Jean Dubé

[Human Resources Development, February 8th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, we heard the minister today and on previous days bragging about the six point plan.

Is the minister telling us that a department that handles 30,000 cases and billions of dollars in taxpayers' money has no plan before October 5?

[Supply, February 8th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, the member for Lévis, for his excellent question, because I know that there are also problems in his riding.

When I look at these ridings with high unemployment and see how the funds are being distributed under this program, I find this absolutely deplorable.

The government is trying to defend itself. This morning, someone said that when an individual makes a mistake in filling out his unemployment cards, he is immediately considered to be guilty “You're guilty, so off to jail with you”. But what we have here is evidence that there was a lot of mismanagement or a huge lack of management, and the government, as well as the Prime Minister is rallying around the minister to try to protect her.

So, this is what we are used to seeing with this government, but some limits and policies must be implemented in order to help all the regions affected by high unemployment.

[Supply, February 8th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his question. However, the person who accused the public servants was the minister of HRDC, not the member for Madawaska—Restigouche. The minister was trying to pass the blame to everyone else.

Yes, in certain areas these programs have worked. But that is not the question. The question is the billion dollars of mismanagement. It could be more. We are talking about 30,000 projects at HRDC. It could be much more.

Last week a former cabinet minister told me to be careful of what I said. I could jeopardize the programs. I will tell the House something. It is important to know where every bloody cent goes that taxpayers pay. That is not going to buy my silence. We are going to get to the bottom of it. We need an external audit.

If we are going to protect taxpayer money, if we are going to maximize what we do with these funds, we need to bring transparency back to this parliament and ask for an external audit.

[Supply, February 8th, 2000]

It was excellent.

[Supply, February 8th, 2000]

It was pretty well that. I hear members of the opposition saying it was to buy votes. We will certainly let the public decide that. We will tell them the facts and let them decide what is really going on.

These programs were brought in to help regions with high levels of unemployment, regions which under TJF had to have 12% and higher, like my riding. I was fortunate enough to receive TJF funds and the funds worked well. But mishandlings went on in the department and that is the problem. We have to find out exactly what is going on with the department so we can maximize the impact of what this was supposed to do in helping the regions.

The minister's own riding of Brant has an unemployment level of 6.6%. Where is the justification for qualifying projects in that riding? If my riding had 6.6%, we would not have received a cent, but it has something like 25% to 30%.

The bureaucrats yesterday, when being questioned by the media, stated that there are pockets of unemployment within that riding. We have a hard time getting the unemployment rate in a riding. How can we get a reading of the unemployment rate in a pocket of a riding? In my riding of Madawaska—Restigouche, the Restigouche portion is calculated with the area of Charlotte in southern New Brunswick. How can we calculate a pocket within a riding? Is it by street number? I am not sure, but I would certainly like to see how it is done. I would like to see the pocket in my riding which is the highest.

We are very concerned with what has gone on in the past couple of weeks, and probably the past couple of years. We are talking about $1 billion, maybe a lot more. We could call it shovelgate, or whatever we want, but it is the biggest scandal in Canadian history and it is on the Liberal government's head. The only way we can get around this, the only way we can bring transparency back to this parliament, is to ask for an external audit. We cannot ask the very same department to audit what it has done. That is like asking the RCMP to investigate the RCMP. We cannot do that.

We have a responsibility as a parliament to the people of Canada to be transparent. Therefore, I ask the minister to call for an external audit to get to the bottom of this.

I want to congratulate my colleague for putting forward this motion. This party wholeheartedly supports the motion.

[Supply, February 8th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with my colleague the hon. member for Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough.

The saga continues. Let us go back in time. We have heard different members get up in the House of Commons today and speak about whatever we want to call it, shovelgate, or Place du Portage gate, which is the building which houses this department, or the bunker. We could name it what we want but it is certainly a huge scandal.

Let us go back to January 19 when the minister of HRDC came into the foyer of the House of Commons and delivered the internal audit dated January 2000. That very same day I called the department for a copy of the audit and it was so kind as to send a copy to my office. Then 10 minutes later I got a phone call from the same department to tell me that I had been sent the wrong cover sheet and I was asked if I would destroy that cover sheet and throw it in the garbage. I asked to be sent the other cover sheet and I would take a look at it. When I received the other cover sheet, there was no date. The date of October 5 had been deleted. I checked with the various media to see what cover sheet they had received and they had received the one with no date.

It is obvious from that that the department was in a massive cover-up. It might be a strong word but it is certainly a lot of money. We are talking about a billion dollars here, not a million. We are talking about a billion dollars of taxpayers' money, money that people work hard for every single day, and they pay hard taxes as well. We have come to find that a billion dollars has possibly been mismanaged. I think it has been mismanaged.

We are looking at 459 cases out of 30,000 cases and 37 could be very serious. Let us do the math. The math was done to do the audit. They picked 459 different cases. If we do the math and take 37 cases out of 459 out of a universe of 30,000, that would give us 2,400 files with a problem for a possible total of $2 billion.

Two billion dollars is a lot of money and we are only talking about one department, HRDC. Out of this big universe in Ottawa, HRDC is not the only department that gives out grant money. There is Heritage Canada and industry. There is a serious problem.

We have been asking for an external audit on this. The minister sent out to the press conference yesterday the very same people she accused of being in the dark ages just the week before. I have questions for the House and the minister. Who is in charge of the department? Is it the senior bureaucrats we saw yesterday or is it the minister? We all saw the scrum coming out of the PMO last week. We have good reason to think why she was not there.

We also asked yesterday for the resignation of the minister because the buck stops there. The buck stops with her desk, not with anybody else. She accused bureaucrats of bungling this. I state in the House of Commons that when I deal with the bureaucrats in my riding, they are very thorough and very transparent. If she is going to point the finger at somebody, she had better put a mirror in front of herself and point at it. That is the person she has to blame.

We also find with this audit that there was a concentration of grants given during the 1997 electoral period, 54% to be exact. That can be put in the calculator too. Fifty-four per cent of the grants were given during an election period. It is absolutely scandalous that taxpayers' money that was supposed to go into regions affected by employment insurance reform was being used to try to elect Liberal members.

[Human Resources Development, February 7th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, the minister cannot be part of the solution because she is part of the problem.

Why did the minister stand in the House of Commons and tell Canadians just before Christmas that everything was all right with the department? When did the minister know and when did she forget?

[Human Resources Development, February 7th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, on January 19 the minister released an altered document to the Canadian public, an internal audit whose title page was dated January 2000. We know now the audit was completed much earlier, on October 5. As a matter of principle, no minister of the crown should withhold information. Will the minister do the honourable thing and resign?

[Committees Of The House, December 15th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to the answer by the hon. member. If I clearly understood his response to the question from the opposition, the government is not ready to look at employment insurance and the effect that employment insurance has had on many Canadians in Canada. Am I clear on that?

Could the member also comment on whether the government would be in the position it is today if it was not for free trade, which has brought export up from $80 billion to $280 billion? As well, would the government be in this position if it was not for the GST, which this government said it would scrap in the last election? This year the GST brought $24 billion into the federal coffers. Does the member think that the government would be in that position today if it was not for these measures which were brought in by the Conservative government?

[Education, December 2nd, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, young Canadians often find themselves in a catch-22 situation at the beginning of their careers with no experience, no jobs; no jobs, no experience.

Older Canadians could be in the same position at the end of their careers if they have not kept up with new technologies. We cannot stress enough the importance of having training available for both groups. The average monthly number of beneficiaries for training fell from 68,000 in 1995 to 31,000 in 1999.

Can the minister tell us why this is happening, doing less for youth and doing less for older workers?