Mr. Speaker, in many situations such as this we now have a new minister. The new minister tries to sweep everything away. We have a former minister who is now an appointee and no longer a member of the government. We have the deputy minister who is now no longer the deputy minister. He has been appointed Governor of the Bank of Canada.
We have very clear evidence. The newspapers were writing in 2000 about how the federal government was taking its fight to court to audit spending at the centre. The government knew there were major problems in existence at that time. Yet we now have a further audit that demonstrates that even while it was doing that it was still flowing money to the foundation. The abuses were growing and not staying the same, not getting smaller. The abuses were getting bolder and bolder. The money that was being scammed was getting into larger and larger numbers.
All of that is a clear indicator to me that there is major corruption at work and is deep seated. It affects some elements of our bureaucracy. This suspicion was there in the early 1990s when I was in this portfolio and it is still there. It has not been fixed.
The signal the government is sending by not making anyone accountable unless they were actually caught with their hand in the cookie jar, on the take, is that we have a vested interest in preferring to bury these problems, more so than exposing them and cleaning up the accounts and the entire situation.
This is a sad story that the Canadian public deserves to know more about than they currently do.