House of Commons Hansard #62 of the 38th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was general.

Topics

The House resumed consideration of the motion.

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4:20 p.m.

Conservative

Brian Fitzpatrick Conservative Prince Albert, SK

Mr. Speaker, it is my understanding that foundations carry out government policy, independently and at arm's-length from the government. Could the member enlighten me as to what government policy the Trudeau Foundation carries out?

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4:20 p.m.

Sudbury Ontario

Liberal

Diane Marleau LiberalParliamentary Secretary to the President of the Treasury Board and Minister responsible for the Canadian Wheat Board

Mr. Speaker, I will have to get back to the member on that one. I am sure that many of the endowments are done in the name of former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau. Canadians valued his years in office and are happy to see these kinds of things occur.

We are just as concerned as the opposition is with how we spend money. I have been in the House for many years and I can honestly tell members that we have always wanted to do good things. Many of the projects that are funded through foundations are very good.

I do not think the Auditor General has ever said that she did not like the work that they did, on the contrary. She wants permission to do compliance audits and I am in favour of that. I do not think it is necessary for the Auditor General to be named the annual auditor. There are a lot of audit firms out there that are very capable of doing this work, and it is probably a better idea that the audit function be separate from what the Auditor General does. The Auditor General can take a fresh look and come out with a compliance audit which is what we are really looking for.

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4:25 p.m.

Peterborough Ontario

Liberal

Peter Adams LiberalParliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development

Mr. Speaker, it is very important to put this motion into context. The Conservative Party and its predecessors, the Alliance and the Reform Party, have consistently shown no interest in this area of public policy.

The member who just asked the question about the Trudeau Foundation illustrated that fact. This is not one of the foundations we are talking about. We are talking about the research capacity of the nation. In the mid-1990s, the brain drain, which we heard from that side and throughout all of the country, was a serious problem. Our level of productivity as a nation and the productivity of each individual Canadian was very low. The government of the day had to do something about it.

The party over there consistently, whenever lists of grants are produced from the granting councils, goes through the grants and criticizes them one after another despite the fact that they were allocated according to a peer review process. These foundations, not the foundation my colleague referred to, were set up to deal with that matter, to bring young Canadians back, scientists, teachers, and professionals, and to keep young Canadians in the country, and to raise the productivity of the nation. That has happened. A very large piece there was the long term effect of these foundations.

Ask the members, Mr. Speaker, I know you know some of them, whether any college or university in their ridings does not like and appreciate what the Canada Foundation for Innovation and these others foundations have done for them. They have done great things. They are accountable, as my colleague has said. I accept the fact these foundations are accountable. They are not technically accountable to Parliament, a very fine point, but they are fully accountable. Does she not agree they have done wonderful public work?

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4:25 p.m.

Liberal

Diane Marleau Liberal Sudbury, ON

Yes, Mr. Speaker, they certainly have and they have been able to fulfill some public policy issues. Members should speak to the many university students who have been able to benefit from the millennium scholarship. Think of the thousands of students across the country. Why was that foundation set up? It was set up so we could help poor students who were having a hard time going to university.

If we asked students who have had the benefit of these scholarships how they feel about the foundation, they would tell us that it has done great work. We could go down the list and find the same kind of response to them.

This is not about the work of the foundations. This is about who audits them and should the foundations have the Auditor General do compliance audits. We agree with that. It is the other external audit issue that we think is a little out of control.

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4:25 p.m.

Conservative

Diane Ablonczy Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB

Mr. Speaker, it is strange that the Liberals opposite protest loudly about the fine work these foundations are doing and no one is questioning that. Then they fight tooth and nail to keep that fine work from actually being objectively evaluated and confirmed. Hello. If it were such good work, then why would the Liberals be not eager for all of the good things, all of the fine things, and all of the quantifiable work that these foundations are doing to be made fully transparent and open? Would the member answer that question?

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4:30 p.m.

Liberal

Diane Marleau Liberal Sudbury, ON

Mr. Speaker, we have already brought forward a number of measures to ensure the foundations report to the public and that is important. They do not always necessarily report to Parliament directly, but they do report to the responsible ministers. They do report to the responsible departments.

They cannot have it both ways. Either the foundations do good work, which they do, and they have admitted to that. So, tell me, what is the problem? The motion is one that we could have supported if it had not gone too far in demanding that the Auditor General be the external auditor of all foundations all the time which is really not something that can happen because some of the foundations are jointly managed by provinces. There are many provinces which would say to let them decide who will be their external auditor.

