Mr. Speaker, I have spent the day listening to the debate and I am disappointed to hear that the government will not support a motion which calls for openness, transparency and accountability for all Canadians. That is very telling. A number of government members talked about things other than the motion before the House only because they did not want to give their opinion on whether what was asked in the motion was not only reasonable, but whether it was the responsibility and in fact the duty of parliamentarians to exercise due diligence and scrutinize proposed spending of taxpayer dollars. It is our job.
In this instance we have a $3 billion amount which is labelled “unmarked funds” proposed to be used for a variety of purposes. In the section that describes this amount of money in Treasury Board vote 35, it refers to budget implementation initiatives subject to approval by the Treasury Board between the period of April 1 and June 30”. In other words, Treasury Board will authorize the expenditure of certain moneys, $3 billion, in the first quarter of the upcoming fiscal year.
It goes on to say “to supplement other appropriations and to provide any appropriate Ministers with appropriations for initiatives announced in the Budget of January 27, 2009”. It basically says that it can be spent on anything, whether it is in the budget and announced to Canadians what the intent was, or some other purpose to which the government may decide to apply it.
What the vote is really saying is “trust us”. The government wants $3 billion and at some point in time it will disclose where it was spent, but it will not tell us right now. How can Parliament exercise its responsibilities and its duties to scrutinize the proposed spending of taxpayer dollars if it does not know what it is? However, we understand there will be some matters that come up that may very well not be able to be identified specifically as to the precise location, the name of the project, the size of the project and other details.
The motion does not ask for pre-disclosure. It simply asks for disclosure when the funds are being used. That is when all is known. It is simply asks the government to publish a report which advises parliamentarians and Canadians on what the moneys were spent. That is the gist of the motion. When the money is spent, we would like to know what it is because the government did not tell us during the process of the estimates or identified it in the budget. This could be almost anything.
The Conservatives are going to vote against this. Why? Because Conservatives have to do it anyway when the supplementary estimates come in next June. However, that is after all the money has been spent. If Parliament has a problem, or concern or question about expenditures of some of the $3 billion, when will members get a chance to do this? They will not get a chance until June and even then, depending on what goes on in the House, the House may rise for the summer by the time other things are done and all of a sudden it will be next fall. Therefore, the motion asks for accountability, openness and transparency.
The Treasury Board officials commented on vote 35. They indicated that it ran contrary to the principles of accountability and responsibilities of parliamentarians. In fact, House of Commons Standing Order 80(1) clearly states:
All aids and supplies granted to the Sovereign by the Parliament of Canada are the sole gift of the House of Commons, and all bills for granting such aids and supplies ought to begin with the House, as it is the undoubted right of the House to direct, limit, and appoint in all such bills, the ends, purposes, considerations, conditions, limitations and qualifications of such grants, which are not alterable by the Senate.
Even in our own Standing Orders, it says that if Parliament is to discharge its responsibilities, it needs to have this information. The government has moved forward with this $3 billion in unmarked funds and it will tell us sometime three months down the road what it was for. There has to be a compromise here and this motion proposes that compromise. It says that as the money flows out, we want to know what it was spent on, what the project name was, the amount and the department or program under which it was operated.
If the motion is simply asking for openness, transparency and accountability, why is the government saying that it is going to vote against it? It is bizarre. If someone gets a bee in his or her bonnet and all of a sudden another party decides to vote no along with the government, what happens? All of a sudden we do not have any money flowing because we are going to an election. That is what it really means. Ultimately, it is like playing chicken.
The government showed us that side of its strategy in the budget. The budget did not just have budget information in it; it had a number of other non-budgetary items in it. Why? Why did it include the Competition Act? Why did it attack pay equity for women? Why did it attack the Navigable Waters Act? It took a lot of time to do that and the government threw that in there. Why? Because if members objected to those things, they would defeat the whole budget and they would not defeat the whole budget because Canadians needed the stimulus.
Therefore, the government has us. We have to pass the things it wants without the normal parliamentary scrutiny.
The government's economic statement last November, in which it forecasted four years of surplus and no recession, was disastrous. All of a sudden, between the first week of November and when it tabled the budget in January, there was an international economic crisis that was not seen in November. It happened instantaneously in each one of those countries. It was not gradual. There were not any signs. It was as if somebody flipped the switch and all of a sudden we had a crisis.
Something is wrong here. It is a matter of trust. When the former Treasury Board president, who is now responsible for infrastructure, was pressed for an explanation as to why the government continued to refuse to give Parliament the specifics, he told the opposition members that the matter fundamentally amounted to trust. He was honest with us and he was honest with the committee. He said that they either had confidence in the government or they did not.
This response has lead us to conclude that neither the minister nor the government appear to have a clue as to where the money will go. Instead, they suggest that the government is getting set to improvise with billions of taxpayer dollars. It is flying by the seat of its pants with $3 billion of taxpayer money. This motion says that we need to have some accountability. We will give the authority to go ahead and pass the estimates, but we want to know what the money is spent on as it goes out. We do not want to wait until June. It is our responsibility and our duty, and the government should support the motion.