The other thing, of course, is that these questions were asked of former minister Bains, the architect of the Liberal green slush fund. He refused to answer. He gave the same answer to every question. Regardless of what the question was, the answer was not relevant. That's what prompted the question of privilege. When we asked him about the issue of the appointment process for Ms. Verschuren, all he could say was that he made appointments and didn't remember. These things are why we're here talking about the privilege motion I moved. While it's true that witnesses can give answers to questions that members may disagree with, they have to be relevant to the question. He didn't give one single relevant answer to any of the opposition members' questions.
Mr. Erskine-Smith knows that, because he was here at the committee. He heard it. Now, maybe he had a challenge understanding when the member asked whether he'd talked to Annette Verschuren in a phone call about the appointment. He said it was an application process, a fair and open process. I guess he doesn't understand how to make the distinction between yes and no, I spoke with her or I didn't, versus saying some automaton, hologram-type answer he was preprogrammed to say. It's one line all the time.
I understand the Liberals are upset that every time we have a meeting—except with former minister Bains—we uncover and reveal more Liberal corruption. All the other witnesses have been here answering the questions and revealing shocking revelations about these Liberal appointees, who were hand-picked by the Prime Minister and put in by Navdeep Bains. Somebody told him to do it, because it's very clear he didn't know what to do. He was just told something. All he seems to do is repeat things other people tell him to say. We're trying to get to the bottom of that.
It's incredible that the privilege breach we saw yesterday with the former architect of the Liberal green slush fund, Navdeep Bains, was not seen by Liberal members as something to be troubled by. They're not troubled by the theft of $400 million. They're not troubled by the fact that it only represents half of what the Auditor General had available to look at. The Liberal members, including MP Erskine-Smith, have never once acknowledged the fact that, out of the $856 million in the audit period the Auditor General looked at, only half of the conflicts of interest were revealed, because she only looked at half the transactions. Shockingly, 82% were there.
Mr. Erskine-Smith would have us believe that an ADM sitting at every meeting never reported anything to Minister Bains. About 82% of the time, these Liberal appointees were voting on money for themselves. Never once would a senior bureaucrat have reported that up to Minister Bains or Minister Champagne, who was also silent on this for 40 months and never said anything until it was public.
These are the issues of privilege that former minister Bains breached. That's why we're here, and that's why the motion is on the table.
I will leave it at that for now, Mr. Chair. I'm sure we'll have great insight from the Liberal members, and perhaps an explanation from Mr. Erskine-Smith about his language.