Mr. Speaker, I welcome this opportunity to participate in a discussion about the 2002 Auditor General's reports. It is a welcome recommendation by members of the Conservative Party that we devote some time today to the Auditor General's reports and talk about our need as members of Parliament to play a meaningful role in the scrutiny of public expenditures.
I was elected in 1997 and became the health critic for the New Democratic Party at that time. The very first lesson I learned in that role and in carrying out those responsibilities was in fact that there was within the Department of Health, and presumably across the board, a culture of deception and a culture of secrecy that clearly permeated the situation. We learned that quickly through trying to scrutinize government expenditures on a limited basis in that department and by responding to concerns of officials who felt the need to speak out and were hamstrung every step of the way in those efforts.
So I learned early on that the government has a very serious problem and that the Auditor General is playing an absolutely critically important role in exposing that culture of secrecy, that culture of deception, within the government and helping parliamentarians regain the necessary tools to do our jobs effectively.
It has been said by many today: thank God for the Auditor General. If it had not been for the Auditor General's reports over the last numerous years, but particularly the year in question, 2002, we as parliamentarians would be in the dark, without the information and the ammunition to be able to try to hold the government to account for its inappropriate administrative patterns and misuse of public expenditures.
The Auditor General has always played an important role in terms of Parliament, a role that is critical in terms of our ability to try to hold the government to account, but in fact in recent times it has become clear that the Auditor General plays a role that cannot be filled by any other aspect of our system, because the role that opposition members play in the House has been hamstrung and frustrated. There is no question about that. Through various techniques and manoeuvrings by the government of the day, the role of the opposition member has been greatly reduced and our ability to hold the government to account on basic matters of the expenditure of public funds has been greatly curtailed.
The government has developed many paths around access to information and has presented all kinds of obstacles to members every step of the way. When we look at what happens during question period and the kind of stonewalling that happens whenever we ask basic questions about government plans and about spending priorities, it is clearly an obvious example of the treatment by the government of the role of parliamentarians, particularly opposition members.
The 2002 Auditor General's reports made a very important contribution to this fundamental issue about the role of parliamentarians and the role of this place in terms of holding the government to account. Her report entitled “Placing the Public's Money Beyond Parliament's Reach” is important in that regard.
Many members have referenced her reports but I think we need to look at the broad issues with respect to accountability and with respect to the tools that the government uses to make it impossible for us to do our jobs.
It is critical that we recognize and give some attention to the fact that in 2002 the Auditor General clearly did indicate that the government has moved to ensure that substantial amounts of public money are transferred to foundations, which puts that money beyond the reach of Parliament and beyond our ability to scrutinize. That point has been raised today, and recently the Auditor General made a very clear statement at the public accounts committee indicating that this is an issue which has to be resolved and which requires a concerted effort on the part of members of Parliament to redress.
The Auditor General was very clear in her statement on February 12 when she said:
The federal government has “delegated” program responsibilities to certain foundations without making them appropriately accountable. Since 1996-97, it has transferred more than $7.4 billion to 10 foundations, money provided well in advance of program needs.
She referenced the prominent examples referred to in the House today: $3.15 billion in federal funds for the Canada Foundation for Innovation; the Canadian Millennium Scholarship Fund with $2.5 billion; and Canada Health Infoway Inc., with $500 million.
Madam Fraser went on to say:
At March 31, 2002, almost the entire amount that had been provided to the foundations was still in their bank accounts and investments. It will be years before the ultimate intended recipients--students, health care providers and others--receive the money.
This is an issue that speaks directly to the role of Parliament in holding the government to account for public expenditures and to one of the mechanisms which the government has implemented to ensure that we are kept in the dark and Canadians are not fully informed of the revenue available and the programs that are committed.
That is clearly an issue that must be brought into focus today and must be dealt with through this debate. The more we can give public attention and parliamentary focus to this kind of accounting practice, the more we in fact can overcome this kind of method on the part of the government which hides and confuses the situation.
The opposition role clearly has been hurt and hamstrung by the fact that it is almost impossible to have a serious discussion of the estimates of a department at the appropriate committee. My own experience has been that in the standing committee pertaining to health, it is next to impossible to be able to have a serious, in depth look at the expenditures of that department on a line by line basis. If we are lucky, and if the committee members and the opposition put enough pressure on the committee as a whole, we will have the minister before the committee and have about an hour to discuss millions and millions of dollars being expended in terms of health care. It is hardly an appropriate way to account for public expenditures and as a result the House proceeds without the benefit of an in depth look by members of Parliament who have experience and interest in an area like health care.
It is interesting to note that it always takes a fight to get something as basic as estimates dealt with on an in depth basis. Why should it take a motion on the part of committee members to have the estimates dealt with in a serious way at the committee? Why does it take a motion that must be voted on by members of the committee to have the minister appear before the committee so that we can question him or her and the priorities of that department? Why does it take a motion to have the reports of the Auditor General pertaining to that particular committee presented in order to have the issues dealt with?
Are these not basic aspects of the role of parliamentarians and the role of the standing committees in terms of accountability? It is baffling to me, and to so many others in the House, that we continue to have this battle day in and day out. Why is it not automatic and why are steps not taken to ensure that we as members of Parliament have the tools necessary to scrutinize the government? Why are we continually having to fight just to be able to access the basic methods for scrutiny of government expenditures?
