All of that was good and well, and the board had committed itself to improving some of those areas, but the problem was that it did not address the issues that people wanted her to look at in terms of how the board operated in the marketplace, whether it gave farmers a better deal or not. We have no way of knowing that because the board itself limited her in what she could study. That is one of the problems that the Auditor General faces, often being restricted in what she can do and where she can go.

We saw that in the gun registry. It is another good example of where she said she could not find out the true and full costs of the gun registry because she was not allowed to go far enough into not only the justice department but some of the other departments to find out who had actually been funding this and where the money for it had been coming from.

I want to talk a little bit about the gun registry. The Auditor General talked about the fact that the issue was not about gun control. It was not even the astronomical cost overruns although we talked about those, but that the real issue, and what was inexcusable about what was going on with the gun registry was that Parliament was kept in the dark.

The member for Toronto--Danforth had some comments about how important it was for people to access that information. The Auditor General said that what was inexcusable about the program was that not only was she not able to get the information but parliamentarians had been kept completely in the dark about it.

We are all familiar with the fact that $1 billion has been put into the gun registry. Many of us would say that $1 billion has been wasted. That is $1 billion for seven million guns, which, If I have worked it out right, is about $143 per gun. It would probably average out to $300 to purchase a gun and here we are spending $150 just to register it. That has to be a complete disaster in terms of how the program is being run.

I want to talk a bit about what is wrong with the registry.

[The Deputy Speaker]

I regret that the hon. member has used up his 10 minutes. If someone wishes to ask him a question about what he was going to say, he might have an opportunity to do just that.

[Kevin Sorenson, Canadian Alliance, Crowfoot, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I have been sitting here intently listening to the speech by the member for Cypress Hills—Grasslands. Members are sitting on the edge of their seats. We have enjoyed the speech so far. I would ask him to expand on his thoughts on the gun registry.

[David Anderson, Canadian Alliance, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to talk a little more about this important issue. It is important enough that one of the ministers handed it off to another minister. I want to read a quote from one of the newspapers:

--if you walk around with a great ungainly reeking, rotting albatross lashed snugly around your neck. The federal justice minister, grasping this simple truth firmly enough, has dumped the national firearms registry onto someone else's desk and marched briskly away from it.

He has only had it for a few months, but it is already far too hot for him to handle, particularly with his supposed leadership ambitions. I would suggest that if he is going to be a real leader, he will have to handle problems a bit better than he handled this one.

I know there are others who would love to ask questions, but I want to quickly talk about the fact that the registration system has been far too cumbersome. We have heard time and time again of people who have actually tried to participate in the system but have not been able to get through. The minister assures us that he will correct that, but it has been five years now and the system is not fixed yet.

We have heard about his bogus claims of success, that it has turned away some 7,000 claims over the years. What is interesting is that most of those claims would have been turned away under the old FAC system anyway. They would have been rejected, so that claim does not apply.

In moving the firearms registry to another department we hear a surrender, an admission of complete failure in the program by the cabinet and by the cabinet minister. We will see over the next while that this program will begin to wind down because the government has realized how ineffective and inefficient it is.

I would like to suggest a very simple solution on the gun registry problem, which is that we go back to a system as we had before. In the FAC system the owners were registered and there was no worry about registering the weapons. In that way the police know, if they need to, whether someone has a gun if they are going to a person's place and they need to be concerned about it. They do not know how many guns people have now anyway. If someone is breaking the law, it is very unlikely the person has registered the gun.

The old system worked fairly well. People took courses, registered and then were able to use their guns as a tool, as many of us do. If that were done, it would be a big help.

In conclusion, there is a lack of leadership. The Auditor General stated:

Without better direction and clear expectations, these initiatives will flounder. Even the best-intentioned department can't make up for a lack of leadership.

I would say that is what we have faced in so many different areas in so many different departments.

[Keith Martin, Canadian Alliance, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, when my colleague looks at the government and sees a Prime Minister who can appoint cabinet ministers, deputy ministers, executive assistants to the ministers, and judges to the Supreme Court, does he believe that Canada has a true, rich democracy or have we moved into the era of a dictatorship?

