Benoît Sauvageau

[Government Contracts, November 22nd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the Auditor General also expressed her concern with the quality of the surveys. Having read the report, we could add that Public Works has been complacent toward survey providers.

How can the government still claim that it has cleaned house when nothing has changed since the Auditor General's incriminating report of November 2003?

[Government Contracts, November 22nd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, in November 2003, the Auditor General wrote a report on the management of surveys by Chuck Guité's group. She found major problems, including contracts linking Earnscliffe to the Department of Finance.

Now that we know that the money spent on surveys tripled in nine years, that Public Works and Government Services did little, if any, quality control, and that several research firms contribute to the Liberal Party of Canada, how can the government say that there is no more cronyism within the Liberal Party?

[Yitzhak Rabin, November 14th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, November 4 marked the tenth anniversary of the assassination in Tel Aviv of the Prime Minister of the State of Israel, Yitzhak Rabin. He was shot by a Jewish extremist opposed to the peace process while singing a song of peace.

Yitzhak Rabin was passionate about safety and prosperity for his people. He reached the highest rank in the military as chief of staff of the Tsahal during its stunning victory in the Six Day War.

This courageous and generous man and winner of the 1994 Nobel peace prize, realized very early on that Israel's security required withdrawal from the occupied territories that he himself took over, as well as the creation of a viable and democratic Palestinian state side by side with the Jewish State of Israel.

The Bloc Québécois remembers this great man and supports his solution: two viable states, one Jewish and one Palestinian, living peacefully and securely next to one another.

[Privilege, November 4th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Conservative member who just spoke.

Every time the Liberals ask a question or talk about the Conservatives in this debate, they deliberately and knowingly try to associate them with the Bloc Québécois and Quebec sovereignty.

I would like the member to explain that if the Conservatives are supporting the same motion the Bloc is supporting, it might be mainly because we share the same values, which are honesty and integrity. I would like to hear his comments on that. If the Bloc Québécois, the Conservatives and the NDP share values like honesty and integrity, I do not think that we should be ashamed to say so here in the House.

[Privilege, November 3rd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I want you to know that it was not I who had my cell phone on while I was talking. I will therefore continue my reply to the question put to me.

The Bloc Québécois honours parliamentary procedures. It will debate the subamendment, the amendment and the motion.

[Privilege, November 3rd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I notice that many Liberal members would like to be Speaker of the House and decide for you. All your decisions are being challenged.

First of all, the Speaker of the House ruled the motion in order. He did not say that we should accept it. Once a motion is ruled in order, there is a debate. The amendment to the motion proposed by the leader of the Bloc Québécois is also part of the debate. When the whip of the Bloc Québécois proposed an amendment to the amendment, which was ruled in order, the President of the Privy Council stated that it should have been ruled out of order.

The member is saying that we should not be challenging the ruling that the motion is out or order, but that is not what the Speaker said. He said that it was in order. Under our Standing Orders, when we are debating the amendment to the amendment, the amendment and the motion, we are allowed to, and I would invite you to--

[Privilege, November 3rd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, this is not a laughing matter. There are 26 members who sent out the householder, and 28 who did not, because the Bloc Québécois is truly a decentralized party. No comprehensive study was done to know what was going on. Proposals are made, then each member decides what is appropriate for one reason or another. Some have issues or activities which are priorities in their ridings. For example, Bill C-277 asked that the Auditor General investigate into the $9 billion the government was hiding.

The sponsorship scandal having been exposed, I saw fit to inform the public that, under a bill put forward by the Bloc Québécois, the Auditor General would now have a right of oversight over the foundations through which the government was moving money. I am happy that the question was put to me. The government hid money in the sponsorship scandal. One has to wonder whether it hid more elsewhere.

[Privilege, November 3rd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to answer the question from the member for Bourassa, who has been trying to hide from the population for a year.

In terms of the Gomery report, my answer is that I approve of Justice Gomery's recommendations, especially when he states the following:

Those facts allow me to draw the following conclusions: The Commission of Inquiry found: the refusal of Ministers, senior officials in the Prime Minister’s Office and public servants to acknowledge their responsibility for the problems of mismanagement that occurred.

