Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak to this issue. It is useful for the House to have debates on important public policy issues. This is certainly one that has been around, but we have to differentiate this in a couple of ways.
The first thing is it seems that whenever we want to inflame debate all we have to do is throw out the aura of some dishonest or inappropriate behaviour. We use words like sponsorship and we do not know what is happening with these foundations. The members really do a great disservice to the people who are involved in these organizations, all of whom subject themselves to very rigorous oversight regimes. The Auditor General herself has said that. To try to confuse what is a substantive policy debate with this kind of unfortunate language and mudslinging debases the debate that we could have here.
What is at issue is a policy disagreement. It is very important that we stay focused on that. To do that let us step back a few years. After 27 years of deficits we dug ourselves out of debt, thanks to the very hard work of the current Prime Minister when he was finance minister, and the government of the day .
I hear lots of talk about the forecasting. In fact the forecasting methods the government uses are as rigorous as we are going to find. It would be really interesting to see the others. What happens is that on a cash flow this year of some $190 billion, it is enormously difficult particularly when a big chunk of the revenue comes in the last quarter to determine exactly where we are going to be. The government exercises a very serious prudence regime to guarantee that we do not overshoot because there is no way we want to go back to the old days of deficits. Those are the simple facts of it.
As we got close to coming out of debt, the then finance minister realized that we would likely have a very large surplus toward the end of that first year, and he made a decision. He said the problem was that it is also an accounting issue which the Auditor General talks about. He said at that time that because of the way the rules were currently structured, he could not put any of that money out to do other work.
The reality was, if members will cast their minds back to that time, there were huge concerns about the brain drain, about people having to move to the United States to get quality jobs, about our research communities being depleted. There were huge cries across the country for investments in our capacity to innovate because all of us believe, and I have heard members on the other side express exactly these same beliefs, that if we are to grow as a country, we simply have to develop ways to invest in our innovative capacities. The Prime Minister when he was finance minister made the decision to put 25% of the surplus that year into an instrument that allowed it to carry on in subsequent years.
According to accounting policy at that time, he had to put it out to an independent agency, otherwise it would remain on the government's books and would have gone toward the debt. He made a decision. It was not a shady, hidden decision. He spoke about it; it was announced in the budget. This House looked at the legislation, passed the budget bill, debated it here and approved the expenditure. It was not done in any secret way. It was done on the floor of this chamber with the support of people in this chamber. We set up a facility that brought people of very high reputation, people who unquestionably are leaders in this country, around a table to make decisions on a peer review basis about how we would fund science. That is what was done. It is as simple as that.
We have to try to get to the substantive debate and not play these foolish games. The Auditor General herself has said over and over again that she has no concern about the financing. There is no sponsorship here. There is nothing hidden here. In fact, of these institutions, it might interest members to note that every single one of them produces an audited financial statement. Every single one of them subjects itself to independent evaluation and those reports are tabled here in this House. When I chaired the committee on government operations, there were concerns because they had not been before the House.
It is interesting to note the comments of the member for Medicine Hat about the sheriffs in 1254. Those same actions were the ones that actually created the foundations of the modern House of Commons and its role to oversee government expenditure.
How many hours does the member spend in committee on estimates? How many times have those members called departments before them to rigorously look at their spending? One of the great failings of the House is that we do not take that seriously and we do not do exactly what the member says we need to be doing.
Those foundations will come before the House and answer questions. We could call any one of them and they would share their financial information. In fact, they would be glad to do it. When I called them and when the chair who followed me called them, there was absolutely no resistance to it.
Any suggestion that there is something shady, underhanded or hidden from public view here is simply wrong. The foundations' audits and evaluations are published on their websites. In many ways one could argue that these organizations are models of transparency. Not only that, the foundations have been enormously successful in their prime missions. The volume of quotes that talk about the good work they have done is extraordinary.
Dr. Adele Diamond from the University of British Columbia wrote, “The Canadian government's vision and foresight in establishing the chairs program was absolutely inspired. Indeed other countries are now scurrying to follow Canada's lead”.
There is renewed energy across the country. We no longer have a brain drain; we have a brain gain. People are coming back to Canada to occupy these positions because we have made investments in research. Students are able to go to university because we have invested in them, despite the actions of certain provinces to claw back.
There are always opportunities for improvement. Frankly, I am a huge fan of the Auditor General. I work very closely with her on her comments about government. She provides an invaluable service.
The boundary issue here is the closer we bring these organizations to government, they may as well simply become departments of government and we would lose the ability to carry the funding over fiscal years. Why is that a problem? I encourage members to take this issue seriously and to call the various organizations before them. Members should call the auditor before them to discuss some of the other issues of the funding of research in government. They should call the head of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research who is currently saying that he has a problem in that he cannot plan ahead because the accounting rules are in many ways based on the recommendations of the sheriff in 1254 and do not allow for moving into a more modern kind of accounting.
It is interesting to note that in the auditor general's report where concern was raised about foundations, in chapter 8 she talked about the government's need to go to accrual accounting. This would allow us to account for activities multi-year and perhaps would make it unnecessary to use some of these instruments.
The fact is that in the current circumstances, if we want to manage our cash flow so wo do not go into deficit and we want to put some money into the hands of Canadians who can do good work, this is a vehicle that works exceptionally well and has been enormously successful. I would simply challenge members to put on the table a substantive concern.
The Auditor General also went on in her report to say that she had no concerns about the accounting standards. In fact, she has issued unqualified audits of the government's books every single year. It is important to stay focused on what is essentially a policy disagreement between the auditor and the government. It is a disagreement around whether or not these institutions should be separate.
Members have said that if the government makes a grant, the auditor should be able to audit that organization. We make grants to the United Nations but we do not expect the auditor to be the auditor of the United Nations. We make grants to the OECD, the World Bank and other organizations. We give money to other organizations in pursuit of agreed upon policy goals debated in the House and passed in the House. We do not make it a requirement that the Auditor General be the auditor for all of them.
We do sit down and look carefully at our agreement rules and the text of our contracts with these companies. We simply put in place performance measures that people can look at in order to satisfy themselves that the funds are being used in a way that is consistent with the purposes for which they were given.
Do we want proper information? Do we want proper evaluation? Do we want Canadians to know that this money is being spent? Absolutely. The question is, are they independent of government? It is the government's belief that to bring them in closer puts us in a dangerous position which would make it impossible for us to use these vehicles to fund those important services.