On the other hand, I still think that if it is federal money, our auditor should have the right to follow the money in the foundations. I would be prepared to support that part of the motion. The problem is that the opposition refuses to change its motion and it is just there to oppose and be negative. We are trying to work constructively and do good things.

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4:30 p.m.

NDP

Bev Desjarlais NDP Churchill, MB

Mr. Speaker, I want to read a little section again from this wonderful pamphlet the Auditor General sent around to all of our offices and I hope a lot of Canadians will see it as well. I hope the Liberals will take the opportunity to read it, too. It states that performance auditing examines management practices, controls and reporting system that focus on results. It also states that these audits examine whether government programs are being managed with due regard for economy, efficiency and environmental impact, and with measures in place to determine their effectiveness.

Why is the government opposed to the performance auditing of these foundations that were given $9.9 billion, I believe, initially? There is still some $7 billion dollars left. Canadians, taxpayers and this Parliament all have a right to know that those programs are beneficial. “Methinks the government protests too much”. It should prove to us that we are wrong. We can handle it.

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4:30 p.m.

Liberal

Diane Marleau Liberal Sudbury, ON

Mr. Speaker, I suppose it is quite normal around here that nobody listens. I believe I have said at least 5 times, if not 8 or 10 times in the course of the debate, that I believe the Auditor General ought to have the right to do performance audits on foundations.

The problem is not with the performance audit, it is with the fact that the motion also includes that the Auditor General be appointed as the external auditor of foundations. I think that is going too far. The foundations have auditors. If they want to have the Auditor General as their external auditor, they can ask for that, but it is not necessary. It is the performance audits that are important. That is what we should be asking the Auditor General to do. That is what I am supporting.

People ought to listen to what is being said here. We are not out there to hide anything. We are trying to do the right thing. We have to be responsible because we are the government. Opposing is fine because the opposition can throw all kinds of stuff out. It does not have to be based on truth. It does not have to be based on reality. We, on the other hand, must be realistic and we must manage things properly.

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4:30 p.m.

The Deputy Speaker

Order. It is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Nanaimo—Alberni, Softwood Lumber; the hon. member for Verchères—Les Patriotes, Intergovernmental Affairs; the hon. member for Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, National Defence.

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4:30 p.m.

Conservative

Gary Lunn Conservative Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise in this debate.

After listening to some of the comments made by members across the way, I get the perception that they keep saying, “Just trust us”. We just have to look at the record of the government for the last 10 years. We have to look at the scandal of all scandals or, as they say, the mother of all scandals to see why we need openness and transparency.

I would be the first person to acknowledge, and most people would, that some of these foundations do tremendous work. Then let us make it an open and transparent process. All we are saying is to let the Auditor General have a look at the books.

The member opposite kept referring to the opposition as just wanting to oppose and to be negative. Excuse me, but in fact what we are doing is asking for what the Auditor General has been asking for in not one, two or three but four reports. The Auditor General has been asking to get access, as she should. There is probably no one who has better credibility and is more trusted as an independent auditor than the Auditor General. That is basically what the debate is about.

This government began using foundations in 1997 at arm's length. Basically it used these foundations so the Liberals could actually take public funds and hive them off into various foundations.

I have met many of the people in the foundations and I am the first one to admit they do absolutely fantastic work. So if they are doing this great work, let us be open about it.

Tomorrow the government is going to table a budget. We in this place will debate the merits of the government's plan and vote accordingly. We need to know that money allocated in a budget year is spent in that budget year. As we know, that is not the case with these foundations.

If there are two words that this motion is about they are “transparency and accountability”. If we do not have transparency and accountability, I do not think we can have a proper debate on the spending priorities of this nation. There is an unaccountable approach in government right now and we need to stop that.

The Auditor General has brought this to our attention, as I said earlier, on four separate occasions. It is time that we open the books to the Canadian people. It is time to be open, honest and transparent, and we can do that through the Auditor General.

All week the President of the Treasury Board has selectively quoted the Auditor General. He points to the federal government's attempts to modernize the government framework for non-profit corporations. He conveniently ignores the fact that the government has done nothing to address the Auditor General's concern about the lack of performance audits and the absence of an appropriate mechanism for ministerial oversight.

I emphasize that this is not something that just happened yesterday. It is the same government that has been in power. Has it addressed any of these problems? Absolutely not. We are still talking about it in 2005. The Auditor General first raised this in 1997, again in 1999 and 2002 and now again in 2005.

The simple fact is that the Auditor General has raised this issue so many times and the government has done nothing to fix the problem. That alone speaks volumes. I believe that if the government had even made half an attempt to address these issues we would not be here talking about it right now.

