Mr. Speaker, I would like to respond to the member for Renfrew--Nipissing--Pembroke on this important matter.
I would like to reiterate what has been said numerous times in the House over the last few years. The sponsorship program was fraught with deficiencies and fundamentally flawed. The government acknowledged these mistakes and eventually cancelled the program.
However, a number of measures were taken before cancelling the program. After the internal audit of 2000, the following measures were taken. An action plan was developed to deal with the managerial problems. In early 2002 specific measures were put in place to end the problems that existed in the sponsorship program. In March 2002 the Auditor General audited three contracts that were awarded to Groupaction. In May 2002 a moratorium on the sponsorship initiative was imposed. In December 2002 a redesigned sponsorship program was put in place for a trial period of one year. On December 13, 2003 the Government of Canada announced the abolition of the sponsorship program.
Members opposite continue to talk about the sponsorship program only being a Liberal fund, but to the contrary, opposition members were applying to the program at the same time. It was a program that sponsored good events in local communities and that is why all members of Parliament are upset for the very reasons that the member opposite has outlined.
The problem was not money going to festivals or other activities within communities. There was a problem with the management of certain companies that, it appears, were acting inappropriately. That had to be stopped and that is why the charges have been laid and why we have had a public inquiry. That is why we are trying to recover the money.
The opposition speaks about there being no transparency in government and asks why nothing is being done to clean up the program. Nothing could be further from the truth. We have a wide open public inquiry headed by a judge which will go wherever he chooses to get the information required. We have an unprecedented release of confidential cabinet documents, Treasury Board documents and departmental documents. We have separate reviews and we have the public accounts committee, to which we are sending everybody. This is fully transparent and probably unprecedented attention when a problem is determined in government.