Mr. Speaker, I have always taken so much pride in representing the riding of Edmonton--Strathcona, and I have always taken so much pride in being able to stand up in this place to represent Canadians, to talk about pertinent issues and to do the best I possibly can as a member of Parliament to advance great goals for Canadians. Yet here we are on a day like today dealing with the culture of corruption that has existed in the government since it has taken power. The exact same things those members said they would try to eradicate while they were in opposition seem to have become ten times worse than any previous government.
I stand up today with a saddened heart to discuss these issues because we should be discussing issues pertaining to BSE, softwood lumber and our place in the world. How can we deal with these issues and the integrity of the country when we have a government that seems to be corrupt to the bone? We just cannot do it. Canadians are finally coming to the end with this government and what it represents.
This is not something new. It is a trend that has continuously been building since the government took office. I want to take a moment to read today's motion into the record. It states:
That, in the opinion of this House, the Liberal government has and continues to nurture a culture of corruption through the abuse of its influence and the use of public funds for personal benefit and to benefit friends, family and the Liberal Party of Canada.
Just recently the Auditor General's report was tabled in the House. According to that report, the sponsorship program has cost at least $250 million. We hope, through the process of a public inquiry, that we can get to the bottom of this and find out if there has been even more abuse. It seems $100 million of these fees went to commissions for Liberal-friendly advertising companies that did little or no work.
It is bad enough that this sort of abuse has taken place, but the person who is in charge, the top dog, the Prime Minister of the country, is claiming that he had no knowledge of any of this happening. Let us look and see.
Since this report was tabled, he has given on separate occasions a number of different excuses. A number of my colleagues have highlighted them. I would not mind going over them because I was floored when I heard some of the excuses, particularly after hearing that the new Prime Minister would do things in a new way and that he would bring a new level of government. It seems like he has brought a new level of ignorance and corruption to the government.
First, he claimed that he did not know anything about the scandal. The next day he blamed a rogue group of public servants. When people were not buying that story, he admitted that he had heard about a number of administrative problems, when it came to the actual sponsorship program. He said that he really was not aware of it until the final Auditor General's report was tabled in the House.
It is hard for us on this side of the House to believe that the Prime Minister, who was one of the most prominent ministers in the government over the last 10 years and who was one of the chief members of Parliament at cabinet, would know nothing about the scandal and the abuse of taxpayer dollars. Now that the government has been caught, we are starting to find out more about the truth. Hopefully, before the election is called, Canadians will know the full truth about this matter and how much the Prime Minister and many of his ministers knew about the whole scandal evolving on that side of the House.
The truth of the matter is I think there has always been this sort of abuse, neglect and disrespect of taxpayer dollars. Only when they get caught do they make an effort to change any of the things that have happened on that side of the House. We have a number of examples to show even before this Auditor General's report.
I can speak from my own experience. When I worked on the revenue file, I dealt with the GST fraud issue. Some members may remember that issue. We did not know the figures involved. One of my colleagues has said $100 million. We thought it could have been up to $1 billion that was lost by the government because of its lack of control in the department of revenue to ensure that people who made false GST claims did not get the moneys. There were no checks or balances in the Department of Finance when it came to cheques being mailed out for false claims. It is incredible that this would happen. It took an inconsistency where someone actually received a cheque and was shocked because that person had put a false claim in. This story came to the media.
We started to investigate it and found that millions of dollars had been abused because of the lack of respect on that side of the House for taxpayer dollars. It is outrageous. Only when the government got caught did it say that it had a whole department that was focused on GST fraud and that it changed the accounting practices. We actually had to grill the previous minister in committee. Finally she decided to change the reporting process so Canadians could find out how much was lost throughout the years of the government being in office, especially on the GST fraud.
Because the government kept lumping the amount of money that was lost into general revenues for the department, in accounts receivable which it was still in the process of trying to track down, the number could have been in excess of a billion dollars. That is another billion dollar boondoggle of which we never got to the bottom.
I do not have to remind Canadians about the ones that were more topical and that gained a lot of interest from the media. The HRDC boondoggle was the same sort of abuse on that side of the House. It was a disrespect for taxpayer dollars. A continuous flow of money went to people who should not have received it. Ultimately, there is still no accountability.
We have the gun registry about which we have heard more and more. Again, only after the work on this side of the House by one of our diligent members, the member for Yorkton--Melville, who kept hammering the government saying that the numbers were not adding up and it was not coming clean with Canadians, did we start to find out the abuse of taxpayer dollars in that department. Now the costs are upwards of $1 billion. This is unacceptable. That program was supposed to be no more that $2 million. Now some estimates are that it will reach almost $2 billion. This is outrageous and is another example of abuse by the government.
Even when it comes to the Prime Minister's own backyard, how can we trust what numbers the government puts out? I think that is the crux of the problem. Canadians have lost confidence in the government. When initially questioned about how much the Prime Minister's companies, Canadian Steamship Lines, had received in grant money, the government put out a number of some $137,000. We would like to take the government at its word, but obviously through the diligent work of one of our colleagues, the member for Edmonton Southwest, who put a question on the Order Paper to find out how much that money was, we found it was $161 million.
How can the government stand in this place and ask Canadians in almost a repentant style to forgive it and trust it when it comes to bringing openness and transparency into this place? How can the government even imagine that Canadians can trust it to do so?
When these numbers come out in such flagrant ways, there is no accountability. The government does not seem to know what is happening in its own departments. The Prime Minister himself is not aware of how much money, even during the portion of the time when he was finance minister, that his companies were able to obtain. This is outrageous.
We finally are seeing the straw that has broken the camel's back. The member for Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Aldershot has come out and said that he cannot remain with a government that seems to be void of ideas, full of corruption and obviously is heading in a completely opposite direction of where he as a member of Parliament is heading. Many of us came to this place to try to strive for Canadians, to put Canadians first, to give them the best government possible. He cannot remain in that government. I would like to echo the end of his press conference when he said that maybe it was time for change.
I hope Canadians will remember that if the government has the audacity to go to the polls in the next couple of months.