[David Anderson, Canadian Alliance, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Mr. Speaker, it is important that the responsibility be shared and that it not just be in the hands of the Prime Minister.

A good example would be the agriculture department these days. That department is in complete chaos because the Prime Minister is the one who appointed the deputy minister. We know that the agriculture minister and the deputy minister have a hard time working together. Because one person was able to appoint someone to a political position, whether he deserved it or not, there is a complete department comprised of employees who do not know what their mission is. They are not sure where they are going and they are struggling with that. Because of that, farmers and Canadians are suffering. The programs are not what they should be because one person has too much power, and that would be the Prime Minister.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to speak to this supply day motion. I happen to be one of the members of Parliament on the public accounts committee and it has been a real eye opener for me.

For the viewers out there, the public accounts committee is the one committee that is struck to deal with the Auditor General's reports. I have been in this place for almost 10 years and because that committee gets very little attention by the press or by the House, I must admit that I was unaware of its importance.

That committee, and in respect the Auditor General, is there to hold the government to account, the whole government, not just the executive branch, the cabinet ministers. It makes sure that all the rules and regulations that have been put in place on the spending of our tax dollars are followed, that there is value for money, that the programs are administered in a cost efficient manner and that Canadians are getting value for the tax dollars that go into running those programs.

I hate to think what it would be like if we did not have the Auditor General, who is an officer Parliament and not of the government, and reports directly to Parliament. That is a very important distinction because the government does not have control over the Auditor General or the reports that come from her department.

I speak in terms of her because the present Auditor General is a female, Madam Fraser. That does not make her any less tough and I would suggest she is as tough or tougher than a lot of former auditors general. She takes her role seriously and that is to look at various programs. There are resources available to the Auditor General to look into pre-programs, programs that are in the designing stage, to see whether or not they will meet the objectives they have set out to do or, as in gun control registration, to look at the cost of a program.

It is interesting that in the report my colleague from Cypress Hills—Grasslands referred to, the one on the gun control registration program, she made it quite clear she did not look at the operations of the program but only at the cost of the program. In looking at that she recognized there were enormous overruns of the projected costs of the program.

When we look at Groupaction and the report that she did on government sponsorship programs, it was a question of not applying Treasury Board rules and of not getting any value for money.

The Auditor General's department can look at all different aspects of how the government operates. The Auditor General reports to the House of Commons, not to the government, problems that she sees in how Canadian taxpayers' money is being spent, in how programs are being operated and in how the administration, the bureaucracy, is managing the programs the government has established.

It is such an important part of allowing us as parliamentarians to do our job because the Auditor General's department can get information that is almost impossible for us as ordinary parliamentarians to get on our own. The Auditor General has the ability and the resources to go into the departments and to look at the various programs that she wants to look at. If somebody brings a concern to her, she can determine whether or not to investigate the issue.

There are some very serious issues that have come up only because the Auditor General in her independent state has been able to investigate and get to the bottom of them. One example is the Groupaction file, which is a blatant abuse of Treasury Board rules and regulations.

Then it is a question of what we as parliamentarians do once we have those reports. We in the public accounts committee review those reports and call witnesses to appear to explain how it happened, how the issue of concern occurred, who was responsible and what has been done to make sure that it never happens again.

I have sat on that committee for a number of months. It is interesting the rationalization we hear from government department officials. In today's case it was the minister himself who was rationalizing all the reasons that things happen.

One thing that is very hard to pin down is who was responsible for the decision that allowed the issue to happen in the first place. That is where the job of the parliamentarians comes in. We look at the Auditor General's report and try to pinpoint who was responsible and how it happened.

The position of the Auditor General is not so much to criticize the program or say whether or not it should be there. In many cases the Auditor General will not say specifically who was responsible. That is the job of parliamentarians, to take the report based on the facts of what was found and to dig a little deeper to find out how it came about, who was responsible for the decisions and to determine what we as parliamentarians will do about it.

In some cases the Auditor General does not deal with value for money. The gun registration program is one example. The Auditor General tried to obtain all the information in order to evaluate the cost of the gun registration program. In essence what happened is the information was scattered all over the place and the audit could not be completed.

