Mr. Speaker, I certainly welcome the opportunity to stand in the House today and respond to the hon. member's motion. I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for North Vancouver, the Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Treasury Board.
The motion in question concerns chapter 8 of the 2013 Spring Report of the Auditor General of Canada on the reporting of public security and anti-terrorism initiative funds. I have reviewed the motion in detail and appreciate this opportunity to correct the false assumption on which it is based.
The Auditor General and his office have had full access to all of the public security and anti-terrorism, or PSAT, reports. He has been clear, saying, “We didn't find anything that gave us cause for concern that the money, you know, was used in any way that it should not have been”.
That is not all he said. He also confirmed in his testimony before the Standing Committee on Public Accounts that characterizations of these funds as lost are inaccurate. In fact, he clarified in his testimony that the reporting on the funds in question was purely an internal government reporting process. He verified that the shortcomings, which our government acknowledges, did not prevent parliamentarians or Canadians from scrutinizing spending through the estimates process and through the public accounts process. Those are the facts.
It is also a fact that our government has taken decisive action to ensure the security and safety of Canadians. Canadians can be assured that government funding tagged for security initiatives was used for that purpose. Core security-oriented organizations, such as the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority, or CATSA, the Canadian Border Services Agency, National Defence, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, are the types of agencies that report through PSAT.
On July 14, 2000, I was in the Pine Lake tornado, so I have seen death and destruction among neighbours and students. Our family lived through this disaster. I had to speak to my students when I came back in September about that event. A year later, we were getting over this trauma. When the world witnessed the destruction of the twin towers by terrorists in 9/11, those images affected me on both a personal level and as a horror shared with my fellow citizens. Again, I had to discuss with my students the intolerance and the devastation in the fall of 2001.
I understand what it is like to try to make sense out of both natural and man-made disasters. When it comes to terrorism, I take it very personally.
In a post-9/11 environment, Canadians expect law enforcement to adopt a proactive posture in order to disrupt terrorist plots before an attack occurs. Our government has taken strong action to keep Canadians safe, including measures such as the recent combating terrorism act, targeting serious drug crime, cracking down on organized crime and preventing nuclear terrorism.
I think all members in the House would agree with me when I say that terrorism is a heinous crime. Its objective is to strike fear into all citizens and to discourage us all from going about our lives freely and without fear. Terrorists live by a philosophy that rejects the democratic process, and their motivation is fundamentally at odds with our rule of law.
Acts of terrorism cannot be allowed, and our government continues to act to prevent the types of tragedies we have seen in New York and in Boston.
We are balancing, though, two very distinct needs in this post-9/11 world. We will keep our country safe and we will be responsible with taxpayer dollars while doing so.
This chapter of the Auditor General's spring report 2013 comes with important recommendations that our government agrees with and intends to implement. We acknowledge that there was some lack of clarity and some aspects of horizontal reporting, despite all expenditures of the federal budget being reported through the regular parliamentary reporting cycle.
Despite all the factual statements made by the Auditor General, the NDP is again willing to be deceitful and is attempting to manufacture a scandal, despite formal assertions that our reports to Parliament are sound.
Let me reiterate that the premise of the motion in question is completely false. The processes that departments follow for reporting to Parliament and Canadians on their spending and results were respected.
The audit acknowledges that deputy heads, as departmental accounting officers, are responsible for accounting and reporting their spending through the Public Accounts of Canada. These reporting requirements are in addition to the internal reporting requirements imposed under the public security and anti-terrorism initiative.
All government spending, every nickel and dime, is reported to Parliament and accounted for in the Public Accounts. This took place in 2001, in 2002 and so on all the way to 2009. The Auditor General said that he did not find anything that gave him cause for concern that money was used in any way that should not have been.
On the contrary, what the Auditor General has concerns about is the clarity and the characterization of reporting between government departments over the period 2001 to 2009. The Auditor General's recommendation focused on improving that reporting process.
Our government accepts his recommendation and is committed to improved public reporting on initiatives that involve multiple departments. In fact, our government has already taken action to improve public reporting on such horizontal initiatives.
In the fall of 2011, the Office of the Auditor General said that the government did a good job of monitoring progress and spending for economic action plan initiatives, saying that the government was diligent in monitoring the progress of projects and their spending.
With respect to reporting to Parliament and Canadians, the government has taken several steps to improve financial reporting and to support parliamentary scrutiny of estimates and supply.
On April 22, a new searchable, online database was launched that for the first time ever would consolidate all information on government spending in one place. The website allows the public and parliamentarians to track government spending, showing trends and government-wide totals for specific areas like personnel spending.
This is in addition to other significant actions that we have taken. For example, we now post financial data sets on the Treasury Board Secretariat website and the open data portal. We also now publish quarterly financial reports.
Our government has made ongoing improvements to the form and content of reports on plans and priorities and departmental performance reports.
Clearly, much effort has been made to improve reporting. Therefore, I ask the House to reject the hon. member's motion and to reject this diversion from what really matters: the work done every day to keep Canadians safe.