Mr. Speaker, I would be remiss if I did not return the serve by the hon. member for Mississauga West, who informs us that it is absolutely incorrect and totally ridiculous to say that there is a $1 billion hole in the HRDC grants.
I could agree with him to a point that he is not completely wrong on this. We do know, however, that the amount that has been lost, wasted or misspent lies between the Prime Minister's $252.11 figure and the $1 billion mentioned at one point in the media.
Is it $1 million, $2 million or $50 million? This is the figure the motion is intended to find out. We know it is perhaps not $1 billion; however, as the Prime Minister has already stated, we know it was $252.11—but he was slightly wrong in his figures—and this is what today's motion is intended to clarify.
In passing, it should be noted that the member never answered the question on whether he supported the motion or not. The question was relatively clear, there was no need for 50% of the votes plus one, just his opinion, but we will know it in due course.
I will now come back to the motion put forward by the Canadian Alliance member for Calgary—Nose Hill. For the benefit of the parliamentarians who often talk of nothing and everything and who will see that we support the motion of the Canadian Alliance—they will think it has to do with Quebec's separation—I will read you the motion. Our friends opposite often have very delicate and sensitive hearing. This is why I am going to repeat this motion slowly but surely so they may understand what we are talking about today. The motion reads:
That an Order of the House do issue for all departmental audit reports to be tabled within 15 days of their completion and permanently referred to the appropriate standing committees—
What does that mean? The motion is asking for three things. Under the Treasury Board standards, every federal department must complete an internal audit report, as did the Department of Human Resources Development.
The hon. member for Calgary—Nose Hill is asking that these internal audit reports be automatically referred to the appropriate standing committees. This means that the report from the Department of Finance would go to the Standing Committee on Finance, the report from Fisheries and Oceans would go to the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans, and so on.
It should not be necessary for an opposition member to make a request under the Access to Information Act to have such reports released. It should be formal, normal procedure.
If I have time, I will explain later on that this is not just a wish expressed by the opposition, but rather a standard set by the Treasury Board and also a wish expressed by the auditor general.
The second thing motion is asking for is that all internal audit reports since January 1, 1999, be tabled within 15 days after the adoption of the motion. If passed, the motion would ensure that in the future all internal audit reports would be referred to the appropriate committees. This requirement would also apply to internal audit reports completed since January 1999.
Third, the motion calls for all access to information requests for internal audit reports previous to January 1999 to also be made public.
As everyone knows, this motion follows on the heels of the huge HRDC scandal, which raises many questions about how departments operate, and about their transparency as well.
I will list a series of responsibilities that must be recognized within departments. First, public officials are accountable. Ministerial responsibility ought to be restored. There is also the need for the government to be transparent, which is emphasized in this motion.
Members of the public have a right to know what is going on in the public service and particularly where their money is being spent. Too often, we hear the argument “HRDC's program and grants are a good thing because some non-profit agency in our riding received assistance, which was helpful”.
We do not have a problem with that. If $60 of every $100 does go into grants, we have no problem with that, as all the opposition parties have said. What we want, however, is for $100 of every $100 to be well spent and not $60 to help the less fortunate members of society and $40 to reward Liberals. This is clear to everyone. People want to know where their money is going.
Members are elected to represent their constituents and not just to pat the government on the back, as the member for Waterloo—Wellington does all too often, without looking any deeper. For some members, everything is just fine, and they do not look any deeper.
Opposition members, however, are public watchdogs who must keep an eye on the money spent, wasted or badly invested by the Treasury. Officials who are not elected, such as Deputy Minister Mel Cappe at the time, must also be held accountable because they are spending taxpayers' money.
This should not all fall to MPs. There are also the unelected, such as the Clerk of the Privy Council, Mel Cappe, who was Deputy Minister of Human Resources Development, negotiator for the transfer of training programs from Ottawa to Quebec, and also Deputy Minister of the Environment. If I remember correctly, I had the privilege of travelling across Canada with him on the Environmental Protection Act.