Here we are today, as a result of years of what I would characterize as deceit and secrecy, discussing the Auditor General's reports, which are very significant from that particular vantage point. The gun registry has certainly become a symbol of that kind of arrogance and maladministration on the part of the government. The Auditor General was very clear in her December 2002 report entitled “Matters of Special Importance”. She said about the gun registry program:
The issue here is not gun control. And it's not even astronomical cost overruns, although those are serious. What's really inexcusable is that Parliament was in the dark.
Parliament was manipulated by the costs, $1 billion by the year 2004-05, coming in under supplementary estimates with no mention of that in the performance report. That is the real issue at hand today. How was it that parliamentarians were not given the information they needed to scrutinize this program in detail? How did it come to be that members of Parliament were kept “in the dark” about expenditures with respect to this particular program? How did we end up today with the $1 billion scandal, the $1 billion overrun?
Mr. Speaker, how do we get control of that situation so that members of Parliament are informed along the way and so that we can in fact pursue the issues and try to bring the government to its senses with respect to the fiscal mismanagement problems it clearly has?
The gun registry was just one of the many issues raised by the Auditor General in her 2002 reports. I want to touch on a couple of issues that often get sidelined in the midst of this $1 billion fiasco, which of course we need to focus on because it is such a glaring example of what is wrong with the government's accounting practices and of the trust that is placed in Parliament and parliamentarians.
If it had not been for the Auditor General's 2002 report, Canadians would not have become aware that the problem with social insurance numbers had not been resolved. We would not have been aware that there are roughly five million more social insurance numbers circulating than there are Canadians. We would not have been aware that the resources are still insufficient to follow through on information checks, that usage is still inappropriate even within government departments, and that fraud continues to run rampant without us really knowing the extent. That is one issue.
Let me go to another area, which has to do with health care, because I think that in the year in question the Auditor General made two very important reports pertaining to health care. They shed light on how the federal Government of Canada can play a role in sustaining our health care system and pursuing a cost effective approach to a system that many would say will not be affordable in the future.
Let me use the example of the Auditor General's report with respect to disease surveillance. For the benefit of members, let me point out that it was chapter 2 in her report. Sheila Fraser said the following:
The risks that poor health surveillance creates are very real: preventable illnesses may not be prevented, approaches to treating disease may not be as effective as they could be, and government funding may be directed at the wrong issues.
She basically said that in this area, which falls directly under federal jurisdiction, the Government of Canada was failing its citizens. It has failed to adequately track diseases making it difficult to design effective prevention and treatment programs.
Here we have a basic tool, a basic aspect of public policy decision-making, that being the surveillance of the incidents of disease in this country, and the government of the day cannot find the wherewithal, the means or the leadership to track the rates of disease, the methods of disease prevention and the alternatives in terms of treatments and interventions.
When we have breast cancer killing so many women every year why is it that the government cannot track the interventions that make a difference and advise Canadian women about those interventions and those alternatives? When it comes to heart disease, arthritis, asthma and mental illness why do we not have a tracking system that encompasses the nation and ensures that information is available to everyone about such serious matters?
It does not take a rocket scientist to know that if the federal government could do that, we could be looking at tremendous cost savings in the future because we have engaged at a preventative level, we have taken on these issues from the point of view of holistic health care and we have made every effort to address prevention and promotion as part of our health care system.
Another very interesting report by the Auditor General in 2002, which may come as a surprise to members, concerned health care and the enforcement of the Canada Health Act. In that report the Auditor General repeated her concerns that the government did not seem to know what money was going to health care and did not have the mechanisms in place to ensure that the money as committed was spent on the appropriate programs and that provincial governments were in full compliance with the Canada Health Act.
It is interesting that despite all the pronouncements in all of the reports we are still a long way from that kind of accountability and that kind of national system of surveillance of our basic health care system.
I know some of those issues were addressed in the last budget. We eventually will see a move from the Canada health and social transfer to the Canada health transfer, which will provide a measure of accountability and ensure that funds flowing from the federal government to provincial governments will be directed toward provincial health care systems.
However there are still no guarantees that the money allotted to provinces in terms of medical equipment and diagnostic services will be targeted and directed in terms of the non-profit health care delivery system. There has been no attempt on the part of the government to ensure that the new funding arrangements as announced in the budget will live up to the basic principles outlined by Roy Romanow in terms of accountability and in terms of ensuring a non-profit health care delivery system.
There are many other issues we could mention today. Needless to say, the issue at hand is one of accountability and about ensuring that parliamentarians have the mechanisms and the tools they need to keep a check on government spending and to do what the public expects us to do, which is to ensure that the money set out in the budget will be spent on the designated items and that there will be honesty and integrity in terms of government expenditures so that no one gets a sense of waste, mismanagement, unscrupulous behaviour, fraudulent activity or any sense that things are being kept in secret, out of sight and out of mind.
Our job today is to remind the government that we as parliamentarians need the tools to do the job and that this whole era of fiscal mismanagement and operating behind closed doors, out of the scrutiny of the public and Parliament, must end and it must end soon.