Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.
Today we heard a ridiculous answer regarding this ridiculous situation. We are calling for a public inquiry that would be transparent and independent to look into all the problems associated with the sponsorship program. We heard the comments made by the former vice-president of Groupaction on a Montreal television station. Now we are being told that these matters are the subject of a police inquiry, which will become a judicial inquiry.
However, a police and judicial inquiry is not a political inquiry. The RCMP's mandate will not be changed to transform this police inquiry into a political inquiry. If a conflict of interest does exist, then we are not talking about a political inquiry, but about a police and judicial inquiry.
The problem is this. When there start to be serious connections, the only way for the people of Quebec and the rest of Canada to realize how complex and strong the connections are between the politicians and these communications firms is to simply and immediately set up a public, independent and transparent inquiry. Every time we raise this issue, we are told “A police investigation is under way”.
Let us not forget, as I mentioned earlier, that there were irregularities in 130 contracts. That is the figure we have? Again, the internal report prepared by Public Works and Government Services was not made public.
In other words, we are dealing with the same people who carried out the internal investigation in 2000, and nothing has happened. The opposition, especially the Bloc Quebecois, and even the media had to carry out their own investigations before the government decided to act.
The people watching us have seen several heads roll. I will not go over the list of ministers who were brought down. Another minister was linked to this issue and he cannot tell us that he is not aware of the situation. When we started to ask questions after his appointment, we gave him enough time to look into this. But all he is doing right now is referring the contracts to the RCMP and setting up internal investigations.
Yesterday, the day before and last week, we heard from the vice-president of Groupaction and from Mr. Charles Guité that the Prime Minister's office was involved. This speaks for itself.
We need a public, independent and transparent inquiry. Only then will the people of Quebec and of Canada find out what really happened.