Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my speaking time with the hon. member for Churchill, who, as we know very well, has battled for years in this House to ensure that proper use is made of public funds.
It is my pleasure to rise today to speak in support of this official opposition motion. It reads as follows:
That the House call on the government to implement the measures recommended in the latest Auditor General's report to improve the framework for the accountability of foundations, in particular, to ensure that foundations are subject to performance audits that are reported to Parliament and that the Auditor General be appointed as the external auditor of foundations.
I am speaking in favour of this motion for a number of reasons, one of which is that it is based on my own private member's motion, Motion No. 181. It is one of the first I submitted in this House as a new member of Parliament, on November 1, 2004, and that motion reads:
That, in the opinion of the House, the government should appoint the Auditor General as the external auditor of foundations...and ensure that adequate mechanisms are in place for a broad scope audit of all delegated arrangements.
We are in favour of this motion because of what we have seen with the refusal of the government to take into consideration and to follow up on what is very clear from the Auditor General, that is, to follow the direction that she has indicated she needs to take to make sure we are having the appropriate use of public funds. She needs to be able to audit these delegated arrangements, these foundations.
In a sense what we have seen from the government is the old Liberal arrogance making its reappearance with this refusal to in any way accept the auditing of foundations when it is very clear that there is a problem, when it is very clear that the Auditor General is not aware if we are having a satisfactory use of public funds, and when it is very clear that the Auditor General has raised concerns.
As I mentioned earlier and will mention in the course of my presentation today, most of the foundations do not have in place the type of contract that really makes it clear to Canadian taxpayers across the country that the funds are being used and verified in an appropriate way.
Since we are seeing this reaction from the government, it is very important that in all corners of the House we consider this motion today. I certainly hope that the motion will be adopted with support from all four corners of the House, but if the government refuses to support it, it is very clear that in this minority Parliament three corners of the House will be sufficient to adopt the motion, which would be in Canadians' interests.
The facts are very clear. Nine billion dollars in grants have been provided to these foundations since fiscal year 1996-97. In fact, in the last four years the amount of money in these foundations has almost doubled. To this day we now have $7.6 billion in Canadian public funds that has been sent to these foundations without the appropriate oversight. That is unfortunate.
The Auditor General has called for a broader scope of responsibility. She has been very clear that she needs to be able to monitor and audit those funds. How does the government reply? It has said it will not allow that appropriate type of auditing.
We saw last fall as well that the government was very reluctant to allow the Auditor General to play the important role that she does. We saw the Liberal government actually withholding funds, believe it or not, from the Auditor General's department and pushing her to the point where she would have had to lay off 85 staff members. In other words, she would not be able to do the good and effective job that she does on behalf of Canadians. It was only with pressure from this and two other corners of this House that we were able to push the Liberal government back and finally have acceptance of funding for the Auditor General. The staff was not laid off and the Auditor General could continue to do the good work she does in monitoring federal departments.
Now we are going beyond that. We need to stop this game of hide and go seek. We need to be able to monitor effectively the funds that are going into these foundations. We have enough cause for concern with the sponsorship scandal, the boondoggle around employment and the employment insurance fund, and the huge missteps around budgeting with the fact that when small budget surpluses are forecast we actually see large budget surpluses coming out.
We have some real concerns about this government's ability to sit down and monitor finances in an honest and prudent way and in a way that benefits all Canadians. It is not as if the need is not out there. We have seen a tripling of homelessness in my area in greater Vancouver. We have seen a health care crisis that led to closure of hospitals. We have a child care crisis. We have increasing child poverty. There are needs across this country that are not being met and we have the Liberals playing games with appropriate monitoring of public funds.
The Auditor General was very clear in her report about her concerns around foundations. I will give a brief resumé of some of the recommendations that she put forth and what the status is in terms of how the government has reacted since this issue was raised by her a few years ago.
She recommended that, in new or amended funding agreements, sponsoring departments should seek to ensure that evaluations commissioned by foundations meet recognized evaluation standards. I raised that question with her when we had the opportunity to discuss her report. She said that five foundations have completed those independent evaluations that meet recognized evaluation standards. Most of the foundations are not doing that, despite the fact that it was very clear in the Auditor General's report that this recommendation needed to be followed.
She also said in her report that eight funding agreements gave sponsoring ministers the authority to undertake compliance audits but none were planned or under way at the time of her audit. The ability existed, but the government did not follow up. There were no compliance audits even though the opportunity exists in many of the funding agreements to make sure Canadians are getting good value for money.
The Auditor General also talked about adjustment mechanisms. When a foundation is clearly not meeting its purpose, or when circumstances have changed, a mechanism needs to be put into place to ensure that value for money is met. She recommended that the adjustment mechanism should not rely on the allocation of additional funding and revisions to the funding agreement. Right now the mechanism available is to put more money into the foundations and that is how we negotiate an adjustment mechanism. The Auditor General raised the alarm around funding agreements in regard to making sure that the government has the authority to terminate the agreement if defaults are not remedied.
As I mentioned earlier, in most cases there are no provisions under funding agreements to ensure that the government has the opportunity to terminate the agreement if a foundation is in default. In most cases, Canadians' interests are not being looked after by this government.
Finally, the Auditor General also was very clear that funding agreements need to give the minister the right to recover unspent public funds upon the winding up of the foundation. Many of the funding agreements do not have this provision. We are now facing a circumstance where the Auditor General does not have the power to intervene. When defaults are found, how they are recovered is a matter of some speculation because the Auditor General cannot do that work, and in most cases the funding agreements do not allow the termination of the agreement. In many cases, ministers representing this Parliament do not even have the right to recover unspent funds upon the winding up of a foundation.
Right now we are basically operating on faith. As I mentioned earlier, given the spending scandals of this government, my faith in its ability to handle the financial management of this country responsibly is, to say the least, in question. The challenges are enormous. As we see increasing poverty and a decrease in the quality of life for most Canadians, this government continues to play hide and seek with public funds. That is a shame. That is why we in this corner of the House will be supporting the motion.