Debates of May 9th, 2013

Opposition Motion—2013 Spring Report of the Auditor General of Canada

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, accountability is the reason why we are debating this motion on this NDP opposition day.

The official opposition is asking the government what happened to the $3.1 billion that the Auditor General could not find in the review he conducted of expenditures related to the fight against terrorism.

Accountability is something that is extremely important to Canadians, particularly after what happened in the mid-2000s.

The Gomery commission sought to shed light on certain instances where the Liberal government at the time was not accountable for expenditures made in promoting national unity. At the time, it became clear that accountability was a priority for Canadians when electing a government. A government had to be accountable to the Canadian public and to Parliament with regard to its spending.

As a result of a finding in the Auditor General's report, which is the subject of the motion we moved and are debating today, we are calling for a justification for this missing $3.1 billion.

I would like to go back in time. I know that this has been done several times, but I would like to put things in context. From 2001 to 2009, $12.9 billion was budgeted to combat terrorism. This amount was allocated to 35 different departments. Different amounts were allocated to different departments depending on their responsibilities.

Following the events of September 11, even the Treasury Board Secretariat at the time was given $2.5 million over a period of five years to implement accountability mechanisms for these new initiatives. This would allow the Treasury Board to account for expenses and ensure that the money was well spent.

In the Auditor General's report, we learned that only $9.8 billion of the $12.9 billion allocated from 2001 to 2009 is accounted for. There is still $3.1 billion missing. I am talking about the period ending in 2009, not 2012, and I will tell you why.

Was this money spent? We do not know. Was it not spent and lost because it was not spent? We have no idea. That is the real problem here. That is what members should find worrisome, and not just opposition members either, but government members as well.

I am blown away by the fact that members, including Conservative backbenchers and members of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts in particular, are not curious about where the $3.1 billion has gone. It is a substantial amount.

It is worth noting that problems with anti-terrorism funding were raised in 2004, in a report by the Auditor General at the time. That 2004 report was already sounding the alarm about accountability issues regarding money spent.

I will summarize the recommendations made by the Auditor General at the time.

The government as a whole failed to achieve improvements in the ability of security information systems to communicate with each other...deficiencies in the way intelligence is managed across the government. A lack of coordination has led to gaps in intelligence coverage...gaps and inconsistencies in the watch lists used to screen visa applicants, refugee claimants, and travellers seeking to enter Canada...No one monitors delays in the entry or the quality of the data on watch lists...criminal intelligence data are not used to screen applicants for clearance to restricted areas at airports...

There were also deficiencies in funding evaluations, the reporting process, and the list goes on.

As early as 2004, just three years after the anti-terrorism measures were put in place, there were problems with how the funding for the fight against terrorism was being used.

These measures were originally adopted under a Liberal government. We know today that in the 20 months of Liberal governance and seven years of Conservative governance following the release of the Auditor General's 2004 report, the Auditor General's recommendations were not implemented and these governments also failed to keep track of the equivalent of 25% of the money allocated to anti-terrorism initiatives.

That is why we are talking about accountability. The government manages this money. It is supposed to report its expenditures to Parliament. As the President of the Treasury Board mentioned, Parliament, through its committees and the House as a whole, is responsible for considering the public accounts and then adopting them. However, it is clear that there is no way to trace the use of this $3.1 billion in the public accounts reports from 2001 to 2009. It is simply impossible.

The Auditor General tried and was unable to trace the money. That was his conclusion. If the Auditor General was unable to determine how $3.1 billion out of a $12.9 billion budget was spent, despite all the resources his office has available, members of Parliament will obviously not be able to make a decision based on the information we have.

This specific situation illustrates a major problem when it comes to accountability. However, the government's entire approach to accountability is being called into question here. That is the primary reason why we have always supported and have always tried to strengthen the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer. That is why we need officers who have access to all the information, in order to help the House. I am not talking about just the opposition here, but the entire House.

