Madam Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise today and address this issue. I am grateful that the Bloc Québécois has brought forward this motion. It is very important that we find a way to ensure that money that the Liberal Party has diverted into its own coffers for use during an election campaign, money that belongs to taxpayers, is put in trust so it cannot repeat this again, like it has done in three previous elections, running election campaigns on dirty money.
At the outset, the Conservative Party supports the motion. Right thinking Canadians everywhere will understand the importance of this kind of motion, ensuring that we do not replicate the unbelievable behaviour of the Liberal Party in three previous elections.
There are so many issues I would like to address, but I want to start by addressing some of the things the public works minister stated when he spoke awhile ago.
In talking about the testimony before Judge Gomery, the minister said that these were allegations. He has repeatedly told us how we have to let Judge Gomery do his work and that we should not reflect on testimony. He then turned around and tried to undermine the credibility of witnesses who were appearing before Judge Gomery, calling into question their credibility. However, on the other hand, when it is convenient, he says that we should not reflect on the testimony.
I want to point this out. When people appear before Judge Gomery, these are not just allegations. This is sworn testimony, sworn evidence before a judge. It is important to make that distinction. Many times this testimony is backed up by other witnesses and by documents. Therefore, it is wrong for the public works minister to come here and try to undermine the credibility of what Judge Gomery is doing and undermine the credibility of witnesses when he says that we should not be reflecting upon what is being said before Judge Gomery. I want to point that out at the outset.
This is an issue of incredible importance to Canadians. It is an issue about self-respect. It boils down to whether Canadians have enough respect for themselves that they will finally say that they will no longer tolerate being taken to the cleaners by the Liberal Party of Canada. This is what has happened for a number of years now.
This is not in doubt. There is absolutely no question whether there was money being stolen from the taxpayers and diverted into Liberal Party coffers. The question is how much money was taken? That is the issue, and how broad in scope is this criminal conspiracy. Clearly that is what it is. We have all kinds of evidence that there are not just a few people, but dozens of people involved in what is a broad, far-ranging, criminal conspiracy.
The question that Canadians ultimately have to ask themselves is will they continue to support that kind of behaviour and that kind of government. Even many Liberals are saying, enough is enough. They no longer have faith in the current Prime Minister to get to the bottom of this. In fact, some of them are leaving the Liberal ranks saying that they have had enough and that the Liberals look upon the public as a vulture looks upon a dying calf. That was said by one Liberal member who has now left that caucus.
I know members across the way will say that they have a new Prime Minister now who wants to get to the bottom of this. I want to point out a couple of things.
First, there is sworn testimony before Judge Gomery which says that the Prime Minister had lunch with one of the, as my friend says, principal scam masters or scam artists involved in the sponsorship scandal. We are talking about Claude Boulay. This comes on the heels of testimony from the Prime Minister where he said that he only knew Mr. Boulay in a casual way.
Now we have someone who overheard a conversation, gave sworn testimony, that the Prime Minister and Claude Boulay talked advertising contracts over lunch. This is important. We need to point this out because there are many people who want to believe the current Prime Minister somehow sat apart from this.
Even if we decide that what was heard really did not happen, I want to point to the fact that we have seen the Prime Minister and his government actively try to block getting to the bottom of this issue. I want to point to what happened last year when the Prime Minister came in as the new prime minister and said that he wanted to get to the bottom of this, he would leave no stone unturned, he was mad as hell. We heard all the cliches.
At the same time, we know the government was actively withholding millions of documents from the public accounts committee which were relevant to finding out who was at fault for what had occurred and for finding out how millions of dollars of taxpayer money had been diverted away from what should have been a good purpose and ultimately some of which was diverted into the coffers of the Liberal Party of Canada. Lo and behold when the election finally passed and Judge Gomery was in place, suddenly all those documents became available. I think that points to the government trying to cover up evidence that could have cost it the election.
I would argue that the man who paints himself as the Prime Minister, who wants to address the democratic deficit, is actively involved in undermining democracy. That was a good example of it. However, it does not end there.
During the election campaign we heard the Prime Minister's team say that it had done an audit of the Liberal Party books. That was in the dying days of the campaign when the election was very much up in the air and no one really knew how it would turn out. Liberal government members said that an audit had been undertaken of the Liberal Party books and that everything was clean. Now we find out, several months later, that there was no audit. That was a complete fabrication.
As my friend has pointed out, a forensic auditor has said that when the government characterizes what the auditors did when they looked at the transactions of the Liberal Party as an audit, it is completely out to lunch. I am talking about forensic auditor Al Rosen, a chartered accountant and certified fraud examiner, who said the Liberal government was pulling the wool over the eyes of the public when it characterized the nature of the review that took place during the election campaign as an audit. We need to point that out.
My friends across the way are questioning whether an audit is more indepth than the review that took place. I want to quote from Mr. Rosen who said:
Trying to use these reports to claim that everything is fine within the party is completely inappropriate. That's not what the reports say and what's missing from it is the cash transactions that don't get recorded in the books.
When the Liberals say these things during an election campaign, they are obviously attempting to mislead the public in a craven attempt to hold on to power. Is that addressing the democratic deficit or is that undermining democracy? I would argue it is undermining democracy. It is using dirty money and dirty tactics to hang on to power.
We cannot trust the Prime Minister to get to the bottom of the sponsorship scandal. He is implicated by his actions. I support the motion of the Bloc Québécois. The Conservative Party supports it as well. Let us vote in favour of this so the Liberal Party cannot use dirty money one more time to try to get re-elected in the next election campaign.