Mr. Speaker, for a government and Liberal members who feel so confident about the direction they are taking on this horrific scandal, we would wonder why they would get that excited and defensive in this chamber.
As I was trying to say, the real test of the government's sincerity is whether or not it will make a commitment to call on the Liberal Party to pay back the money that was identified in the Auditor General's report as money taken from public coffers and put into the Liberal Party.
We are talking about two instances identified by the Auditor General. One is for about $300,000 from firms like Groupaction. After it received lucrative contracts from the Liberal government, money went back as donations to the Liberal Party. That is one instance.
The other is close to $300,000 in public money used for Liberal polling. That is also an abuse of public funds and that money should be paid back.
None of us should be casting widespread aspersions on the public service as the government and the President of the Treasury Board has tended to do by suggesting that there is a group of 14 off in the public service somewhere that have done all this.
We should be reminding the President of the Treasury Board that the first thing this government did when it came into office was to freeze all public service promotions, freeze all public service lateral transfers and freeze all public service reclassifications.
The second thing it did was review all public service jobs from the point of view of privatization. The third thing it did was come into the House on this scandal and suggest that public servants out there somewhere are responsible for the mess.
I suggest that the government take responsibility for its actions and come clean with the fact that we are truly talking about a Liberal scandal.