Mr. Speaker, this is a very interesting opposition day we are having today.
We have a real scandal before us. Even in the opinion of the Prime Minister, it hearkens back to the great Mulroney years. The Prime Minister got carried away last week saying that things were no worse than they had been in Brian Mulroney's time.
I think they are worse. Here, a deliberate effort is being made to play with democracy. For example, in the riding of Saint-Maurice, the week before the election on June 2, 1997, there was an avalanche of often questionable grants, including to the golf club and to a certain motel the Prime Minister is quite familiar with.
In Anjou—Rivière-des-Prairies, my friend and former colleague, Roger Pomerleau, was beaten by my former union head. Thanks to the abuse, his election cost taxpayers $25 million.
In the riding of Brant, where there is almost no unemployment, millions and millions of dollars were invested in mismanaged programs.
According to the polls, as they put it so well, if the trend continues, we have taken at random 459 files, which we have systematically studied and have come up with 37 nebulous cases, really nebulous.
There is no need for me to mention Vidéotron, McGill or the natives who repaid jewels with taxpayers' money. Off the top of my head, this represents an 8% rate of error in the administration of HRDC.
If there are in fact 10,000 files, at the rate of 8% there would be 800 cases, and 37 have been found. There are another 763 they will have to start looking for tomorrow morning.
I do not understand. I wrote a letter to the former Minister of Human Resources Development because, through his delivery assistance program, an arbitrary decision, he had allocated a certain questionable amount in my riding. I wrote him saying “Be careful, Mr. Minister. You are playing with public money. You are cutting the benefits of the unemployed and using the money to pad those who do not need padding. They are already well padded financially”.
Three months later—he often went to Paris too often, apparently —he wrote me to say “I do not understand, Mr. Chrétien, your not being proud at having $35,000 distributed in your riding”.
I am happy to have him give $35,000, but properly.