Mr. Speaker, I perhaps have more faith in the words of his former leader than that member does because the right hon. In May 2000 Jean Chrétien said, “A few million may have been stolen”. It may not have been the Auditor General's word. It was the word of the prime minister who helped to set up this scam who said that millions may have been stolen. In his characteristic sort of Marie-Antoinette l'etat c'est moi attitude he said, “So what? Maybe it did some good”.
I have never alleged that the Auditor General said money was stolen. Clearly, she has said it is unaccounted for. That would be a synonym for missing; millions upon millions. We now know, with the criminal charges laid this week that relate to this matter, without any doubt, and I believe we can infer reasonably, that there was fraud and theft involved, and the former prime minister confirmed that.
Let me give a couple examples of what have been credible media reports on this.
There was a story in the Ottawa Sun from senior sources who talked about the process of dry cleaning. Senior officials from Liberal ad scam firms, like Groupaction, would take their company credit card to go shopping at expensive boutique stores in Montreal with the spouses of prominent Ottawa Liberal political figures. They would purchase expensive items on their credit cards for the personal use of these Ottawa figures. Then the costs would all be dry cleaned through the ad scam contracts.
We have heard about $4,000 bottles of Pétrus wine being purchased by ad scam agencies and served to senior Liberal political figures and the cost of that being dry cleaned through advertising contracts.
We have heard about Crown corporations effectively purchasing luxury boxes at the Montreal hockey arena, but dry cleaning the cost of that through the ad scam agencies. This kind of activity goes on and on.
Yes, I believe, like Jean Chrétien, that millions were stolen. I agree with the Auditor General that we have no evidence about the whereabouts of millions of dollars. Let me just point to one example. This has not received much attention, but I think it is just a shocking example.
In May 2003, the Globe and Mail reported that a $64,000 donation from the company of Liberal fundraiser Alain Renaud was followed by a government sponsorship subcontract that benefited Mr. Renaud brother.
A few months after Alain Renaud made his donation, which, by the way, was the fifth largest donation to the Liberal Party that year, larger than several of the chartered banks, public works issued a $492,000 contract to Groupe Everest to produce promotional items, such as key chains and watches. Groupe Everest then subcontracted a $390,000 order to Communication Art Tellier Inc., controlled by Benoit Renaud, brother of Alain Renaud, and Groupe Everest got a $68,000 commission in the process.
Guess what? The company of Alain Renaud, which made this $64,000 donation to the Liberal Party, was shortly thereafter bankrupt. It had the same address as his brother Benoit Renaud who got the subcontract for $400,000.
What do we have here? One microcosm of the kind of unconscionable fraud, undoubtable fraud that occurred that benefited who? The Liberal Party got 64 grand out of this deal. Alain Renaud brother got a $400,000 contract. Groupe Everest, Liberal ad agency, got a $69,000 cheque for the trouble of passing the money on.
This is the kind of evidence which I see, as a member of the public accounts committee, is undoubtable circumstantial evidence about fraud and theft. That is precisely why the committee has been shut down. There will be no meaningful answers before going to the polls because the answers would be far too damning.