Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise in the House today on behalf of the New Democratic Party as its spokesperson and critic for HRDC, to speak in support of the motion by the official opposition.
It has been rather a perplexing and ironic debate. The member for Peterborough has challenged other members that they should not be discussing the business of the committee and yet he himself raised recommendations from the HRDC committee. I do not see how we can debate this issue and the motion without getting into the business of the committee and the recommendations that have come out of that committee. I hope we can get on with the debate and deal with some of the very important questions that are before us.
Today's motion is very important because the four opposition parties have been united in their focus on what has become the central question in the HRDC scandal. On June 1 the four opposition parties issued a joint statement which reads, “We have no confidence in the government's response to the scandal at HRDC. Therefore today we reiterate our grave concerns and call for an independent public inquiry to investigate and report on the alleged partisan interference and wrongdoing in the awarding of HRDC grants and contributions. It is crucial to restore public confidence and only an independent public inquiry can accomplish this”.
It is ironic that earlier today the chair of the committee, the hon. member for Peterborough, said that another public inquiry would be a waste of dollars. Another public inquiry implies that we have already had one. Certainly there have been committee hearings. Certainly we have heard some witnesses. But to characterize that as an independent public inquiry is doing a grave injustice to the whole idea of what an independent public inquiry is about and why we need to have one.
There have been weeks of hearings, committee meetings and questions in the House. Independent investigation work has been done by members in the opposition parties. The minister released 10,000 pages and volumes of information have come out. Despite all that, Canadians are still no closer to understanding what happened in the department, how decisions were made and how it is that today we have ended up with a dozen or more investigations that possibly could lead to criminal charges if there is found to be wrongdoing.
Canadians have not received answers to some very basic questions that have been put in the House of Commons as well as in the committee, as well as by the media day after day since we returned to the House in February.
That is why the opposition parties issued a joint statement. That is why the opposition parties, from day one, have called for an independent public inquiry. That is why today this motion is before us again. I believe it is actually the second opposition day motion on a public inquiry. Members from the Bloc also put forward a motion a couple of months ago.
It deserves some closer examination as to why the insistence or the pressure is still being kept up by those of us in opposition. Perhaps the government's line is that this is about playing politics. I beg to differ. This issue is about trying to restore confidence in public expenditures. It is about trying to restore confidence in public decision making. It is about trying to restore confidence in the way our parliament and the way our government work.
I should like to say at the outset that from the New Democratic Party's point of view we have always defended the purpose and intent of the kinds of programs now under investigation. In terms of the principle of what those programs stand for as far as job creation in areas of high unemployment and training people to sustain the local economy are concerned, those are things that we in the New Democratic Party have always supported. We do not take issue with them.
Historically we have been on record for many years since our inception as saying that there is a legitimate role for government to play in job creation, in youth training, in providing literacy programs and in all the things we have seen go on. However the issue is the way those programs have been managed and the fact that we have mounting evidence that funds have been used for political partisan purposes.
It is sad to note that the people who have taken the flack, the people who end up paying the cost of this mismanagement and of the political partisan use of these funds, are the very people these funds and programs are designed to help. That is the sad irony of what has taken place here.
From our point of view in the New Democratic Party we want a public inquiry to get at the truth, to restore a sense of balance and to say it is important that we look at each of those investigations and get answers. I was very interested to hear the exchange a few minutes earlier by my hon. colleague from the Bloc who was trying to put on record a few of the cases that have come up. There are so many it is impossible to detail them in a debate such as this one. We on the opposition side are all aware that we need a thorough examination of them.
Clearly the mandate and scope of the committee dominated by government members are completely inadequate and limited in ability to passively or even willingly take that job on. We in the NDP want a public inquiry precisely to get at the truth but also to restore confidence in these programs. I do not think that can be underestimated.