Perhaps we also need to look at what went on at Environment during his reign. This deputy minister has a long history in the federal government and we believe that unelected officials must also be answerable to the Canadian taxpayers for their actions.
This is important. I have listened to the speeches of the previous two speakers with their references to accountability, and I believe they have left out a few things, either by accident or by design.
First of all, it is important to look at how the government is obliged to be accountable. This has nothing to do with it being a good government, with their being nice guys, with their Liberal values properly. There are obligations, laws, regulations. I shall try to be very brief, because one could easily take 30 minutes on accountability alone, or even give a post-graduate course in public administration on it, but I am going to touch on it very briefly.
First we have the budget presented by the Minister of Finance. At the start of the fiscal year, the Minister of Finance presents his budget, which reveals how much money, by department, the minister and the officials may spend. Also, if we look carefully at the budget, we can often tell which programs will have money invested in them.
However, on the subject of the budget, we wonder how the Minister of Finance can announce his budget for this year, next year, the other year and so on, over five years. The U.S.S.R. used to present five year budgets, and we know what happened there recently.
What can we say about the Minister of Finance, who brings down a budget that provides for tax cuts, among other things, and who the next day says “Perhaps this will happen faster than what I forecast in the budget yesterday or the day before”. Did he present a responsible budget or not? The Minister of Finance presents a budget containing figures for the coming year. Then, something the public knows less about are the estimates, what we call the little blue books, which come out each year for each of the programs and provide more precisely how the funds in the budget will be spent.
There is also—the member for Mississauga mentioned it earlier— the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, which examines the audits and recommendations of the auditor general. I sit on the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, and it is true unfortunately that a number of members arrive at the committee less well prepared than they should be and that the committee should be as unpartisan as possible.
Each year, before appearing before the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, the auditor general reports to the House. He can now, under legislation, table four reports a year. The fact that he can table four reports a year has advantages and disadvantages.
When the auditor general tabled only one report a year, the report was expected and followed up and his recommendations got fairly considerable media attention. The disadvantage of having an annual report was that if a serious flaw in the administration of public funds were discovered early in the audit, the auditor general often had to wait eight, nine or ten months before tabling his report and reporting the flaw to the public.
So, it is a real advantage for the auditor general to be able to table four reports every year. However, because the auditor general now tables a report every three months, there is somewhat less public interest and media attention. Heaven knows that what the auditor general's reports say on the sound management of taxpayers' money in Canada and Quebec is extremely important.
When the auditor general tables his chapter by chapter report, the Standing Committee on Public Accounts reviews each chapter with designated officials. The departments must also—and this is a rather strict accountability requirement—table annual reports. Each department must table an annual report in which it explains how it intends to spend the money allocated to it by the Department of Finance.
In order to examine the departments' annual reports, to review their expenditures, parliamentarians have the right, under the Access to Information Act, to ask for documents that are not of a public nature, and they can request specific information on the management of accounts by departments.
The auditor general can also reply to written questions received from parliamentarians. My colleague, the hon. member for Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup—Témiscouata—Les Basques asked a very specific question to the auditor general concerning the Department of Human Resources Development and the auditor general will reply, not in his next report but in a written answer, as to whether he will pursue the matter and investigate that department.
There is also the Financial Administration Act, with which all departments must comply. We obtain a great deal of information, it is true—I have just mentioned several types of information that the government and the departments are obliged, by regulation, to release to parliamentarians—but this information system must also be improved, as the President of the Treasury Board pointed out in her report.
Members, whatever their party—Bloc Quebecois or Canadian Alliance—too often face large hurdles when requesting more critical information, information more specific to the management of public accounts.
It is important to remind members of the public that, when the auditor general tables his report, he is making observations. The auditor general cannot force the government to take specific action. There is nothing binding about his observations: they are only recommendations. So the auditor general recommends to the government that it take specific action to correct a particular situation.
