Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with my hon. colleague from Surrey Central. It is a pleasure to speak to the situation if for no other reason than it brings to light an endemic and systemic problem within the government that has been occurring on the government's watch since it was elected.
This is nothing that began overnight. It did not begin with the audit for which the member for Calgary—Nose Hill had been pushing for a long time. It did not bespeak the 459 programs that have been brought to the floor of the House, showing a miserable lack of accounting. It bespeaks a problem that is running through many departments. I will begin with the HRD and will go to a few others after.
What actually took place here? Some 459 plus projects were looked at randomly in the audit that was done as a direct result of Reform Party insistence and pushing for a very long period of time. Of those programs, 15% did not have an application on file. Of the remaining applications, the following elements were missing: 72% had no cash flow forecasts; 46% had no estimate of the number of people participating; 25% had no description of the activities that were being supported; 25% had no apt description of the participants; 11% had no budget; 11% had no description of expected results; and 97% of the files showed no evidence that anyone had been checked to see whether they owed money to HRD, a requirement to determine whether or not the program fits the bill. Eight out of ten files reviewed did not show any evidence of any financial monitoring on the part of HRD, and 87% of the project files showed no evidence of supervision. I could go on.
The response from the Prime Minister is that in this small cross-section are all the problems we have. That is absolute nonsense. To think that this random cross-section, which shows such endemic mismanagement, represents the only problems faced by HRDC is, at best, short-sighted and, at worst, refers to things that we cannot mention in this place because they would be in the realm of unparliamentary language.
What does it actually bespeak? It bespeaks mismanagement and a lack of respect. It is a lack of respect for the taxpayers of Canada who break their backs to pay money to this institution, which should spend it in a responsible manner. It is a lack of respect for all Canadians and it is a lack of respect for the money the government receives. It is looked at as the government's money, and the government demonstrates that time and time again.
This is not the government's money. It belongs to some poor sod who is paying taxes on the $19,000 a year which he earns. It is his money. It is the money of 30 million Canadians. It is not the Liberals' money. It is not the Reform Party's money. It is the people's money. It is up to the government to manage it properly.
The government has prized itself, falsely as we can now prove, on being a good manager of the public purse. We have shown that not only is it an appalling manager, but when faced with irrefutable facts of its mismanagement, it obfuscates, it puts the issue under the carpet and pretends there is no problem. That is not only an insult to this institution; worse, it is an insult to all the taxpayers who pay money to the government.
The member for Mississauga West stood this morning to go on a pathetic tirade over issues that are completely irrelevant to what is taking place. The member stood and said that the Reform Party is against job creation, that it is against developing programs for places with high unemployment rates, particularly in certain sectors of Canada and in aboriginal communities. That money is meant for this purpose. We do not dispute that at all. We want to make sure that these places have higher rates of employment. However, every member of the opposition wants the money to be spent in a responsible way. We do not want the money to be used as a tool for pork-barrelling. We do not want it to be used cynically as a means to gain power. But that is exactly what has been taking place for far too long.
This did not happen overnight. For over 10 years the auditor general has been saying that HRDC has had a great deal of difficulty keeping its finances on track. In previous reports it has been stated that HRDC has been unable to monitor what was going on to ensure the money was being spent wisely.
The question which I pose to the government is: Why did it take until the year 2000 for the government to admit, in a backhanded way, that it has a problem? It does not have a little problem; it has a massive problem. It is a chronic problem that is faced not only by the programs within HRDC but by a lot of other programs.
I have worked on reserves and I have seen some of the most impoverished people of the land. The money which is targeted to help those people, to deal with the rampant unemployment amongst them, to give them the skills which they need, does not get to them. We can go to many reserves and see people living at levels of poverty which are akin to what we would see in third world countries. Children lie on concrete slabs in the middle of winter. Multiple families live in houses that are boarded up, without central heating and with soiled mattresses on the living room floor. There are drunk people all over the place and children who have infections all over their bodies. We probably would not see this situation outside these communities.
Money is earmarked to help these people, but for years they have not received that money. That is in part why there is deplorable, abject poverty in those communities. It is not because the money is not there. There were billions of dollars involved in the minister's previous portfolio. She knew full well what was going on. The member for Skeena brought it up time and time again, as did the member for Wild Rose, the leader of this party and other members of the opposition. Money is being spent by the department of Indian affairs, but that money is not getting to the people. The auditor general has brought that up time and time again, but the government puts its blinkers on and says it does not have a problem.
This is the tip of an iceberg that is very large. The honourable thing to do, beyond the minister resigning, would be for the government to finally come clean with the Canadian public and say that it will do an audit or it will listen to the auditor general and others and fix the problem. If the government does not fix the problem and make sure that taxpayer money is used as it was designed to be used, to help those who cannot help themselves, then it should leave because it is not doing its job. If the government professes to be the manager of the public purse, then it should do the honourable thing. Those responsible should either resign or fix the problem, together with opposition members. All members have people in their ridings who are suffering and the problem needs to be fixed now.
There are other things, such as western economic diversification and ACOA. The people at CIDA just found $850 million. The member for Surrey Central will speak later about the $850 million of CIDA money that was given with no or minimal accountability to Canadian companies. That money was designed to help the poorest of the poor. It has gone into the pockets of companies making millions of dollars. Why should the Canadian International Development Agency be giving money, with no accountability, to private companies to spend onshore? That is not what taxpayer money is for.
The government should do the honourable thing. The minister should quit, the government should fix the problems right away and come clean in all of the other ministries to ensure that taxpayer money is spent wisely.
