Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I do believe, given the context of my position and my statement with regard to the origin of this issue—I made and motivated my point very clearly in the very first round and several times during this investigation already—it points to the very direct instance where the vulnerability of our public service creates the kind of risk we're seeing in GC Strategies, which is very relevant.
I support this motion because of the intent to get to the bottom of how these individuals at GC Strategies were able to take advantage of our public service, not just once but several times. We've seen in the breaking of the story in La Presse in Quebec that it was over $250 million since 2015. Prior to that, we're seeing from information I'm gathering that under their former name, Coredal, they were able to contract over $7 million with the Conservatives. That's just in our initial findings.
It is true that there is a rot in the public service. That rot's been generational and I've been clear about that generational rot. Now we're seeing both the Liberals and Conservatives being true to what is the very fact of the vulnerability present in our public service.
I welcome the Liberals' motion towards transparency. I would invite my Conservative colleagues, who are also interested in accountability and transparency, to really delve deep in their own statements made many times about the risks that GC Strategies and players like them present and vote in favour of such a thing. Anything less would be a deflection and would be something that seeks to hide what is the origin of the very important contractors on the other side of this.
These contractors are known to the government. They were known to the Conservative Party and they were known to the prior government under Harper.
We need to get to the bottom of this. I welcome this level of transparency, and I hope that my colleagues do too.