The Auditor General and the government of course differ on some of the accounting principles. Some would argue that this is the problem, but I do not think that is the issue at all.

The main thrust of the Auditor General's report is that of the $9.1 billion given to foundations since 1997 $7.7 billion of this public money is sitting in various accounts across the country under the auspices of various foundations that are completely unaccountable and completely unscrutinized by Parliament. That is a lot of money the government has pretended to spend. We know it is sitting out there. All this motion would do is allow the government to audit to make sure that this money is going to where it is supposed to be going.

We all saw in the sponsorship scandal that $100 million was hived off in fees and commissions to various Liberal friendly ad agencies. It is very obvious to me why the government is so cynical about this and why the government does not get it. Of course, the government members give us their grand statements and stand up and say, “Trust us”.

There has probably never been a time since Confederation when trust for members of Parliament or trust for the government being in charge of public funds has been so low. We saw it in the last election. It was the issue in the last election and it continues to dominate. It continues to plague the government because it is refusing to do anything about it.

Therefore, in a positive vein, the official opposition, through an opposition supply day motion, is coming forward and basically suggesting that the Auditor General be the external auditor of every foundation where federal public money is involved. I think that is pretty clear. I think it is absolutely the right thing to do.

The question is, when we see millions of taxpayers' dollars go missing, when we see these scandals, how do we ensure this does not happen? How do we ensure that there is public accountability? Unfortunately, unless we bring in the kinds of measures where there is complete scrutiny, openness, transparency and public accountability, the public will continue to be cynical.

Sadly, the public is now starting to question some of these foundations, some that do very good work, I might add. If we were to allow this openness and transparency for complete scrutiny and public accountability, some of this good work could be brought to light. Just maybe, I dare say, there might be some foundations that are using money when that was not intended to happen, when these were not the intended consequences for where that money was supposed go. I think it is our job to ensure that does not happen. One way we can do that is through the Auditor General.

Let us look at the Prime Minister; of course his memory can be so selective. And these are the people who say “trust us on the foundations”. When he wants to remember the Mexican peso crisis, he can remember everything about it. Yet when he had to appear before the Gomery commission, he did not remember one useful thing. It was somebody else's problem. There was absolutely no accountability. His recollection of anything that happened was not there at all.

Quite bluntly, I found his testimony insulting. His testimony was that it was everybody else's job. It was a bureaucrat's job or maybe the job of people on his staff, but he was never directly involved. Yet when he wants to have a very crisp memory on other matters, he has it. That is the reason this motion has been put forward for us today.

In conclusion, what this motion really comes down to is that it is all about the taxpayers having the right to know that their money is well cared for. It is not saying “trust us”; it is giving taxpayers wide open transparency and accountability. I can see the value of having experts make the decisions in their fields, whether it is in education, health technologies, scientific research or the arts. Nobody is questioning that. What we are saying is that we should be able to take a look at where that money is being spent.

Let us make sure that there is openness, transparency and accountability so that the Auditor General has the power to go in and scrutinize these books. Again, I cannot emphasize enough that this is purely about accountability. I am not questioning the foundations' work. I am saying I do not trust the government, and for good reason. What it has done to the Canadian taxpayer for its last 10 years in office is absolutely unacceptable, and it is time that this government opened the books up to the Auditor General so we can see if there is any more.

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4:45 p.m.

Peterborough Ontario

Liberal

Peter Adams LiberalParliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development

Mr. Speaker, I heard the member say “let us have a look at the records”. There could not be anything more public than the records of these foundations. These are very sophisticated organizations working in a very sophisticated and important part of our society. They have websites which are the best in the country, designed by the best people in the country. My colleague can go and see every grant and he can see the administrative expenses and so on.

As my colleague has explained, these foundations regularly appear before parliamentary committees. Partly because, in my view, they understand that in this very fine way, as the Auditor General has quite rightly said, they do not have to report to Parliament, they go to great lengths to go to parliamentary committees. I would recommend to any member of the House to phone one of them and there will be a faster response than from any of our government departments, which are in theory fully responsible for this House.

I wanted to apologize for a mistake I made in my last intervention. I misspoke myself. I said that nobody on the Conservative side had defended this critical area of public policy. It truly is critical. People do remember the brain drain, but it is now a thing of the past. If Canada does not keep up and maintain its intellectual capacity we cannot keep up in the productivity race around the world. We have done so; there has been a revolution since these foundations.