As to his second comment, let me apologize for disappointing the member for Bourassa, but since 26 members have sent this group mailing—math is not really my forte—that means that there are 28 who did not send it. So, it follows that when he went on a fishing expedition to find out who had sent it and who had not, the odds for success were one in two, were they not?

I did not send this brochure. Therefore, I will not be able to table a letter in this House. I will not be able to give him that pleasure. I simply want to show him how false his line of reasoning is, when he maintains that everything was centred in the whip's office, this nasty whip, where everything was concentrated. There were 26 out of 54 who did that, and the other 28 were not scolded. Those 28 others decided to deliver a common communiqué, a collective mailing that concentrated on their intentions.

But I see the member for Bourassa smiling. I do not see how one can make a revelation of the fact—

[Privilege, November 3rd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I think that, from now on, we will be able to speak properly and intelligently.

I wonder why the Liberal members are opposed to such householders and are asking us to apologize, by trying to make us feel guilty. We must recall the facts set out in the Gomery report, in page after page, all the testimony heard by the Gomery commission, all the oral questions we have asked in the House since the report was tabled and all the non-answers we have received from the ministers. We must remember everything we have heard about the $100 million scandal, friends, advertising firms which we could name: Groupaction, Gosselin, Groupe Everest, Lafleur Marketing, Vickers & Benson, Polygone/Expour—we know this company better—and Coffin Communication. All these agencies received money during the sponsorship scandal and contributed to the Liberal Party.

Our integrity is being called into question, when nine candidates accepted brown envelopes containing dirty money. The president of the party was quite right in saying that we should plug our noses when we talk about the Liberals. He may have said it best, except for the member for Bourassa, who said that the guilty parties must be punished. But have they truly been punished? We know that the person who gave the money to Marc-Yvan Côté has been banned for life from the Liberal Party, as was Mr. Côté. The nine other candidates who accepted this money are still there, with the ministers and the members. Perhaps they will run in the next election. And we are being asked to apologize for this.

The parliamentary householders were sent in compliance with the rules of the House and the rules of the game. Let us look at what these householders say. They say that four ministers—three still in office and one former minister—appeared before the Gomery commission. This is a fact. The leader was wondering why these householders did not publish the photos of the other ministers. It is because they did not appear before the Gomery commission. This is also a fact.

The debate is about the sponsorship scandal. It opens the door to discussion about what happened at the Gomery commission. We are taking advantage of this open door. The more we talk about it, the more people in Quebec and Canada will realize what really happened on the Liberal side and will understand that this is an institutionalized and controlled system.

Let us look at Justice Gomery's major findings: The first one is that there is “clear evidence of political involvement in the administration of the Sponsorship Program“. Whose political involvement was it? Then, the report talks about “insufficient oversight at the very senior levels of the public service“. We could quote from the report to show that the former president of the Treasury Board, whom we heard, failed to do her duty: “a veil of secrecy surrounding the administration of the Sponsorship Program and an absence of transparency in the contracting process“. Who is hiding behind this veil? Who holds the secret?

The report goes on talking about:

reluctance, for fear of reprisal, by virtually all public servants to go against the will of a manager [Chuck Guité] who was circumventing established policies and who had access to senior political officials;

gross overcharging by communication agencies for hours worked and goods and services provided;

inflated commissions, production costs and other expenses charged by communication agencies and their subcontractors, many of which were related businesses;

the use of the Sponsorship Program for purposes other than national unity or federal visibility [which means filling the pockets of cronies] because of a lack of objectives, criteria and guidelines for the Program.

Among the cronies were the ones from the cigar club. We all remember who belonged to that club. I continue quoting from the report:

deliberate actions to avoid compliance with federal legislation and policies, including the Canada Elections Act, Lobbyists Registration Act, the Access to Information Act and Financial Administration Act--

Members opposite talk about transparency. Nevertheless, when questions are asked in committee and access is needed to some documents, for example about the Canadian Unity Council or the Internationaux du sport de Montréal in November 2005, the same veil applies and members of Parliament cannot get answers to their questions.

