Elsie Wayne

[Sponsorship Program, February 17th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I believe he must be hiding somewhere because he is not here today.

[Sponsorship Program, February 17th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister found the time for 33 meetings and telephone calls with his company officials when he was finance minister, yet he cannot find five minutes to call his ministers to find out what they knew and when they knew about the sponsorship program.

Why are personal financial affairs more important to him than finding out what his ministers knew?

[Supply, February 17th, 2004]

Darling, I am losing respect for you.

[Supply, February 17th, 2004]

Yes, indeed. He was the eye of the needle. That is absolutely correct.

On this one here, I have to say that for him and the Prime Minister to state that he did not know anything about this, oh, oh--

[Supply, February 17th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I want the hon. member to know that the former minister of finance, who is now our Prime Minister, was in charge of all money.

[Supply, February 17th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I want my hon. colleague to know that if the Auditor General found out just by doing a review that in her opinion there were 14 employees who were involved in this, how come the former minister of finance, the member's present Prime Minister, did not know? He should have known if there were 14 people in his department doing the wrong thing.

[Supply, February 17th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, if the hon. member had listened to the people who called Rex Murphy's show, he would know exactly what the people want us to do. I can tell him right now.

I am not pointing fingers at anyone. I am saying that the people in this government either knew what was going on or not, and if they knew what was going on, it should have been corrected. That was a number of years ago. Now they are pointing the finger at one person. They sent him away to be an ambassador and now they are bringing him back and saying it is his fault.

My understanding is that Groupaction in Quebec was given a contract. They were supposed to do a profile of some sort on some action. They submitted it and they got paid substantial funds. Then they copied the identical report three times and got paid thousands and thousands of dollars. Is that what they want? The Prime Minister was the minister of finance and he knew that money was going to Groupaction.

[Supply, February 17th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to advise the House that I will be splitting my time today with my friend from Port Moody—Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam.

It is an unfortunate duty to rise today on this important topic, a topic that has seized the attention of the whole country. The Auditor General's report of last week confirmed something that many of us have long suspected. It proved that the government was engaged in a corrupt practice, possibly criminal in its scope.

I am not the first to be outraged by the most recent scandal and I surely will not be the last.

Mr. Speaker, I do not know if you listened to the Rex Murphy show on the weekend, but most people across the nation did and, I have to say, with the Prime Minister there to listen as well.

All across this nation the people are very outraged with this government. As a taxpayer, I was shocked to learn that our money was being used to fund these kinds of corrupt activities. As a member of Parliament, I was livid to learn that the government was undertaking these types of activities.

For the past week we have heard a great deal about this scandal, but there are three areas in particular that I want to highlight for the consideration of the House.

First and foremost, I want to address the suggestions made by the Prime Minister that the officials working with Prime Minister Chrétien were aware of this problem and covered it up.

Second, I want to address the fact that the Prime Minister continues to deny that he knew anything about it.

Finally, I would like to discuss the principle of ministerial accountability in general.

In the past week, the Prime Minister has held a number of press conferences, but none as significant as the one held at the national press gallery last Thursday. At that time, the Prime Minister told reporters that one of the reasons why he was kept in the dark about the scandal was his poor relationship with the previous prime minister, Jean Chrétien, and his staff. The clear message was that if he had a better relationship he would have been told about the scandal and what was taking place. For that to be in any way relevant, we must believe that the Chrétien PMO knew about the scandal in advance.

Now, if the Chrétien government knew about it, then why not tell the people, perhaps even the current Prime Minister? They were clearly engaged in a cover-up, yet the Prime Minister insists that Mr. Chrétien now is a man of integrity.

All this raises very important questions about why the Prime Minister did not know about it himself. Why did he have to rely on the information of others? Was he not the minister of finance? Was he not the senior minister from Quebec? Was he not the second most powerful person in cabinet at the time? How can we believe, given the Prime Minister's resumé, that he was totally in the dark about something as important as this? The truth is that either the Prime Minister did know or he should have known.

The evidence is mounting that Liberals in Quebec were aware that this sponsorship program was becoming an issue. It has been reported that the issue was discussed in the meetings of the Liberals' Quebec caucus. It has been reported that the Prime Minister received a letter from a senior Liberal outlining his concern on this issue.

