Madam Speaker, I thank the member for his question. It gives me an opportunity to clarify something.
I do not want to attack the accountants in any way, shape or form. I would not want this bill to be considered as a partisan or political bill either. However, it has not been prepared in this form by the Bloc Quebecois. The Auditor General kept bringing it back for amendments.
For my colleague's benefit, I am not an accountant myself, but I would like to tell him that there is accounting being done within the foundations.
According to what the Auditor General says, the external auditors only make sure that the amounts are accurate, while the Auditor General--if I understood well--conduct a value-for-money audit, which is another form of accounting type audit, not only to make sure that the $100 million that were in the first column are still in the second one, but also to find out how the money was managed.
The external auditors, like Samson Belair/Deloitte & Touches etc., simply do not have that kind of mandate when they are asked to make an audit. It is not that they are incompetent or dishonest. It is only that they do not have this mandate. That type of responsibility lies with the Auditor general.
I have a lot of respect for Samson Bélair/Deloitte & Touche and for other accounting firms. However, we must recognize that they do not submit their reports to Parliament. They submit them to the foundation. What role do parliamentarians play in the follow up on how that money was spent? None.
During the last election campaign, the Prime Minister said he wanted to increase the power of parliamentarians. I would find it very strange to voluntarily relinquish the power to increase our supervisory rights on the foundations' budgets. It is simply because external accounting firms do not have that mandate. It is not because they are not fulfilling their duties in a correct, honest or voluntary fashion, it is because their responsibilities are different. It is the role of the Auditor General to conduct this value-for-money audit, as she suggested in 2002, and as the hon. member's party agreed to in a report of the public accounts committee, which includes Liberal members and which recommended to open the books of all the foundations for the Auditor General.