Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to join in the debate today. I support the motion in front of us for a host of reasons.
The first thing I would like to address goes back to the comments of the President of the Treasury Board who earlier today said that the first thing was that it seems that whenever we want to inflame debate, all we have to do is throw up the aura of some dishonest or inappropriate behaviour. Let me knock that down right away.
First, that is not what I am about, and second, that is not what the debate is about today. Let us remember that all of this flows from the AG's report. What did the AG say about whether or not there was anything dishonest, whether that is driving this or not? On page 2 she states:
4.7 This chapter does not express a view on the merits of foundations as a vehicle to achieve the government's policy objectives. Our findings should not be interpreted in any way as a criticism of the individuals in charge of the foundations.
Right off the bat let us acknowledge that this is not some kind of witch hunt. This is not a fishing expedition to leave the suggestion that this is another sponsorship scandal, unless the government wants to give us a carte blanche guarantee that there is none anywhere. However that is not the issue before us now.
The President of the Treasury Board said earlier today that managing something as large as the Government of Canada was a very important responsibility that we all share, and we particularly share that in a minority. He went on to say that he thought members should get focused on their responsibilities.
We are talking about billions of dollars of taxpayer money that the Auditor General has said has not been adequately looked at or accounted for. It seems to me that is the responsibility of every member of the House, minority or majority. If that is not enough of a credential, I am a member of the public accounts committee, so not only is it my job on behalf of my constituents, it is part of my job in being here.
Let us set aside this nonsense that somehow this issue is being raised as a political bogeyman, that accusations are being thrown around. That is not true. This is about accountable government and transparent government, and the ability of parliamentarians on behalf of voters and taxpayers to hold the government of the day accountable. That is it.
What those comments suggest is that the President of the Treasury Board is a little more concerned than he needs to be, and perhaps that is because the government does not have a good argument. I do not understand why the Liberals continue to oppose this.
This may be an opposition motion but we must remember that it is driven by the Auditor General's report, and not just this one. In previous reports she has tried to get the Liberals to acknowledge that something needs to change.
What exactly did the Auditor General say concerning the accountability of foundations? In the first paragraph on the first page she states:
Despite a number of improvements to the framework for the accountability of foundations to Parliament, overall progress is unsatisfactory.
It seems to me that we have a job to do and that is to get into the satisfactory category. If the government is not prepared to do it, then, my goodness, we will do it as a minority because we have the votes this time. That is what is going on here.
I want to continue on with her report where it states:
In the Auditor General's observations on the government's summary financial statements in the Public Accounts of Canada, we have raised concerns about the governance and the accountability of and accounting for government transfers to foundations.
Is that not the government that says that it wants to be transparent and accountable and that it is? It is funny that the Auditor General has said “not yet” when it relates to foundations.
The report goes on to state:
These are up-front payments made many years in advance of need. Our performance audits in 1999 and 2002 found that accountability to Parliament was placed unnecessarily at risk—the government had failed to meet the essential requirements for accountability to Parliament, namely credible reporting of results, effective ministerial oversight, and adequate provision for external audit.
On page 5, 4.14 states:
The government has recorded these payments as expenses, even though the foundations do not expect to use the funds for many years...This accounting treatment has resulted in a reduction of the reported annual surplus when funds are transferred to foundations, rather than when funds are distributed to the ultimate intended recipients or used for the ultimate purposes that the government announced for this spending.
In simpler terms, when the government makes an announcement that money will be going into a foundation, existing or new, it takes the total amount that it is transferring and shows it as an expenditure.
In the case of the Canada millennium scholarship fund, the government was able to announce billions of dollars to help students access the education to which they are entitled. The problem is that if that had been done within a ministry it would be not be an expenditure. The government cannot make the statement that it is spending $3 billion on education when it is done in that way. However, because the money is going to a foundation, the government can make the statement and it is factually truthful.
However in reality, in terms of what it means to people, if the government has not spent $3 billion on education then it cannot take credit for supposedly doing so. The key point the Auditor General made was that what ought to be recorded as an expense, and therefore available for political use in a speech, is what ought to be accounted for, which means only the money that was actually sent to recipients. We have learned from the Auditor General that it is a fraction of what is in these accounts.
That is the first biggest problem we have. It leaves the impression that the government is spending billions of dollars on Canadian health care, billions of dollars on innovation and billions of dollars on education but that is not the case.
The government has transferred the money to these foundations, yes, and there is a notional amount in the budget, yes, but did it actually spend that money in the homes for people to actually benefit from it? No, only a fraction of it. That is not being transparent because the government is saying one thing and doing something different.
The Auditor General is saying that the government has an obligation. It does not matter whether it is Liberals, Tories or whoever, what matters is that the government ought to be showing as an expenditure only those dollars that it actually expends, not money that it transferred to an agency which then spends it in little dribbles. Without the Auditor General telling us this, the existing rules would never put that in front of the House of Commons.
Holding foundations accountable is not just a question of whether or not we think there are people in there cooking the books, or outright stealing money, or expending money they should not, or passing off money to partisan friends. That is not the second issue that I am interested in, in terms of bringing them forth. I am interested because in the short time I have been here and on the public accounts committee we have had a chance to deal with the Auditor General's report that came out last year.
My friends who were on the committee will know that chapter 5 dealt with Indian and Northern Affairs Canada's education program and post-secondary student support, one of the most outrageous reports of a ministry not doing the job that the House thought it was doing. It was not about whether we thought the deputy was dishonest. It was quite the opposite. The deputy appeared very professional. Nobody was questioning his credentials before, during or after.
However that does not take away from the fact that the disgrace that is going on in this ministry, vis-à-vis our first nations people, would not have been brought to the attention of the House of Commons had the Auditor General not had the legislative mandate to go in and review what was going on.
We have two different things here. There is a world of difference between the minister who says that the programs work. Well, a broken clock works twice a day. The question is whether this is the best use of the money that is meant to help Canadians. The Auditor General is suggesting that the process does not let us as parliamentarians make an intelligent evaluation on whether program objectives are being met vis-à-vis the money that is being spent to fund it. That is the issue. It seems pretty clear to me and I think to quite a number of other people.
I do not know why the government has itself in such a twist over this. The Liberals are the ones, by resisting, who leave the impression that maybe there is something they do not want people to see. I am not making that accusation or that allegation but I am saying that billions of dollars are sitting in accounts earning interest to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.
i think the millennium fund alone has collected close to $700 million in interest on the money that is sitting there and yet the government is taking political credit for spending the money on education. No, it is not. The money is sitting in a bank account collecting hundreds of millions of dollars that could be helping people.
At the end of the day, making these changes would make for better transparency and more proper accountability.