I am sure there are Conservative supporters, people of principle who are Conservatives—if not the Conservatives here in the House—who do not understand how the government can lose track of this money and deny that there is a problem.

I can guarantee that if it were an NDP government across the way that lost $3.1 billion, that party would have a field day with this, not just in the House, but also during fundraisers in their ridings. However, since they are the ones across the way, it is no big deal.

In 2006, when Canadians elected this government for the first time, they were voting for accountability and transparency. That is what the government promised and that is what Canadians have been waiting for for seven years.

We owe a debt of gratitude to the Auditor General for undertaking this initiative. He will have to keep going, though, because we still do not know what this $3.1 billion was used for. Regardless of the quotes taken out of context by the President of the Treasury Board, some things in the report are clear.

In this House we have the right to ask questions, and that is what we are doing right now. We are entitled to do so. The government should recognize that and agree with the NDP's request to find this $3.1 billion. What was it spent on? Where are the documents?

If the money was not spent and ended up back in the consolidated revenue fund, then they should just say so and that is where we will look for it. This morning, a member told us that it will come out in due course. That is not good enough. We want accountability right now. The best quote in the Auditor General's report is as follows:

The Secretariat also said that it would provide direction to departments and agencies on requirements for reporting to Parliament.

That was in 2004, and that has not been done. This time the Auditor General is saying that:

It is important that government knows whether the funds allocated to protect Canadians and fight terrorism are being spent to achieve the PSAT objectives.

If the Auditor General cannot figure out whether the funds were spent according to the objectives set out by the government, we have no way of knowing either.

Once again, the question is: where is the $3.1 billion that cannot be accounted for? Why is the government not making an effort to provide these reports to the House?

If that is not the case, not only must the government take the blame for this, but it must also support our motion.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his speech, which highlights the lack of accountability of the government in any way, shape or form for money. This is not the first time that there have been money issues with the government. I believe they were found in contempt of Parliament in the last Parliament over money issues.

The Conservatives have misled the Canadian public—I was going to use a different word I am not allowed to use in the House—over the cost of the F-35s, which is far more than $3.1 billion, yet the government seems to take it so nonchalantly. That is a lot of Canadian taxpayers' money, $3.1 billion. That is not something to sneeze at. That is an enormous amount of money that has been spent in good faith by Canadian taxpayers. They deserve to know, and parliamentarians deserve to know, how it was spent. That is all we are asking. How was that money spent? Would he agree?

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I agree completely.

The government is constantly asking Canadians to blindly trust it. We should trust the public accounts, which are very general and extensive. Generally speaking, they consist of three large volumes containing 10-digit numbers. They are extremely complex, but they make for a very interesting read. As an economist, I love these books. However, with an MP's resources, it is extremely difficult to really be able to identify how funds are used.

That is why we asked for accountability, among other things, from the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer, who does an excellent job. He noted that what the government was saying about budgetary expenditures and accountability was not accurate when it came to the cost of our intervention in Afghanistan or the F-35s.

We need accountability. This government claims to be accountable and transparent. The Treasury Board President said that his government was one of the most transparent in Canadian history. On the contrary, it is one of the least transparent, and we are seeing more and more that it is one of the least accountable, too.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Northumberland—Quinte West.

I am pleased to have this opportunity to respond to the motion moved by the hon. member opposite regarding chapter 8 of the Auditor General's report on public security and anti-terrorism, the PSAT initiative. I have reviewed the NDP motion, I have read the Auditor General's report and I have heard the AG's testimony on this chapter. After all this, I must reject the premise of the NDP motion.

The Auditor General and his office had full access to all documentation from the PSAT initiative and they were left with a specific conclusion: that the reporting process was not as exhaustive as it should have been. However, the AG said that he “did not find anything that gave cause for concern that the money was used in any way that should it should not have been”.

The government takes Canada's national security very seriously. Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, we have been actively involved in protecting our citizens.

