moved:
That, in light of $3.1 billion of missing funds outlined in Chapter Eight of the 2013 Spring Report of the Auditor General of Canada, an order of the House do issue for the following documents from 2001 to the present, allowing for redaction based on national security: (a) all Public Security and Anti-Terrorism annual reports submitted to the Treasury Board Secretariat; (b) all Treasury Board submissions made as part of the Initiative; (c) all departmental evaluations of the Initiative; (d) the Treasury Board corporate database established to monitor funding; that these records be provided to the House in both official languages by June 17, 2013; that the Speaker make arrangements for these records to be made available online; and that the Auditor-General be given all necessary resources to perform an in-depth forensic audit until the missing $3.1 billion is found and accounted for.
Mr. Speaker, I wish to inform you that I will be sharing my time.
I like to try to look at things with as much clarity and wisdom as possible. My dear colleagues will no doubt agree that when the sun is shining, everything is bright and everything is good. Spring has arrived, bringing warmth and hope to all of us, right?
This is therefore a very good time for the tabling of the Auditor General's report. Unfortunately, this debate brings very little light with it. The government is quoting the Auditor General out of context, in order to defend itself. The truth is that, once again, this government has proven that it is a bad fiscal manager and that, although it claims to spend taxpayers' money judiciously, it is not paying close enough attention.
The Auditor General did a good job. I would remind the House that in chapter 8 of his spring 2013 report, a chapter entitled “Spending on the Public Security and Anti-Terrorism Initiative”, he states:
Information on whether departments used $3.1 billion in initiative funding was not available.
It is simple. It means that they did not find any trace of this money, period. During his audit, the Auditor General asked the Treasury Board Secretariat for information that could help explain how the balance of $3.1 billion allocated between 2001 and 2009 was spent.
No clear explanation has been given, but the secretariat has admitted that one possible scenario is that the funds were allocated to various public security and anti-terrorism activities but categorized as ongoing program spending.
It is important to remember how the Auditor General arrived at that sum of $3.1 billion. In 2003, the Treasury Board Secretariat received funding to strengthen its ability to properly report on and evaluate horizontal public security and anti-terrorism, PSAT, activities.
The secretariat was the only department in the entire federal government to collect financial and non-financial information from a number of departments and agencies on this initiative. The information was stored in a departmental database designed for that purpose.
In addition, at the end of 2003, the secretariat established a reporting framework. The Treasury Board expected the departments and agencies to comply with the secretariat's reporting requirements.
The framework required departments and agencies to provide yearly financial and non-financial information about their PSAT-related activities. Then, the Auditor General reviewed departmental projects and approved allocations to determine how much funding had been granted to departments and agencies for the PSAT initiative.
The Auditor General found that, from 2001 to 2009, $12.9 billion was approved for department and agency programming under the PSAT initiative. Treasury Board Secretariat officials agreed with the Auditor General's analysis. The Auditor General then reviewed certain annual reports to see whether the departments had submitted their expenditures and the actual results of the initiative to Treasury Board every year. This covered the expenditures and results that were clearly stated and corresponded to the themes and objectives of the initiative.
By using the information about expenditures set out in the annual reports, the Auditor General determined that, of the $12.9 billion allocated, the departments and agencies had reported to Treasury Board that approximately $9.8 billion had been spent on PSAT-related activities. That leaves $3.1 billion that the government cannot account for.
It is unbelievable. The Conservatives are establishing ineffective and unnecessary laws on terrorism that violate our civil liberties, yet they are unable to say whether the astronomical amount of $3.1 billion allocated to the public security and anti-terrorism initiative was even spent. If it was, how was it spent and on what programs?
What is more, the Auditor General's report showed a blatant and shocking lack of oversight with regard to government progress and the reports on funding for public security. Unfortunately, today, we can add to this amount the $2.4 billion in contracts awarded to external consultants for which the government also does not have any reports.
This did not just occur in 2009. What happened in 2010? Well, the Auditor General and his assistant had plenty of interesting things to say on this subject. They said that their audit stopped there and that it was at that point that this method of reporting was done away with. They added that the Treasury Board Secretariat had stopped collecting data from departments through annual reports and that it was in the process of implementing another procedure that it hoped to launch in 2014.
Yikes. The entire public security and anti-terrorism initiative is being called into question. The Auditor General noted that the Conservatives were not keeping track of money as they should have been and that the government had simply stopped counting. Instead of humbly accepting the Auditor General's report on this spending, the government decided to throw around quotes of his taken out of context.
The President of the Treasury Board said that it was simply an accounting problem and that all of the information was available in the public accounts of Canada.
Here is what the Office of the Auditor General told Maclean's reporters:
The information reported annually in the public accounts was at an aggregate level and most of the PSAT spending was not separately reported as a distinct (or separate) line item. Furthermore, with over 10 years elapsing since the beginning of the PSAT program, much of that information is now archived and unavailable.
Canadians do not have access to all of the information. The Conservatives are fond of defending their actions by sharing partial quotes from the Auditor General. The Conservatives and ministers like to use the following quote: “We didn't find anything that gave us cause for concern that the money was used in any way that it should not have been.”
However, there is more to that quote: “...it's important for there to be...a way for people to understand how this money was spent and that summary reporting was not done.”
What is also shocking is the Liberal Party's silence on this issue. Perhaps the Liberals realize that they are just as guilty. For example,why did they not take action in 2004? What did they do? Nothing. No, the Liberals have no credibility to condemn the Conservatives for losing $3.1 billion, considering their dismal record of losing $1 billion.
If this government truly believes in properly managing taxpayer money, it will support this motion. That $3.1 billion is a lot of money. Our motion is simply asking for information. This government must provide all of the information available on the loss of $3.1 billion.