Mr. Speaker, it is with pleasure that I rise to address the motion put forward by the New Democratic Party. I will indicate upfront that we recognize the value of the motion and therefore will be voting in favour of it.
I hope New Democrats will see the benefits of the amendment that we tried to move earlier today. The NDP motion could be made better and stronger if that party were open to accepting our amendment. I would encourage those members to think about this.
The Liberal Party has two primary concerns. The first is, of course, the $3.1 billion. The second is what we can do to fix the situation. Our amendment deals with the second one. I would encourage NDP members to look at that.
I want to start off by indicating what the Auditor General of Canada has suggested, in its entirety, with respect to this specific issue. This of course is in the 2013 audit report:
Our analysis showed that departments and agencies reported about $9.8 billion in spending by 2009, about $3.1 billion less than the amount allocated for PSAT activities. Our review of the financial and non-financial information reported by departments and agencies showed that projects were consistent with the announced objectives of the Initiative. However, information to explain the difference of $3.1 billion between the funding allocated to departments and agencies and the amount reported spent was not available.
That is a critical component of what was being stated by the Auditor General.
We need to keep in mind that we are talking about a timeframe of a number of years leading up to 2009. It is actually a total of $12.9 billion. Out of that $12.9 billion, the Auditor General was able to look at $9.8 billion. He felt 100% confident with respect to what happened to that $9.8 billion.
Then there is the $3.1 billion. Treasury Board officials would tell the Auditor General it was one of three possible situations, but we do not know for sure. One situation is that a portion of the money could have lapsed. I have asked members about that and they do not believe it lapsed. There was no 100% assurance, or even close to 100% assurance, that the money was lapsed. The government is trying to give the impression that the money was spent, but we do not know that.
The person with the best access to that information is the Auditor General. If the Auditor General concludes that he cannot find the receipts and other items that he looks at, then it would be fair to believe and acknowledge that not enough information was available for the auditor. It does not necessarily mean that the auditor did not have access to all of the information. It means that the information was not there and available for the Auditor General.
We are talking about $3.1 billion. What are the other two possible situations? The second situation is: Was the money spent on public safety activities but not accounted for? That is quite possible, but again, we do not know for sure. The third is: Was the money carried forward and spent on activities that were not related to the initiative?
Again, we will not see the Prime Minister stand in his place and give us the guarantee that, no, that was not the case. He will not stand in his place and do that because he is not in a position to really know, I believe, or he is hiding a lot of information from Canada's Auditor General, which would raise a whole new area of discussion and debate that would need to take place.
We need to recognize that we really do not know how that $3.1 billion was actually spent or if in fact it was spent.
At the end of the day, how much is $3.1 billion? When I was first elected, that almost made up the entire budget of the Province of Manitoba. Today, we would find that it does make up and exceed some provincial budgets. If we want to talk about health care services and the costs of health care, $3 billion is more than the transfer payments toward social programming that Manitoba would receive. It is a lot of money.
We are talking about tens of thousands of jobs that could have been initiated, tens of thousands good quality jobs. Three point one billion dollars is a great deal of money.
When I ask questions with respect to that or if we listen to some of the speeches given from the Conservative benches, what we will often hear is, “Don't worry. Trust us. It will materialize”.
That is not good enough.