Mr. Speaker, I will follow up on what the member for Medicine Hat just said, although I would like to commend my colleagues from the Progressive Conservative Party for bringing this matter before the House.
The member for Medicine Hat talked about accountability. I wish that I had unlimited speaking time because I could be here for a week talking about the different departments and the lack of accountability.
I hear some ministers heckling, and they are in charge of those departments. I could go on and on. The saddest part of all this is that this type of behaviour by the government and all the departments is not the exception, it is the norm. That is what this has become. That is the scary part.
I will focus my comments on three areas because I could go on for many but I only have 10 minutes. I will talk about the Human Resources Development Canada, the military and the gun registry.
Let us talk about HRDC. In 1994 the Auditor General stated the following regarding operations:
We believe Parliament should know whether these programs are producing the results expected, whether value for money is being obtained, and whether the programs in certain circumstances are having possible negative effects on the economy.
What a novel idea that is. Imagine that. In 1998 the Auditor General stated that inadequate controls existed in grant programs in many departments.
In 2000 an audit of HRDC revealed a billion dollars was mismanaged. When the files were looked at, 97% showed no evidence that anyone had checked if the recipient owed money to HRDC, 80% showed no evidence of financial monitoring and 15% did not even have an application on file.
Last year the Auditor General revealed that there were five million more SIN cards than there were people. One household received 225 SIN cards before being investigated. Where is the accountability?
Members have referred to these as allegations. These comments come from the Auditor General. Yes, we in the Canadian Alliance bring these up all the time, things like the gun registry. The member for Yorkton—Melville has been a most tireless spokesman on the issue. In fact he fed the Auditor General hundreds of letters that he investigated so that she could have a base for her report. An independent investigator has come up with this.
Let us go on to defence. The Auditor General continually warned the government since 1996 that the military was critically short of resources. In 1994 national defence lost twice as many members as it enlisted. The Auditor General's audits in 1996, 1998 and 2000 and 2001 all demonstrated there was human resource problems in national defence.
The government does not listen. It does not act. The money gets spent on its own slush funds.
In 1999 the Auditor General reported that Bombardier obtained a $2.8 billion contract. The contract was let without competition in complete contravention of government regulations. In 2002 the Auditor General confirmed that $65 million of the contract was paid out for flight training that was never received. This is absolutely shameful. This can go on in any department. It goes on all the time and I will get to that in my conclusions.
The Auditor General has stated for some time that the Canadian Forces need $1.5 billion a year more in its base just to meet the current operational and capital procurement requirements. What did it get in this year's budget? It got half that. It was desperately in need of an ambulance. The government barely gave it a band-aid.
Let us go on to the gun registry. I commend the member for Yorkton—Melville. Through courtesy of the Auditor General came the scandal that best defines the government over the past 10 years. This was to be a net cost of $2 million to the taxpayers. Everybody in the country has learned that it cost a billion. As the member for Medicine Hat pointed out, the government's own estimates now take the cost of the registry up to a billion and a half dollars for a database. It is ridiculous.
Was it all worth it? Not according to Toronto police chief Julian Fantino who, on January 6 of this year stated:
I am very devastated by the amount of gun related violence that we are experiencing here in the city of Toronto; a tremendous increase over years gone by. The difficulty of course is that we haven't yet come across any situation where the gun registry would have enabled us to either prevent or solve these crimes.
Tell me how this $1 billion is doing any good. The Auditor General, not an opposition member of Parliament but the Auditor General herself stated, and these are her words, not mine:
The issue here is not gun control. And it is not even astronomical cost overruns, although those are serious. What is really inexcusable is that Parliament was in the dark.
If people in a Crown corporation kept information from the shareholders on purpose, they would be thrown in jail, but not here. It is an absolute disgrace.
I mentioned three examples. Another frustrating thing is that this has become the norm, whether it is about public works contracts, whether it is in justice with the gun registry, whether it is in HRDC, or whether it is in environment on Kyoto. Billions of dollars are being thrown around. Nobody on that side of the House is prepared to take this on. It will not change. The only solution is a change of government.
Is the former finance minister who is the heir apparent to take over from the badly bruised current Prime Minister prepared to take on these departments? Not a chance. He has been around here for a long time. We will see more uncontrollable spending.
The House has been asked to consider the reports of the Auditor General for 2002. Frankly, we should be considering a lot more.
We started off last year by learning that sponsorship program moneys were being funnelled to Liberal friends and supporters. One communications firm, Groupaction, received $1.5 million for three reports which all delivered exactly the same thing. This is not just wrong. This is not just scandalous. This is criminal. Someone outside Parliament would have been thrown in jail.
Last year ended with it being exposed that the government wasted $1 billion on a gun registry that does not work. The government tried to hide this from the Canadian people.
In short, 2002 was a banner year for waste and corruption. The Auditor General deserves our thanks for helping to expose those files. We need to remember that is only one year in a long tradition of ignoring the Auditor General's office.
I listened to members saying that these were just allegations and that the Auditor General was wrong. If I were in the government and the Auditor General delivered such a report, I would say that we would get to the bottom of it and fix it. What did the Liberals do? They ran, ducked, hid and took cover. They tried to come up with every excuse in the book as to why it was not their fault. Sometimes they actually blamed it on the Auditor General herself. It is unbelievable.
Previous reports told the government to watch how it spent HRDC funding. Previous reports told members opposite that the military needed our help. The reports go on and on.
The worst problem with all of these reports is that none of them have had any effect on the government. That is the scandalous part of all of this. The government carries on with its spending. As the member for Medicine Hat just stated, government spending in the budget we have just witnessed is up some $17 billion, the largest single percentage increase in a budget over 40 years.
The Liberals have not got it yet. They are not going to cut their wasteful spending. They will funnel billions more, all coming out of the taxpayers' pockets. It is unbelievable.
The government treats scandal and corruption with a business as usual attitude. If it were not for motions like the one before us today, the government would not even consider the Auditor General's reports which consistently expose its failures. It has been like this since 1997 when I became a member of Parliament.
The worst problem is that things do not get fixed. We see the same things happening in report after report. The government has a complete disregard for the Canadian taxpayer.
The Liberals' arrogance has grown. They will treat the money as if it were their own and will spend it as they want. They will keep it and funnel it to their own supporters. There is no solution coming from over there. The only way to fix this is to throw the government as far as we can or we will continue to read about billions being funnelled to the government's supporters and being thrown in the paper shredder.