Recently, our government introduced and passed Bill S-7, the combatting terrorism act. This bill proposed to create new substantive offences that would make it illegal to leave or to attempt to leave Canada to knowingly participate in or contribute to any activity of a terrorist group for the purpose of enhancing the ability of any terrorist group to facilitate or carry out a terrorist activity, knowingly facilitate a terrorist activity, commit an indictable offence for the benefit of a terrorist group and commit an indictable offence that is also a terrorist activity. Our government has been unwavering in its commitment to protect Canadians and support the global fight against terrorism. That is why we work closely with international partners to combat terrorism and its perpetrators.

The proposed new offences would send a strong deterrent message, strengthening the hand of law enforcement to mitigate threats and increase the penalties for this type of conduct. Putting in place safeguards to protect Canadians as they go about their lives in safety and security is not a new focus for this government. That is why the public security and anti-terrorism initiative was put in place to fund measures to enhance the security of Canadians. This initiative involved funding allocated to departments and agencies government-wide to implement a variety of anti-terrorism measures. These measures focus on air security, emergency preparedness and military deployment, intelligence and policing, screening of entrants to Canada, border security and facilitation, and border infrastructure.

Funding for the public security and anti-terrorism initiative rolled out before the end of 2001. It has been scrutinized by parliamentarians according to the proper procedures for examining and reporting on the spending of taxpayer money. As members know, each department must table in its public accounts each item of spending. This is a legal obligation, and that is exactly what has been done.

Moreover, the Auditor General has found nothing in his examination of the spending on this initiative to suggest anything that was done improperly. All the funds are accounted for in public documents presented to Parliament, including the public accounts. There is no indication that any dollars are missing, misappropriated or misspent. The process that departments follow for reporting to Parliament and to Canadians on their spending and results were respected for every year of the initiative.

For its part, the TBS established an annual reporting framework to monitor the implementation of these initiatives. Key components of this annual reporting approach included: funding allocations; progress indicators; emerging issues; challenges and risks; horizontal issues such as capacity, interoperability and partnerships; and audit and evaluation information.

When submissions related to PSAT funding were considered, approval was provided based on two conditions.

One condition was that existing and established reporting and evaluation requirements were respected, and that funding was used for public security uses.

The intent of this condition was to ensure that departments complied with reporting requirements and evaluated security programs to confirm that the implementation of the initiatives was creating the right results.

The second condition helped ensure that funding was used for security purposes while providing the flexibility to reallocate funds if necessary to respond to evolving risks.

Canadians can be assured that government funding tagged for security initiatives was used for that purpose. This was among the conditions for the PSAT funding, and deputy ministers attested that the funding would be used for security-related purposes. Members do not have to take my word for it. The Auditor General of Canada has said that his office, “didn’t find anything that gave [them] cause for concern that the money...was used in any way that it should not have been”.

I do not think the Auditor General could be any clearer than that.

What is more, the Auditor General's 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 requirement imposed under PSAT.

The Auditor General has been clear that departments had an internal control and due diligence process in place to ensure spending was conducted according to the rules.

The prime concern since September 11, 2001, has been the security and protection of Canadians. We have no more fundamental duty than to protect the personal safety of our citizens and defend against threats to our national security. This has been our objective with regard to this spending. So far, we have been remarkably successful, transparent and accountable to the citizens of this country.

[Jonathan Tremblay, NDP, Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the member did not do very much, aside from quoting the Auditor General partially and out of context. Talk about bad faith.

I do not understand why the Conservatives were screaming so much when the Liberals used the same strategy. The Liberals lost three times less money than the Conservatives, who are now saying that it is no big deal and that they are good fiscal managers, even though $3.1 billion is missing.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I understand that the function of Her Majesty's loyal opposition is to shine a light on government and make sure that everything is in order. However, this particular motion is clear.

