Mr. Speaker, I am happy to speak today on our official opposition motion on the recent Auditor General's report on the missing $3.1 billion.
I have to say that there are days as an MP on this side of the House when I do not know whether to laugh or cry. On the surface, we can shake our heads and poke fun at the government that cannot find $3.1 billion of taxpayers' money. We know what we do at home when some money goes missing. We look under the bed and in the washing machine. Maybe a few Canadians check socks. Yesterday we asked the government if it checked the banana stand.
All kidding aside, we are not talking about some loonies or toonies or change. We are talking about $3.1 billion. This is the stuff accounting teachers use with their students as prima facie evidence of accounting gone wrong. This is where one wants to cry rather than laugh. This comes from a government that has inflicted on Canadians ad nauseam its economic action plan commercials for itself. It is more wasting of taxpayers' money.
The Conservatives have made outrageous claims about being good managers of the economy, when the evidence, such as the missing $3.1 billion, tells the real story. This is the government that brought Canada the $50-million spending spree of the member for Parry Sound—Muskoka for the G8 summit, with gazebos and the paving of the yellow brick riding that had nothing to do with security. Is this where we should be looking for the $3.1 billion for security measures?
We saw the financial fiasco of the F-35 jets. Are their fumes where we should be looking for the $3.1 billion?
In the past, we have seen economic mis-managers spend money on government programs that did not exist. Coming from Northern Ontario, I know the fiction of FedNor's spending claims from the President of the Treasury Board.
Is it any wonder that when someone with the integrity and independence of Kevin Page, the former Parliamentary Budget Officer, pointed out this incompetence, the government chose to shoot the messenger rather than conduct the business of the government in a proper fashion?
The ridicule of the Conservative government's spending and accountability knows no bounds. Richard Cléroux writes, in his Straight Talk blog, that the President of the Treasury Board is a treasury minister who has lost his treasure. The minister claimed the money was not lost, that it was only an accounting difference between him and Michael Ferguson, the Auditor General. Mr. Cléroux suggests that the treasury board minister might not be wise speculating that the money might have been spent in Afghanistan and on border crossings. Mr. Cléroux reminded Canadians that the minister “spent $50 million on building public toilets in a farmer's field, a gazebo in a town, buying a $2 million cruise boat that wouldn't float, and the killer—paying $1 million to have somebody carve a fake, miniature lighthouse out of an old tree stump...If anybody out there comes across a $3.1 billion bundle somewhere in a government office, you'll know whose it is”. Others are calling the government's explanation a fancy fudging of facts.
The minister acknowledges that the individual reporting by departments is not followed by whole government reporting. If we do the math, it is pretty simple. Add up the different departments and get the bottom-line figure. However, it does not add up. We are out $3.1 billion.
Let us be clear about the importance of security and anti-terrorism initiatives. They are needed to meet the post-9/11 security environment. No one disputes that, but with all the spending cuts happening, we need to be sure we have value for our spending. We need to know where this money is going and whether we are getting the security we are paying for. We have a problem when the Auditor General tells Canadians he does not know and cannot determine how this money was spent. It is a real concern that the government shows such a lack of interest in monitoring overall spending on national security.
The government loves to blame the previous Liberal government for getting us into this mess, and there is some truth to that. However, it is the Conservative government that in 2010 let drop the commitment to strategically monitor overall spending on national security. It was the Conservative government that stopped providing annual reports on where all the money was going.
The Auditor General found that $3.1 billion was missing between 2011 and 2009. What happened in 2010? Both the Auditor General and the Assistant Auditor General had some interesting things to say about that. The Auditor General said:
Our audit only went up to this time period, and at the end of this time period this method of reporting was stopped.
It seems that when the Auditor General found that the Conservatives were not counting money properly, the government's answer was to simply stop counting. That is banana-stand nonsense.
We can do better. We must do better.
I am the mining critic for the official opposition. We have a 20-member mining caucus that met this week to look at what a proper national mining strategy might look like, one that could support the good-paying jobs and the investment the mining industry makes in our economy, which was $35 billion in gross domestic product in 2011. A mining strategy that can pay dividends for Canada when it is done in a sustainable fashion is good management of the economy.
My leader has made it clear that for these natural resources projects, it is not in Canada's best interest, not even for our bottom line, to take as much resources out of the ground in as short a period of time as possible to sell to whomever, usually foreign countries, with foreign companies getting most of the profit. This does not serve Canadian interests now or future generations. We in the party know something about sound economic management. It means paying attention to both the bottom line and the social good. It is not surprising, as a federal government report indicated, that, taking into account all governments and all parties, NDP governments have balanced the books more than any other party. Whether it is mining or national security, we can get it right. That is good fiscal management.
That is not what we are talking about today with this missing $3.1 billion. Where is that money?
During his audit, the Auditor General asked the Treasury Board Secretariat for information to help him explain how the balance of $3.1 billion, allocated between 2001 and 2009, had been used. Although no clear explanation was given, the secretariat worked with the Office of the Auditor General to identify several possible scenarios: the money may have lapsed at the end of the fiscal year for which it was allocated; the money may have been spent on different public security and anti-terrorism activities and reported as part of ongoing program spending; or the money may have been carried over and spent on programs not related to the initiative.
With this motion, we are calling on the Conservatives to make public, by June 17, 2013, a detailed summary of all departmental expenditures specifically related to public security and anti-terrorism initiatives between 2011 and 2009 and to give the Auditor General all the necessary resources to perform an in-depth forensic audit until the missing $3.1 billion is found and accounted for.
Surely it is time to stop politics and actually take the issue of preventing terrorism seriously and account for the money spent on anti-terrorism initiatives. Conservatives are bringing forward initiatives and unnecessary laws that infringe upon our civil liberties without actually being able to explain whether the whopping $3.1 billion allocated for public security and anti-terrorism initiatives was actually spent, and if so, how, and on what programs.
Ordinary Canadians need to know why $3.1 billion of their taxpayer money is missing and why the Conservatives are not doing everything in their power to find where the $3.1 billion went and what it was used for. We will leave no stone unturned to try to get to the bottom of this boondoggle. That is a real economic action plan.
If the Conservatives have nothing to hide, why do they not make it transparent and release all necessary documents to the Auditor General to make sure the $3.1 billion is found and accounted for?
