Mr. Speaker, I am pleased and honoured to share in the debate today with my leader, the member for Halifax.
I listened with care but also with disgust to a lot of the things that have been said on the government side, not just today but on other occasions, in defence of the Prime Minister.
I am reminded, probably because of my previous training, of a number of biblical insights in which people talk about ears that cannot hear and eyes that cannot see. Of course the more common version of this is “there are none so blind as those who will not see”.
It seems to me that we have this kind of wilful blindness on the part of government backbenchers and on the part of everyone on the government side who refuse to see that there is a genuine problem here with respect to how the Prime Minister behaved in relation to his shares in the Grand-Mère golf course and in relation to the various things that he did in respect of the future of the Grand-Mère inn, in particular, calling and lobbying the president of the Business Development Bank with respect to a loan for the inn.
I am also reminded of the teaching which condemns people who are so busy pointing out the sliver in the eye of someone else that they cannot see the beam in their own eye.
What we have seen time and time again in the House is a form of ad hominem argument that I think degrades this place over and over again, which is responsible in part for the low opinion people have of politics and politicians.
Over and over again we have heard from the government side, when members get up, comments made about the Leader of the Opposition and the troubles he had with respect to a libel suit in Alberta. We have had the fate of the hon. member to my left here in law school mentioned. We have had all kinds of things mentioned that have absolutely nothing to do with the legitimacy or illegitimacy of the call for an inquiry, or the allegations that have been made which lead to the call for an inquiry.
It does no one any good to have the Minister of Industry talk about people who are making these allegations and calling for the inquiry. We saw it recently when a Liberal member got up and instead of asking my leader a question about her speech, he made some allegation about the NDP being in training for the civil disobedience at the Quebec City summit, which was false to begin with because what people are training for is how to handle the police when they come after them, not how to go about committing civil disobedience and getting arrested. Even if that were true, what would that have to do with the quality or the legitimacy of the call for an inquiry? It is like playing in a sandbox here. Somebody makes a legitimate request and people get up and say that our mother did this, our father did that or our grandfather did this yesterday. It is no wonder people do not have a high opinion of this place.
It seems to me that the Liberals are so accustomed to patronage and to feathering their own nests and the nests of their friends that at a certain point they cannot tell any more when patronage, which is questionable in itself, particularly when it is to the extent that the Liberals practise it, moves over on the gauge into conflict of interest. Frankly, I think this is what happened to the Prime Minister. At a certain point patronage crossed over into conflict of interest and he hardly noticed because there is so much arrogance there. There is a feeling that it is a one party political state and a one party political culture and basically the Liberals can do whatever they like.
It is that kind of attitude that permeates everything that has to do with the disbursal of government money. We see it not just in respect of the Prime Minister's actions, but we see it in the actions of the Business Development Bank in general. We see it with respect to the Export Development Corporation. We see it with respect to the Canadian International Development Agency. We saw it in spades last year when we talked about the way money was disbursed through HRDC.
Everything is turned to political ends, either political in a collective sense or political in a sense of rewarding Liberal friends for support. In this case, the money was sought for a hotel, a situation in which the Prime Minister stood to gain.
One of the more curious arguments that has been made. again by the Minister of Industry, is that because the Prime Minister lost money, this clears up the matter. Did it not occur to the Minister of Industry that those shares stood to go up or down, contrary to what the Deputy Prime Minister said at one point in the House when he tried to tell the House that the price of the shares was fixed so it did not matter what the Prime Minister did?
We have found out that is not true, like a lot of other things that have been said over the last several months. The price of the shares could change. The price of the shares in the end was less than what the Prime Minister originally sought to sell them for. This is supposed to be argument enough for us to drop it; but if the value of the shares was in flux, then yes, the Prime Minister lost. However he could have lost more or he could have lost less.
Does the Minister of Industry think that the Canadian people, the media and members of parliament were born yesterday? If the price of the shares could change then they could go up or down. That is precisely a question of the Prime Minister's behaviour between the period of 1993 and 1999, between the initial bill of sale and when the sale was finalized. We want to know what happened in between. Is that so unreasonable?
I remember being on my feet in the House calling for the Prime Minister to release all relevant documents. The problem is he has not released all the relevant documents and it looks like he does not intend to. We need to have an inquiry in order to determine what happened in that space of time. Why do we need that? It is for a number of reasons.
Frankly I would like to see the inquiry clear the Prime Minister. I do not want to live in a country where the Prime Minister is found to be engaging in a conflict of interest. I do not want to live in a country where it is never cleared up as to whether the Prime Minister was in a conflict of interest. I would much rather live in a country where an inquiry is held when there is a serious allegation of conflict of interest and the matter is resolved and cleared for the benefit of all.
Another reason is so that parliament can get on with doing more of what we should be doing. Government members have been very cute in this regard. They ask why the opposition did not ask about this and ask about that. When we do, we do not get decent answers anyway. They sure showed that last week. It has been suitably reported and they have had to answer for it.
I call the attention of the House to an earlier time in another place when an allegation of conflict of interest was made in May 1986 against a cabinet minister in Manitoba, a good friend of mine, former energy minister Wildon Parasiuk. What did he do? He immediately resigned. Former chief justice of Manitoba, Samuel Freedman, was asked to conduct an inquiry. By August he was back in the cabinet because he had been cleared and the allegations were found to be false. Is that not a much better scenario for the Prime Minister?
I am not suggesting that the Prime Minister resign, but certainly an inquiry could be set up. At some point we could have a ruling on just what went on. That would be a much better way to deal with this matter than the way the Prime Minister has dealt with it so far.