I have to say that either the opposition has not read the Auditor General's report from which I quoted, which is so obviously clear that there are no misappropriated funds and no money that has been hidden and that this is clearly a case that can be explained. Or my only other conclusion would be that if the opposition has read the report, then its members are misinforming the public and deliberately trying to create a situation that is not there, which causes confusion.

Therefore, I would throw that right back to the opposition members and ask them this. Why are they doing that when they have the same report, the same information, the same facts and should be drawing the same conclusions?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I have to agree to disagree with this particular member with regard to his thoughts on what the Auditor General is saying.

However, let us try to move forward in terms of how we prevent these type of events from occurring in the future.

The Liberal Party has been suggesting that we need to look at ways to move toward program-based appropriations, something our former parliamentary budget officer, Kevin Page, suggested we move toward and something we want to propose as an amendment to the motion itself.

My question to the member is this. From his perspective, or in his own personal opinion, does he not believe that at the very least we should be sending a very strong message today that we need to look at the way we are reporting and move toward program-based appropriations? Would the member agree with that?

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would agree that as a Parliament it is our job to do these things. It is our job to look for problems and collectively look for solutions. We might not agree on what that solution should be, but that is how Parliament works, and I would agree with the member that looking for solutions should be the focus of this whole exercise.

We recognize we could have done things better, and we state that as well. The government's response to the Auditor General is that we recognize the recommendations that were made and that we will endeavour to improve. I think it is incumbent upon us all to work toward a way to make this situation better and subsequently make government that much better.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today on the subject of the funding for Canada's public safety and anti-terrorism initiative.

As we know, the hon. opposition is calling into question the government's accounting for the money used to fight terrorism both at home and abroad. We have indicated that all funds in question have been accounted for in public accounts, and those are available to Parliament.

What is more, there is no indication that any money is missing or that any money has been poorly used or wasted, and that is also the opinion of the Auditor General of Canada. He gave the government's accounting for these expenses a clean bill of health. He did so after reviewing all available documents during the course of his audit. In fact, he confirmed at committee that the anti-terrorism funding he was reviewing was purely an internal government reporting process. The Auditor General clearly said that his office did not find anything to indicate that the money was used in any way it should not have been.

We understand the priorities of Canadians, and our priorities are aligned with theirs. We understand that there is no duty more fundamental than protecting the personal safety of our citizens and defending them against threats to our national security. That has been our objective with regard to spending on anti-terrorism measures at home and abroad. To this end, the Canadian Forces have played an essential role in recent years.

We continue to face a wide range of complex and unpredictable threats that, as we know, can emanate from anywhere from down the street to the other side of the globe. These threats can take on many forms, and the government bears the responsibility to protect and defend the individuals, institutions and infrastructure of our nation against all dangers.

Now, as our defence community shifts its focus away from Afghanistan, it is looking closely at that environment, an environment that poses challenges ranging from cyberthreats, piracy, illicit trafficking and arms proliferation to fiscal crises that persist around the globe to changing regional dynamics in Asia and the Arab world. These challenges, paired with the end of our long mission in Afghanistan, give us clear impetus to make sure that the Canadian Forces are ready to meet today's needs.

Indeed, the readiness of the Canadian Armed Forces to react to any eventuality will be an area of continued effort in the post-Afghanistan era. The Canada first defence strategy outlines the government's commitment to give the forces the resources they need to carry out their work on behalf of Canadians in a volatile world.

In keeping with this commitment, we have increased defence spending by about a third since 2006. We have invested in critical military capabilities by acquiring transport aircraft, upgrading armoured vehicles, modernizing warships, and launching Canada's first military satellite.

The government has made significant investments since 2008 in reviewing military infrastructure across the country. We have provided new resources to care for our troops and their families.

I would like to mention at this point that at 8 Wing in Northumberland—Quinte West, this commitment has never been greater. Hundreds of millions of dollars are being invested in the infrastructure there so that we can accommodate Canada's elite anti-terrorism squad.

