Debates of Feb. 20th, 2004

Sponsorship Program

[Jason Kenney, Canadian Alliance, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the evidence is in the daily newspaper if the minister would pick up the paper and read about the leaked memo, where Mario Laguë had been invited to a secret meeting which resulted in the sanitizing of the Auditor General's report in 2000. Has he not yet read Jonathan Murphy's article from the The Globe and Mail two years ago, where he, not us, implicates Mario Laguë as having been involved in secretive meetings to thwart access to information and divert attention from Auditor General's reports?

If this government is about openness and transparency, why does it hire a cover-up specialist to deal with the Prime Minister's--

[The Deputy Speaker]

The hon. Deputy Prime Minister.

[Anne McLellan, Liberal, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Mr. Speaker, I can only say that what I have just heard is an outrageous allegation. Let me reassure this House that in fact Mr. Laguë did not even attend the meeting that is being referred to by some hon. members of this House. Mr. Laguë had no responsibilities for the design or management of this program.

In fact, what is even more important is that Mr. Laguë is willing to appear before the public accounts committee or the public inquiry to answer any questions that may be put to him.

[Caroline St-Hilaire, Bloc, Longueuil, QC]

Mr. Speaker, in the aftermath of the 2000 election, the chief electoral officer spoke out against any form of contribution made in such a way as to conceal the donor's identity, such as was possible with the Liberal Party's secret funds, like Liberal Party Trust Fund 2, which was in operation at the time of the sponsorship scandal.

Will this government, which claims to want to get to the bottom of things, admit that any verification of whether the misappropriated funds ended up in the secret Liberal funds will require an end to the secrecy so that the public can know the source of these secret funds before there is an election?

[Jacques Saada, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister responsible for Democratic Reform]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal Party of Canada has no secret funds.

When Bill C-24 on political party financing was being studied, that party wanted retroactivity. It backed down on that in order to get the bill passed so it could obtain public funding for political parties. Now they want to use another approach to get the retroactivity they did not obtain at the time, and did not want, because they wanted the public funds.

[Caroline St-Hilaire, Bloc, Longueuil, QC]

Mr. Speaker, as well as the special funds, we do not know who is behind the Liberal MPs' secret funds. The chief electoral officer himself is the one saying that there are apparently millions of dollars in those funds.

In order for the public to know, before the election, where the sponsorship money ended up, would it not be to the government's advantage to take its inspiration from the transparency the chief electoral officer is recommending and reveal immediately the identity of the people behind the secret Liberal funds?

[Jacques Saada, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister responsible for Democratic Reform]

Mr. Speaker, I think it may be time for the Bloc Quebecois to find something else to talk about.

I repeat again. Despite the allegations of these colleagues, the Liberal Party of Canada has no secret fund. Any question relating to such a secret fund is unacceptable; there is no secret fund.

[Benoît Sauvageau, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the Chief Electoral Officer, not the Bloc Quebecois, has several times denounced the use of trust funds, which he calls the “black hole of political financing”. This practice was current at the same time the communications firms, friends of the Liberal Party, were filling their pockets with sponsorship money.

Will the government—which prides itself on transparency—admit that it is important to know whether or not the contributions made to Liberal candidates in 2000 through the secret slush funds came from these very communications firms?

[Jacques Saada, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister responsible for Democratic Reform]

Mr. Speaker, we have been very clear in saying that the commission of inquiry that has been established can go absolutely anywhere it wants and question whomever it wishes, in order to get to the bottom of things.

The second thing is that on January 1, 2004, Bill C-24 on political party financing, which we examined during the last session, became law. Before that date any existing trust funds, or the people who managed them, had a choice: they could transfer these funds to ridings so that the money could be used for political purposes, or they could respect the $1,000 contribution ceiling across the county. That is now over.

[Benoît Sauvageau, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Bourassa is about to have a breakdown, but I will ask my other question.

The Prime Minister has told us that he wishes to be transparent in the inquiry into sponsorships. Is the government willing to admit that we will never know the extent of this scandal until and unless we know who contributed to these slush funds?

[Jacques Saada, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister responsible for Democratic Reform]

Mr. Speaker, I do not know if my language is incorrect, incomprehensible or unintelligible, but I shall repeat for the umpteenth time: there are no secret slush funds in the Liberal Party of Canada.

National Defence

[Alexa McDonough, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Mr. Speaker, President Bush is weaponizing space. New evidence makes that clearer than ever. The U.S. federal budget has allocated funds for space based missile interceptors. The U.S. air force has unveiled its plans to put weapons into orbit. That means space.

The new arms race is underway and Liberals remain silent. Will the minister of defence stand in his place today and condemn George Bush's plans for weaponizing space?