My question to the member is this. I misspoke myself because one member of the Conservative Party, Preston Manning, was a big supporter of these things and the party over there kicked him out. Would my colleague not agree that Preston Manning was the last real defender on that side of this important area of public policy?

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4:45 p.m.

Conservative

Gary Lunn Conservative Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC

Mr. Speaker, we all have the greatest respect for Mr. Manning, and I know you do as well, for what he gave to this country and for his commitment.

I can say that I have defended many foundations and the great work they do. That is not the debate here. That is not the issue.

The member is quite right when he says that they do come before Parliament and they report to us on what they are doing. There is some phenomenal work, but there is still some $9 billion which has gone out to these foundations. What is the great objection to opening these books to the Auditor General? That is simply all we are stating. Nobody is questioning the foundations. Nobody is questioning the work they do and the benefits there are, but when we are spending $9 billion it is quite conceivable that some of that could go off the rails, or that maybe it is not being spent the way it is supposed to be spent. We do not know.

Those members say “trust us” and ask how we dare question the openness and accountability of these foundations. Quite frankly, it is not the foundations I am questioning. It is the honesty of the government. Its record is abysmal. It is absolutely disgusting. How do I know that in these hundreds of foundations there is not some foundation out there where money is not being used appropriately and there is not political interference? Because the record will show that this is what has happened in the past.

For the member to suggest that the people on this side are questioning the foundations is absolutely false. What we are saying is to give the Auditor General wide open and unfettered access to the books so that there can be accountability, openness and transparency, but as for this government saying to trust it, I am sorry, that is not in the cards.

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4:45 p.m.

Conservative

Dave Chatters Conservative Westlock—St. Paul, AB

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to join the discussion this afternoon. It has been interesting to listen as the debate goes back and forth on this issue. I want to approach the subject a little differently in my presentation, but I would like to make a few comments on the discussion that has taken place.

No one is disputing the good work that some of these foundations do. The question is, why could they not do just as good work under the full scrutiny and the full transparency of Parliament? I do not know why they have to be hidden, at least in the respect that they are not as transparent as the Auditor General says they should be.

I think this whole debate really started, not only because of the Auditor General's report, but because the budget is coming up tomorrow. A rumour is floating around that the government plans to set up yet another foundation to hide the $5 billion proposed to set up a national day care program because the minister has been unable to get anywhere near any consensus from the provinces on the issue, and rightly so.

Look at the record of the government on the last national day care program it set up. Canadians today are still paying a tremendous price for it . I speak of the residential school program, a national day care program set up by a Liberal government to do the right thing, to take children away from their parents at an early age to give them education. That was a truly a disaster. I suspect the current government's proposal for a national day care program will be just as big a disaster as the one of many years ago. Any time the government thinks it can do a better of job of raising children than parents can, then it is becoming too arrogant.

However, the whole issue of the foundations and the accountability of them is a huge issue. Over the last number of months I do not know how many times I heard members on the government side get up and tell us of the wonderful work of the sponsorship program, not unlike what we hear about the work of the foundations. We know what happened there. I do not think we could even begin to imagine the depth of corruption that the Gomery inquiry is uncovering.

I am not suggesting that this is going on in the foundations. However, in my view at least, it is a reason we should not take the government's word for its integrity and for its transparency because the evidence is different.

However, the issue that I want to touch on in the few minutes I have is another issue that the Auditor General raised in her report, which also is related to accountability. That is the issue of information technology security as it relates to privacy. There has not been a lot of discussion on that, yet it is a huge issue. It has the potential to cause major problems for the government and future governments if we do not pay attention to what the Auditor General has said and take action now.

As chair of the committee on ethics and privacy, I have heard a number of witnesses come forward, specifically the privacy commissioner, to express some real concerns about information technology security.

The media reported that in preparation of her report the Auditor General's staff actually was able to hack into government computer programs and extract information from them. That should scare everybody, particularly when in the House a few years ago the issue of the million dollar boondoggle in Human Resources Development Canada revealed the extent to which the government was collecting information on Canadians and storing it in government databases. To find out in the Auditor General's report how vulnerable that information is to those who would steal it and use it for other purposes should be frightening to all Canadians.

The new Privacy Commissioner has some good ideas on how we should deal with that. However, she is still in the process of straightening out an awful mess in the Privacy Commissioner's office, left over from the previous privacy commissioner who seemed to focus more on his lavish lifestyle than he did on his responsibilities of protecting Canadian security. I do not think that is not the case now.

The reality is we are slow getting off the mark in addressing some of these issues. It is hard and very expensive for the government and agencies of government to find the expertise to deal with this issue and to provide protection.

