Mr. Speaker, our presence here today is the result of a political event that occurred in October 1995, the referendum. Fifteen days before the referendum, the polls clearly showed that the Yes camp was winning.
So, there was panic here in the House of Commons, particularly among the federal Liberals. Quebeckers had to be shown that Canada was a beautiful country and an ad campaign was needed to do that. That is why the sponsorship program was created, and that is also where everything started, like the famous love-in held two days prior to the referendum.
So, when I am told in the House that the current Prime Minister, all of the current ministers and all of the federal Liberal members did not know what was happening, I must say I have serious doubts because everyone knew that Jean Chrétien's Liberal government had to flex its muscles to save the country. That is what we were told by the person who set up this program when he testified in July 2002 about the sponsorship and Groupaction scandals.
Do you know what Mr. Guité said? “We were at war. Something had to be done. The separatists were going to win”. What more proof do we have to give here in the House? The sponsorship scandal is inextricably linked to the future of Quebeckers. Now, today, they are trying to tell us that the present PM did not know what was going on.
I remember my days on the public accounts committee when we tried to have some witnesses appear who could cast some light on this. You should have seen the stonewalling that went on, as the federal Liberals systematically prevented the Standing Committee on Public Accounts from doing its job.
Today we hear from the new President of the Treasury Board. It was he who opposed those amendments, before the present Prime Minister came along, when we were debating the importance of the Public Service Act and when the Bloc and the NDP were trying to introduce amendments to protect public servants who might act as whistle blowers about ministerial political interference. The Liberals themselves blocked those amendments to Bill C-25.
This morning, it is quite fantastic what the President of Treasury Board can say when he talks to us about democracy and transparency. I need not remind hon. members that, the night before the Auditor General's first appearance to explain the content of her report, an emissary of the PMO called together the Liberal members of the Public Accounts Committee. I would call that interference and controlling behaviour.
Today they are trying to make us believe that transparency and democracy exist among the Liberals, but I am not buying it. You know what the press is saying today? Today's headlines describe the PM's actions of yesterday as “damage control mode”, in other words that he was in a panic. Do hon. members want to know what the PM reminds me of with his protestations of not being aware, that he will clean house, that he is outraged, and so on? He reminds me of someone who claims to have left his past behind, but then keeps on talking about it. After two hours of hearing about it, one is tempted to say “Hey there, you have not left your past behind you at all”.
That is what the Prime Minister is doing now. He keeps on saying he knew nothing, keeps on saying his government will change its behaviour, change its mentality, that his government will become the most democratic government anyone has ever seen in this House of Commons.
That is a monumental joke. The people of Quebec are starting to react to what the Prime Minister intends to do, because it knows that the sponsorship scandal is intimately related to our national future.
If current polls are clearly showing that the Bloc Quebecois has made significant gains in Quebec, regardless of what happens in coming months, this means that the people of Quebec understand what took place in October 1995. It means that Quebeckers are a good, proud, and different people.
There are phone-in radio show hosts, in Toronto and Vancouver, and even a minister who are currently suggesting that this whole issue is indicative of Quebec's way of doing things. We have certainly never seen anything of the sort.
The current Prime Minister, who proclaims himself a Quebecker, should take more aggressive action to stand up for Quebec when under such attacks. There is more to come. Anytime the Quebec people sets out to achieve sovereignty, these kinds of racist remarks pop up all over the place in English Canada. Forgotten are all the nice things said in Montreal, one day or two before the referendum.
Light will definitely be shed on this issue. The Standing Committee on Public Accounts has set the process in motion. On Thursday, we will have a meeting where the Auditor General and officials from the three departments concerned will try to explain the complex nature of this program. There are so many complexities that it is hard to make out the authors. All this was apparently done without any political interference.
Now we can see one president after another speak up. André Ouellet said he did not know what was going on at Canada Post. Jean Pelletier—and this is worse—is Jean Chrétien's former chief of staff and now heads VIA Rail. He would have us believe that he knew nothing.
I look forward to hearing what Alfonso Gagliano has to say. He made us a promise and I hope he will keep it. He said he did not want to comment on a political situation while posted in Denmark, but would clarify the whole situation upon his return to Canada. I am sure that, listening to Alfonso Gagliano, there are ministers from Quebec, federal Liberal ministers, who are going to blush.
We are talking about a Prime Minister who says he was not in the loop. It is funny that the same day the report was tabled he held a press conference to announce his measures. He preferred to speak to the media rather than to Parliament. The next day he said that it was a small group. When he felt that people were beginning to have increasing difficulty believing him, he went back to the media at 1:30 p.m., to tell the journalists that it was no longer just a small group, but that it was quite a lot bigger than he thought and that there was some political direction involved.
Not only are the polls unanimous, but all of our colleagues were discussing it when they returned to the House. On the weekend, no one was talking about anything else. We heard how revolted the people felt, especially since this Prime Minister had made cuts in transfer payments for health care and education and in employment insurance, so that the government and good friends could make millions and millions of dollars. That is unacceptable. It does not matter whether the election happens on May 4, May 10, in the fall, or in 2005, the people of Quebec are going to say, “Liberals, begone”.