That raises one concern. Who is in charge and what information is being used in order to ask for more money to run this program? The other was reporting to Parliament, where it was found that because it is a major crown program there are certain Treasury Board guidelines on the reporting mechanism, on what information is to be tabled and reported in Parliament. They failed to do that.

When we talk about value for money we have to look at the estimated cost of this program which will be over $1 billion. Parliamentarians have to look at it from value for the tax dollars and justify whether or not it is a good program.

From Statistics Canada the information garnered is that there are under 200 individuals who lose their lives because of firearms. Upwards of $1 billion will be spent in order to register guns to stop that from happening. At the same time there are over 5,500 women who die each year due to breast cancer. The commitment the government has made is $30 million over five years, which works out to $6 million a year.

When we talk about value for dollar, the government has to explain to Canadians how it can determine that spending over $1 billion for less than 200 people who die each year because of firearms can be justified over spending $30 million for the over 5,500 women who die annually due to breast cancer. Value for dollar is where some Canadians have a bit of a problem.

The Auditor General's report is a valuable tool for parliamentarians. It is one way that parliamentarians have of getting the inside information on how government departments operate, how they spend tax dollars and whether or not they are being spent in an efficient manner, whether we are getting value for dollar, and whether they are managing the dollars within the confines of Treasury Board guidelines. In many cases the Auditor General has found that the guidelines have been broken, that the controls on spending tax dollars have not been followed.

We as parliamentarians are put in the position of dealing with that information and ensuring that we are protecting the spending of tax dollars and that we are getting value for money.

[Keith Martin, Canadian Alliance, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I have two questions for my hon. friend. My first question deals with people who die from gunshot wounds, and my colleague mentioned 200. Two-thirds of homicide victims die from the use of something other than a firearm. However the vast majority of the people who die from firearms are killed by illegal firearms which have been smuggled into Canada. Therefore the problem is not registered guns. Only a small handful of those 200 people die from the use of a registered gun. Therefore the firearms registry will have even less of an impact.

My second question deals with the issue of parliamentary oversight and oversight on the part of the Auditor General with regard to government expenditures. One of our primary roles as members of Parliament is to oversee government expenditures, how taxpayer money is spent. In my view MPs and the Auditor General, despite the fine work she does, have lost both the power and authority to oversee these expenditures.

Does my colleague agree with my statements? What needs to happen for us as parliamentarians to exercise our role as overseer of government expenditures? How can we have the power to exercise our role in Parliament? As well, how can the Auditor General exercise her power in a more efficient fashion?

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for that rather philosophical question. It goes into whether our system works when the executive branch of government is the one that determines the agenda and the decisions on that agenda. It really prevents Parliament from operating separate from the government's agenda. That needs to be changed so Parliament can be more effective in determining what the end result will be in dealing with some of the issues that appear before the House.

The tragedy in all this is that we have an executive that chooses what the agenda will be and it runs the bureaucracy to the point that the bureaucracy is hand in glove with the executive branch. It is up to the opposition to point out when things are not what they appear to be. Often what we are told by government representatives is somewhat different from the reality, such as the gun control registration program.

I find it hard to believe that the government uses the supplementary estimates at the beginning of the year for money it will need every year. It could ask for that money in the main estimates. Year after year the government goes after more money in the supplementary estimates. That is smoke and mirrors. The government knows it will need more money and has year after year. It avoids dealing with Parliament on the issue of how much it will cost by planting it in the supplementary estimates.

As far as the criminal use of firearms being under the registration program is concerned, I sat on the justice committee when it dealt with Bill C-68. Everybody on the committee advised the government of two things: first, that criminals would not register their guns no matter what; and second, that it would cost an enormous amount of money. Government members were told that by provincial representatives, by various business associations and by organizations. They were quite upfront that this would be an enormous program and that it would be difficult to put it into application.

I raised in committee whether the government had done due diligence before it went into this program to see what the likely costs would be. The top bureaucrat told me that he did not know. I am sorry but I find that very hard to accept. I find even harder to accept the fact that 94% of the senior bureaucrats received performance bonuses when they spent 500 times more than what was originally planned on the gun registration program. I find it hard to accept that they were rewarded for not delivering on a promise. I believe taxpayers would have a problem with this as well.