I did not want us to miss that part of the Auditor General's report where she raised a red flag. It is not the first time the Auditor General has raised it. When we look in the private sector, we see what is happening with information technology. Of course everybody has been listening to the terrible situation the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce has with its IT information and lack of security.

In this age of high tech spying, Canadians should be concerned with the miniaturization of the technology such as cell phone cameras and all kinds of tracking devices. The protection of our privacy, particularly our privacy as it relates to the information that government collects and holds on us, is a huge issue and one to which we want to pay attention.

I know it is a little off the topic of the foundations and the right of the Auditor General to investigate those. However, it was part of the Auditor General's report and it is relevant in a sense, certainly to the transparency and security of government.

I would urge the government to consider supporting the motion before us. I think Canadians everywhere have lost confidence in the government's honesty and integrity in reporting what is going on and how it is spending our money. We are talking about huge sums of money in these foundations. There are rumours about increasing the amount of money out of the purview of government. The motion is a valid motion and one that all members of the House should be willing to support, and I hope they will.

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4:55 p.m.

Peterborough Ontario

Liberal

Peter Adams LiberalParliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to what my colleague had to say. I share his concern about privacy, both personal privacy in a very general way and particularly, as he expressed it, privacy in this incredible technological age.

The hon. member mentioned miniaturization. The University of Alberta is the national centre for nanotechnology. People are working on their own advances in miniaturization, making things much smaller than they were, also providing our national centre expertise in how we deal with these matters.

In thinking of privacy, we can pass laws against this or that, but in the end we cannot put a bag over our head and in that way protect ourselves from advances in miniaturization and in nanotechnology, which goes on around the world.

In the end the only way we can deal with the privacy aspects of these stunning advances in technology is by having people on top of those advances. The 12 or 13 science foundations, which are the main focus of the motion, are our way of doing that. They are a way of implementing a long term, teaching and research project reaching out over eight or ten years, something that cannot be done within the lifetime of a government. Thereby the country and our citizens can be in a position to protect themselves properly from the dangers of technology, and take advantage of them.

I would urge my colleague to express his support for these foundations and to continue supporting the area of public policy which they represent, which is to keep Canada on the forefront of technology in the 21st century.

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5 p.m.

Conservative

Dave Chatters Conservative Westlock—St. Paul, AB

Mr. Speaker, I do not argue a lot with what the member is suggesting. I just do not see why the Liberals have to take $9 billion out of the direct control of government to achieve those things.

Those foundations can do that kind of work, and we very much need them to do that. We need to enlist the expertise of the private sector to do that, but we do not need to take $9 billion and put it in bank accounts that stretch out for Lord knows how long and away from the scrutiny of Parliament to achieve those things.

We should get together and achieve the things about which the member has spoken. At the same time, bring that money back within reach of the scrutiny of the government and of the Auditor General, and we can achieve both our objectives.

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5 p.m.

Conservative

Diane Ablonczy Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB

Mr. Speaker, I would like to get my colleague's response to statements made on the government side.

If I understand the argument of the Liberals correctly, when we ask for greater accountability in our motion, the argument on the other side is that private audits are done of the foundations and that the foundations report to the public, not to Parliament.

Does my colleague feel those private audits and those foundation reports to the public are adequate and why does he feel we need our motion in addition to those measures?

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5 p.m.

Conservative

Dave Chatters Conservative Westlock—St. Paul, AB

Mr. Speaker, I have been around here for over 11 years and every year I look at the government's own performance reports. Whoever writes those performance reports, has rose-coloured glasses.

I can think of examples. Some 600 first nations are required to produce private sector audits of their books every year. Those audits are done and are reported to the minister. Yet we constantly hear of corruption and mismanagement of money within those communities.

If the board of directors hires the auditor and sets the parameters of the audit for the private sector audit, I suggest it would likely get the results for which it is looking. That is the weakness of the private sector audit.

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5 p.m.

NDP

David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON

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.

SupplyGovernment Orders

5:15 p.m.

The Deputy Speaker

It being 5:15 p.m., it is my duty to interrupt the proceedings and put forthwith every question necessary to dispose of the business of supply.

The question is on the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

SupplyGovernment Orders

5:15 p.m.

Some hon. members

Agreed.

SupplyGovernment Orders

5:15 p.m.

Some hon. members

No.

SupplyGovernment Orders

5:15 p.m.

The Deputy Speaker

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

SupplyGovernment Orders

5:15 p.m.

Some hon. members

Yea.

SupplyGovernment Orders

5:15 p.m.

The Deputy Speaker

All those opposed will please say nay.