In general, the recommendations made by the auditor general, who is non-partisan, are implemented by the government. But, as the auditor general pointed out in his last appearance before the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities, in the ten years he has been making recommendations about the disbursement of grants and contributions by Human Resources Development Canada, these recommendations have not been implemented.
We can therefore see that some departments take the auditor general's recommendations into consideration and institute specific corrective action. But there are two departments which have long been corrupt and in which a miracle will be needed to put things right and they are Human Resources Development Canada and National Defence.
These will be two of the last departments that I hope and believe the auditor general will examine before he concludes his excellent work, because he is leaving us in one or two years to take up very important duties within an international organization. Perhaps he will be followed by the Minister of Finance, who knows?
In the United States, for instance, when the auditor general, or the person who has the same duties there, submits a report, the government and the various departments are required to be accountable to the public; accountability is an obligation. It can be seen that his role is far more restricted.
Here in Canada, what has happened in the past 20 years or so to modify the auditor general's role is that he has been instructed that, instead of tabling one big document once a year, he should divide it in four and report four times a year. Then they said to themselves that everything is fine, that they did not have to do anything else for another 20 years. As the auditor general was doing a good job, everything was just great. In our opinion, the auditor general ought to have closer control over government administration.
When the present auditor general, Mr. Desautels, leaves, the Liberals will be the ones to appoint his replacement for the next seven years. I am certain, I am convinced, that the Liberals are going to appoint an auditor general on his abilities, not his political allegiance. He may be in place for the next Liberal mandate, but he certainly will be there for the next government.
This auditor general needs to be recognized as impartial and non-partisan. When he makes recommendations, all parliamentarians and taxpayers must assign to them the importance they deserve.
As far as ministerial responsibility is concerned, there is a flaw as far as accountability is concerned. Only the minister currently in charge of a department are be answerable for the actions of that department. In that context, we saw how the current Minister for International Trade washed his hands of any responsibility and even refused to answer, this after having said in his adopted city of Paris “Yes, I will answer the questions that will be asked of me on this issue”. But the Minister for International Trade has said nothing.
The current Minister of Human Resources Development said “I do not have to answer, because this did not take place under my administration”. When things start to heat up in a department, they change ministers, thus avoiding having to answer questions.
What happened at Human Resources Development? An internal audit report was tabled, as is required. They did not do so because they are nice people or because they wanted to see how things were going in their department. Internal audit reports are important documents and they are compulsory.
The minister had known about the internal audit report for a long time, but the information was only disclosed on February 21. Was there a cover up attempt? We have our opinion on this, but let us say that I am merely raising the question. As we know, asking the question often brings the response. Did they hope these data would not become public in the House of Commons? What data are contained in the internal audit report? It is this report that is the model for the other reports we want tabled in this House.
Seven categories of programs were analyzed in the report. The programs analyzed totalled grants and contributions of around $1 billion a year for three years. There is therefore $3 billion in programs that were analyzed.
The internal audit report prepared by officials within the Department of Human Resources Development revealed significant problems in program management. Grants were awarded when no application had been made.
I asked people in my riding “Is it easy to obtain a grant from the federal government before you apply?”. They replied “It is so hard to get one when you have applied that if you get $252.11”, as the Prime Minister pointed out, “and you spend $250, they want the $2.11 back and they are after you until you have paid back the $2.11”. Management at HRDC is so efficient with quotas that they can even cut benefits to the unemployed.
At section 6.5.1 of a Treasury Board internal document on internal auditing, the President of the Treasury Board asks the government and says that departments should expect these internal reports will be made public, not only under the Access to Information Act, but by the intrinsic desire of the various departments to make them public, as the motion by our colleague from the Canadian Alliance requests.
She asks to have these reports be released to parliamentarians and the Canadian public so that we may know where the money goes and ensure that the money duly earned by Canadian taxpayers which is paid in taxes to the federal government is wisely invested.
