Mr. Speaker, it is a shame for Canada that we have to be debating this in the House of Commons. It is a shame that there is not parliamentary reform that takes this issue out of the hands of the Prime Minister, where it is not legislated that the House can deal with the issue and that a private inquiry would be automatic in a situation like this.
It is really unfortunate that the members of the government cannot see that Canadians want this issue to be resolved by independent inquiry. They are doing everything that they possibly can to stop this from happening.
The issue we are dealing with in the House of Commons is whether or not there was a conflict of interest by the Prime Minister of Canada. That is the issue we must concern ourselves with.
The issue is very clear that the Auberge Grand-Mère Hotel received funding from the Business Development Bank of Canada because of the interference of the Prime Minister of Canada.
The Auberge Grand-Mère is adjacent to the Grand-Mère golf course in which the ownership of the shares was suspect at the time the Prime Minister was lobbying the BDC for a loan. The loan had been refused prior to the Prime Minister's lobbying. The Prime Minister told the House that he sold his shares in November 1993, three days before becoming the Prime Minister of Canada.
Canadians are concerned about the supposed agreement of sale with Jonas Prince, the owner of the Delta Hotel chain. It is unbelievable that two corporate lawyers would sign a handwritten agreement with no witnesses, with no place of signature and with no corporate seal, and Canadians do not expect that it is real. There was no down payment. There was no deposit even. In any kind of sale, even transferring the ownership of a car, there has to be some exchange of money.
Mr. Prince did not make a $75,000 loan payment on November 1, 1994, as was called for in the agreement. He did not make another similar payment in November of 1995, two years later. It was on January 27, 1996 when the Prime Minister first contacted the ethics counsellor to inform him that he had not been paid. If it was in a blind trust, how in heaven's name did he know he had not been paid? He was not to be informed of what was going on.
According to the ethics counsellor, the Prime Minister and his lawyer were to look for a way for him to get paid. If that is not involvement in a blind trust, I do not know what is. If the contract was truly valid, why did the lawyer, who was supposedly handling the affairs, not take the issue to court? That did not happen. Three and a half years later these shares eventually were passed on, sold, transferred to one of the original partners in the golf course.
One has to ask oneself why there was an accompanying document in 1999 signed by the Prime Minister in regard to his company J&AC Consultants. Why was there even that document in 1999 if he had no interest? It is quite clear to Canadians watching this unfold that there was a financial interest of the Prime Minister in what was happening not only with the golf course but the hotel next door.
Liberal members may believe in incredible coincidences, but within a month of informing the ethics counsellor that he still was owed money, the Prime Minister held a private meeting with immigrant investors to discuss investing in a hotel. Funnily enough, one of the coincidences was that the Grand-Mère hotel eventually received $2.5 million in investor funds.
A couple of months later, and this is another coincidence, the Prime Minister called the BDC on behalf of the hotel. After the BDC rejected the loan, the Prime Minister continued to lobby on behalf of the hotel, and gee, what happened? BDC changed its mind and loaned some money to the hotel.
That did not happen without the interference of or influence by the Prime Minister of Canada. He is not an ordinary member of parliament but the Prime Minister of Canada and he actually met on occasion with the president of the bank at 24 Sussex Drive. I cannot invite somebody to 24 Sussex Drive to lobby him. The Prime Minister went to extreme lengths to ensure that the Auberge hotel stayed afloat. The question is why. Gee, I wonder why.
For any of us here to try to pretend that what happens next door with regard to property we may own has nothing to do with our financial well-being is fooling ourselves. Before coming to this place, I spent years as a realtor and I was also in municipal government. Let me tell the House that a municipal government informs adjoining property owners of any changes to properties next door because there is an interest. As a realtor, there is no way that I would ever have sold a house on a handwritten document that had no witness, no place of location and no corporate seal. There are reasons why realtors would not do that when selling someone's property: because it would not be upheld in a court of law and would not be made binding.
We talk about interest because that is where the conflict of interest comes in. There is absolutely no doubt in the minds of Canadians that there was a financial interest to the Prime Minister and his associates with the golf course and with the hotel. If that hotel had gone bankrupt, the Prime Minister would have lost a whole lot more money than he did with the value of his shares. If—