Mr. Speaker, the Deputy Prime Minister was in fact intimately involved with the various cabinet committees linked to the sponsorship scandal from the very beginning. She was in the loop and perhaps the tie that binds. In 1995, she was a member of the unity committee; in 1998, a member of the ad hoc committee on government communications; in 2001, an official member of the communications committee.
Will the Deputy Prime Minister admit that she was not only in the know but was in fact the common thread in the elimination of controls and safeguards and boosting up spending into the contract scam?