Exactly, they would not even hide $100. For every hard won cent the average citizen earns, the government is right there grabbing half of it. The public will remember this during the next election, and the public knows that the Bloc Quebecois also defends the interests of the middle class and of disadvantaged members of our society.
To justify its ineptitude and its lack of courage, the Liberal majority maintains that the committee found no element for which to cast doubt on the integrity of bureaucrats involved in the making of this premature decision. This is incredible. This is extraordinary.
Liberal MPs are being hypocritical and even naive in pretending to be able to pass judgement on the integrity of the bureaucrats involved. All of the Liberal MPs' actions during the committee meetings were a shameless attempt to bury the affair by trying to conceal the facts.
Numerous other examples make the list of inconsistencies, inexactitudes, lapses and differing versions even longer. From the outset of the committee's work, the Liberal majority, blatantly
manipulated by the government, prevented the public accounts committee from shedding light on the entire family trusts scandal.
The majority report is the crowning achievement in this blatant effort by the government to bury this scandal and to silence the truth in order to protect themselves. What we said during the 1993 election campaign, and will repeat during the next one, is that the Liberals and the Conservatives are like Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Put them into a hat and pull one out, there is no way to tell them apart.
Let us not forget that this family trust scandal happened in 1991, when the Conservatives were in power. Let us not forget that. We said to the Liberal majority: "Why do you not let us bring this fully out into the light? You have nothing to gain, but do you have something to protect?" Let us ask the question. Let us remember the 1993 election campaign, with its $1,000 parties at Senator Cogger's in Westmount, the fund raising parties attended by the present Prime Minister.
That is why, when campaign contributions are being examined, we say "Look at who is contributing to your campaign fund, and then you will know whom you are beholden to". We in the Bloc will be collecting funds for the next election campaign from ordinary people, $2 here, $5, $10 or $20 there. Our election campaign will not be funded by big business. Whom will we be answerable to after the next election? To the ordinary people who contributed to our campaign fund. We owe nothing to big business. Look at who is behind the funding of the Liberals, of the Conservatives. They are no different one from the other.
That is why with this dissenting opinion we, the Members of the Bloc Québécois, make the following recommendation, and I quote: "That a special commission of inquiry be set up, independent of the government, with the mandate to shed light on all of the events surrounding the December 23, 1991 decision and the subsequent use of this tax loophole by other rich Canadian families". That is what the Bloc Quebecois thinks.
To conclude, without a neutral investigation, free from all partisanship in the Liberal government, this scandal will never be brought out into the open. If the government has nothing to hide, no one to protect, nothing to feel guilty about, as it says, what is stopping it from putting such an commission of inquiry into place, one which will certainly absolve it of all blame? Or so the government has been telling us over and over for the past six months.
Once again, I must conclude that, unfortunately, the Liberal majority has gagged us in the public accounts committee, and again here today we are unable to tell Quebecers and Canadians what actually happened in this family trust scandal, where two rich families were able to transfer $2 billion to the United States without paying any income tax.