Madam Speaker, I am very honoured to have the opportunity to speak to this motion and in particular to share my time with the former prime minister, whose career, whose service to Canada and whose reputation are impeccable in the House.
As has been stated already, it is quite a sad attempt, and I would go so far as to say a pathetic attempt, by the government to deflect attention from the issue when we see the desperate references, even to go so far as to try to insult a person's family. I am surprised, frankly, that Liberal members on the opposite side of the House would, in their own conscience, sit by and cheer in their churlish, childish way those attempts to distract attention from the real issue.
We know what the real issue is. It is here and it has been defined in this motion as one calling for an independent, judicial, public inquiry into the affairs surrounding the Prime Minister's business transactions in his riding of Shawinigan.
The facts now on the public record are such that there is a mounting case, whether it be public opinion or whether it be evidence if it were before a criminal court, that would suggest there are irrefutable facts that the Prime Minister put himself deliberately in a conflict of interest by his business dealings and by his direct interventions with the Business Development Bank of Canada.
For many years it has been a longstanding accepted tradition that government would not deal directly with arm's length corporations that were set up to serve the public. This is what has happened.
The Prime Minister directly called the president of the Business Development Bank with the full knowledge that he had an interest in a golf course that was adjoining the hotel. He lobbied on behalf of that same hotel, in which he once held an interest, to give it public money, and this is the key. Public money in the amount of $615,000 was put into the hotel that was directly adjacent to the golf course while the Prime Minister still had a financial interest in that golf course. It is not rocket science. It is not any sort of a legal leap of faith to suggest that the Prime Minister had a stake in the approval of the loan to the Auberge Grand-Mère.
The evidence surrounding this and the attempts by the Liberal government to obscure, to cloud, to somehow make murky the clear evidence that the Prime Minister made this intervention from direct denials in the House, from letters and media manipulation on the part of the Prime Minister and some of his poisoned partisans like Warren Kinsella is very much something that should concern the Canadian people. People should be concerned about the efforts and the lengths at which the government has gone to obscure the truth.
Attempts to penetrate what has taken place through clear questions in the House, very straightforward penetrating questions, have been brushed aside. There has been continual public slurs of individuals' names, their records and their families. This again heightens the frustration and I would suggest the animosity of this debate.
There are clear indications now that the Prime Minister obviously did not have his shares in a blind trust, even though that was misstated on the floor of the House by himself and his trained protector, the Minister of Industry. There have been clear contradictions on the public record about the actions of Mr. Jean Carle, who lived in the Prime Minister's basement and who was his anointed son. He is the same individual who was dispatched to the Business Development Bank as a courier of PMO speaking points for the Business Development Bank president. The Prime Minister stood here and said there was no involvement of Mr. Carle on that file, which was completely false.
There is clear evidence that even Jean Pelletier, the Prime Minister's personal Rasputin, involved himself in this matter. He indicated that Mr. Carle was not introduced to the president of the Business Development Bank by him at a hockey game in Montreal. That in fact was a fallacy.
There have been many occasions where the Prime Minister could have been forthcoming. He could have come before the Canadian people and used the House as his forum to set the record straight. Instead he has done the opposite. He has taken every occasion to run from the truth and add further fuel to the fire by selectively releasing documents that try to exonerate him. It is now clear that this was very much an after the fact attempt to corroborate or somehow exonerate the Prime Minister. We know that this was not full disclosure.
As required by law, in a legal sense, in a criminal court full disclosure is necessary. The crown cannot decide whether to give little dribs and drabs of evidence to the defence to make its case. It has to give full disclosure. That obviously has not happened here. What we have seen are documents resembling, in the case of the supposed bill of sale, something that a couple of kids would write with a crayon on the back of a napkin at a Kool-Aid stand. This is not the type of documents or documentation we would expect from two millionaires with legal training.
Let us debunk the myth about the little guy from Shawinigan. This is the big enchilada from Ottawa with whom we are dealing. This is a multimillionaire who just wanted to get paid. He stated quite clearly in the House that he just wanted to get paid.
What does that denote? A financial interest, even though he maintained repeatedly and still maintains that he sold his shares in 1993. There is a very clear question here. Why is the name of the Prime Minister's company still appearing on documents in 1999, six years later? Obviously, a financial interest remained.
There are more mounting contradictions. The more we delve into it, it is like an onion. The more we peel away, more questions emerge. The government has gone to great lengths to try to obfuscate what has taken place. This plethora of contradictions remains.
We know we are supposed to put all assets in a blind trust when one enters the office. If a person is in cabinet, all the assets go into a blind trust. That obviously did not happen. There was a $300,000 debt owing and it was not declared. The incredible efforts that are being made here should be cause for alarm. Canadians deserve better, particularly from the Prime Minister. They have suffered now for several years this sad spectacle of the Prime Minister twisting and turning in the wind over the auberge affair.
It is a very complicated tale but at the very root of it is a simple matter. It is one of conflict of interest. It is one of a Prime Minister retaining a financial interest in a property while trying to enhance a nearby property. The government even tried to deny the connection between the golf course and the hotel, as did the industry minister and the very partial and involved ethics counsellor. It is absolutely false to suggest somehow that the hotel would not benefit from having the golf course or the golf course would not benefit from the hotel. Canadians are not that naive.
No one needs a business or real estate background to understand. The hotel includes in its literature the presence of the golf course nearby. The comments now on the public record from the owner, the good friend of the Prime Minister, Mr. Duhaime who bought the hotel from the Prime Minister stated under oath that he in fact relied on the golf course for business. To try to deny the obvious is really a sad spectacle on the part of the government.
The Prime Minister's credibility is very much at stake, as is the credibility of other individuals involved in the issue. The ethics counsellor, not to attack him personally, cannot have a shred of objectivity or credibility in this. He reports to the Prime Minister. His livelihood depends on the Prime Minister. It is unfair to even suggest that somehow he could fairly judge the circumstances. Even if he could, he could not report to parliament because the Prime Minister has set it up in such a way.
The truth is out there. We simply have to have a forum to get at the truth. A full judicial public inquiry would provide us with that opportunity. We have to submit the facts before that objective trier and that would very much satisfy the opposition. The Canadian public are calling for a public inquiry.
What would have happened in the cases of Milgaard, Morin and Marshall if there had been no opportunity to go back and revisit the facts and if they had not been given an opportunity to bring forward new evidence, put the matter behind them and shed light on this issue?
There is an old legal maxim that says guilt always hides from the light. The attempts that have been made on behalf of the government to keep the Canadian people in the dark clearly indicate there is more to this issue. The public deserves better. A full judicial inquiry would allow the public to put the issue behind them. It would allow the Prime Minister to put this behind him.