The Gomery report goes on to say:

—a complex web of financial transactions among Public Works and Government Services Canada (PWGSC), Crown Corporations and communication agencies, involving kickbacks and illegal contributions to a political party—

This party is called the Liberal Party. And today, we are asked to apologize.

However, the Gomery report clearly states, “—involving kickbacks and illegal contributions to a political party—”. We are not talking about $1 million; it is much more than that.

Money was diverted in the sponsorship scandal, but a mere $1 million is being reimbursed, and we are asked to say thank you and sorry because the Liberals are such nice people. Excuse me, but enough is enough.

Here is another excerpt from the Gomery report:

Five agencies that received large sponsorship contracts regularly channelling money, via legitimate donations or unrecorded cash gifts, to political fundraising activities in Quebec, with the expectation of receiving lucrative government contracts;

We have the opportunity to talk about the Gomery report. Lets us continue to do so. We were told that they accept the report's findings, which are:

Certain agencies carrying on their payroll individuals who were, in effect, working on Liberal Party matters;

Those agencies received money and paid so-called volunteers working in Montreal. And what were those employees working on? Illegal election campaigns.

Some members in this House were elected thanks to election workers who were illegally paid. Some received envelopes and campaigned with money obtained illegally.

Here is another excerpt from the Gomery report. We read:

The existence of a “culture of entitlement” among political officials and bureaucrats involved with the Sponsorship Program—

We are being asked to refer to the Gomery report. For the benefit of the member for Ahuntsic, I will quote the report:

A pattern of activity whereby a public servant in retirement did extensive business with former recipients of Sponsorship Program contracts; and

Here is the most important part:

the refusal of Ministers, senior officials in the Prime Minister’s Office and public servants to acknowledge their responsibility for the problems of mismanagement that occurred.

This is what Justice Gomery says on page 7 of his document.

He talks about the refusal of ministers. Among others, the President of the Treasury Board, or presidents, should have ensured that the money was well spent. Justice Gomery puts it clearly: “the refusal of Ministers ... for the problems of mismanagement that occurred”.

If the ministers had fulfilled their responsibilities, if they had put in place all the controls to properly manage the public administration and money, the laws would have been respected.

Justice Gomery says the following on page 19 of his report:

The Treasury Board exercises its oversight role most actively through its review of submissions for spending initiatives.

The principal expenditure controls are found in legislation, especially sections 32, 33 and 34 of the Financial Administration Act. In brief, section 32 ensures that funds are available to pay for any goods or services contracted; section 33 deals with requisitions for payment; and section 34 ensures that no payment for goods or services requisitioned by the government shall be made unless there is a certification on record that the goods or services have been supplied in accordance with the government contract which authorized the expenditure.

It is very clear that Treasury Board has the tools to ensure that a scandal such as the one we are talking about today—and that we have been talking about for too long—does not occur. As the justice pointed out, and I will conclude on this note, the ministers' refusal to admit their responsibility for the mismanagement is unacceptable, and this is why we are going to continue talking about the sponsorship scandal.

[Privilege, November 3rd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I will also remind the member for Bourassa that it is interesting to note that the House By-Law No. 2 provides at section 2(c)—the House leader of our party referred to this earlier, but we point it out to the members, because the Liberals have a tendency to tell us that we are completely off topic—that “partisan activities are an inherent and essential part of the activities and parliamentary functions of a Member”.

So we did what can be seen in the householder that the Liberals have been advertising exceptionally well today. We could almost thank them for this, but we can see in the householder some facts that were identified at the Gomery commission. It talks about money funnelled through the sponsorship scandal.

We are being asked today to apologize. I am wondering about one thing. Since the member for Bourassa rose earlier to speak, is it relevant that he is talking all the time during my speech and that he is trying to disturb people in this House? Is this normal? Are you saying that it is normal, Mr. Speaker? If the member is too nervous and does not feel like keeping quiet during my speech, that tells us that, on top of his integrity, it is his respect for others that must be attacked, because he is not showing any respect for others. How can we be asked to apologize?

The hon. member for Bourassa says that he is sensitive? Then he is sensitive.