Mr. Speaker, this is a curious debate we are having today because I believe it is a diversionary tactic along with so much else the government is doing these days. I cannot help but believe that. Had we not had the disclosure of all of the conflict and the sleaze that we have had in the last couple of months I am sure the government would not have brought this up at this time.
If we look back in recent history we will find that leading up to the 1993 election the government promoted the concept of increased ethics in government. Undoubtedly that was well-founded at the time. There were some allegations of misconduct in the previous government which the Liberals were trying to replace. The Liberals made that an election issue and it resonated with Canadians. There were a lot of people who voted for our party, the Reform Party at that time, who said that was one of the reasons they voted for someone else.
Out west a lot of people said that they would not vote for the Conservatives because there was a lot of evidence that they were not on the up and up when it came to ethical behaviour. However, they said they were not voting for the Liberals either because they still remembered some of the things that they had done. Therefore, they gave this new party an opportunity to begin spreading its influence, hopefully one that was positive and directed toward improving not only the ethical behaviour of government but also fiscal behaviour and behaviour in many other areas.
I remember many years ago when I was teaching in a high school there was a problem in our school. Audio-visual equipment kept disappearing. All of a sudden one of the projectors was gone, then one of the screens and then a tape recorder disappeared. I remember how incensed we were when the solution to solve that problem was to increase the amount of time that teachers would spend monitoring the halls at noon. In other words, instead of having three people on hall duty at noon it was increased to five or six.
We said that it was absurd because whoever was taking that equipment had access to the room where it was stored and none of the teachers had keys to that room. We had to go to one person who had a key. It was either that person or someone else who had a key who was liberating the equipment. We objected because there was a problem that was identified but the solution was opposite to what would have solved the problem.
The reason I give that example is because we have the same thing here. Unfortunately, we have here a culture of corruption. That is a phrase that has been used. It is not used inadvisably. I do not believe we are heading in the right direction if we were to say that in the midst of this culture of corruption the problems would be solved by coming up with another document. Will we behave differently from what we believe in our hearts because of the presence or absence of a document?
I have the advantage of sitting in the back row on the opposition side but directly opposite, for all intents and purposes, the Prime Minister. When we ask questions I get an opportunity to observe not only his body language but I also get to hear his words. In the last couple of months when accused of steering public money into purposes for which it was not originally intended, he seemed to suggest that it was normal. I found that to be incredible.
He said it explicitly. He said that he was just doing his job as a member of parliament. This happens with other members. The solicitor general was asked about trying to get a contract for a school in P.E.I. That was just a good MP working for his constituents. It so happens from my understanding that the college was not even in his constituency. He was acting as a political minister for the province. His job was to get money from the federal coffers into his province as a political minister.
Yet when we asked questions of the political minister, the Speaker, with all due respect, ruled them out of order. He said it was not a proper ministry. It was not labelled and not listed in Hansard as one of the ministries. The questions were ruled out of order because a ministry did not exist. Yet the government ministers and the Prime Minister were telling us that this was normal, people just did this.
It is the thinking that has to change. These people must come to the realization that whether it is written in a code or not, it is wrong. That is the simple bottom line of it. People do not take things that do not belong to them, nor do they take things and give them to their friends if they do not belong to them.
I am incensed at the lack of ethical behaviour by the government. It is totally wrong what it is doing. It is wrong to give contracts to businesses where there is no intention of doing any work, but there is no qualm at cutting the cheque.
I have wondered about this. Where has the breach come from? I strongly doubt, and I have no evidence for it, that this was instigated by the public servants themselves. I do not know what would be in it for them. Unless they were getting immediate kickbacks from the scheme then there was nothing in it for them. In the long term it would have to be a pretty substantial one to persuade them to do this. Their job would be at risk, at least we would think so, if they were caught.
Where then does this come from? I have a suspicion, but again we cannot find out, that the source of the problem was a directive from higher up, from the political minister for the province. I will tell members the reason why I believe this.
When Nicole Simpson in California was murdered there was this bizarre situation where the helicopters hovered over the white Bronco. It was reported that O.J. Simpson was in it, apparently holding a gun to his own head. There were other stories that were circulating at the time. There was probably nothing that cast more doubt on his innocence than that particular occurrence. What bizarre behaviour if he did not know anything and was not involved.
I have used an analogy and I bring it back to the case at hand. In January there was a sudden and unexpected cabinet shuffle. The result of that shuffle included the former public works and government services minister being released from his post. He resigned from cabinet and resigned as a member of parliament and off he went to Denmark. That was totally bizarre. If there was nothing behind it in terms of these contracts that were going on in Quebec, that was bizarre behaviour. Why would one just out of the blue one day say that his job was done here, and he was gone. I cannot understand that.
The Prime Minister used to get up and say that this was a minister who was doing a fine job and he supported him. He said that for everybody, no matter what the controversy. Those words are meaningless. If the same words are used all the time, regardless of the situation, then it does not take long and the words become meaningless.
The Prime Minister's testimony that this was an excellent minister and he supported him all the way proved not to be true when in January he sent him hurtling over to Denmark. Why would he do that? We have no way of finding out. The Prime Minister will not answer the question directly and I guess he does not have to. The rules of the House state that we are free to ask any question and the government is free to give any answer. Most of the time when we ask a question that is directed toward getting at these facts we receive the most absurd response. Sometimes, in fact almost always, the answer has no relation to the question at all.
As a humorous diversion, I recall when I was a youngster we used to relish in riddles. I do not know if I can remember this one correctly because we are talking decades ago and I was probably in grade 4 or 5. This was the riddle: “If your mother were a $5 bill and your father were a cat, how many flapjacks would it take to shingle the roof of a doghouse?” The answer is 23 because a Ford does not have feathers. That does not make any sense.
Yet I have thought of that riddle many times in question period. We ask questions of the minister, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Prime Minister. The responses that we get have about the same relationship in comparison to the riddle that I just told. We ask questions on specific aspects of the investigation, where the money went, who was accounting for it or who had the right to sign for it. Invariably--