When we consider the number of different opportunities the Prime Minister had to learn about this scandal, one has to wonder how he avoided it. It is almost as though the official policy at the Department of Finance was “hear no evil, see no evil and speak no evil”.

The fact is, if the Prime Minister was genuinely unaware of the problem he must have lost control of his department and lost touch with his government. How else can we explain the strange sequence of events that conspired to keep him totally free and clear of trouble?

By his own admission, he did learn of this through the machinery of government, or the civil service.

By his own admission, he did not hear about this in a Quebec caucus meeting, but all the others did.

By his own admission, he does not recall receiving a letter from a senior Liberal Party supporter on the issue, but that person has stated he wrote the letter.

By his own admission, he did not have the type of relationship with those in the Prime Minister's Office that would cause them to bring him into their confidence.

By his own admission, then, he was isolated from the department, his caucus, his party and his leader. That is the story of someone who was totally disconnected from the government of the day.

We can only believe his excuse if we accept that the Prime Minister was ignorant of everything going on around him. Frankly, given his stature in his party and his government, that is simply not credible.

There is a general principle of public law that I want to address at this time. We are all aware of the principle of ministerial accountability. It is a basic pillar of our parliamentary democracy. We have a departmental structure that places the ministers at the top. Ministers are then accountable for their actions in the House of Commons. They are in turn responsible for the actions taken by their departments. It is not necessary that the minister in question was personally involved in the actions of the department. It is not even necessary that ministers are aware of the actions taken by their departments. They are deemed to know.

What is important is the principle that they are responsible for their departments in all aspects of their conduct. As the senior ranking government minister, the Prime Minister is ultimately responsible for the actions of every department in the government.

To his credit, the Prime Minister has acknowledged his responsibility, but as minister of finance at the time when government money was being used for improper and possibly criminal purposes, the Prime Minister had a responsibility for the actions of his department then. He had a duty to know what was being done in his name and on his authority. He had a duty to ensure that the government was not engaging in fiscal mismanagement. He had a duty to know when taxpayers' money was being used for questionable purposes. If he did not, then he failed in his duties.

We know that for the past 14 years the Prime Minister has been fighting to get where he is today. We know that he let nothing and nobody stand between him and the PM's office. He was engaged in a leadership campaign that stretches back to 1990. That kind of campaign takes a lot of time, maybe even too much time. It can be a distraction. We are left to wonder whether the Prime Minister was working so hard to become a prime minister that he did not have time to be the minister of finance.

He cannot have it both ways. The Prime Minister cannot go around the country telling Canadians that he is responsible for bringing down the deficit and keeping the economy strong if in the next breath he tells them that he did not know what was going on in his department.

He cannot have it both ways. He cannot say that it was a small group of people and then launch a full scale public inquiry to find out who did it. Either he knew or he should have known.

Why was the former minister, who is now former Ambassador Gagliano, fired? Does the Prime Minister know he was responsible for all of this? If so, why do we need the inquiry? As I stated, the Prime Minister cannot have it both ways. Either he knew or he should have known.

I have to say that I think now that he is travelling across the country speaking to people and wanting to listen to people, he is finding out how people feel. The people are truly upset.

When I go home to my riding I see the people who are not working anymore and the people who earn $25,000 a year who try to feed, clothe and educate four or five children. Then I think about the $250 million stolen from the taxpayers of this country. There is something wrong. There is something wrong in this House and we have to correct it. We have to take the stance to correct it and we must never let it happen again.

[Government Contracts, February 12th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I am awfully glad the Prime Minister cares now because in 1999 when he knew about it, he did not care at all.

One hundred million dollars of taxpayers' money went from the government into the hands of Liberal Party supporters. The $100 million lost on the sponsorship program is equal to the tax money paid by 12,000 Canadians earning the average salary of roughly $25,000.

I know the Prime Minister is a millionaire and finds ways to avoid paying taxes. How can the Prime Minister justify squandering--

[Government Contracts, February 12th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister can run, but he cannot hide.

One hundred million dollars in commissions were paid to friends of the Liberal Party on his watch as finance minister. That represents all the taxes paid by the hardworking people of Hanna, Alberta, or Sackville, New Brunswick, or Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia, or Heart's Delight in Newfoundland.

The Prime Minister should be ashamed of himself. When will he come clean and admit that he knew about the sponsorship scandal?