No, it never ends, but question period will be here soon. Maybe we will be able to ask some questions about that.
Let me get to Aérospatiale Globax Inc. and the illegal trust funds. On March 7, 1997 the owner, René Giguère, received a TJF grant of $2.04 million, announced a month prior to the election call. There we go again, $2 million right before the election. In other words “If something happens to us here we want to make sure you get the cash first”. Its two daughter companies are Placeteco and TechniPaint. Questions have also been raised any number of times in the House on those two companies. As recently as yesterday, the minister said that if anything was coming out through access to information that we could have it.
However, if we look at the track record of the government when it comes to forwarding documents, most of the pages in the documents have either been whited out or shredded out and precious little is left to get our hands on to really look at.
Let us look at the political donations of this bunch: $4,000 from Globax to the Prime Minister's personal campaign in 1997; $10,692.40 from Globax to the Liberal Party in 1997; $3,467.90 from Placeteco to the Liberal Party in 1997; $604.48—I am not sure how someone gives 48 cents to a political party unless it is rounded out—from TechniPaint to the Liberal Party in 1997; and $569.60 from Placeteco to the Liberal Party in 1998. This totals $19,334.38. This is not a bad return. Get a grant and give back a donation and things are looking pretty sweet.
What a wonderful way to do business: Give some, take some, give some and on and on it goes. That is the way the Prime Minister says that business goes. He says that he is just being a good little MP for his constituents. That was in March 1997.
On April 23, 1997, just before the writ was dropped, the first instalment of $440,000 was disbursed to the company. Yee hee, here is $440,000.
On March 27, 1998, almost a year later, on the last day of the 1998 fiscal year, the second instalment was paid to a trust fund set up with the law firm Champagne Cleroux Avocats. To ensure that TJF funds did not lapse at the end of the fiscal year, the lawyer involved was Gilles Champagne. We have seen his name before if we have looked through Hansard . I have some Hansard clippings here, that I will get to in a little while, but they are precious. Gilles Champagne was talked about quite a little bit. He was a two-time political appointee of the Prime Minister to Canada Post Corporation. His contract was renewed on September 28, 1999 and he is still there.
On May 5, 1998 an HRDC staffer commented by e-mail, and I quote:
The subsidy being an interesting element for a future buyer, the Office of the Prime Minister wishes that HRDC do all that which is legally possible to do because if the sale does not take place, a bankruptcy and layoffs will result.
Businesses do go bankrupt and layoffs do happen but this is a staffer saying “Come on, better get this going here. Do all you possibly can”. It is a very strange thing.
On June 11, 1998 TJF officer, Clément Parent, wrote that he had serious reservations about the sale. This was somebody who was pretty worried about this. Did the Liberals pay any attention? No.
On June 17, 1998, just a few days later, HRDC authorized that all but $10,000 of the $1.2 million in the trust fund be paid to the Globax subsidiary, Placeteco, now purchased by Claude Gauthier owner of Transelec Inc. We have seen him on the pages before.
It carries on. On December 10, 1998 Placeteco went bankrupt anyway. All the jobs that the minister and the Prime Minister talked about, all the wonderful jobs that were created, were created and then the employees were laid off. Mr. Gauthier re-purchased it. Do we not just love it? We can go bankrupt and then just re-buy the thing a few days later, eight days later. He stated that as the new owner he would not be bound by the hiring requirements contained in the contract with HRDC and resumed operations with just 62 employees, less than half of the 155 jobs he had agreed to. It never ends.
Mr. Gauthier got government money, went belly up and then re-bought eight days later and said “Here I am again, all you lucky people, and I do not have to abide by your guidelines. I do not need to hire 155 people. I will hire a skeleton crew of 62 to do the work”. That is what we call cash in our pockets. It is a sweet deal.
On April 7, 1999, just a year ago, the last instalment of the $400,000 was paid in trust to Deloitte & Touche at the request of Mr. Giguère who claimed that a big deal for TechniPaint was in progress. It is like someone saying “Stay tuned, a big deal is coming. We want more money and we are coming for more. Everything will be okay because we have a big deal cooking”. If it was such a big deal there ought to have been enough private people to invest in it.
On May 25, 1999, almost a year ago, HRDC headquarters heard of trust funds and found that the first trust fund violated section 34 of the Financial Administration Act and Treasury Board guidelines. This was starting to get serious. It was not just my word against his word. This was the Treasury Board guidelines and the Financial Administration Act.
The second trust fund violated Treasury Board guidelines. The funds had to be closed and the money, with interest, returned to the consolidated revenue fund. Great, that is a really sweet and practical use of taxpayers' dollars. Why this money is being shipped out to these people in the first place would be a really good question to ask.
It goes on. Number five is the lobbying activities of René Fugère. I wish I could be reading members a novel and that this was chapter five of a fictitious work, but this is so true that it hurts and it so relevant that it hurts even more.
I am sure all members remember René Fugère. I am sure they read Hansard . Whatever they miss in the daytime they catch up on at night and they will know René Fugère. On May 28, 1997 René Fugère, an unpaid aide to the Prime Minister, appeared on the Prime Minister's behalf at a press conference four days before the 1997 election to announce a TJF grant of $164,000 for Yvon Duhaime and the Auberge Grand-Mère. Why in the world, during a writ period when an election was on, was the Prime Minister muddling around giving cash to anybody? I suppose it looked legitimate because somebody was working on his behalf. René Fugère was out there. It would have almost gone against the guidelines that I read from a little earlier about the wonderful on site visits that Liberal MPs can have. These were really good. The criteria was, of course, that it was really good for site visits as well and designed to be used by the Prime Minister, ministers, secretaries of state and members of parliament when planning to visit regions and home constituencies. With an election on, the Prime Minister had to be somewhat astute and undercover, so René Fugère went on his behalf and said, “Here is the cash, Yvon”. That was $164,000 right at election time.
On August 9, 1997 we had the Auberge des Gouverneurs in Shawinigan. Old René Fugère had a hand in that as well. Access documents showed that Fugère lobbied for and received an extra $100,000 in January 1999 for Mr. Thibeault. That was not bad. That was on top of the $600,000 TJF grant he had already received in 1997. He was a fairly profitable fellow.
On March 12, 1998 Celebrity Boats gave all lobbying authority to Mr. Fugère in writing.