Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my hon. colleague from Kings—Hants. I am pleased to speak to the motion put forward today condemning the government for using yet another federal agency, this time the Canada Information Office, to hand out lucrative, untendered government contracts to friends of the Liberal Party in exchange for support or donations.
I would like to start by reviewing some of the history behind the Canada Information Office, the forces behind its creation and its mandate. I then want to examine some of the evidence that has been presented to the House in recent days showing that, contrary to treasury board policy, large contracts were given to individuals and companies without going to public tender. These individuals and companies, in turn, gave money and resources to the Liberal Party of Canada. Finally, I want to link the questionable practices of the Canada Information Office with similar conduct of this government in other departments, such as HRDC and public works.
I will show that incidents at the Canada Information Office are not isolated, but part of a larger picture that shows consistently and convincingly that this government in its dying days has lost its moral compass and that this is a government which is corrupt.
The Canada Information Office was born out of the failure of the Prime Minister to deal with the 1995 Quebec referendum. As members will recall, in the six months leading up to the referendum the Prime Minister's strategy for winning the vote was like so many other issues of vital concern to Canadians, and that was to do nothing. Don't worry, be happy, the Prime Minister reassured us. We all remember how the referendum turned out. The Prime Minister came within one-half of a per cent of destroying this great country founded by the Conservative Party and built through the hard work of four generations of Quebecers and Canadians.
Canadians were outraged at this great failure by the Liberal Prime Minister. In the wake of his self-made disaster, the Prime Minister did what all good Liberals do when faced with public demand for action on an issue. He created a new government program and threw millions of dollars at it. Thus, the Canada Information Office was born.
He did this not because it would provide some long term national unity benefit, but because Liberals always do what is good for the Liberal Party first, not what is good for the nation.
There is an important distinction to be made here. Unlike previous Conservative prime ministers, such as the Right Hon. Joe Clark, who always did what was best for the country first, this Prime Minister ignores the serious problems facing Canada by giving voters the perception of doing something constructive.
Following the fine Liberal tradition of creating taxpayer funded bureaucratic solutions, on July 10, 1996 the Minister of Canadian Heritage announced that she was going to be the saviour of our country. How was she going to save the country? She would create this new government agency called the Canada Information Office. She would find $20 million to run it and solve all of our national unity problems.
When the minister made the announcement, she could not say what kind of information the office would provide, how it would distribute the money and where its budget would come from. She was also at a loss for words to explain why the Liberals were creating a new bureaucracy that would duplicate public information operations already in place.
Just about everything the heritage minister announced that day was already being done by the federal government in other departments.
Apparently it did not occur to the Liberal brain trust that public outrage following the 1995 referendum might be an indication that the current propaganda bureaucracy was ineffective and should be scrapped or replaced. Of course not. It meant that the Liberals should spend even more taxpayer dollars on a brand new government agency. Let me quote Toronto Star columnist Rosemary Speirs, who summed up the minister's announcement like this:
The journalists quickly realized that the Canadian heritage minister had only the vaguest notion of what this new $20 million-a-year `non-partisan' agency is supposed to do. She couldn't give examples, couldn't break down the budget, and when she finally called her press conference to a close, she left exasperation and puzzlement in her wake.
And so the Canada Information Office was born. What happens when we have 50 government bureaucrats sitting around with no mandate except that they know they have $20 million a year which they must spend? Is it within the realm of possibility that some of these millions of taxpayers' dollars might end up in the pockets of friends of the Liberal Party?
As hard as it might be for us to believe it, it appears that is exactly what has happened. Access to information documents released this week show that of the millions of dollars spent by the Canada Information Office each year, more than 20% of the contracts awarded by the office are given out without competition, including many that are worth more than the $25,000 threshold set by treasury board to go out for public tender.
In the previous two years $2.6 million was given to two businesses whose owners have in turn given substantially of their time and money to the Liberal Party of Canada. More than $1.6 million was handed to Communication et Strategie Inc. of Montreal in a joint contract with Groupe Cible between April 1, 1997 and December 31, 1999. Groupe Cible is headed by Serge Paquette, a defeated Liberal Party candidate and a long time party organizer in Quebec. This money was used to plan tours and handle media relations for Quebec ministers, a function normally done by the staff of the minister.
Another beneficiary of the Canada Information Office was Tremblay Guittet Communications Inc. of Ottawa, a company owned in part by Michèle Tremblay, who was press secretary to former Liberal Prime Minister John Turner, and a long time supporter of the minister responsible for the Canada Information Office and the Quebec political minister. Tremblay received an annual contract of $53,500 to advise the Minister of Public Works and Government Services, which has been renewed every year since.
Other Liberals have also benefited from contracts given out by the Canada Information Office. Richard Mongeau, through one of his companies, gave $15,000 to the Liberal Party. In return he received $389,000 in legal and communications contracts. He was handed $144,000 for advice he gave to the Canada Information Office in 1996-97 and was paid $160,000 to provide legal advice to the office in 1997 and 1998. On January 13 of this year he was appointed as a Quebec superior court justice. That is not a bad return for a $15,000 investment. The list goes on. These revelations are shocking, but unfortunately they are not isolated.
I would only make one conclusion from the evidence we have examined today. This is a corrupt government, rotten to its core. Canadians would be well served if the Prime Minister were to call an election this fall so that voters could show this group the door and replace it with a government led by the Right Hon. Joe Clark, who is dedicated to solving public policy problems through honest means.