The results are clear. The Canadian Armed Forces have been able to maintain the highest operational tempo since the Korean War, ranging from Afghanistan and Libya to floods and fires across Canada. All these investments and others like them will leave the forces well equipped to handle their current and future operations, including protecting us at home right here in Canada.

Other investments are being made to ensure that firefighters, police, medical professionals and military personnel are supported with the right resources, knowledge, tools and training to stay ahead of the curve. To support this vital work, the Minister of National Defence announced the establishment of the Canadian safety and security program in 2012.

With an annual investment of some $43.5 million, this comprehensive program identifies and funds innovative scientific and technological solutions to address the full array of public safety and security challenges. It promotes collaborative efforts because no single department, agency or organization is equipped to tackle all of the desperate dangers in today's world.

In March, the Minister of National Defence announced an additional $20 million for 26 science and technology projects that aim to make Canada more safe and more secure. These projects help address Canadian vulnerabilities in the face of some of the most pressing threats to public safety and security today. For example, Transport Canada will work with the Canada Border Services Agency, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and industry partners to enhance the X-ray capabilities used at airports and border crossings for baggage and cargo screening.

Natural Resources Canada will lead an effort with Parks Canada, the B.C. Ministry of Environment, and the University of British Columbia to develop a better system to predict and track smoke from forest fires to assist with emergency evacuation decisions.

Defence Research and Development Canada, partnering with Laval University and the University of Western Ontario, will lead a project to develop critical technical capabilities to identify, locate and mitigate potential wireless security threats and enhance the resiliency of digital infrastructure and response effectiveness. The examples go on.

As recent events in Canada and the United States have shown, Canada must continue to be on guard against terrorism. Terrorism threats are real problems that have to be dealt with, and we are getting the job done with continued investments.

I urge the members of this House to focus their energies and their efforts on the real problems we face and to work together to defend our citizens against terrorism.

The Auditor General found that the deficiencies in the PSAT reporting process did not prevent the programs from achieving their objective, which is keeping Canadians safe and secure.

The Auditor General reviewed all available documents and concluded, “We didn't find anything that gave us cause for concern that the money...was used in any way it should not have been”.

With a conclusion like that from the Auditor General himself, I cannot support this motion.

[John Rafferty, NDP, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to my colleague's comments, and I have to say before I begin my question that I know this member from the public safety committee. I know him to be diligent and I know he is very concerned about how money is spent, so I know he would be concerned about the accounting behind this particular issue.

My office spent a number of days and weeks trying to find out exactly how public safety money was spent. In this particular case, it was money from the border infrastructure fund that the President of the Treasury Board used on some projects in his riding during the G8 summit. By the way, none was spent in my riding, and no one showed up at my door either.

My final accounting, and there might even be more, is all listed, and with the unanimous consent of the House I would be happy to table my findings today.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

Does the hon. member have the unanimous consent of the House to table the documents?

[Some hon. members]

No.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

There is no consent.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

Order. Could the member please move to his question?

[John Rafferty, NDP, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am getting to my question.

My accounting comes to a little bit over $45 million. I wonder if the member would say whether or not he is concerned that $45 million of public safety money was spent—

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

Order. The hon. member for Northumberland—Quinte West.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will not comment on the across-the-bow shots that may occur here because to my constituents and to me personally, and as the member has just said, to his constituents and to him, we want a government that has the accounting practices that the Auditor General says that are sufficient so he feels secure in telling Canadians that on viewing the government operations, they are being done in a manner that he thinks is appropriate.

In this case, the Auditor General has said that there is no money that cannot be accounted for and that there has been no funnelling off to any enterprise. In fact, we have repeated in the House ad nauseam, that the Auditor General said, “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”.

What am I saying? I would agree with the Auditor General that he needs to be satisfied in order to satisfy my constituents and that we need to be a little more diligent and in some cases perhaps much more diligent in identifying specifically. Therefore, we have agreed as a government to take his suggestions and recommendations and we will implement them.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it is also very important we recognize that the Auditor General was not able to indicate where the $3.1 billion in allocation went to. He was not able to provide assurances, for example, that portions of the money or all of the money was in fact spent. Nor was he able to provide any tangible proof or evidence that all of the money was spent on what it was allocated for. He could not give that 100% assurance.

