If I understood the Prime Minister correctly, what a minister cannot do because of the code of conduct, he has his staff or political organizers do it. It is just terrible.
Once again, I get the impression they are laughing at us, that some members opposite are trying to fool the public. How can the Prime Minister suggest that the Liberal Party and the government are so much at arm's length when ministers of the Crown give confidential information on subsidies to Liberal bagmen? That shows that ethics is a consideration for Liberals only when it suits them.
What became of the nice principles they were so proud of in the red book? If I had time, I would go through the list of the irregularities the Liberals have done during the 35th Parliament. We already have a pretty long list after only a few weeks.
What we have seen this week is but the tip of the iceberg. How can you explain that the Prime Minister did not issue a directive on an ethical conduct to his ministers after the Minister of Human Resources Development informed him of the RCMP investigation?
How could anybody believe that the Liberal government made such an omission because it cares so much about the ethics guidelines. What are we to make of the fact that the Solicitor General of Canada, who is in charge of the mounted police, like the Prime Minister calls them—somebody ought to tell him that it is now called the RCMP—was the only cabinet minister who did not know the Liberal Party of Canada was being investigated?
How can we explain the long delay between March 1997, when the scandal was discovered, and the search in the premises of the Liberal Party of Canada on June 12, 1997, just a few days after the government was re-elected? Something smells funny in all this! Perhaps there would have been a different public reaction on June 2, and perhaps the government would not be where it is today.
Are we to believe, and this is an extremely important question the public is asking today, that no government minister was aware that a certain Mr. Corbeil, a Liberal party staffer, was collecting funds at $25,000 a shot? Do you think that no one in that government was aware of it? Come on! Everyone knows that within the very organization of the Liberal party, they knew what was going on. They knew the Corbeil fellow.
In light of these facts, we are saying that it would have been in the Liberal government's best interest to respond favourably to the Bloc Quebecois invitation, when it proposed the creation of legislation on the public funding of political parties. Adoption of such an act would, of course, have had repercussions on the millions in the Liberal Party coffers which come from multinational corporations and various lobbies.
But that would have been the lesser evil, considering that our entire democratic system would have benefited in future from funding from party members and supporters. Passing such legislation would have made it easier for the famous ethics I speak of so often to find a place in our federal political mores.>
But I can already hear those opposite saying that the member for Berthier-Montcalm is totally unaware that they have an ethics commissioner even. Let us talk about this ethics commissioner. I was involved when the position was created, but the government opposite completely disregarded the remarks and requests of the Bloc Quebecois, the official opposition at the time.
The commissioner is not independent, since he is appointed by the Prime Minister, advises the Prime Minister on the sly, on a confidential basis, and has no say in decisions. I therefore have little to say for the ethics commissioner, because, between you and me, he is not very good at his job and is certainly the government's accomplice in keeping silent on a number of matters.
The initial weeks of the new Parliament have revealed the true face of this patronage government with its taste for light ethics. Everything is permitted—from dubious practices to partisan appointments.
Since I have little time left and since I am the justice critic, I cannot resist raising the latest and most offensive of this government's patronage appointments, while we are on the subject of dubious practices and partisan appointments. I am referring to the appointment of the new justice to the Supreme Court of Canada. This appointment of Michel Bastarache is the worst of the government's political appointments. He was appointed a justice of the supreme court.
Who is Michel Bastarache? A former colleague in the law firm where the Prime Minister did his Liberal Party of Canada purgatory. He is a good friend of the Liberal Party of Canada. He was part of a firm that gave thousands of dollars to the Liberal Party of Canada in its funding drive. Michel Bastarache's appointment is one of the worst the government opposite has made.
The worst of it all is that I heard the Prime Minister himself say he did not know Michel Bastarache. I would remind him that the signature on the preface to the book written by Mr. Bastarache in 1986 was that of Jean Chrétien.