Chair, to answer through you to my colleague, who is questioning the accuracy of my statements—I know he normally hangs on every word I say in these discussions—I did say if one were to believe the media reports of the last few days, and there have been, of course, media reports, they have been stating that Roy Cullen was the member of Parliament in question. If that is true, and I would suspect, Chair, that there is some truth to that.... We noted the last time there was a vote on the extension of the Afghanistan mission that there were several Liberal members of Parliament who voted with the government. I would think, Chair, there is probably a better than 50-50 chance that the media report was true.
I would suggest, Chair, that again, if the budget passes and the next confidence vote is that of extending the Afghanistan mission, and of course there has been no decision as to when that motion would come before the House, that would put the Liberals in a very precarious position, a very difficult position, one that they want to avoid at all costs, I would suggest.
Again, that absolutely narrows their options in terms of whether they vote for an election now or whether they somehow manage to avoid an election until it better suits the political needs of the Liberal Party of Canada. I think they have started to determine, Chair, that there is no way to get out of it, that we need to have an election now, only because we can't avoid major controversy on Afghanistan. We can't avoid the type of internal division that will surely follow a vote of a divided caucus on extending the Afghanistan mission. That means, Chair, that we may be looking at an election call within a month.
From the Liberal perspective, I'm sure they're thinking: “What then can we do to try to gain as much political advantage in the next month as we can? Are there any policy issues that we can advance? Are there any weaknesses within the Tory policy position that we can exploit, or is there any scandal that we can create that might give us some form of political advantage?”
I would suggest to you, Chair, that they have determined in many of their strategy meetings that this is one of the issues they need to try to exploit. This is potentially something that they could go to the polls with and say, it's a scandal. Chair, there are normally only two primary things that tend to bring down governments—financial or fiscal mismanagement and scandal. It's clear that this committee, at least the opposition members of this committee, are well into their strategic approach to try to create a scandal.
Chair, I should also point out a couple of fundamental flaws in some of the things they have said—some contradictions, if you will. I mentioned a few moments ago that during their conference of yesterday, the opposition members stated that if left unchecked, if this matter wasn't dealt with quickly, the Tories could potentially exceed their national advertising cap by $10 million. I think we're going to find, Chair, in the days and the weeks to come...you'll see that figure being bandied about more and more, when in fact according to pretty accurate estimates based on the allegations of impropriety from the 2006 election, if in fact all of the allegations of overspending were true, the amount the Conservative Party would have exceeded their elections cap was about $800,000 to $850,000, not $10 million.
But again, that's not sexy enough. That doesn't really ring true. That's not a big enough number. So the opposition members are coming up with this fictitious and totally absurd number of $10 million, and I'm sure that's what we're going to hear. That further underscores my contention that what's going on here, these allegations from the opposition, are nothing more than partisan attempts to create a scandal where none exists.
I can see no other reason that they would have raised this figure of $10 million except for the fact that it has some impact; it has headlines. They didn't want to say, well, that doesn't make sense. They didn't want to look at the facts and find the average transfers from the federal party to local campaigns being far less than $30,000. No, that wouldn't create headlines. So they have to manufacture a figure that they hoped would make headlines.
Chair, that is just one more example to demonstrate my contention that this has nothing to do with finding out whether or not Conservatives acted in some improper manner during the 2006 election, but it has everything to do with the fact that they are trying to create a scandal.
Once again, Chair, let's agree, without question, upon one thing: how Elections Canada has set the rules and how the relationship between the national party and the local campaigns are to work. I read into testimony yesterday that by Elections Canada's own guidelines, the national party is allowed in an unrestricted fashion to transfer funds to the local campaign, and the local candidate has been allowed, up until recent changes, but certainly was allowed in 2006, was absolutely within their rights, to use that money that was transferred in to promote either their own candidacy or the national campaigns, or to promote the leader. In other words, by Elections Canada's own guidelines, you can transfer money from the national party to a local campaign; that local campaign can create and print and produce, whether it be in print or electronically, a national ad, and that's fully within the rules. But what are the allegations of the opposition?
They're saying, “You can't do that”, and that's all they have to go on. It's simply their allegation that it is wrong. And that's, Chair, why we are so—perhaps it's a misnomer, but I think it's pretty accurate—desperate to get our court case heard as quickly as possible. Without question, we believe we have a solid case that will absolutely demonstrate that we did nothing wrong.
We are also so firm in our convictions that we want to bring that discussion to this level. But in an attempt to do that, Chair, we need to have access, which we will have in a court of law, to information—
