Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to rise today to speak to this very important motion. I will be sharing my time with my friend, the hon. member for Louis-Saint-Laurent.
Never before has a prime minister boasted so loudly and spent so much to achieve so little with respect to infrastructure. Today is an incredible opportunity for this Parliament to really show, in a minority situation, just what it is capable of. Thank goodness for the Parliamentary Budget Officer and the Auditor General, because it sounds like this Parliament is going to call for some accountability. After all, our job, not only as the opposition but also as parliamentarians, is to make sure we hold the government to account for its spending.
The debate on the motion started at 10 o'clock this morning. I will remind members of Parliament and those who are watching of what the motion states:
That, given the Parliamentary Budget Officer posted on March 15, 2018, that “Budget 2018 provides an incomplete account of the changes to the government’s $186.7 billion infrastructure spending plan” and that the “PBO requested the new plan but it does not exist”, the House call on the Auditor General of Canada to immediately conduct an audit of the government’s Investing in Canada Plan, including, but not be limited to, verifying whether the plan lives up to its stated goals and promises; and that the Auditor General of Canada report his findings to the House no later than one year following the adoption of this motion.
Transparency and accountability are precisely what the opposition is asking for today. I checked the mandate letter from the Prime Minister to the Minister of Infrastructure and Communities and there are several references to what transparency and accountability will look like.
I will quote from the mandate letter, which states:
We will continue to deliver real results and effective government to Canadians. This includes: tracking and publicly reporting on the progress of our commitments; assessing the effectiveness of our work; aligning our resources with priorities; and adapting to events as they unfold, in order to get the results Canadians rightly demand of us.
It continues:
I also expect us to continue to raise the bar on openness, effectiveness and transparency in government. This means a government that is open by default.
It also states:
Ensure that Canadians have access to accurate and timely information about infrastructure investments in their communities, and work with your Cabinet colleagues to improve financial reporting to Canadians and the Parliamentary Budget Officer.
It further states:
We have committed to an open, honest government that is accountable to Canadians, lives up to the highest ethical standards and applies the utmost care and prudence in the handling of public funds. I expect you to embody these values in your work and observe the highest ethical standards in everything you do. I want Canadians to look on their own government with pride and trust.
When we look back at the infrastructure plan that was put into place by the government, it was an aggressive infrastructure plan. I will remind members and Canadians that back in 2015 the Prime Minister spoke about modest deficits to invest and grow our economy. Of course, we found out that plan was a $186-billion plan over 12 years.
However, the reality is that much of that money has not been put into the types of projects the government was planning on doing. The Parliamentary Budget Officer said that for every dollar that was proposed, 60 cents has not gone out. Therefore, on a scale of $186 billion, we can imagine the magnitude of what has not gone on with respect to that infrastructure plan. That is precisely what we are hoping to find out through the Auditor General.
I will mention some facts on the infrastructure plan.
On failed spending, the Parliamentary Budget Officer has shown that the Liberals have failed to get their own infrastructure money out the door and that infrastructure money lapses at 60% per year for the first two years. One cannot force-feed infrastructure projects with unlimited amounts of money. Municipalities and provinces have to be ready for it and this just does not appear to be the case. There are so many potential infrastructure projects that could be funded that are not being funded.
He also found out that there have been no results. When the minister of infrastructure in the last Parliament was asked in the House of Commons how he was spending $187 billion in infrastructure, he gave a very flippant answer. I do not even think the minister of infrastructure knew where that money was going.
There has been no new economic growth. In fact, the economy has slowed down. The Liberals claimed that their infrastructure spending would increase GDP by an average of 0.3% per year. In fact, at best, the PBO estimates that it fell short by 67%. This is a failed plan.
The truth is that nobody knows how much the government is spending on infrastructure. The Prime Minister does not know. The Parliamentary Budget Officer does not know. The Department of Finance does not know. Even the Department of Infrastructure does not know how much the government is spending on infrastructure. The opposition asked the PBO to reach out to the Department of Infrastructure to ask how much the government spends on infrastructure and it could not even answer the question.
The Parliamentary Budget Officer has said that the government's infrastructure plan does not exist. He said that the investing in Canada plan is hopelessly mismanaged and improvised. The Prime Minister's greatest failure is when he promised, as the centrepiece of the 2015 campaign, to run temporary small deficits in order to invest in infrastructure that would grow the economy. The PBO analysis showed that despite all of the Prime Minister's spending, there was no incremental increase in infrastructure in Canada.
We are here today because there are lots of questions that need answers. We have seen over the course of the last four years many big cheque announcements across this country. David Akin of Global News had a program on social media that would follow government spending. There were billions and billions of dollars in announcements, but very little to back them up. That is precisely why the Auditor General is required to step up and provide to Parliament, on behalf of Canadians, an answer to where that money is going.
The other thing the Parliamentary Budget Officer spoke about was that deficits keep increasing and that infrastructure spending is accounted for within that deficit structure. If the government is not spending the money, where is that money going and why are those deficits continuing to increase? These are all very valid questions.
I will remind members that it is important to understand this is a critical issue. We need to understand this because wasteful spending, sky-high taxes and reckless borrowing are a result of incompetence in getting this infrastructure money out the door.
Last, in 2017 the Parliamentary Budget Officer found that the Liberals had spent only half of the promised infrastructure money. In 2018, when the Parliamentary Budget Officer requested the Liberals' infrastructure plan be produced, he found it was a plan that did not exist. In 2019, when the Parliamentary Budget Officer requested a list of specific project commitments under the investing in Canada plan, the government was unable to provide the data.
Conservatives are calling on the Auditor General, who is an independent officer of Parliament, to ask the government for the data on where that money is going and what it is being spent on. If it is not being invested on things designed to grow the economy, as the Prime Minister said was the intent back in 2015, then all of us as Canadians and parliamentarians have a right to know what is happening with that money.