Mr. Speaker, thank you for recognizing me. I am certain the member for Saint-Hubert would have delivered an excellent speech. I will try to be just as good.
A moment ago I heard some Liberal members tell the member for Beauport-Montmorency-Orléans that it was all the Conservatives' doing. I believe we should set the record straight. Family trusts are the creation, a great big Liberal baby, of the Liberals under Pierre Elliott Trudeau, in 1970.
In 1970, Pierre Elliott Trudeau in his great wisdom created family trusts for 21 years to reward friends of the government, friends of the Liberal Party and other federal parties, since the main goal of family trusts is to avoid taxes and allow families to get richer.
Therefore, in 1970, the Liberal government of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, of which the present Prime Minister was a member, since the member for Saint-Maurice was in Pierre Elliott Trudeau's cabinet in 1970, created family trusts for 21 years.
What happened in 1991, 21 years later? The Tories, who were against family trusts in 1970, came into office with Mr. Mulroney as Prime Minister, and they decided to maintain the family trusts.
Really, 1991 was an exceptional year. I think that our viewers should pay attention to what is going to be said next, if they ever had doubts about the efficacy of the public service. I will tell them what happened on December 23, 1991, Christmas Eve, at about 11.30 p.m. Some public officials went in to work, to allow the Bronfman family, two wealthy families in fact, to transfer some $2 billion to the United States.
The day before Christmas, some government employees came to Ottawa, went in to their offices at 11.30 p.m. and authorized multibillionaire families to transfer $2 billion to the United States without paying a single penny in taxes.
Do you know what kind of Christmas gift that represented for those families in 1991? It meant approximately $500 million, an amount which the Canadian taxpayers paid, donated to those multibillionaire families. What did the Tory government and the Liberals do meanwhile? They turned a blind eye. Because, as we all know, these families give to Liberals and Tories alike.
Fundamentally, these families are federalists. Whether the Liberal or Conservatives are in power is of no consequence to them. In any case, they manipulate them through their campaign fund. This is how they manipulate the big parties opposite, the parties that are funded by these big families. This is why the Liberal or Conservative government is so generous.
Here we have the biggest scandal of the century breaking out. We learned about this scandal, $2 billion transferred from Canada to the United States without any tax being paid. What did the government do? What did the Bloc Quebecois do? The Bloc Quebecois immediately condemned this action, especially when we know that the Liberal government is attacking the poorest. It makes cuts to unemployment insurance, to transfer payments. What must the provinces do, then, if they are stuck with cuts of $4.5 billion, like this year? They have to cut welfare, health care. It
is the federalists opposite, the Liberals opposite, who are primarily responsible for that.
We know that two families got $2 billion out of Canada. We know that the government seems to have trouble finding money for social programs. What did the Bloc do? It asked a parliamentary committee to examine the issue and to see whether or not the officials who met one Christmas eve to give a nice $500 million gift to two multimillionaire families in Canada, had not shown a lack of integrity.
It is obvious that, at the time, Liberals sitting on the committee agreed with the Bloc Quebecois. They were really astounded by that announcement, by that scandal, and they seemed to want to get to the bottom of the issue. They seemed to want to co-operate with the Bloc Quebecois, the official opposition, to examine the issue, so this would not happen again.
However, the members who had shown some resistance, who had dared voice their opinion before checking with the Prime Minister, fell back into line, saying there was no problem, everything was all right. But it is not all right to let this go on.
The committee had to determine if there was any interference by officials. Did they or did they not show any lack of integrity? These are the big questions the committee had to ask and answer. Instead, all the Liberal members of the committee spent the whole time trying to sidestep the issue, to avoid shedding light on this extremely important matter.
Did the committee have the power, the authority to shed light on this matter? Yes, it did. Had it made use of all its powers and all the parliamentary mechanisms available, it could indeed have shed light on the matter. Yes, it could definitely have pointed a finger at those responsible and provided a permanent solution to the problem.
What did the Liberal majority in the committee do? What were they instructed to do by the Prime Minister of Canada? They started by preventing the committee from fulfilling its mandate. That is what they did. They refused to use the investigative powers available to them. They would not let the committee hear the testimony of all the officials involved. They did not want the committee to hold more than two meetings to consider this scandal.
It is the scandal of the century. Never before in Canadian history have such huge amounts been taken out of the country without the proper taxes being paid. The Liberal government across the way and its Prime Minister persist in wanting to protect the friends of the Liberal Party, those who put money into the party's campaign fund. I am sure that, on the eve of calling an election, the Prime Minister got on the phone to remind a few friends they had been spared in the family trust scandal, adding: "I hope you will remember how good the Liberal Party was to you, because there is an election coming".
That is how it works. They had all the facts, but chose not to act. They would rather let things be. They ran interference when Bloc members asked questions. Yet, $2 billion was taken out of the country. I would say that was pretty serious. What did the Bloc members on the committee do? They drafted a dissenting opinion to make it clear to the government they disagreed with the government's attitude on this issue.
Quite frankly, with respect to this issue, given how much money is involved, I think it is fair to say, seriously and honestly, that the Bloc Quebecois took a very effective approach on the issue and acted with professionalism in immediately blowing the whistle on this scandal and seeking to correct the situation.
There is no way that all aspects of an issue as important as this one can be considered in just two days. No way. This was not the first time that the Liberal government used such a tactic. The government did the same thing in the case of the Somalia inquiry. It did not give enough time to the commissioners and judges to get the real answers to the legitimate questions of Quebecers and Canadians.
The same is true in the case of family trusts, this outrageous scandal. Some Canadians and Quebecers had legitimate questions, but the solutions and answers to these questions could not be found in two days.
In a dissenting report, the Bloc Quebecois referred to some evidence and testimony before the committee. You cannot hear many witnesses in two days, but you can still take note of certain things.
Mr. Speaker, since my time is almost up, I would like to conclude by moving a motion.
I move:
That the House do now adjourn.
