That is good advice, Mr. Speaker. The point has been made and obviously the sensitivity on the other side demonstrates that my arrow has hit its mark.
Now that the Auditor General has confirmed what the official opposition has been stating for years, the Prime Minister announced yet another meaningless public inquiry. He has created a flurry of media attention, made public apologies, and has uttered threats against the nameless evildoers to get the Liberals past the next election.
The story changes every day. I assume what is happening is that the story is told then the polling is done. If it does not wash with the people, another story is told. I refer to the first story as the case of the conspiracy of the 12 monkeys. There are 12 people hidden away in the labyrinth of government somewhere gratuitously shelling out money to ad companies with close connections to the Liberals. They then kite these cheques, as the Prime Minister said, and the money goes on to friends and some of it just stays.
What I found objectionable is that the government, or whoever these nameless individuals are, used agencies like the RCMP to accomplish its purposes. These individuals traded on the good name of the RCMP so they could send an ad agency a cheque for $3 million. The ad agency kept $1.3 million and $1.7 million went to the RCMP. What happened to the $1.3 million? The ad agency and obviously these nameless individuals hiding in the bowels of government were trading on the good name of the RCMP to perpetrate this scheme on the people of Canada using taxpayers' money.
Canadians are entitled to know, why did the Prime Minister say nothing when he was in a position to stop this unprecedented financial abuse? We have heard from Liberal members that, since 1999 in their caucus, these rumours have been circulating. The former Minister of Canadian Heritage said that the now Prime Minister, then finance minister, the vice-president of the Treasury Board, must have known. It was obvious he should have known if he did not know.
Government does not operate by setting up a program for a quarter billion dollars and not have that go through the Treasury Board process and through the senior minister in the province where the money is to be spent. It was convenient. I am saying that as a result of my own public service experience as a member of the attorney general's department, as an elected official and a cabinet minister in Manitoba. What these Liberals are trying to get Canadians to believe about this mysterious organization and funnelling money to their friends is simply ludicrous.
Everyone knows what the process is. If the process was not followed, there is only one individual who is to blame, and that is the person who had his hands on the levers of power when he was finance minister, when he was vice-president of the Treasury Board, and that is the Prime Minister.
Now the Prime Minister is trying to distance himself from the previous 11 years of Liberal government. “I had no idea what was going on”, he said. Yet he never hesitated over the last 10 years to tell us how he was an integral part of the government. He knew where every dime was going. Suddenly, he is out of his office. However, he was an MP. He was here every day in the House I assume. Yet he did not hear any of the rumours that we heard.
When we spoke up about this, the Liberal members shut down the committee hearings. When we wanted to ask Alfonso Gagliano a question, the Liberal members shut down the hearing. Why did we not speak? It was because the member over on the other side shut us down.
It is shameful that those Liberals were involved in this cover-up when everyone over there knew what was going on. When the people of Canada were entitled to know what was going on, they shut down the inquiry. They refused to allow us to ask questions. Now they say to us that we are all in this together and that we should resolve it together. It is like somebody being caught breaking into a house and going down to do time asking if anyone wants to share time with him. I say, “No, thank you. You are doing your own time”.