Here we go with the Liberal viewpoint of hurry up, spend it, get it back into the economy. I can see why the people in charge think that March madness is the way to go now that we have a $600 billion debt.
The review found that across all 1998-99 contribution programs examined, some $261 million, or 26.3% of all project expenses, was paid out after March 1. One-quarter of the year's spending was spent in one month, the month of March. These expenditures are typically advances for the coming fiscal year to avoid lapsing funds at the end of the year.
The total amounts of grants and contributions spent by fiscal year across all departments and agencies of the federal government were as follows: 1996-97, $14.12 billion; 1997-98, $14.26 billion; 1998-99, $15.22 billion; and 1999-00—and of course the month of March is not available—$11.60 billion. This brings the total to $55.2 billion. That is unbelievable.
Given the fact that I have drawn attention to these things I can understand why some Liberal members are frustrated when they look at these facts. It is probably a little embarrassing.
I will get ready to wind down because we do have to get to question period. I am sure that Liberal members are grateful because I know they want to be drilled and grilled again about some of their general mismanagement.
Members have been pressing me to tie this issue together. It is easy to tie together. This government is out of control. It says that it is managing our money and looking after Canadians. Yet we see massive amounts of money being spent that is based on, I believe, political manipulation. We see a government whose members say that they are in control and claim that everything is okay. Yet the same government has invoked closure more times than the Mulroney Tories. I never thought it would happen. I believed these guys. I guess that shows how naive I was. I believed members when they told us that things would be a whole lot different when the Liberals formed the government. I do not see a lot of difference and I do not think my friend from Broadview—Danforth does either.
I would like to cite a few things from question period. I am sorry that I will barely be able to touch the surface of this binder.
Some of the questions we have asked and some of the answers that have been given to us have frustrated us because the Canadian public is not getting the answers,
Let me refer to question period on February 7, the day after the HRD boondoggle had blown loose. The former leader of the opposition, the member for Calgary Southwest, said:
Mr. Speaker, Canadian taxpayers pay the highest personal income taxes in the western world. No wonder they are angry therefore when they find out that more than a billion of those hard earned taxpayer dollars have been grossly mismanaged by the Minister of Human Resources Development.
If the human resources minister had any respect for Canadian taxpayers and respect for the principle of ministerial accountability, she would rise in her place today and resign from cabinet.
Remember the note I talked about earlier from the Prime Minister when he said his ministers would take responsibility. She did not. Would the minister resign? Of course the Prime Minister said he would not accept the resignation if it were offered. That goes a little counter to what he had said earlier. Then the former leader asked:
The Prime Minister intervenes not to protect Canadian taxpayers, but to protect the discredited minister.
These are the folks who are footing the bill on all this stuff. He went on to say:
In 1991 the Prime Minister said “When we form government, every minister in the cabinet will have to take full responsibility for what is going on in their department. If there is any bungling in the department, the minister will have to take responsibility”.
When did the Prime Minister abandon the principle of holding cabinet ministers accountable?
The Prime Minister responded by saying that she was just doing okay and that everything was fine. The member for Calgary Southwest went on to say:
—a fish rots from the top down.
We pointed out last year that moneys from the transitional jobs fund were being misused in the Prime Minister's riding. The Prime Minister excused it. He accepted no responsibility. He set the wrong example. Now that little scandal from Shawinigan has become the billion dollar boondoggle in human resources.
Why does the Prime Minister not start accepting responsibility for this gross misuse of taxpayers' money and fire the Minister of Human Resources Development?
That did not happen and it has dogged them. It has gone on and on and on. It has now come down to the coffee shop level. In fact, my husband and I were at the Alberta land titles place a while ago. A fellow came up to me. I forget what he was asking about, but he said he ought to get an HRD grant for it. When people are talking at the ground level about it, we know that it has resonated from the holy hill all the way down to people at the ground level. When they start talking like that, it makes us wonder how much general respect there is for a government and a Prime Minister who is not terribly concerned about it.
When we came back on February 7, I asked the following question:
It is one thing for the minister to say that everything is going just great in her department. She has borrowed a pair of flip-flops from the industry minister.
He had just gone through a wonderful deal for the NHL hockey teams that lasted about 24 hours. She was following his lead. I went on to say:
First she said everything was really well managed and that she was just proud as punch of it. On November 4 she said, “Nothing inappropriate was done in terms of the administration of the approval process”. But now she admits that maybe some things were overlooked, little things, like application forms and things like that.
Why will the minister not just accept the responsibility she has for this billion dollar bungle and resign?
She said no, that everything was okay. She said “Let me repeat again that there have been no $1 billion lost”. I did not say that there had been a billion lost. I said there was a billion dollars bungled and pretty hard to track down. Of course the RCMP are trying to track some of it down right now. She said “We know where the money is”. On and on its goes. One of my colleagues from Edmonton—Strathcona said:
The human resources minister should take advice from the Prime Minister. Back in his righteous days he said “When you are a minister and your bureaucrats do well, you take the credit. I always took the credit. On the other side...when I made a mistake, I took the blame.
The Prime Minister said that earlier. Who has the HRD minister, in fact probably all of them, blamed? The bureaucrats. It is not their fault. They are getting the political direction from the top and they are doing what they have been told to do. To me that is the pity of it because their political masters are getting involved in some of the things they should be making wise decisions on.
Let us look at the questions we asked in February. There were no answers. In March it was the same thing. We asked any number of questions. If we were to get an answer there would not be so many pages of questions that we have to ask.
In April, not long ago, we were asking all kinds of questions. The unfortunate part is they are not being answered correctly by the government. Sure, answers are tossed off to have something in Hansard , but at the same time the minister knows that she is not out of the woods yet. We continue to find more and more information.
Let me just make a couple of remarks in closing about what has gone on in the HRDC committee. I could go on for a long time about it. We have seen some of the results. When a minister gets brought to committee, it is unbelievable some of the things he or she will say which simply do not make a lot of sense.
When the minister was called to committee on Thursday, February 10, the chair, the member for Peterborough, said:
The gavel has now gone down. I would ask the media to leave.
There is an open and happy little affair. Upon asking the witness to take her seat, the minister did so. On and on and on we go. She talked about all kinds of things. None of them gave answers, though. Basically I could condense probably 150 pages to quote the minister as saying it is okay; we have the six point plan; everything is all right; everything will be okay. It goes on and on and on.
Then Claire Morris was called in. She was asked a lot of questions. Then Mel Cappe was brought in and he was asked a lot of questions. I went to that particular meeting that day. It was fascinating because Mel Cappe basically said that he was not really free to answer that question. If we are talking about government money and taxpayer dollars, there had better be a lot of people who are willing to answer.
