Mr. Speaker, I move that the first report of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts presented on Thursday, October 28, 2004, be concurred in.
I will be dividing my time with the member for Prince George--Peace River.
The first report of the public accounts committee, which I tabled in this House when we came back in the fall, dealt with the issue of the Privacy Commissioner, not the sponsorship program or the sponsorship scandal.
I want to point out the clear similarities between the two when the government does not pay attention to what is going on and how everything gets right off the rails. Perhaps the government did know what was going on and it did it with its blessing.
The report dealt with Mr. George Radwanski, as members may recall. He was a Liberal hack, if I may say. He was appointed by the Liberal government to the position of the Privacy Commissioner, an officer of Parliament no less. The government had not done any background checks other than the fact that he was a major contributor to the Liberal Party.
Apparently, that was quite sufficient for him to get the appointment. The fact that he was bankrupt really did not make that much difference. The government was not that worried about finding out these things.
The fact that Mr. Radwanski owed tens of thousands of dollars in back taxes of course did not mean anything because now he was going to have the money from the salary to pay back his taxes. Then, of course, the court and the Bankruptcy Act wiped all of that clean. He got his salary and he did not have to pay it back. This was just a great little gravy train that he was on.
The Auditor General took a look at what was going on and she said in her report that the former Privacy Commissioner:
--abdicated his responsibilities and that under his stewardship, rules and even basic standards of decent behaviour were routinely and flagrantly ignored and broken. These facts are by now widely known and, with one notable exception, universally accepted
This is how the Liberal appointee, Mr. George Radwanski, who had no other criteria for being in the job, other than contributing to the Liberal Party, was acting as an officer of Parliament. Mrs. Fraser, the Auditor General, went on to say in paragraph 5:
--oversight mechanisms of central agencies—the Treasury Board Secretariat and the Public Service Commission—were insufficient or, in the case of central agencies, not used to either prevent abuse and wrongdoing or deal with them when they occurred.
While Canadians have been horrified at the sponsorship scandal and the revelations that have been coming out almost daily on that, there are other scandals that maybe did not quite reach the same headlines, but nonetheless are very important.
We have of course the concept that Parliament ensures and authorizes spending by individual departments and agencies and officers of Parliament. However, we found out that because Mr. Radwanski thought he was a small department, with a budget of only $11 million, that the Auditor General would never come along and take a look at what he was doing.
Since Mr. Radwanski felt that the Auditor General would never show up and take a look at his books, he thought that he could break the rules with impunity. He actually borrowed $250,000 from next year's spending to cover off his excess spending in that particular year, totally contrary to the Financial Administration Act. This was contrary to the whole concept of Parliament. Only Parliament votes the money. If we do not vote it, they cannot have it.
Mr. Radwanski just helped himself to next year's budget. How he was going to balance the next year's budget we do not know. We never did get around to giving him the chance to figure that out himself because we turfed him out the door.
Then I said to myself that there must be some redress, something must happen. Mr. Radwanski spent money without Parliament's approval. Somebody should come here and do a mea culpa, apologize, and say they are going to fix the problem.
Therefore, I stood up in the House on a point of order or a point of privilege, I do not remember which, and demanded an explanation. Back came the answer that if money is spent that is not authorized by Parliament, there is a little section in the Financial Administration Act that says that is okay. It is deemed to be authorized anyway.
That is the low point of democracy here. We had it with the Privacy Commissioner and we have it with the sponsorship scandal. The whole rules regarding the administration of ethical financial management were totally ignored. The government was complicit and complacent and nobody seemed to care.
Yet, no one has come back to the House to say said that they were sorry and apologize to the Canadian people, and to say that this should not have happened. No one, not the Prime Minister, not the President of the Treasury Board, the Deputy Prime Minister, or the Minister of Finance. No one has stood up here and apologized to the Canadian taxpayer and that is an affront to Canadians.
That is why we must take a look at the sponsorship scandal, the office of the Privacy Commissioner and what else yet we do not know. There was Canada Post where the president was helping himself to millions of dollars in expense reimbursement without producing a single expense receipt.
That is again totally and completely unethical behaviour and no one has admitted that they were responsible. Perhaps the time is coming that someone is going to be held responsible. That is the responsibility of the House.
That is why we have these debates and why no confidence in the government is what causes an election. Perhaps one day very soon the House will express its dissatisfaction with the government and we are off to an election.
As I mentioned, Mr. Speaker, I am sharing my time with the member for Prince George--Peace River and I will turn it over to him.