Mr. Speaker, I will begin by pointing out that I have been on the Standing Committee on Public Accounts for five years now. It is therefore my pleasure to deal with all reports, remarks and comments by the Auditor General.
As hon. members are aware, two weeks ago certain parts of the report were leaked to the press, and I find this regrettable. Normally, when a report is to be released, it has a specific release date. In this case, that date is November 25. The leaks reported in the Globe and Mail of course again referred to amounts that had supposedly been authorized by the Prime Minister. There was mention of $100 million to Bombardier for the Challenger aircraft.
There was reference to the possibility that, during the last election campaign, money had been paid out by the federal government to carry out polls on behalf of the Quebec Liberal Party. That really got my attention, because it took me back to the unfortunate occurrences at the time of the 1995 referendum.
I was present when the big thinker behind that program—what we called the Canadian campaign—said that we were at war. That war later was the excuse for a kind of reward program for the advertising agencies that had contributed to setting up the Canadian pride campaign.
It eventually ended up in the Groupaction affair; that company was found at fault for having published three similar reports. We remember that the Auditor General later asked the RCMP to investigate.
We tried, with the means at our disposal, to establish the links between the Prime Minister's office, Groupaction, and the other companies named in what has been called the sponsorship scandal.
I am on the offensive again today, because I want an explanation. Through these leaks, we are told that, possibly, some money were taken from Canada's treasury to finance studies or polls for the Liberal Party of Quebec; once again it closely resembles what has happened in the past.
I hope that the House will continue to sit and that we will have an opportunity to see the famous Auditor General's report on this matter. In the meantime, however, I would still like to ask the Government of Canada if it has any more information to give us on the subject of the leaks to the Globe and Mail , the questions my colleagues have asked, and the question I asked myself on this specific topic.
I would like to know whether there have been further developments, and whether further information has been obtained about the possibility that funds were used to subsidize polls for the Liberal Party of Quebec.