Is the member prepared to give the House of Commons that assurance today. Could he stand in his place and say 100% that the $3.1 billion has actually been fully expensed? Could he indicate that it has been fully expensed in the appropriations it was designated for?

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I think I did say that during my speech and in my response to the hon. member of Her Majesty's Official Opposition.

However, to the third party question, I put my trust in the Auditor General of Canada and the Auditor General of Canada said that the money was not spent in any way that it should not have been. When in committee, he went on to say that government departments were responsible for accounting and reporting spending through the Public Accounts of Canada. He confirmed:

The spending within the departments would have undergone normal control procedures in those departments; so there are internal controls in departments about spending and they would go through all of those normal processes. We didn't identify anything that would cause us to say that we felt that anything was going on outside of those processes.

What is the opposition worried about? What is the concern? In its vain attempt to throw mud and hope that some of it sticks, the Auditor General has said that it will not to stick because everything is accounted for in Public Accounts.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to the opposition day motion with really a sense of sadness, sadness because as the finance critic for the official opposition, I have sadly had a front row seat in watching the greater opacity, the greater lack of information by the government when it comes to financial matters. From its omnibus bills to its time allocations to its silencing of opposition testimony, it has become frankly a bit of a chill in Ottawa.

Now I think we get a sense of why some of that is. What we are debating now with this opposition day motion by our party, the NDP, is the misplacing of $3.1 billion contributed to the coffers of Ottawa by Canadians across the country. It is not just any amount of money. This money was put in the hands of the government in trust to be spent on public security and anti-terrorism measures. The fact that the government cannot account for this money, as witnessed by the Auditor General in his recent report, is frankly shocking, but it is in keeping with the general lack of reporting, the lack of transparency by the government.

It is a government that forced the Parliamentary Budget Officer, which was a position created in fact by the Conservatives and an officer who was put in place by them, Kevin Page, to go to court to try to get some of the information from budget 2012 in terms of how government was spending and which departments, programs and services were being cut by the government. Now we find that even the government does not seem to understand, or know, or be able to find monies that were put in its trust and for which it would be responsible.

Before I continue, I will be sharing my time with the member for Edmonton—Strathcona.

The motion we are debating today is really calling on the government to issue documents from 2001 to the present, to account for this money on natural security. That is when these funds were initially allocated and that this public security initiative was created. What we are calling for is all of the public security and anti-terrorism annual reports that were submitted to the Treasury Board Secretariat, all the Treasury Board submissions made as part of the anti-terrorism initiative, all the departmental evaluations of the initiative, all the Treasury Board database information established to monitor the funding, all of these records be public and made available to the House, in both official languages, by June 17.

That is all we are asking for, that this basic information about the dollars given to Ottawa by Canadians across the country for a very serious purpose, the anti-terrorism public safety initiative, that this money be made available and that the Auditor General be given the necessary resources to perform an in-depth forensic audit to find the $3.1 billion that is unaccounted for by the government.

At the same time as this money has gone astray, no one can find out where it is. Under budget 2012, the government has made significant cuts to public safety. A total of $687.9 million will be cut from public safety by 2015. To outline some of these cuts, $143 million to the Canada Border Services Agency, the CBSA, will mean the elimination of 626 full-time equivalents, including about 325 front-line officers. A further 100 positions may be affected in the CBSA.

To put this into perspective, I come from the city of Toronto, the largest city in the country. Like other communities across the country, we have concerns about handguns that are illegally smuggled into our country and fall into the hands of youth, especially, as well as others. Far too many young people in our communities have died because of the illegal use of handguns that were smuggled into the country.

