Mr. Speaker, for two years the Prime Minister's office knew of the problems with the sponsorship program. As soon as the internal investigation was launched in 2000, the PMO could have put an end to the shenanigans.
However, the Prime Minister's close advisers preferred to spend their energy covering up the affair instead of ordering a real administrative reform and dealing with the guilty parties.
How can the Deputy Prime Minister, who is strangely silent in defence of the Prime Minister today, still say that an independent public inquiry is not necessary, when clearly it is the only way to truly find out what really happened, and more importantly, who was pulling the strings?