[David Pratt, Liberal, Minister of National Defence]

Mr. Speaker, I want to make it very clear once again. We have had two debates in the House this week. I have made these points on a number of occasions, but I will make them again.

The official policy of the Government of Canada is one of non-weaponization of space. The Prime Minister has said that and the Minister of Foreign Affairs has said that.

In addition to that, the official policy of the United States government is one of non-weaponization of space. They do have the ability to research various programs in the United States, but before they deploy anything there has to be a change of policy and that has not taken place.

[Alexa McDonough, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Mr. Speaker, if the government does not intend to see space weaponized, then why will it not stand up and condemn the plans of George Bush to do exactly that?

Today's Ottawa Citizen reports that Bush's plan, and I quote, “echoes [the] former U.S. president's...Star Wars scheme”. Yesterday Russia tested a hypersonic weapon designed to penetrate missile shields. Yet when New Democrats raise these concerns, Liberals accuse us of scaremongering.

I ask the minister again: If this is not a new arms race, what is?

[David Pratt, Liberal, Minister of National Defence]

Mr. Speaker, part of the reason why the NDP has been criticized on this issue is because they have laid before the Canadian public a number of specious arguments. The NDP has talked about $1 trillion being spent on ballistic missile defence. That is absolutely absurd. They talked about nuclear tipped warheads being used for ballistic missile defence. That is absolutely absurd. It is not part of the existing program.

The NDP needs a credibility check on this issue.

Sponsorship Program

[Rahim Jaffer, Canadian Alliance, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister would have Canadians believe that he can get their money back from his Liberal friends. Yesterday the Auditor General was highly dismissive of this promise, saying, and I quote, “I think it will be difficult to do that, given the lack of documentation that we found in the files”.

The Liberal Party set up this program to hide this money and only the Liberal Party knows where it is. How does the Prime Minister expect to keep his promise?

[Reg Alcock, Liberal, President of the Treasury Board and Minister responsible for the Canadian Wheat Board]

Mr. Speaker, this is a serious issue. The junior Joe McCarthys on the other side of the House stand up all the time, making all sorts of slanderous statements, smearing individuals and smearing competent public servants, but they have yet to do what I have been asking them to do for two weeks: to put a single credible fact on the table.

If the hon. member people believes that people have been fraudulently dealing with public--

[The Deputy Speaker]

The hon. member for Edmonton—Strathcona.

[Rahim Jaffer, Canadian Alliance, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Mr. Speaker, this is about the Prime Minister keeping his promise and, something the government knows very little about, a commitment to Canadians. The Prime Minister claims he respects Canadians and their tax dollars, yet everything he is doing is absolutely the opposite. He dodges questions about his involvement and continues to shovel advertising money to his friends at Groupe Everest.

Now we know the money cannot be recovered. How are Canadians supposed to trust the Prime Minister when there is no way he can recover this money?

[Reg Alcock, Liberal, President of the Treasury Board and Minister responsible for the Canadian Wheat Board]

Mr. Speaker, let me see if I have this right. The member asks how we can trust the Prime Minister. This is the member from the party that put an incomplete document on the table alleging that it was a statement of fact. They did not have the courage to put the whole document on the table.

However, let us ask the Auditor General what she thinks about this: “I would say, as I have said before, that I believe the Prime Minister is taking this very seriously and has taken serious measures to address the concerns...”. That is Sheila Fraser, Auditor General of Canada, yesterday.

[Cheryl Gallant, Canadian Alliance, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Mr. Speaker, $100 million and no paper trail: How does the Prime Minister expect to recover those lost millions from the sponsorgate scandal?

[Stephen Owen, Liberal, Minister of Public Works and Government Services]

Mr. Speaker, we have appointed a special counsel for the recovery of funding flowing from this program. That lawyer and his firm are already aggressively tracing money. They will be following it from the source of the sponsorship program to wherever it might lead.

Where money can be recovered, aggressive civil action will be taken to recover it. Where criminal activity is indicated, referrals will continue to be made to the RCMP. When any of us in the House or outside the House have knowledge of improper activity, criminal or illegal in some other way, they will--

[The Deputy Speaker]

The hon. member for Renfrew--Nipissing--Pembroke.

[Cheryl Gallant, Canadian Alliance, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister has given his personal guarantee to recover the stolen money. Does he intend to take it out of Liberal Party coffers?

[Stephen Owen, Liberal, Minister of Public Works and Government Services]

Mr. Speaker, the investigations that are underway, as well as the work by the special counsel, will be tracing the funds from their source in the sponsorship program to wherever they might lead. If that leads to the Liberal Party, the Prime Minister has said it will be followed there. If that leads somewhere else, it will be followed there.

We do not start at some imaginary place and work backward. We start at the source of the funds and follow it wherever it might lead.