Mr. Speaker, the practice of the government in providing less than complete responses to questions posed by the official opposition during question period prompts me to ask for greater clarification from the Minister of Public Works regarding the fraudulent misappropriation of $160 million in taxpayer funds from the Department of National Defence.
As the member for Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, it is my honour to have Canadian Forces Base Petawawa in my riding. I pay tribute to the fine job the forces are doing on behalf of all Canadians. I say welcome back to all the Petawawa soldiers returning home from Afghanistan and Bosnia.
It was with shocked disbelief that my constituents, particularly the returning soldiers and their dependants, greeted the news that $160 million had been stolen from DND. The men and women who work at the Department of National Defence, as do all Canadians, see this as a theft.
The federal government can lose $160 million, but when it comes to its employees, it cries, “No money”. Wages at DND have been frozen for seven years, but $100 million would pay for a 3% wage increase for 150,000 employees. How credible is a government that tells public servants it has no money and it freezes their wages for seven years, and then turns around and with a straight face tells them the government has no money, yet it can lose $160 million?
Negotiations are taking place right now between Treasury Board and public servants. I hope the government treats its employees with honesty and the respect they deserve.
My question to the minister is the same question being asked by all Canadians, who are outraged by the financial incompetence and the mismanagement of the government. How can an individual at the level of director in a department get away with stealing $160 million?
The individual in question was a CS, a techie. He was not even a procurement officer. A CS is not even a classification with signing authority. He was specifically delegated with signing authority and he should not have had it.
Is it not a coincidence that his immediate superior, a director general, has put in for his retirement on April 1? Was it not the same director general who signed that contract for the defective grenades with no default clause?
The minister said, “if something was done of a criminal nature”. The individual in question has been fired. Obviously the minister considers him guilty or he would not have been fired. The Prime Minister also fired Alfonso Gagliano as ambassador to Denmark, but he would not have fired him if he was not guilty in the $250 million sponsorship scandal. People are fired if they are guilty.
What the people of Canada are afraid of is that a cover-up in the Department of National Defence will happen in the so-called name of national security.
What Canadians are afraid of is that not one dollar will be recovered, not one person will go to jail for stealing millions of dollars from Canadians. Every dollar stolen is one dollar less that goes to health care, highways, seniors, children, the environment, job creation, and the list goes on.
Canadians do not believe that the individual acted alone. He had help, inside help. I am told that the individual who was fired from DND rented a private plane for thousands of dollars an hour, boarded it with bags of cash, and flew to a Caribbean island. The money is lost.