All members have commented on the point at one time or another that through the whole debate and the developments which have taken place the workers and staff people who actually deliver programs on the frontline in local HRDC offices have taken a beating. It is not just as a result of what has unfolded since February. They have taken a beating because they have suffered years and years of cutbacks in the public service, some 5,000 people alone in the Human Resources Development Department.
The issue of the undermining of the public sector workforce and the undermining of public services is a recipe that comes from the Liberal government. It is something that is contributing now to the very low morale and sense that this department is simply falling apart. It has lacked leadership. It has lacked accountability. It has lacked transparency. It has also suffered from very low morale.
Who would blame the people working in that department for feeling thoroughly cynical and depressed about all these goings on. They are still delivering the services yet have less and less resources to do so as a result of all the cutbacks.
We in the NDP see a very serious matter that needs to be addressed by the government. It must be taken up to restore confidence in this operation and the various things the department does. I am referring to increasing the staffing resources and recognizing that the people who deliver those programs do it with a sense of public interest, a sense of public mission.
Somehow we have to separate the function of government in carrying out operations and programs from a political culture that is so pervasive that we heard time and time again in committee from various witnesses that the political atmosphere dictated everything else.
Today I think it is very important that we continue with this debate and continue to press for an independent public inquiry because there are critical questions that still must be addressed. There are issues on which we do not yet have answers. For example, as recently as June 5, reports are surfacing suggesting that the minister knew, possibly in October 1999, about the internal audit that was done of the transitional jobs fund and that those programs being mismanaged.
There are serious issues about when information was known and whether or not we are getting the full goods and the full answer on when it was that the minister or her staff were involved and had disclosure about the ongoing problems.
We still have continuing evidence that the transitional jobs fund was used as a slush fund. A 1998 independent review conducted by Ekos Research Associates suggested that transitional jobs fund grants were approved for political reasons.
A 1997 audit done by Consulting and Audit Canada, which examined 25 transitional jobs fund grants in Quebec and Atlantic Canada, warned that the fund was “political”. In particular, in the awarding of a $6 million grant to a tree planting project in New Brunswick, the firm reported:
Pressures on staff to expedite the approval process have come from the political level and commitments have been made that HRDC staff must then follow.
I am pulling this information from public documents and from some reviews which were done in previous years. This is now a matter of public record but the problem is they were never followed up. The systemic problems within this department in terms of the politicization of the process and the political interference are questions that we have to get answers on and questions that have never been addressed.
In my office we received information about the way grants were disbursed in the Kenora office in northern Ontario. There were allegations of political interference on the part of the current minister of Indian affairs who was previously the parliamentary secretary to HRDC. People who worked in that office said that they were very concerned about the partisan nature of how these grants and contributions were awarded.
Then we have the situation of Scotia Rainbow. In February the member for Bras d'Or—Cape Breton blew the whistle on the Scotia Rainbow allocation funds. She questioned how a $750,000 grant approved to Scotia Rainbow, a company owned by a Liberal contributor, was increased in the same fiscal year to $2 million. More than that, as a local member of parliament she was never approached to give concurrence to the transitional jobs fund beyond the initial $750,000 in September 1998.
In fact the member for Bras d'Or—Cape Breton has now asked the auditor general to conduct a thorough review of Scotia Rainbow's applications and the grant from the transitional jobs fund. To add insult to injury, the organization went into receivership by defaulting on its obligations on a $10 million loan from the Bank of Montreal.
Our member from Bras d'Or has raised this issue continually in the House of Commons and has been absolutely stonewalled by various ministers in the government in trying to get some straightforward answers.
Other critical questions need to be addressed so I will continue with my list. Everybody has a list of questions they want to have answered. One of the questions we have that pertains to my own riding and the riding of the member for Winnipeg Centre is: Why is it that some of these funds were supposedly improved in areas of high unemployment when the unemployment rate was actually lower than the criteria? Why is it that for the minister's own riding funds were approved when its unemployment rate was lower than the criteria?
We suddenly heard about the existence of pockets. The government explained this practice with fuzzy, warm rules that pockets of unemployment—