Mr. Speaker, I would like to get back to this morning's motion. Essentially, this motion recommends “the creation of an independent public commission of inquiry”.
What happened is that HRDC's internal auditor selected 459 projects at random—somewhat like in a survey involving 1,200 people across Canada. Of these 459 projects, 80% were problematic, had not followed the normal procedure. What is worse is that 37 were extremely problematic. Of these 37, the RCMP are investigating 19 throughout Canada, three of them in the riding of Saint-Maurice, the Prime Minister's riding.
With his usual verve, the Prime Minister told us that only $250 had been misspent. Our suspicion is that, if all 11,000 projects were audited, the HRDC scandal would involve somewhere between $1 billion and $3 billion, an amount unprecedented in Canada; it is mind-boggling.
The Liberal Party has been accused of buying votes, and what happened in Saint-Maurice in 1997 clinches it. The Prime Minister literally won the election by handing out taxpayers' money and, unfortunately, this money was misused as in the case of Placeteco. This was on the news last night. It is scandalous.
I ask the member opposite to tell me how the Liberals are going to be able to refuse to create an independent commission of inquiry to look into all the projects when the vote is held at 5.30 p.m.