To think that the Conservative government would cut over 600 border security guards from patrolling our borders and at the same time it cannot account for if, whether or how it spent $3.1 billion is frankly shocking and I know it is unacceptable to the constituents in my riding of Parkdale—High Park and to Canadians right across the country.

The government is also cutting intelligence agents from the CBSA and sniffer dog units. Under budget 2012, it scrapped the Inspector General of CSIS, who was put in place to ensure accountability there. The government is also cutting almost $200 million from the RCMP. While it is making what I would call reckless cuts to public safety measures, at the same time it seems to have misplaced over $3 billion that was allocated to protect our public safety.

While we are hearing a lot of stonewalling from the other side on this issue, what we are calling for with this motion is for the government to stop playing politics with our public safety and our hard-earned tax dollars and just give the Auditor General the information that he needs to fully account for where this money has gone.

Was it properly spent or improperly spent? Let the Conservatives give us the documents so all Canadians can find out what happened to the money. That is all we are asking for. It is very simple and straightforward.

We are hearing a lot of stonewalling on the other side of the House. We are hearing that the Auditor General did not find that any money was misappropriated. He did not find that any money was misappropriated because there were no documents saying where the money was. There were no documents to tell if it had been spent, not been spent, if it had been turned back into a previous budget, put forward into a future budget or spent on public security. Did it go to the President of the Treasury Board's gazebo? Did it go to a fake lake in Toronto?

We do not know where this money went. It could be lost in loose change down sofas across the country. We have no idea. However, there are clearly some serious spending problems with the government and with the public safety and anti-terrorism initiative because the money was not monitored properly, may not have been spent properly and clearly has not been properly accounted for.

The Auditor General needs the documents to be able to track the money and to find out on behalf of hard-working Canadians. They do not get to say "I just lost a third of the money I was supposed to report" when it comes to tax time. They have to account for every penny. Therefore, the Auditor General has to get the documents he needs to properly account for $3.1 billion in missing funds.

We urge the government and all members in the House to support this New Democrat opposition day motion to give the Auditor General the information he needs and do the job we were elected to do on behalf of all Canadians.

[Francine Raynault, NDP, Joliette, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for her speech.

The President of the Treasury Board and other Conservative cabinet ministers keep saying that this is merely an accounting problem and that all of the information is available in the Public Accounts of Canada.

I would like to hear my colleague's thoughts on this.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for her question.

The problem is that we know that the Auditor General did not have all of the information from the Public Accounts of Canada.

Now we are asking the government to produce those public accounts so that the Auditor General can really verify if the money was spent, and if so, how it was spent. That is all we are asking.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

Mr. Speaker, when the Conservatives quote something, they take only a little sample of the quote. The rest of the Auditor General's quote was: “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”.

I was here during the days when Jane Stewart was the minister of HRDC, and many Conservatives were sitting right where I am now, yelling out ”boondoggle”, right across the country, over the so-called billion dollar boondoggle. In fact, the member for Calgary—Nose Hillwas on her feet literally every day for months on end over an issue that ended up being not much at all. However, now we have $3.1 billion and another $2.4 billion gone off to numbered companies without proper phones and stuff, from what we are hearing.

The reality is that this is fiscal mismanagement at its very worst. Therefore, I would like my hon. colleague, the finance critic for the NDP, to elaborate and elucidate just a bit more on why this is so bad for Canadian taxpayers and how we in the NDP, when we are in government in 2015, would change everything.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the quote my colleague cites is certainly an important one: “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”.

This is what the Auditor General has said. Clearly, what we are seeing here is a shocking, government-wide lack of monitoring on the progress of public security funding. This is at the same time the government is bringing in a variety of laws that infringe upon our civil liberties. If public security is so important to the Conservatives, they should be able to account for this money.

Under a New Democratic Party government, there will be accountability. There will be a greater sense of responsibility for the hard work Canadians put into earning their tax dollars. The Conservatives do not do the job. We will make sure that we are representing the interests of Canadians.