Madam Speaker, if I may clarify, I was referring to what my constituents were telling me. If I have misspoken and called the government corrupt, then I unreservedly withdraw that comment. My constituents were telling me that they believed that there was corruption in this government with particular emphasis on the ad scam program.
I am not suggesting that the foundations are another ad scam, but there are earmarks and some very striking similarities to the problems that occurred within the sponsorship program. There is no real accountability to taxpayers. These foundations were set up at arm's-length to the government. They are not attached to any minister and do not report directly to any minister.
That is a grave concern and we have heard that said many times by other speakers in the House today. The government does not have any authority over many of these foundations unless a foundation does not act within its mandate or within its funding agreement. Other than that, the government cannot hold these foundations accountable. Any foundation that receives taxpayers' dollars should not work that way.
Parliament has been around for hundreds of years, and one of its basic premises is to ensure that taxpayers' dollars are protected. When voters across this country elect members of Parliament, they do so trusting in their parliamentarians to protect their hard earned dollars. The way the foundation system is structured today does nothing of that. It does not protect taxpayers' dollars. It does not ensure that taxpayers' dollars are appropriately spent because there is no accountability back to Parliament.
I recall during the last campaign when the Prime Minister was speaking of the sponsorship scandal he said that he was mad as hell and would get to the bottom of it. He would ensure nothing like that occurred again. He spoke of things like government transparency and accountability. What I find most amazing is the fact that the very person uttering those words was the finance minister at the time when the foundations were established.
How can the Prime Minister on one hand say that he is outraged at what happened with the sponsorship scandal, and yet on the other hand he was the very finance minister who approved setting up these foundations which could result in very similar actions with respect to the sponsorship scandal that we are all outraged about?
My colleague from Edmonton--St. Albert made several references to grants given to individuals or organizations through foundations that appeared to have direct connections to high officials within the Liberal Party and Liberal supporters. That is eerily similar to what happened with the sponsorship scandal. These types of things must be stopped.
Canadians across this great land distrust governments in general. One of the reasons they lack trust in politicians and government is because of situations like this. They see their hard earned dollars being turned over to a foundation that has no responsibility to report back to the Parliament of the day. They feel that parliamentarians are not protecting their dollars.
We must resolve this. We need to have parliamentary oversight. Parliament needs to have more direct control over these foundations and their spending, or lack of it. It is wrong for Parliament to turn over $9 billion to a series of 17 foundations and tell them they can do what they wish with the money, that they will not be audited by the Auditor General, that they will not have to report back to any minister of the Crown regarding spending, and that they can determine how this money should be spent with no interference from the government. That is wrong.
A private business could never be run with that lack of accountability and yet the government has decided to put over $9 billion into foundations and ask Canadians to basically trust it and trust the foundations. Taxpayers are not being told how the money is being spent. No performance audits are being done. The Auditor General will be prevented from auditing these foundations and the taxpayers are being asked to trust the government.
We now find out that over $7.7 billion have been left in the foundations and have been sitting there unreported for many years. To my understanding, the government of the day when it transferred money considered this but put this down on its books as an expense item. It is not an expense because the $7.7 billion is still sitting there. It was a transfer of funds.
A couple of things come to mind, which have been mentioned before but bears repeating. When the government was projecting modest surpluses, the reality was that there was a far larger surplus. The money sitting in these foundations, which was not spent, could have been used by the government for a variety of other purposes but, more important, had Canadians known about this money they would have been able to express their desire for what to do with this additional money.
To put things in a term of reference with which I am familiar, $7.7 billion is larger than the provincial budget of my home province of Saskatchewan. We have $7.7 billion sitting in a foundation or a series of foundations with no parliamentary oversight and no control by the government as to how that money will and could be spent.
I honestly hope that those who administer and control these foundations and who make the decisions on where the money should be spent, such as grants to universities, hospitals or other worthy projects, are working on behalf of Canadian taxpayers. However we do not know that. We must ensure that there are proper accountability practices put in place to protect Canadian taxpayers.
My fear is that if this is left unchecked there is a possibility that the money could be used strictly for political purposes. Some of the members opposite groan and moan. My colleague from Edmonton—St. Albert has already pointed out a number of examples of where some of this money went to firms that seemed to have direct Liberal connections.
What would stop that from happening? Where is the accountability? We thought the sponsorship scandal could never happen. There are laws against that too, if I am not mistaken. It seems that laws were broken with respect to sponsorship. Could they not have the same effect here?
The Auditor General has made a series of recommendations on how to clean this up. All we are asking is that the government listen to the Auditor General and follow through with her recommendations.